How To Turn Distress Into Success: A Parable of War and Its Making
Theater For The New City

December wouldn't be complete without Bread & Puppet Theater's annual show at Theater for the New City. Inevitably this year's themes are war and global capitalism. How To Turn Distress Into Success also highlights the role of spin in transforming the worst of man-made disasters, like the war on Iraq, into triumphs of human intellect.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Never Gonna Dance
Broadhurst Theater

Of course he's gonna dance. He's gonna dance from the minute he steps onstage to the moment the curtain falls. And that's as it should be with a nutty, old-fashioned show like Never Gonna Dance, which yearns to be a screwball confection the way they used to make `em, and, more often than not, succeeds. Lead Noah Racey doesn't have Astaire's height and sings just passably, but when he moves, so does the show. Peter Hatcher's book, adapted from the MGM film "Swing Time," has enough contrivances to raise even the long-shut eyebrows of Louis B.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Never Gonna Dance
Broadhurst Theater

Based on the film "Swing Time," with marvelous songs by some of the best old timers, Never Gonna Dance is a show about tap dancing, and some of the numbers are breathtaking as choreographed by Jerry Mitchell. The rest are merely superb. The leading man, Noah Racey, charming and tasteful, is almost an Astaire, and there are fine comic turns by Peter Bartlett and Peter Gerety. David Pittu delights as an absurd Latin Lover, and the real charisma is Karen Ziemba, who lights up the theater whenever she's on stage.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Nine
Eugene O'Neill Theater

Although its plot revolves around the character of Guido, a Fellini-like Italian film director, Nine is most impressive as a vehicle for the women in Guido's life. John Stamos has taken over from Antonio Banderas as the male lead, and he sings and acts well. His words are more clearly understood, and he exudes his own star quality, though he seems a bit young for the part. The director is supposed to be just 40, and Stamos is approaching that age, but one expects the character to be older.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Retreat From Moscow, The
Booth Theater

Behind the British accents and literary allusions (which are underlined, italicized and bolded, just in case you couldn't figure them out for yourself) lies a very middlebrow drama about a couple nearing their sunset years and reaching a crossroad in their relationship.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Taboo
Plymouth Theater

The progression of a naive but talented waif who, through good people skills and sheer lucky breaks, becomes a star, is a time-honored one for Broadway musicals, but rarely has that scenario been more oddly put forth than in Taboo, a show by, about and starring Boy George (nee George O'Dowd) -- only he doesn't play Boy George. Instead he plays Divine-like downtown muse Leigh Bowery, who, with his outre garb and makeup, made himself a kind of living art, and thus inspired George's own star-making makeover.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wicked
Gershwin Theater

Say what you will about songwriter Stephen Schwartz, when he puts on a show, it's a show. You get a production, in the David Merrick sense of the word - but in a pop/modern way. With Wicked, not only does Schwartz get an impressive set and special effects to match his breezy music and deft, if sometimes overreaching lyrics, he gets a brilliant, layered book by Winnie Holzman and two (count `em, two!) star turns.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

The great accomplishment of the new production of Wonderful Town is that it transcends the show's limitations. The music is the least distinguished of Leonard Bernstein's Broadway career: not as poignant as On the Town, not as dramatic as West Side Story, not as dazzling as Candide. But it's not meant to be distinguished; it's funny. The young Lenny, with his cabaret buddies Betty Comden and Adolph Green, wrote the score in a hurry -- starting just five weeks before rehearsals began. They did it with an exuberance they never again equaled.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

Just when recent revivals made Comden & Green appear too quaint for modern Broadway, along came Encores!' long-delayed Wonderful Town to give us a wonderful time. Donna Murphy's the franchise, giving even the mildest zingers a kick like tabasco.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

Wonderful Murphy in Wonderful Town! I guarantee, Donna Murphy will win the Tony for Best Female Performance in a Musical. She lights up the stage with a comic flair seldom seen anywhere, her body is a rubber band, and her magnificent voice fills the theater with warmth and beauty. The play, with book by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, from stories by Ruth McKenney, is just a bit of delightful fluff about sisters coming from Ohio to live in Greenwich Village.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Bravo, Caruso!
Off-Broadway Theater

Next Act Theater can indeed take a bow for its production of Bravo, Caruso!. It is one of the end-of-year highlights of the Milwaukee theater season. While the play may seem to be an odd choice for this time of year, the events of Bravo, Caruso! occur on Christmas Eve, 1920.

