Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

There's not much to cheer about regarding the new musical, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life. Once you get past Rivera's relatively brief incarnations as her best characters from years past (such as Anita, the role she created in West Side Story, the original Velma in the musical Chicago, or the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman) there's not much left to say. If those tidbits are enough to hold your attention for almost two hours, then by all means see Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Darwin in Malibu
FSU Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Except for huge sounds of waves, the flowery bamboo-furniture-filled beach house in Darwin in Malibu has the peaceful solitude conducive to Charles Darwin's reading. It's a novel as sexy as the young girl, Sarah, in cut-offs, serving him banana milk shakes. She (a langorous Leigh Ann Wolf) herself has been reading what he calls a "dangerous thing," a diary that makes her recall a boyfriend having a hot night with a "bitch" not far away in Bakersfield. Darwin (way-too-detached Stephen Temperley) would rather she didn't obsess about the "truth" in the diary.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Desire Under the Elms
Cygnet Theater

Desire under the Elms is definitely not for the weak of heart. Eugene O'Neill's story is placed in a remote New England farm. Ephraim Cabot (Jim Chovick), 70-something, brings his much younger bride, Abbie (Jessica John), home to meet his family of three boys. Youngest son, Eben (Francis Gercke), steals Ephraim's rainy-day money to stake older brothers Peter and Simon (John Garcia and Craig Huisenga) for their quest to California. Eben is determined to hate Abbie, but the young man ends up lusting for her.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Deuce
Music Box Theater

In Terrence McNally's Deuce, we have two old Acting Monuments, Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes, playing two old Tennis Monuments watching a tennis match. Early in the play, when these two are on, it doesn't matter what they say; it's interesting as these wonderful antiques watch the game. When we cut to the booth where the commentators are, it goes banal. Direction of the commentators by Michael Blakemore is poor, without a believable word from them. Also, a strange, odd-looking autograph hunter is introduced, I can't figure out for what.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Evening of Intimate Magic, An (with Eric deCamps)
Rockefeller Center - Lincoln Room

I saw the performance of a charming Close-Up Magician, Eric DeCamps. He takes top-level magic pieces, and performs them perfectly: coins appear and disappear; his card work seems actual magic; he does cups and balls, the disappearing egg, uses a spirit box with ropes, and one I haven't seen before that is surely actual magic: bread chips and a cup.

DeCamps, an ingratiating persona, is a master of sleight-of-hand, and his show, one of the best you'll see of this kind of magic, is entertaining from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Legally Blonde
Palace Theater

There is more youthful exuberance and bounce in Legally Blonde (book by Heather Hach, music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin) than in a Beverly Hills High School pool party. As directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, it's nothing but fun.

You know the plot: Bev. Hills supposed Ding Dong goes to Harvard Law School in pursuit of a Dumb Dumb. Beautiful Laura Bell Bundy is the girl, and the charm oozes, drips and splashes -- and she taps, too. This girl is hot!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Radio Golf
Cort Theater

Once again and with his final play, Radio Golf, August Wilson defines the term "wordsmith" and proves he is one of this country's greatest playwrights. This last of his brilliant, decade-by-decade explorations of the black experience in Pittsburgh is another powerful, moving experience. The five-member ensemble explore the ramifications of conscience in a contemporary economic and political situation, pitting the climber, James A. Williams, against the economically stable Harry Lennix, who is running for mayor.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
As If Body Loop, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Strange title. Strange play. Strange experience being trapped in a full-length sitcom that strains credulity and make dismal stabs at profundity.

Ken Weitzman's The As If Body Loop, the fifth play in this year's 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is a curdling amalgam of football guy-talk and a Hebrew legend about 36 people called the Lamed Vuv who are chosen at birth by God to carry all the pain of the world.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Coast of Utopia, The: Salvage (part 3)
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

In part three of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard continues exploring the hopes and naïvete of early Russian revolutionaries mid-1800's. Although the gorgeous pageantry designed by Bob Crowley and Scott Pask scattered throughout the play when there are short scenes with lots of people totally engage us with their beauty and flowing imagination, the conversations do not, except when there is a break in form about them, such as a section in lively sprichstimme - a kind of lively spoken operetta with music.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Cabaret
Patio Playhouse

Cabaret burst onto the Broadway scene in 1966, winning multiple Tonys. It defied musical theater traditions with heavy drama and few laughs. The piece illustrates how a society allows itself to be overtaken. It is currently on the boards at Patio Playhouse Community Theater in Escondido.

