Hairspray
Neil Simon Theater

Your scribe was not permitted to see this amazing show for weeks and months. It had opened while I was still in Europe, before what used to be the Opening of the Broadway Season. By the time I returned, it was already so smothered with raves n' honors that - or so I was repeatedly told - the producers didn't need a website rave. Fortunately, I am (as non-recording Secretary of the Outer Critics Circle) an Awards Nominator and a Voter. Not to overlook also being a Voter for the Drama Desk Awards.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Far And Wide
Mint Theater

The award-winning Mint Theater Company has another first class show, Far And Wide, Jonathan Bank's adaptation and direction of Arthur Schnitzler's Das Weite Land. While the entire cast is quite good, leads Hans Tester and Lisa Bostnar are Broadway- level performers, and the show, which is about fidelity, infidelity, and moofky-foofky among the married and unmarried eighty years ago, sparkles with energy and life during all of their encounters. Ms. Bostnar is an actress capable of leads in Ibsen, Shakespeare, Miller, Williams and Albee.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Golda's Balcony
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

The dynamic Tovah Feldshuh - who certainly can do glamour - avoids it in her recreation of an aging Golda Meier. But she wonderfully evokes the courage and revolutionary career of this powerful and earthy woman who fought for the creation of the State of Israel and, as Prime Minister, guided it through very dark times.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
La Boheme
Broadway Theater

Well, it's better than Rent. That's about the best thing this reviewer can say about the current Broadway version of Puccini's La Boheme, which in this production is set in 1950s Paris. Director Baz Luhrmann is largely successful in achieving his mission, which is to make a great opera more accessible to the masses. He is especially canny in selecting very handsome and beautiful young actors for the leads. He also gives them some freedom in substituting American slang for parts of the libretto (although all the singing is in Italian, with subtitles).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Royale Theater

Twenty years ago, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom announced the arrival of a major new playwright on Broadway. It showed his command of language, humor and tone already at full throttle, while also showing his indulgence for meandering conversation and climactic moments that, however well constructed, feel a little stagey and forced. The playability of Wilson's dialogue has in no way diminished over the years, however; and when you have a force of nature like Charles S.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Royale Theater

Unfortunately, even the star power of Academy Award-winner Whoopi Goldberg wasn't enough to draw crowds to August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. The show had a relatively brief run on Broadway, despite the fact that, in addition to Goldberg, well-known actor Charles Dutton returned to recreate the role of Levee (which he played in the successful Broadway original 18 years ago). Ma Rainey is also notable as the first of many Wilson plays to be seen on Broadway. This reviewer was able to see the original version and this slightly altered revival.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Producers, The
St. James Theater

I went to see the current cast of Mel Brooks' The Producers. Boy! What a show! It's still a brilliant comedy, full of laughs, with super performances by Brad Oscar, Roger Bart, John Treacy Egan, Brad Musgrove, Gary Beach and, as Ulla the night I saw it, Charley Iazabella King. Robin Wagner's set, which goes beyond ordinary bounds in its extravagance, Susan Stroman's absurd choreography, hilarious costumes by Wiliam Ivey Long, all make this show The King of Broadway -- and "It's good to be the king.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Take Me Out
Walter Kerr Theater

I can't recall this much cheering and all-around continuous excitement about a Broadway play since Angels in America. I'm not talking about pre-show hype or media attention, I'm talking about in the theater itself, as a truly enthusiastic audience watches Richard Greenberg's utterly captivating comedy-drama keep trotting the bases.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Vincent in Brixton
Golden Theater

Mired between soap-opera twaddle and pretentious historical drama, Vincent in Brixton speculates - to little profit and much tedium - about the life of youngish Vincent van Gogh for the brief time he lived in England. In his bumbling, hypersensitive way, he livens up a grieving widow (think Rose Tattoo without the laughs), until his nosy sister moves in and ruins things. Jochum ten Haaf is convincingly confused as young Vinny, while Clare Higgins has strong moments as the landlady who rediscovers her physical self.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
A...My Name is Alice
Producers Club II

