Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance
Music Box Theater

I had managed to steer almost totally clear of Dame Edna before my first live dose, reading lightly about Australian actor Barry Humphries' creation and skimming exactly one interview with milady. So I enjoyed myself immensely during my first exposure. The tacky glasses, the silky lavender hair, and the dopey gladiolas were all new to me. These would all probably become less amusing if I had to swallow them nightly. But I love Dame Edna's magnanimous, patronizing cruelty, showered with equal glee upon President Bush and the clueless electorate who keep him in office.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Democracy
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Okay, maybe I saw a different show. Ben Brantley of the New York Times feels that Michael Frayn's Democracy is one of the greatest dramas of our time. I found it a colossal bore. In this view of German leader Willy Brandt and his rise to power, of the intricacies of the spy system between East and West Germany, and of interlocking loyalties, the political machinations are interesting, but the endless exposition gets dull. Director Michael Blakemore keeps the actors moving physically; there much motion on the creatively-designed, two-level set by Peter J.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Gem of the Ocean
Walter Kerr Theater

August Wilson's remarkable play, Gem of the Ocean, part of his cycle of plays about the black experience in Pittsburgh, gives us a working-class family in 1904, not all that long after slavery was ended. Starting with flavorful ordinary conversation, like Horton Foote, the play grows and expands into real theater with unforgettable characters. There is lots of exposition, but it's grand, and the stories are vivid, with a sprinkling of folk humor.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Good Body, The
Booth Theater

Eve Ensler is funny as a writer, performer, and philosopher, with universal deeply felt insights that go beyond comedy. She's sometimes hilarious but with depths that plumb the heart and consciousness. The Good Body explores being overweight -- with a Southern fat woman - and she gives us an 80-year-old Cosmo woman, a pierced lesbian, a Puerto Rican girl, a wife with an unsatisfactory sex life getting her vagina tightened, a high-fashion model, Botox, and a coda with an Indian summing up her "You're Okay!" philosophy.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Laugh Whore
Cort Theater

Mario Cantone's Laugh Whore gives us the hyperkinetic whirlwind spouting observational humor at full blast - he sings, he dances, he jests. His absurd impressions of Shelley Winters, Cher, Tina Turner, Kate Smith (who remembers her?), LL Cool J, Carol Channing, Katharine Hepburn, Elvis, Ann Margaret, Liza, and others keep the audience laughing. And that's only Act One. Act Two is his takeoff on his family, and he is vivid as he portrays relatives and their foibles and mannerisms. Plus Judy Garland!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
`Night Mother
Bernard B. Jacobs

The last night Jessie Cates spends at home is pretty much like the rest of her life: she makes plans, but they don't work out. Before her suicide, she plans to give her mom Thelma a manicure and enjoy a cup of hot cocoa. The cocoa doesn't turn out to be satisfying, and there isn't enough time to do the manicure before Jessie is scheduled to pull the trigger. Such is life, you say, but Jessie has leaped to the conclusion that nothing will ever work out for her. She wants to get off now before the train proceeds to a worse place. Thelma is horrified, angry, and guilty.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Pacific Overtures
Studio 54

The Broadway revival of Pacific Overtures, with songs by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Jerome Weidman, is a mish-mash. Its sort of a "The Americans Are Coming! The Americans Are Coming!" in 1853 Japan, and the production is in several styles. It doesn't seem to know if it's a farce or a drama; real so that we can identify with someone or spectacle that we can watch without emotional involvement. It's like the director/choreographer, Amon Miyamoto, didn't trust the material to just say the words and sing the songs (and do the movements).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Rivals, The
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Shift your consciousness back about 230 years, to a different, somewhat stilted style of writing, and soon the universality of the humor in this ancient soap opera begins to work, and the laughs emerge in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals, now at Lincoln Center. Sheridan is a master of wordplay, and his Mrs. Malaprop's ridiculous inappropriateness in her use of words has become part of our common language. Mischief makers, fools, lovers -- Sheridan's trick is that here and there a hint of almost malapropism slips into everyone's speech.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Whoopi
Lyceum Theater

In her Broadway return, Whoopi Goldberg begins with Fontaine, a politicized junkie, in a piece of observational humor on the political situation which feels about two weeks too late. It's good standup, but Goldberg's preaching to the choir. She then goes to Texas with Lurlene, who muses on sanitary napkins, testicles, vaginas, penis handling, and urine trajectories. Very funny.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Art
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Yasmina Reza uses relatively few theatrical brushstrokes in Art to illustrate the changeable qualities of art and friendship. In this full-length one-act, the two emerge as almost mirror images of each other. An appreciation of a painting may be strengthened by scrutiny of lines and shadings; friendships, in contrast, can be jeopardized by dwelling too much on specifics. There's a magic in each that deserves respect.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Book of Liz, The
Cygnet Theater

