Aida
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

The theme of romance in a time of war is hardly new, but this sparkling production of Aida nonetheless captures our interest with its soulful tale of an enslaved African princess and her Egyptian lover. As the show opens, the two neighboring territories, Egypt and Nubia, are at war. This brings together the victorious Egyptian captain, Radames, and one of the captured Nubians, Aida. Her outspoken manner piques Radames' curiosity, and soon this interest turns to forbidden passion.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Alpha
SouthEnd Performing Arts Center

Seeking to apply his fight choreography skills to a female combat drama, Tony Wright quickly discovered there were no existing scripts to suit his needs. So the actor/playwright, who directed last year's slumber party version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, cooked up his own futuristic sci-fi potboiler, Alpha, now playing at the SouthEnd Performing Arts Center.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Below The Belt
Steep Theater

Who really associates Ionesco and his kin with a social context? Isn't it easier -- and safer -- to nowadays look upon those mid-century protests simply as showcases for imaginative technique? But neo-absurdist Richard Dresser's social context is not so comfortably ignored: three "company men" stranded in a foreign country, employed in the manufacture of something they know only by its toxic effect on the local environs, their lives circumscribed by the prison-like bureaucracy their employers impose on them.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Blue/Orange
Intiman Theater

Joe Penhall, now in his mid-thirties, has been writing plays for a decade. His biggest success has been Blue/Orange, which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2000, transferred to a West End run, and understandably won the Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play. The Intiman Theater has mounted a stunning production that is fully the equal of the London original.

The play takes place in a modern National Health Service psychiatric hospital in London.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Born Yesterday
Utah Shakespearean Festival

While experiencing Garson Kanin's old chestnut, Born Yesterday, at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, I could close my eyes and hear Judy Holliday, as Anne Newhall essayed a delightful characterization of Billie Dawn.

The play is set in 1946 in the plush sitting room of parvenu millionaire junk dealer Harry Brock's (Craig Spidle) suite in the swankiest hotel in Washington, D.C. Harry is accompanied by his entourage, including his beautiful but none- too-cultured girlfriend, Billie Dawn (Anne Newhall). Harry has come to D.C.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Davidson College - Hodson Hall

There's good news up north. Davidson Community Players is presenting Neil Simon's autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs with a finely detailed set from Sandra Gray and evocative lighting from John Hartness. More importantly, there's an outstanding performance in the lead by the diminutive Anthony Napoletano as 14-year-old Eugene Morris Jerome.

Now the bad news. Audiences at Hodson Hall have little reason to stand and cheer before Napoletano takes the final bow.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Cafe a Go Go
Cafe a Go Go

The musical, Cafe a Go Go, which takes us to a working-class London nightclub in the 60s, is a fun take on the Grease generation: teenage romance with verve, spirit, life, youthful enthusiasm and vigor. Written and directed by The Heather Brothers, the songs are bouncy and clever and the action is more contemporary than Grease, and reaches levels of comedy more entertaining for today.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Capitol Steps: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Houseman Theater

There is a large audience hungry for good political satire, and Capitol Steps, playing again at the John Houseman Theater on West 42nd Street, give us the best in town, this time titled "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." As I said in my 2002 review of them, this is a troupe of grownups whose insights and satires show mature writing with depth and intelligence as well as humor, and they are all Broadway-level singers.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Celebration of Silliness!, A
Shelton Theater

The usual (and ever-entertaining) array of juggling, card tricks and audience-participation magic, made worth the visit by the genial performer, Fred Anderson. On the night I attended, he held his own -- both in skill and verbal patter -- despite the presence of a voluble teenage tour group.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Das Barbecu
WaterTower Theater

Das Barbecu, with book and lyrics by Jim Luigs and music by Scott Warrender, opened July 25, 2003 at the WaterTower Theatre in Addison, Texas. It represents one of their most egregious squandering of talent to date. Warrender's wonderful music is far better than Luigs' sophomoric script deserves.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Description Beggared: Or, The Allegory of WHITENESS
Children's Theater of Charlotte - Black Box