The setting is Enrico Caruso's dressing room at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Caruso is tackling his latest (and, the audience knows, his final) role.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Caroline, Or Change
Public Theater

Caroline, or Change is a departure for playwright Tony Kushner, and he pulls it off very well. Instead of writing about cosmic catastrophes like the AIDS epidemic and war in Afghanistan, he narrows his focus to one household in Louisiana in 1963. Even more importantly, he restrains his dialogue and focuses on writing lyrics that reveal their essence within 32 bars.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Music Box Theater

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which explores family relationships, sexuality, and even life and death, is one of Tennessee Williams's best plays. Broadway now has, except for a few performances, an inept production of the play running. Poor Ashley Judd gives it her all but is basically betrayed by her director, Anthony Page, as she, in Act One, recites all her lines with verve and energy and no subtext. How could he allow that? Saying all the words is not enough on Broadway. Her performance passes boredom into pain -- she stirs no empathy and no passion; it's only noise.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Crashing
Chashama

A woman's work is never done -- especially when the sheer annoyances and expectations involved in being a female involve as much toil as any paid employment. The rituals and pains of dieting, dressing, exercising, dating, waxing, and even relaxing are enough to send perfectly functional and sane women to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Christmas Carol, A
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Pabst Theater

As a holiday gift to its hometown, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater has invested more than $1 million in revamping its traditional holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. Much of the cash went into hiring a set designer and costumer with Broadway credits, and in the process of translating their vision to the stage. The money was well spent. The New Yorkers (in conjunction with dozens of local and regional theater artisans) have created an enchanting and authentic look for this production.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Competition, The
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

When all you hear at intermission is people wondering what the original play is like, you can be pretty sure the translation isn't going over. Then, too, when a play and its author have been hyped as much as these have been, people may be forgiven for wondering why it's so disappointing. My theory: the characters are not involving because they relate poorly to each other and are often unbelievable or stereotypes. Moreover, they begin more like tragic figures, even as their foolishness makes us laugh at them, since the comedy plays down its serious socio-economic elements.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Crucible, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Arthur Miller's play about Salem women accused of casting spells on young girls and its consequent hysteria and injustice still has the power that marked its debut during the McCarthy era. Today's major parallels concern 9/11 and the Justice Department and Patriot Act in a society vigilant against terrorism. The story begins after Reverend Parris (ever sterner David Breitbarth) has found his niece dancing naked, led by pretty young Abigail (Merideth Maddox, duly controlling) and abetted by Tituba, a servant from Barbados (Gale Fulton Ross, scary even when acting scared).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Butley
Huntington Theater

A bit of Broadway buzz comes to Boston’s Huntington Theater as Nathan Lane assays the title role in Simon Gray’s seminal dark comedy, Butley. In retrospect, the play feels like the bridge between Harold Pinter’s grim view of male relationships in the 60s and the explosion of gay theater in the late 1970s.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Addicted: A Comedy of Substance
Zipper Theater

By all rights, fifteen years ago, Mark Lundholm should have been lying dead somewhere - and he would have deserved it. An addictive personality raised in a violent home, Lundholm moved from alcohol to drugs, eventually ditching his wife and kid for a life of crime to support his habits. But just when he was ready to pull the trigger on the gun to his head - literally - he decided to give rehab one more shot.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Cookin'
New Victory Theater

It's Stomp with a hint of Blast! and a dash of "Yan Can Cook." Sounds appetizing? For awhile, this Korean import, conceived by Seung Whan Song and now a world-wide touring phenomenon, promises to be both light on the funny bone and tempting to the salivary glands, as Cookin' shows a group of young "chefs" ordered to prepare a multi-course meal in exactly one hour.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Artificial Jungle, The
Bath House Cultural Center

On October 2, 2003, Our Endeavors Theater Collective opened a near-perfect production of Charles Ludlam's mid-1980s comedic suspense thriller, The Artificial Jungle. It is set in a family owned-and-operated pet shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the kind where the owners live behind the shop, a hodge-podge of paraphernalia featuring a prominent screen which doubles as an aquarium when it is backlit.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bold Girls
29th Street Repertory