The Book of Liz is quite entertaining, totally eccentric, and takes a little getting used to. Before us is a light-blue meeting room, sterile in its simplicity. Across the back wall is a row of hat pegs. Several hats are hanging, also in the same pale blue. There is a door in each of the side walls. This is the meeting room of a religious group, the women dressing plainly in black and blues that match the walls. Bearded men are clad in simple black and white. The group does not believe in any advanced creature comforts such as cars or electricity.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Cabaret
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The musical Cabaret has a superlative pedigree. It first opened on Broadway in 1966 and had a healthy run. Then was made into a hit film, starring Liza Minnelli. It has been revived a number of times, including a 1998 version (starring Alan Cumming as the Emcee) that won a Tony Award for Best Revival. With all these plaudits and resources to draw from, why does the Skylight Opera Theater version seem so muddled? One starts to wonder about the show even before the opening number.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Chicago
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Rare, beefy dance is served up with all the trimmings in a dinner-theater version of Chicago that's close to, but more intimate than, what audiences have long been enjoying in New York and London. Especially in the dance, the quality's there in electrifying performances by Charlene Clark and Jillian Godfrey as murderesses who aim to use their notoriety to become stage stars. Presented as a raunchy vaudeville with slinky, black-clad gangsta gals n' guys shaking, slithering and slanting in often-tilted Fosse fashion.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Christmas Carol, A
Pabst Theater

Few regional theaters have capitalized on the public's eagerness to see A Christmas Carol more than the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. This year the company stages its 29th consecutive year of A Christmas Carol in Milwaukee's gloriously renovated Pabst Theater. Over the years, more than a million people have seen the Rep's version of Dickens' timeless fable. Yet it still manages to satisfy as few other holiday shows can. Although small things are constantly changed from year to year, the overall effect remains the same.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Crazy For You
Civic Theater

Just what is Crazy For You? It's an excuse to play a lot of Gershwin music. It could have been a delightful revue with many of the Gershwin brothers' favorites, including "I Can't Be Bothered Now," "Bidin' My Time," "Shall We Dance," "Someone To Watch Over Me," "Embraceable You," "I Got Rhythm," and "Nice Work If You Can Get It." And there is dance, lots of dance.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Five By Tenn
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

Five By Tenn, now at Manhattan Theater Club, gives us five Tennessee Williams short plays from 1937 to 1970 interspersed with words from his letters and other writings as intros. It is interesting to see Williams' treatment of mostly gay themes grow and develop through time as the world changed. Sketches of later fully rounded characters appear, such as Penny Fuller's frantic hopes for her somewhat different son in Summer at the Lake.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Night Mother
Bernard B. Jacobs

`Night Mother by Marsha Norman is in its second Broadway run, and there was a movie of it. So someone liked it a lot. Well, it is a great vehicle for actresses, and Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn as inept mother and suicidal daughter are two of the best, and it's rewarding to see them in action pouring their guts out. There is a certain tension in the play when the daughter declares at the opening that she is going to commit suicide and shows us the gun.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
It's Only a Play
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

True enough that "It's Only a Play," but one only wishes it was a good play and not the joke-drenched, up-dated name-dropping, plot-deferred vehicle for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick that is the hottest ticket in town. A flop when it was first produced in 1986, Terrence McNally's insular comedy is about an actor (Lane) who left the stage to star in a TV series and his contentious relationship with his former friend, a playwright (Matthew Broderick) having his first play produced on Broadway.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Amadeus
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Mosaic Theater opens its fourth season in South Florida with a pitch-perfect production of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's take on the torment wrought on composer Antonio Salieri by the arrival of crude upstart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri alone recognizes the inspired talent of Mozart and the shallowness of his own work for the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II. Having, as a teenager, promised God a life of virtue in return fame as a composer, Salieri feels mocked in his successful mediocrity: "God needed Mozart to let Himself into the world.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Anna in the Tropics
Coconut Grove Playhouse - Mainstage