Mac Wellman has been an Off-Broadway mainstay for 20 years, producing a steady stream of poetic plays that joyously joust with language, impishly flirt with American mass culture, and triumphantly elude all meaning. Description Beggared, currently running in the cozy Black Box studio theater in the catacombs of Children's Theater, is wedded to songs composed by longtime musical accomplice Michael Roth. Or it was -- until the young banshees of the Farm Theater Company got hold of it.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Bible, The: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)
Cabot Theater

One of the creators of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) once stated that the purpose of the play was to put the "fun in fundamentalism." What they have achieved is a giddy, sophomoric send-up of the Great Book. Some of the "shtick" in Bible is as lame as a Jack Benny joke, while other moments are more inspired and indeed funny. It is not likely that audiences will leave the theater without finding at least something to tickle their funny bone.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
American Airlines Theater

There's no denying Roger Miller had a unique and tuneful talent, and that, pushed by producer Rocco Landesman, he rose to the challenge of writing a Broadway musical score to fit the story of Huckleberry Finn. The catchy songs feel right and flavorful, but Landesman should have pushed the tunemeister a notch more. Just when a song seems about to get going, Miller simply repeats the best lyrics - two or three times - instead of coming up with something new or clever to say.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Caught In The Net
Derby Dinner Playhouse

When last we encountered John Smith (Cary Wiger), the fast-talking, fast-moving London-area cabdriver happily married to women in two suburbs, it was in Ray Cooney's riotous farce called Run For Your Wife. That was one year ago in Derby Dinner Playhouse's gloriously entertaining presentation. Now the enterprising playhouse is revisiting with equally hilarious results Smith's bigamous little world, as it offers the regional premiere of Caught in the Net, Cooney's whiz-bang sequel.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Dream A Little Dream
Village Gate

For me, the Mamas-and-Papas musical, Dream a Little Dream, is a flash to my past. I performed in the coffee houses and night clubs of Greenwich Village and, after 1965, in Los Angeles, and knew the people the Denny Doherty character (played in the performance I saw by the very engaging Eric Michael Gillett) talks about on the stage of the old Village Gate, now called the Village Theater, on Bleecker Street. So for me, the show may have more resonance than for other, younger, people.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

If we were to gauge the opinion of the collective American theater as to our best play, the answer would almost certainly be Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill's overpowering portrait of his family -- parents, brother, and self -- on the day they were told he had tuberculosis. One of the few modern plays that can be classed with classical tragedy, it expresses oceanic pain with impossible honesty. O'Neill nearly dispensed with plot, and dramatized ananke (fate) in every moment of the play.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Who knew that the hit of Milwaukee's summer theater season would be a rock 'n roll musical about a half-bat, half-boy? Despite the show's odd premise (drawn from a tabloid story, we're told), Bat Boy: The Musical is flapping its wings all over the country. From San Francisco to Minneapolis, St. Louis to Los Angeles, watch for upcoming announcements of Bat Boy coming to a town near you.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Broadway By The Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1960
Town Hall

Not only has the "Broadway By The Year" series continued to attract the attention and admiration of musical theater lovers, but the recent edition, The Broadway Musicals of 1960, proves to be the best so far. You might be tempted to say 1960 wasn't that brilliant a season for musicals to be considered classics, and that many of the most tuneful shows were actually flops. But show for show and song for song, 1960 is the year that probably best defines what has become known as the last years of the golden age of original American musicals.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Dream'in New York
Producers Club

A foreigner coming to New York to start a new life -- sounds like you've heard that story before. But this one has new twists. And the cast is unusually good.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Falsettos
Diversionary Theater

William Finn, who conceived Falsettos over a 10-year period, so named his musical because "these were characters outside the normal range." A musical about a man who leaves wife and son for a male lover, a psychiatrist who get close and way-too personal with his patients, a lesbian couple, and a challenging love story -- that barely touches the themes of Falsettos. Funny, amusing, poignant, and sad are just a few words that describe Finn's music and lyrics, which demand a lot from the cast.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Master Harold...And The Boys
Royale Theater