If a musical revue is first rate, it can last and be fully entertaining years later, assuming it's done well by a top-notch cast of Broadway-level singers. The current revival of A...My Name is Alice, as directed by Adam M. Muller, is as entertaining today as it ever was. It has energy, verve, lively sparkle and real voices, most of them directly from Broadway. Soara-Joye Ross is outstanding, but the rest -- Ellie Dvorkin, the comic lead, who did the zippy choreography, Jennifer Allen, Avery Sommers and Donna Vivino are all up there with the best on Broadway.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Berzerkergang
Sledgehammer Theater at Cecilia's Playhouse

Sledgehammer artistic director Kirsten Brandt takes pen in hand again, this time to create Berzerkergang. Known for her directorial accomplishments, Brandt turned the direction of her latest work over to Michael Severance and Jessa Watson.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Cabaret
North Coast Repertory Theater

Dennis J. Scott, as Ernst Ludwig/Max, is a study in a slick character with a terrible goal -- the forming of the Third Reich. Linda Libby gives us a Fraulein Schneider we could love, feel sorry for, and enjoy her travails with her tenants. Jim Chovick as her love, Herr Schultz, gives a new meaning to naivety, as Schultz insists that the Nazi will think of him as a German, not a Jew. We watch their love grow and be destroyed.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Cotton Patch Gospel, The
Bunbury Theater

Some knowledge of the history behind The Cotton Patch Gospel, Bunbury Theatre's earthy bluegrass gospel musical that switches the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to rural Georgia, is instructive and deepens enjoyment of that old, old story. Tom Key and Russell Treyz adapted "the greatest story ever retold" from a book called "The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John" by Dr.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Dining Room, The
Patio Playhouse

Director Jay Mower's minimalist set features one elegant dinning table with eight chairs and a lighted landscape painting as the only decoration -- all in a black box. It's a perfect setting to platform A. R. Gurney's The Dining Room. Nothing distracts the audience from the talents of the six players performing 57 different characters.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Dirty Blonde
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Two stories intertwine: one a biography of Mae West, the other of two major, faithful fans who meet at her tomb and fall in love. Behind a rear proscenium arch, as if on a movie screen, Mae West's projected eyes beckon. Fronting the stage, old fashioned footlights suggest the period bioplay to be performed: Jo, a struggling actress who's patterned her professional self after her idol, and Charlie, a dweeby public library film archivist who when a youngster met Mae, act out their impressions of and facts about the star.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Debbie Does Dallas
Jane Street Theater

Although the stage version of Debbie Does Dallas is in no way pornographic (and has only one brief moment of -- alas, male -- nudity), we know from the get-go this will be no sanitized satire. One cheerleader palms her crotch as automatically as the others chew gum, while the others end up mimicking pretty much every sexual combination ever conceived.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Flower Drum Song
Virginia Theater

It's no wonder this version of Flower Drum Song had a short life on Broadway. When someone first suggested that all these great Asian actors around town (from Miss Saigon) could easily populate a production of Flower Drum Song, it must have seemed like an inspired idea. In fact, some moments in the show are inspired. First off, it's nice to see an Asian musical composed of 90 percent Asian actors.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Jackie Wilson Story, The
New Regal Theater

Anyone still undecided on whether to see this musical biodrama, whether in Memphis or when it winds up its tour at New York's Apollo Theater April 4-13, 2003 should know that:
1) the premiere production ran for nearly two years,
2) Melba Moore has joined the cast, and two new songs written just for her have been added to the score,
3) Chester Gregory II, who created the title role and has played it with nary a day off since, is the most exciting and charismatic new artist since Jackie Wilson himself,

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Burn This
Union Square Theater

All four roles in Lanford Wilson's taut chamber piece have fascinating contours. For me, there's a fine spontaneity elevating this drama above the playwright's other fare. But for Burn This to work overwhelmingly, the chemistry between Anna and Pale—radical opposites who attract—must convincingly combust. She's a dancer mourning the death of her gay roommate. He's the roommate's vulgar lookalike brother, repulsed by his brother's lifestyle—and wracked with guilt as a result.