Placed in a decadent Berlin in 1929 and 1930, Cabaret looks at the assent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. Much of the action takes place in the Kit Kat Klub, a less than desirable joint where working girls and boys rent by the hour.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Frost/Nixon
Bernard B. Jacobs

I was so enthralled by the play Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan, now on Broadway, and by the performances of Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, that I could barely take notes.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Tammy Grimes
Metropolitan Room

Tammy Grimes at the Metropolitan Room: it's a pleasure to visit with and spend time with one of our all-time great performers. Okay, she can't really sustain a note any more, but that doesn't matter; it's the real Tammy Grimes up there, and her long-acknowledged comic timing is still active. She still radiates, still entertains every corner of the room.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Pirate Queen, The
Hilton Theater

The Pirate Queen by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Richard Maltby and John Dempsey -- What a show! Action! Beautiful women! Strong men! Great voices led by the magnetic Stephanie J. Block (who reminds me of Maureen O'Hara), and music from Les Miz -- well, almost, but I guess they can steal from themselves.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Year of Magical Thinking, The
Booth Theater

Vanessa Redgrave, of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, now on Broadway, is a great actress, but it's a tough show as a woman recounts the aftermath of her husband's death and then her daughter's. She doesn't sink into self-pity at all, but each of us grieves in our own way, and although "Magical Thinking," her attempt to change reality, is a valid one, it's not my way. There is just a bit of wallowing in recollections of the daughter, and, for me, the lack of tangents away from death and illness, make the piece a tad long.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
BE
Union Square Theater

BE [sic] now at the Union Square Theater, performed by Mayumana, is an amazing show. It's drumming and action, and is as tightly choreographed as a Busby Berkeley musical, with precise Mime exercises, precision drumming, planned wildness, and great contemporary/futuristic costumes by Neta Haker. It has a bit of Cirque, Stomp, Blue Man flavor, but it is its own thing and includes hamboning, black light, acrobatics, Flamenco and belly-dancing, all with great creativity, universality in movement and sound, order and chaos with order.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Be
Union Square Theater

If you haven't seen Stomp, Blue Man Group, Blast!, Cirque du Soleil, Gumboots and/or Drumstruck, have I got a show for you! It's an Israeli import called Be, and it features a passel of young, awesomely agile and athletic performers mixing dance, physical slapstick, musical performance art and audience participation. It's got rhythmic trading of buckets, glow-in-the-dark flippy things, funky dancing, playful calisthenics, and pretty much anything to make an aspiring terpsichorean green with envy.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Altar Boyz
Civic Theater

Broadway San Diego has brought Altar Boyz to San Diego for a short run. From the audience reactions opening night, it could play to sold-out houses. The show debuted over two years ago at the New York Music Theatre Festival, opened Off Broadway March 1, 2005, and has several road productions running. Talk about striking while the iron is hot! Altar Boyz, a struggling Christian boy band, is trying to ride the current religion wave.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Batch
Actors Theater of Louisville

After seeing Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacular, the sixth play in the 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, you're likely to have second thoughts about taking part in one of those pre-nuptial rituals. But do, by all means, see Batch, performed in an arena in The Connection nightclub downtown by an incredible Philadelphia group called New Paradise Laboratories, who created it. New Paradise director Whit MacLaughlin conceived the piece with Los Angeles playwright Alice Tuan, who did the text.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Company
Poway Performing Arts Company

Company, which began as a series of one-act plays by George Furth, became the highly successful musical of 1970 with the addition of Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics. It ran just over 700 performances, then moved on to London. The story is just as topical today as it was 37 years ago. Under Rick Shaffer's direction, Company is running on PowPAC's stage in Poway.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Dark Play Or Stories for Boys
Actors Theater of Louisville