Playwright Nilo Cruz directs his Pultizer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics to stunning effect in Miami at Coconut Grove Playhouse with an assist from set designer Adrian W. Jones. This is Cruz's paean to the power of story-telling, filtered through a bit of the Cuban immigrant experience of late 1920s America. Mainstage audience members are primed as they take their seats before a stage bearing only a single sidelit palm tree silhouetted against dark blue, the tree leaning into the light.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Brooklyn
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Brooklyn, by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson, a kind of Cinderella story about a singer and the street performers who live under the Brooklyn Bridge, has a cast of great singers: Cleavant Derricks, Eden Espinosa, Karen Olivo, Ramona Keller and Kevin Anderson. And that, basically, is the reason to see this show. It's a cute, simplistic fairy tale about an orphan singer, set in the best urban decay (by Ray Klausen) since Rent, with imaginative, award-caliber costumes (by Tobin Ost) that coined a new word for me: trashtumes.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Dream Play, A
Saint Cecilla's Playhouse

Start with an original recipe by playwright August Strindberg and add the following ingredients: an excellent translation by Sweden born Anne-Charlotte Harvey, the creative interpretation of director Kirsten Brandt, the complex scenic design of David Weiner, Mary Larson's delightfully eccentric costumes, David Lee Cuthbert's lighting and projection designs, and Paul Peterson's sound design. Pour these into that cauldron of cutting-edge theater called Sledgehammer, and the product is an enticing, almost comprehensible work: A Dream Play.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Escanaba in da Moonlight
Cygnet Theater

Theater in the United States is a study in regionalism. Take Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the south, or Neil Simon, the New York Jew. There are many lesser-known scripts, such as How to Talk Minnesotan - The Musical from Plymouth Playhouse outside of Minneapolis and Jeff Daniels's film and play, Escanaba in da Moonlight, Las Meninas, Bed and Sofa, and Fully Committed. This season, they've scheduled Pageant, Lanford Wilson's Burn This, the aforementioned Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and David and Amy Sedaris's The Book of Liz.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Eat the Taste
Barrow Street Theater

Eat the Taste the Monday night political satire at the Barrow Street Theater, by the men who wrote Urinetown, suggests that John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, really wants to be in Musical Theater. It's a farce, including a great fight scene, choreographed by David Brimmer, and is full of show business in-jokes and FBI ridiculousness. It's fun to put Ashcroft, Cheney and their fellows down. The performances are as over-the-top as the premise, and at 65 minutes, director John Clancy keeps us amused.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Flare Path
Florence Gould Hall

Want to have a marvelous theatrical experience? The Actors Company Theater (TACT) is without a doubt the best play-reading troupe in this town (or any other town that I've seen). Their staged readings of classics, script in hand (the scripts soon become invisible), with a hint at costuming, have the full dramatic intensity of a fully-realized production performed by Broadway actors. TACT's most recent piece, Terence Rattigan's 1942 wartime British Airforce drama Flare Path, flawlessly directed by Simon Jones, is brought to full life by their splendid cast.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Reckless
Biltmore Theater

Playwright Craig Lucas tries to dazzle us with footwork in his skewed mish-mash of a comedy, Reckless. Some of his writing sparkles with witty surprises, but ultimately, it is the cast that keeps the show alive and interesting. Mary-Louise Parker shines with an impeccable sense of comic timing as a wife whose husband confesses that he has taken out a contract on her life. A solid, strong, convincing Michael O'Keefe secures the center, and a quirky, charming Rosie Perez tickles us with whatever she says (or doesn't say).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Beyond the DMZ
Theater For The New City

In Beyond the DMZ, director Eu-Hee Kim and choreographer Natasa Trifan have created a powerful dance drama about Korean history, the separation of North and South, the Korean War, the Demilitarized Zone, and its impact fifty years later on families who were separated. Well-conceived and artistically well executed, DMZ shows off the supple,well-trained bodies of agile dancers in the company, using Modern Dance form to clearly communicate the pain, the joy, the lives of these people.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Clockwork Orange, A
Storefront Theater - Gallery 37

Being Defiant Theater's swan song, A Clockwork Orange can be seen as a metaphor for the group's 10-year history. With most of Defiant's cast already moved on, this production had some new-comers -- particularly Jarrett Sleeper, who plays Alex, the story's main character. But besides this young exception, Defiant is now like that last part of the play. Where before they were the young, violent and shocking Alex, they are now the reformed and settled-down Alex, who has grown up, married, has kids and holds a job.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Crucible, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Arthur Miller's The Crucible chronicles the events that led to the real-life Salem witch trials of 1692. The play, written in the 1950s, is generally considered to be a commentary on the McCarthy era and the country's anti-communist atmosphere. Although this production remains faithful to the original text (without direct references to the current political climate), one can easily make associations to today's election-year backbiting.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Cyrano
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater opens its 51st season with an ambitious but flawed interpretation of the classic French play, Cyrano de Bergerac. Joe Roets, renowned for his work with children's theater, creates this version, called Cyrano. Three actors (two men and a woman) portray all the characters. They switch from modern dress to partial and full costumes at various times during the course of the production. The quick costume changes -- often in full view of the audience -- do not detract from the proceedings.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Dear Esther
Off-Broadway Theater