It has been 21 years since Master Harold...and the Boys, by masterly South-African playwright Athold Fugard, premiered on Broadway. Since then apartheid, for all intensive purposes, has officially been ended. However, the tragedy of South Africa's embrace of that insidious system, and its effect on the people, remains a key theme of Fugard, despite his more recent preference for less incendiary plots.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Cafe A Go Go
Cafe a Go Go

It’s loud, it’s fast, it gets the job done, and it’s watchable all the way through—and it’s also a show I could have left at any moment without feeling I missed much.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Theater Three

Theater Three opened Bat Boy: The Musical, the off-Broadway horror musical, on April 24, 2003. A spoof based loosely on a newspaper account of a half-boy, half-bat creature discovered in a West Virginia cave and dubbed Bat Boy, the story depicts how he longs desperately to be accepted by 'normal' people. Patrons in Dallas' theatrt loop know that director Kyle McClaran will take this musical over-the-top. Those expecting a traditional musical are quickly disavowed of their expectations.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
American Magic
Altered Stages

The only magic seen at Altered Stages in this very peculiar political protest play was that it made half the audience vanish at intermission! Gil Kofman's fevered fantasy of Ashcroftian Investigative Techniques - dealing with presumed Muslim Terrorists - proved a thoroughly gratuitous exploration of S & M scenes. The energetic cast struggled valiantly with the materials, but this script should have died in Workshop. For Protest Theater: Bring back Bertolt Brecht! Or even Eric Bentley!

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
As You Like It
Public Theater

Director Erica Schmidt has brilliantly managed to recreate As You Like It inside, with an ensemble of only six actors. She also did Debbie Does Dallas with a very small cast -- but that's another story. This ingeniously-edited adaptation was originally staged in a natural environment, but it survives quite well on a bare stage. Cross-dressing & cross-casting make cast reductions possible, but they also remarkably speed up the pace of playing.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Ain't Misbehavin'
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

When the onstage band strikes up the first notes to Ain't Misbehavin', all one can do is echo the words of the press materials: "this joint is jumpin.'" A polished and well-cast production is drawing full houses to Milwaukee's Cabot Theater, as well it should. This is the second time that Skylight Opera Theatre's has staged Ain't Misbehavin'. If the1994 show was anything like the current production, no wonder it busted the box office. This time, the show has a musical pedigree in the form of Neal Tate, whose work goes back to the days of Cab Calloway.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Broad Channel
Phil Bosakowski Theater

One of my CUNY PhD students lived in a tiny clapboard house in Broad Channel, Queens. Just under the flight-pattern into Idlewild Airport - now JFK. When I first drove there in my old VW, I thought I was driving into a wetlands area. Everyone seemed to have at least a rowboat tethered on canals back of their houses. Most of the good folks I met there were shanty Irish, with scant aspirations of earning midtown Doctorates in Theater.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Cirque du Soleil: Varekai
Cirque du Soleil at Blue & Yellow Grand Chapiteau

Attending a performance of Cirque du Soleil is a transcendent, fantastic adventure as we experience the beauty of the human body going so far beyond what we might imagine possible that we are transported to another world -- a surreal world peopled with fairy creatures, lovers who fly (and we fly with them) music that lifts the audience onto another dimension and costuming that floats colors and shapes newly arrived on this planet.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Coyote Tales
Dallas Children's Theater

Adapted by resident playwright Linda Daugherty, Coyote Talesis based on Mexican folklore and performed in English and Spanish at Dallas Children's Theater. Coyote Tales spins a whimsical story of Coyote, a trickster who spends his every waking moment hunting for his next meal. But Coyote, who is several enchiladas short of the Wednesday night special, is no match for the forest animals including Dog, Fox, Rabbit, Raccoon, Chicken, and Prairie Dog, all of whom use their wily tricks to outfox Coyote.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Crimes of the Heart
Poway Performing Arts Company

Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart is a view of one 24-hour period in the lives of the McGrath sisters. At a trim, lean running time of 100-minutes it would have been a delight. Alas, this production, with its insightful but bloated dialogue, runs just over two hours.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Enchanted April
Belasco Theater

The idea of adapting that enchanting romantic film, "Enchanted April," for the stage seemed an odd choice. How could the visual beauty of that movie be recreated on the stage of the Belasco? But this delightful production is not a re-run of the film. Instead, it has been ingeniously adapted from the original novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. The walls of designer Tony Straiges' Italian island-castle are covered with great flowers - suggesting the beautiful gardens seen in the film.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Enchanted April
Belasco Theater

Matthew Barber's Enchanted April is a fine English play done beautifully -- a domestic drama that peeks into a pre-feminist time as four women rent a chateau in Italy to get away from their London lives.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Gypsy
Sam S. Shubert

So how's Bernadette? That question has surely taken on more meanings than the producers of the current Gypsy revival intended. Of course, everyone wants to know how Bernadette Peters stands up to the memories of Merman and Lansbury (and, for some, Tyne Daly). But Peters' numerous health-related absences ended up giving the question a more urgent slant -- will she be playing tonight or will her understudy be offering "Rose's Turn," "Some People," and the numerous other classics Mama Rose belts as she fights for her daughters' careers?

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Gypsy
Sam S. Shubert

Bernadette Peters herself is a great theatrical experience, and in the current Gypsy on Broadway she brings a vulnerability as well as the strength and power of Mama Rose to her performance. Directed by Sam Mendes, it's a very entertaining, imaginative production, a tuneful treat with strong dramatic content, lively Sondheim lyrics, hummable music by Jule Styne, book by Arthur Laurents.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

Too many recent stagings of Eugene O'Neill's greatest play - arguably the greatest of all American plays - have tried to rush the actors, cut the script, or take other desperate measures to shave the show's outsized running time. Granted, the current Broadway revival's 255-minute journey does make us wonder if a few of the repetitious arguments could be tightened here and there.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

This American Masterpiece is the dark side of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!. Long Day's Journey needs no commentary, but this new production - staged by Robert Falls - is Magisterial! Vanessa Redgrave is heart-breaking as the tragically addicted Mary Tyrone. [This did not prevent a Jewish critic sitting next to me from observing that "Redgrave supports the Arabs!"] Brian Dennehy is wonderfully self-pitying-Irish as the miserly husband & father - and ruined actor - James Tyrone, for whom drink is a Good Man's Failing.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David
Brooks Atkinson Theater

More like the look of chintz and the sound of yawns. Just when off-Broadway's Hank Williams: Lost Highway came along to show how a musical revue could be smart, affecting and even sometimes thrilling, Broadway dredges up this reminder of just how dreary a pastiche can be. Oh sure, the first fifteen minutes are amiable enough, as good, personable singers like Liz Callaway, Janine LaManna and the capacious Capathia Jennings sing some hit tunes by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Subtitled, "The Songs of Burt Bacharach & Hal David," this show is definitely not a musical, nor yet quite a revue. The songs are not block-busters, or even that memorable, unless you came of age when they were hot. The cast is able, without being compelling - or especially attractive. The sets look like perambulating rabbit-cages and the costumes seem from Daffy's rather than H & M. Astonishing - and depressing - that the lackluster choreography is credited to Ann Reinking. Scott Ellis directed, but he has certainly had better nights than this one.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David
Brooks Atkinson Theater

The Look of Love: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is one of the most ill-conceived musicals I've ever seen. From an unimaginative start (how can you sing "Don't Ever Go" with an unending smile?) to choreography from some long-ago book of moves with some physical actions at inappropriate moments, crude costumes, meaningless scenery of cages and chain link fences, it's all tedious, with no humor, and is basically tasteless. They have the rhythm but do not delve into the content of the songs.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Salome
Ethel Barrymore Theater

The reading is a neglected and under-rated form; it's too often seen as a half-created production, as if it should be something it doesn't want to be. Now the form has been commercially elevated to Broadway in Salome: The Reading, with Al Pacino.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2003

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