Fourteen-year-old Nick (Matthew Stadelmann) in Carlos Murillo's stunning Dark Play, Or Stories for Boys, the second offering in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, believes he can wriggle out of any sticky situation that arises from his Internet addiction. That's because he has "the dexterity of a sharp-thinking, comic-book hero," he boasts. But the online stories he concocts to manipulate the lives of others and satisfy his burgeoning sexual appetite lead him into dark and dangerous territory.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Dreamgirls
Asolo Theater

Why see onstage the musical Dreamgirls that can be seen in local cinemas? Why see it again if you've already attended the Westcoast Black Theater Troupe's previous productions not long ago? Two reasons: Teresa Stanley and Chadwick. The woman reaches thrilling operatic heights at the end of Act I with both vocal and emotional output. The man doesn't have to act the part of a legendary singer: he personifies a confident, preening man with ravishing soprano tones and manner that would be over the top if his own top -- not just head but attitude -- weren't so high.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Desire in the Suburbs
Workshop Theater

Eugene O'Neill's powerful drama of love, jealousy, betrayal, passion, Desire Under the Elms, is looked at with a contemporary comedic sideways skew by Frederic Glover in his Desire in the Suburbs now at The Workshop Theater on West 36th Street.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Journey's End
Belasco Theater

Journey's End, R.C. Sheriff's vivid, 1928 anti-war slice of World War I trench life slams home the stupidity and brutality of war, and the basic innocence of the soldiers sent to the front to fight in a hopeless situation. It is beautifully performed by a first rate English-accented cast, well directed by David Grindley, and underlighted by Jason Taylor. I know, I know- they want us to experience the half-light of a real trench, but it's a very long play with little respite from the gloom, and there were some nod-outs sitting near me.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Gutenberg! The Musical
Actors' Playhouse

Gutenberg! The Musical! by Scott Brown and Anthony King gives us two wonderful comedians, Jeremy Shamos and David Turner, in a hilarious, absurdist interpretation of the adventures of the inventor of the printing press in 1450. Turner is a comedy star who can sing and dance and has the clean movements of a mime. Shamos is a perfect foil for him.

The songs and patter are clever, and it's directed and choreographed with flair and great comic timing by Alex Timbers. Innovative costumes by Emily Rebholz expand the concept of the two men playing multiple characters.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Howard Katz
Laura Pels Theater

In the gripping poker games of Dealer's Choice and the frayed relationships of Closer, Patrick Marber keenly mapped the emotional toll of compulsive behavior and casual cruelty. At his frequent best, he wedded the fluid, seriocomic dialogue of Donald Margulies to the crisp tension of David Mamet.

So why doesn't it work in Howard Katz? Certainly, Marber's created a larger-than-life protagonist and given him a clear trajectory to follow: hollow career success becomes across-the-board failure, all in an intermissionless 90 minutes.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Apple Tree, The
Studio 54

After ascending to bankability in Wicked, Kristin Chenoweth isn't reinventing Broadway musicals so much as reinventing the Broadway musical star. The triptych of short tuneful comedies by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick will interrupt its limited run this week (Jan. 19-20) as Chenoweth makes a concert appearance, "Live at the Met," this Friday. A little further down the road -- would you believe 2010? -- Chenoweth is slated to make her Metropolitan Opera stage debut in John Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Adrift in Macao
59E59 Theater

Mystery! Adventure on dark streets! Beautiful bad women in slinky costumes! Suave good-looking men! Adrift in Macao, the new film noir musical with book and lyrics by Christopher Durang and music by Peter Melnick now at 59E59, gives us Durang at the top of his satirical creativity, with sparkling, imaginative innovation from director Sheryl Kaller and choreographer Christopher Gattelli. The music is as profoundly enjoyable as the lyrics, and it's a kick from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Brooklyn Boy
Lyceum

Donald Margulies has given us some really great theater. My two favorites are Dinner with Friends and Collected Stories. The current offering of San Diego Repertory Theater is his Brooklyn Boy, under the direction of Todd Salovey. The latter's direction is flawless. He uses pauses—sometimes very, very long pauses—much better than most playwrights use words. His grasp of the material: the humor, the pathos, and the high emotions, is intuitive.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Carnival
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

"Love Makes the World Go 'Round" -- as the lead song of Carnival insists. Love -- by director, cast, and crew for this musical -- also comes through in a joyous, colorful production. Sarah Farnam not only looks perfect as the childlike young woman Lili who talks to puppets she believes real. Her sweet soprano hits both notes and emotional highs too. Brian Minyard's voice soars as well, while he tempers his characterization of the bitter, lame former dancer who manipulates the puppets who'll express the love he can't.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Crime and Punishment
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

What could be more daunting than a theatrical "deconstruction" of a famous Russian novel? That was the thought going through this reviewer's mind before the opening-night curtain rose on Crime and Punishment. The famous book is considered by many to be the first novel to probe the psychological underpinnings of its characters' actions.