Elisabeth Shue brought all her screen magic to Union Square Theatre intact as Anna.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Beauty Queen Of Leenane, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Vicious old Mag Folan is cagily and savagely brought to contemptible life by ATL veteran Adale O'Brien in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's gripping tale of mother-daughter animosity and dependence. Emotionally fragile daughter Maureen, age 40, stuck in their isolated village with the demanding harridan, yearns for escape and comes close to achieving it but for Mag's spiteful scheming that brings doom crashing down on both of them.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Comedians
Samuel Beckett Theater / moved to Acorn Theater 2/5-2/23/03.

From The New Group comes a welcome revival of Trevor Griffiths' 1975 comedy-drama that uses acid to burn its way toward a surprisingly humanistic center. Eddie Waters (Jim Dale, playing kindly but with an edge) is a once- famous music-hall comic teaching a class of up-and-comers eager to get on the paying circuit.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Conservationist, The
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

As the program claims, Mark Wheatley may be "one of London's leading playwrights," but the only thing I've ever seen of his was written for TV. For The Conservationist he seems to have a whole season of episodes in mind. There's so much STUFF about race relations, mixed- raced couples and offspring, academic vs. "real life" perceptions of the foregoing, and parent-child relationships, laced with traces of the results of feminist and sexual liberations!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Copenhagen
Theater Three

It is difficult to believe the erudite and probing questions posited in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen flowed from the same pen as Noises Off, one of the wackiest backstage farces extant. First premiered in 1998 at London's Royal National Theatre with its first American production in 2000 at Broadway's Royale Theater, Copenhagen details a fictional account of an actual meeting between Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, and German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, who visited Bohr's home in Copenhagen in 1941.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Copenhagen
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen is sure to strike a resonant chord with today's audiences. Daily headlines are filled with reports regarding foreign countries and their weapons of mass destruction. Does Iraq have the bomb? Does Iran? Does North Korea? Copenhagen takes us back to the origins of such discussions.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Corn Is Green, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Emlyn Williams' 1941 semi-autobiographical play -- about a teacher who, against formidable odds, helps an unlikely young Welshman escape coal mining to develop his literary talents -- unabashedly calls for two stars. It has them in local favorite Carolyn Michel, bursting with Miss Moffat's pep and determination, and serious FSU/Asolo Conservatory student Bryan Barter as belligerent but brilliant Morgan Evans.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Damn Yankees
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Helluva good show! Who wouldn't be tempted to fall for slick Faustian Gary Marachek, with his bewitching grin, and hope he wins a mid-1950s world series away from the Bronx Bombers? Certainly not the Washington Senators' biggest fan, middle-aged Joe Boyd (portly John F. Roberson, fitting his part like a well-worn glove)! A melodious "Six Months Out of Every Year" his lovely wife Meg (glorious soprano Melliss Kenworthy) can't pry him away from his rabbit-eared TV set.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Deathtrap
OnStage Playhouse

Ira Levin's Deathtrap is a perennial favorite of theater audiences as well as a delightful film. OnStage Playhouse is currently running the production to appreciative audiences.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Dance of the Vampires
Minskoff Theater

Dance of the Vampires is a cheery cartoon with happy dancing and trivial songs. It's an unsophisticated, entertaining, harmless fairy tale, all tongue-in-cheek, with a cast of fine voices and real dancers and acrobats -- sort of a humorous tale by Grimm, for the whole family. The music by Jim Steinman seems like lesser Lloyd Webber, with a little Gilbert and Sullivan on occasion. But when Michael Crawford opens up his pipes, there's a show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

Def Poetry Jam on Broadway is a poetic outpouring of ethnic frustration and rage -- the pain of the poor. The darker people (black, Latin, Asian, Arabic and various mixtures) and their working-class neighbor express their inner turbulence and anger -- for people in high-priced Broadway seats. It's made up of very inventive poems of protest, life, love, all parallel to or tangential from the main stream, performed by their creators, including a teeny Puerto Rican woman (Mayda Del Valle) who is very heavy and a big heavy guy (Poetri) who is the lightness in the show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

Harvesting the creme de la crème of the burgeoning poetry slam circuit, producer Russell Simmons and director Stan Lathan have honed a new theatrical format that uses rap and performance art as its twin launching pads. The result is nothing like a musical.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Dinner at Eight
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