Bold Girls by Rona Munro, now at the 29th St. Rep, is deceiving.  Basically it is a "kitchen sink" drama set in Belfast, Ireland, in 1990, with four women whose men are either dead or in jail (we never find out what they did, but insurrection is implied). While the talk and concerns of these working-class women are quite ordinary, an explosion and shots in the background give the atmosphere some tension. "The Troubles" are rumbling nearby and might spill onto the stage (they don't).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis
Triad Theater (moved to Dillon's)

Well, Tom Lehrer she wasn't. Nor Allan Sherman nor Randy Newman, all of whom have written satirical (and some serious) songs that enjoyed successful off-Broadway tributes in years past. But the largely forgotten Ruth Wallis did carve out a niche for herself with moderately raunchy, double-entendre-packed ditties throughout the 50s and 60s, the most famous of which gives Steve Mackes and Michael Whaley's new revue its title. Boobs!

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Actors' Guild of Lexington

Bat Child Found in Cave was the jaw-dropping headline on June 22, 1992, in the gaudy "Weekly World News" tabloid, where fiction disguised as fact becomes eerily stranger than truth. But let us give thanks to that trashy rag for inspiring Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O'Keefe to transform the Bat Boy concoction into a marvelously entertaining and touching musical.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Blithe Spirit
Theater Charlotte

It's been awhile since we've seen Lon Bumgarner directing an utterly carefree comedy -- so long, you may have forgotten how good he is at it. When he was dominating the Loaf's directing awards from 1987-90, Bumgarner certainly garnered accolades for his Hamlet, Macbeth, and Three Sisters with Charlotte Shakespeare Company. Yet his work was sometimes even more revelatory in frothier fare such as Scapino!, House of Blue Leaves, You Can't Take It With You and What the Butler Saw.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Breath of Spring
Poway Performing Arts Company

Ah, the joys of a cast totally into their assigned dialects! Lee Donnelly, as maid Lilly Thompson, has a cockney accent that almost needs translation. Shari Lyon, as Miss Nanette Parry, has a proper educated way of speaking, Jeff Laurence's (Brigadier Albert Rayne) speech is peppered with a military flavor. Dialect coach Helen McGuinness brings this authenticity to Breath of Spring, which adds so much to the piece's humor. Each actor not only speaks properly, but with just the right dialect for the character. No easy task!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bridge to Terabithia
Children's Theater of Charlotte

Children's Theater is pioneering beyond their comfort zone with Bridge to Terabithia. We've seen CT musicals before, and we've certainly had brave confrontations with dark, disturbing themes. But we've never had an intermission during a CT production—or a Newberry Award medalist fielding audience questions on opening night. Regardless of author Katherine Paterson's appearance, signaling an auspicious hook-up with the Library's Novello Festival, there's no precedent in Charlotte for the rich package that Terabithia can deliver to children and families.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Carnival Knowledge
Soho Playhouse

Step right up to the Soho Playhouse and see, "alive on stage" such wonders as a man walking barefoot on broken glass, chewing up a lightbulb, and hammering a nail in his nasal cavity.  It's all the same man -- Todd Robbins -- in Carnival Knowledge, helped by his lady assistant, Twistina, and joined by the dwarf Little Jimmy (one of the Oompah-Loompahs in the original "Willy Wonka").  It's a diverting mix of standard magic act, dangerous stunts (the most interesting part of the evening, since they're "real"), and flim-flam (one bit really IS done with mirrors).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Comedy of Errors, The
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

Everybody is right! No, everybody is wrong!

Confusion reigns in William Shakespeare's first comedy, A Comedy of Errors. The New York-based Aquila Theater Company's version, created by Peter Meineck and Robert Richmond, gives new meaning to this hilarious amusement. Producer Meineck also created the effective and moody lighting, with director Richmond designing the production.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Drawer Boy, The
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

When a playwright can't explain the source of his work's popularity -- that's a mystery. And The Drawer Boy, written by Michael Healey in 1999, is certainly popular. In fact, it's one of the most-produced plays in American regional theaters. It is also being translated into several languages, including Japanese. Milwaukee audiences were fortunate to welcome Canadian playwright Michael Healey during the show's opening-night performance.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Eight By Tenn
Hartford Stage Company