For those who failed to read Crime and Punishment in college, the noted author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, sets the novel in Russia in the 1860s.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Crimes of the Heart
Village Arts Theater

Dropping by Old Granddaddy's home in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, is quite an experience. The time is the early 1980s in Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart. Lenny McGrath, 30 years old today, has been taking care of her ailing grandfather while her sisters, Meg and Babe, pursued other adventures. Granddaddy, hospitalized in serious condition, has inadvertently brought the three together.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Evil Dead: The Musical
New World Stages

Granted, George Reinblatt's merciless send-up of this Hollywood horror isn't wedded to a musical score of equal distinction. And yes, the late-night cult cachet that Evil Dead aspires to is frankly ripped off from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But outfitted with its undeniably original Splatter Zone, ED is s-o-o-o-o much fun, a happening with its own twisted identity.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Fever, The
Acorn Theater

Starting with wry observations on theatregoing, Wallace Shawn is a fine monologist, an observer/commentator whose tales draw us in, while his insights and humor hold us. In The Fever, there is a lot about the lot of the poor and visits to poor countries, some with revolutions, including Karl Marx's analysis of value and the relationship between product and people, and a ramble on terrorism. There are also comments on a nude beach and on Christmas present-wrapping.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Madras House, The
Mint Theater

Though the Mint Theater's revival of The Madras House is well played, beautifully costumed, often lively, occasionally provocative and, in rare spots, gripping, at the end of its three hours, really the only question that intrigued me was whether protagonist Philip Madras served as a prototype of sorts for Bobby in the musical Company. Although a constant presence in the four major scenes that constitute Harley Granville-Barker's comedy, Philip's a passive presence, serving as adjudicator and sounding board as he mulls life decisions that are crucial to him but

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Bacchae, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Almost everything (walls, floor, dress, decoration, curtain separating locales) is black or white. But Agave's dress after she kills her own son is red, and that's how you know her.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Bye Bye Birdie
Patio Playhouse

Bye Bye Birdie is Patio Playhouse's current fare, a production of their Youtheater under the direction of Chris Hall. Youtheater participants range from early grade school to 19 years old. The group is enthusiastic and includes some quite talented people in major roles.

Bye Bye Birdie opened on Broadway April 14, 1960. In 1963 it was made into a film, and in 1995 it was adapted for television.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Coast of Utopia, The: Voyage (part 1)
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Tom Stoppard is my favorite contemporary playwright (I played the lead in his Travesties in Los Angeles). His new three-play saga, The Coast of Utopia, about intellectuals in Russia (and Paris) set in the 1840s, is now running at Lincoln Center.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Coast of Utopia, The: Shipwreck (part 2)
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

The second play in The Coast of Utopia trilogy, Shipwreck, in Moscow and Paris, includes the 1848 revolution, and the Paris set is amazing before and during the revolt.The style of the whole production is brilliant, and the stage pictures would be a reason to see it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Critical Case of Murder, A
Pegasus Theater

Kurt Kleinmann, founding artistic director of Pegasus Theater, has been writing his signature black-and-white murder mysteries since 1986. Patterned after the film noir style of 1930s and 40s B movies, the costumes, props, sets and make-up are executed in shades of gray punctuated only by the actors' red tongues and blood-shot eyes.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Don Quixote
Lyceum Theater

Mix 16th-Century music with rap, add in some juggling, liberal doses of puns, combat with various folks including giants claiming to be windmills, and you have a strange mix of entertainment at the Lyceum Stage by San Diego Repertory Theater. Paul Magid's Don Quixote is all of this and much more. It's at times silly, at times serious, with a delightful mix of music.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2007

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