After a first scene that's as dull and expository as only openers of American comedies from yesteryear can be, Dinner at Eight quickly reaffirms its status as a classic by layering character quirks and tangled relationships into a story both funny and still satirically stinging. As soon as preening Carlotta Vance (the ever-treasurable Marian Seldes) arrives at her old beau's office seeking financial advice, the machinations click into high gear and stay there till the slightly deflated ending.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Eye of the Storm
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

Time: 1997 (with flashbacks starting just after D-Day, WW II). Occasion: Lecture by Federal Justice Frank Johnson. Place: Harvard Law School. Like the new graduates whom he addresses, we hear "Stars Fell on Alabama" and soon fall into fascination with the Alabama boy who became the judicial star of the Civil Rights Movement.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Flower Drum Song
Virginia Theater

David Henry Hwang has totally rewritten the book for the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's abortive San Francisco treat of 1958. PC pulsewatchers will be glad to find our heroine Mei-Li has been upgraded from an illegally immigrating mail-order bride to a political refugee whose father was martyred back in Red China. But there's no rehab performed on the R&H score, which pales next to the oriental splendors of the team's South Pacific.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Exonerated, The
45 Bleecker

This intensely researched script, pieced together by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen from public records and personal interviews, is as much a crusade as a drama. A bunch of A-list talent has mobilized behind the cause since this reading stage production opened in October, including Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, Elliott Gould, Judy Collins, Lynn Redgrave, Mia Farrow, Mary Steenburgen and Debra Winger.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

As snappy, smart and entertaining as much of Imaginary Friends is, Nora Ephron's ficto-biography of feuding literary lionesses Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy can't overcome a basic stasis in its premise: both writers are dead from the outset and quarreling in retrospect. Director Jack O'Brien can trick this up with video and vaudeville turns (with generally ephemeral, period-style songs by Craig Carnelia and Marvin Hamlisch), but that just makes the piece feel like a Dirty Blonde wannabe.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron is an odd, experimental play -- two famous writers, Lillian Hellman (Swoosie Kurtz) and Mary McCarthy (Cherry Jones), in a fantasy that works theatrically. The women are great foils for each other as they literarily and theatrically jab enmity back and forth. There is great style in the play's inventiveness, although the verbal encounters are a tad over-written.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

When Lillian Hellman reached the pinnacle of her second career, switching from the stage to personal memoirs, the esteemed novelist/essayist/critic Mary McCarthy had the temerity to attack the grand dame. "Every word she writes is a lie," she smiled, guesting on The Dick Cavett Show, "including 'and' and "the.'" Hellman, catching the nationwide telecast, responded swiftly, slapping McCarthy with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit calculated to financially crush her detractor.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Metamorphoses
Circle in the Square

This Chicago import from Lookingglass Theater Company made a big splash last March when it opened at Circle in the Square, my favorite Broadway venue. About a dozen of the fabulous myths narrated by the great Roman poet Ovid are retold around and inside a spacious pool of water. The medium is perfect for simulating the mutability of mortals who become playthings of the gods. Trouble is, the Lookingglass gloss on Metamorphoses strips away the sensuality and the wit of Ovid, overlaying a mocking comedy of its own.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

You go to a play called Hank Williams: Lost Highway for the music of the legendary singer, and your favorites are all there, played live by a dynamite country band, in the production now at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater. It's all framed in a bio-entertainment that is pure bio-charm. It's a good dramatic play as well about the self-destructive life of Williams, with a fine cast, all first rate musicians, led by Jason Petty as the singer/songwriter in a recreation that is almost a reincarnation.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Say Goodnight Gracie
Helen Hayes Theater

Frank Gorshin has an impressive arsenal at his disposal as he engagingly recounts the century-long odyssey of George Burns, who rose to stardom from humble beginnings as Nathan Birnbaum in the Lower East Side. There are antique photos of the hood projected behind Gorshin onstage, followed by authentic movie and TV clips. Simulations of old Burns & Allen radio shows, recorded with Didi Conn, seem to emanate on cue from an ancient Philco.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003

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