To kick off the Hartford Stage's 40th anniversary season, artistic director Michael Wilson, who five years ago embarked on the project of presenting the entire Tennessee Williams canon, has chosen to stage eight relatively unfamiliar one-act plays divided into two quartets ("Rose" and "Blue"), presented in repertory. The plays cover a span from the late 1930s until a few weeks before the dramatist's death in 1983.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Far And Wide
Mint Theater

In his best-known work, La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler explored how the dominant person in one sexual relationship can be, simultaneously, the lackey in another. Far and Wide takes a broader social view, showing how a wife's infidelity (or even the hint of it) can be so much more of a scandal than her husband's habitual bits on the side. Appropriately for the social set depicted, it's all played as high comedy, sobering up just long enough for seemingly inconsequential events to become tragic.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Little Shop of Horrors
Virginia Theater

Feed me, Seymour. Three little words that will bring a grin to anyone with a soft spot for Roger Corman's cheapie film classic about a nebbishy plant store employee and the behemoth he grows using nourishment of a special type -- specifically, Type O. Even those of us who missed the well-loved off-Broadway run of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's musicalization of Little Shop of Horrors have felt the work's indelible stamp, thanks mainly to Frank Oz's exceptional 1986 film. And hence lies the problem with the show's 2003 appearance on Broadway.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Wicked
Gershwin Theater

Since he burst precociously on the Broadway scene in 1972, Stephen Schwartz has been writing about sorcery or magic, and about family relationships. (See "May the Schwartz Be With Us" in the Periodica section.) Now, with Wicked, it all comes together in a consummate work that is spectacular, funny, has something serious to say and contains excellent music. Although it Wicked characters from Frank Baum's "Oz" books and has in-joke references to The Wizard of Oz, it is not a retelling of that story.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Ain't Misbehavin'
Paper Mill Playhouse

Either by association or direct composition, the legendary composer/pianist/entertainer Fats Waller (1904-1943) was famed for "Spreadin' Rhythm Around." 25 years ago, a sizzling, if small-scaled, revue called "Ain't Misbehavin'" proved a winning homage to the great Waller.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Beauty
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

Beauty, by playwright/director Tina Landau, is the latest of many incarnations of the Sleeping Beauty tale. Landau creates a contemporary version blending the past (1,000 years ago) and the present through both creative dialogue and music. Constance, played by Lisa Harrow, is the crone/hag who narrates the story bridging the two time periods. She dominates the stage even as the ensemble members (David Ari, Corey Brill, Simone Vicari Moore, Adam Smith, and Amy Stewart) perform their various roles.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Drinking In America
Central Avenue Playhouse

You always expect something outsized and outrageous when Carver Johns is onstage -- with a slight edge of pure craziness. So it was almost inevitable that Johns and his innerVoices Theater Company would gravitate toward the solo pieces of Eric Bogosian. They're opening their first full season at the Central Avenue Playhouse with Bogosian's breakthrough Drinking in America, and they're proving that the monologues are as wildly pertinent today as they were back in 1985 when the performance artist began writing them.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Evita
Theater Charlotte

If you've followed Billy Ensley for the past three years, you'll notice that Charlotte's preeminent triple threat has expanded his horizons as a singer and an actor. To effect his startling transformations -- most memorably as Fagin in Oliver! and as the lead rocker in Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- Ensley has radically changed his look.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Avenue Q
John Golden Theater

The message of TV's "Sesame Street," tucked in amid the array of alpha-numerical lesson plans, is that, despite the occasional obstacle, "everything's a-ok." While its multi-ethnic casts, resident grouch and human- monster interactions hint at a world of diversity and occasional miscommunication, the Children's Television Workshop nonetheless concocts an inviting urban landscape, full of "friendly neighbors" with their doors open wide to "happy people like you."

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Avenue Q
John Golden (moved to off-Broadway's New World Stages)

The Broadway lark, Avenue Q, is an adult kids' show -- a charming Sesame Street / Muppets singing, dancing delight. It's a clever concept performed with great charm by an outstanding cast of singing puppet characters mixed with non-puppet actors. The skill and range of Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia and Rick Lyon is amazing, and every cast member is Broadway level.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003

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