A young girl's long and torturous journey toward freedom is outlined in chilling detail in Dear Esther. The play opens Next Act Theater's 15th anniversary season, and it showcases how far this company has come over the years. The sensitive retelling of this true-life story is due mainly to artistic director David Cecsarini, who captures the main character's spitfire determination as well as her compassion. As the audience soon learns, both qualities are needed for a young Jewish girl to survive a Polish death camp called Sobibor.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
As You Like It
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

The joy of Shakespeare's comedies, such as As You Like It at La Jolla Stage Company, is just how much fun they can be. Here we have wedding and bedding of numerous lovely ladies, be they a Duke's daughter or a Shepardess. The stories can easily be related to, even with the passing of hundreds of years. James Dublino's direction allows the 16 cast members t to enjoy and broadly interpret their roles. They range from recent community college grads to seasoned pros.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Blackbird
Profiles Theater

During a scene late in Blackbird, Froggy, who shares an apartment with Baylis, finds one of Baylis' short stories. Froggy, in her sweet, always amazed, slangy voice says it's pornographic, and Baylis, in his experienced, gruff tone, replies that it's also an intimate love story. Such a description is apt for writer Adam Rapp's own play as well.

Blackbird can be startling in an explicit way, with its display of swearing, defecating, drug use, nudity, and especially in its harsh depiction of its all-around troubled characters.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Cymbeline
Tom Patterson Theater

Though it's about an early real British king and Roman invaders, Shakespeare's Cymbeline isn't really a history, and -- since every plot complication is explained and worked out in the end -- it's no tragedy. The director, David Latham, writes that it is a romance, but he also says it's such a wonderful play, he can't understand why it is so rarely performed. Latham's new version is interestingly staged and superbly performed, but it's no wonderful play.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Cane's Bayou
Schaeberle Studio

Matthew Holtzclaw, a young writer from Florida, has written a gripping Southern play, mostly about people who are psychologically heavily damaged or deteriorated in some way -- survivors of the garbage heap of working class life, including "special" ones: retarded, palsied, autistic, alcoholic. It's a very special piece of theater, and Holtzclaw has a keen ear for the idiosyncrasies of Southern working-class speech. A repressed young man who cares for his handicapped twin brother meets a lost young woman who is sinking into alcohol.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Chicago
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Milwaukee theater audiences may recall a stunning local production of Chicago staged a couple of years ago. However, that hasn't prevented patrons from lining up to buy tickets to Chicago's national tour, starring Bianca Marroquin (Roxie Hart), Brenda Braxton (Velma Kelly) and Gregory Harrison (Billy Flynn). No doubt the successful film version has fueled a whole new fervor for this dark and cynical show.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Dracula: The Musical
Belasco Theater

The Dracula story is already a satire because of its familiarity, and in Dracula, The Musical, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Frank Wildhorn, they do start off with familiar references and jokes like, "She is of good blood," which get laughs. But that's about it. The rest of the show is stiff and clunky, with derivative songs that mostly hold up the action. However, the design team gives us amazing visuals that never quit.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Day Emily Married, The
59E59 Theater

Horton Foote is unique. Nobody today writes like him in the soft Southern tone that quietly places you in the house with friends to become part of their lives. In The Day Emily Married, now at 59E59 Theater, exposition is gently slipped into the seemingly mundane conversation of this Texas family in 1925, and there is not a dull moment in the ordinariness of these peoples' dialogues in this moment of possibility, frustration, pain, and insight into the human heart.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Forever Tango
Shubert Theater

The dance is spectacular - smoldering sexuality, clean, elegant, amazingly intricate movements as the couples glide, smooth as silk, into effortless lifts and daring endings to the numbers. There is a beautiful, slow, adagio number with the woman in tights instead of the flashy slit skirts of the rest of the show, and there are two comic dances, one in each half. A great, thrilling dance show, in full Tango mystique, with emotionless faces and smoldering eyes, where men are men and women are women - and don't they know it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
King John
Tom Patterson Theater

Shakespeare's King John is no great play, but, perhaps because it realistically explores power politics and is a partly accurate history, it can be fascinating. And much of this production is what theater is all about.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004

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