Dragapella With The Kinsey Sicks
Studio 54

If the only barbershop quartet lyrics you know are to "Sweet Adeline," get thee over to the cabaret room upstairs at Studio 54 and catch this quartet of drag queens who mix filthy double-entendres, Yiddish quips and audience participation with their eclectic a cappella song stylings. A little of this parody stuff would ordinarily go a long way, and the foursome do overstay their welcome a bit, but their vocal arrangements are rich and intricate, and their rhymes are often fiendishly clever.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Forty-Five Seconds From Broadway
Richard Rodgers Theater

Following the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, it appeared Neil Simon was on the brink of creating a host of mature masterworks. Instead, he's moved backwards, papering over thin material with joke after joke (Laughter on the 23rd Floor) or caught between punchlines to build something more serious but frustratingly contrived (The Dinner Party, Proposals). 45 Seconds From Broadway, however, is the most disappointing to date.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Forty-Five Seconds From Broadway
Richard Rodgers Theater

45 Seconds From Broadway is Neil Simon's valentine to the people in the orbit of Broadway, without whom it could not survive, who spin the threads that make up the rich fabric of theater. It is also a love song to that humble, hallowed haven for theater personages, the Edison Cafe, fondly nicknamed the "Polish Tea Room" (a take-off on the flashy Russian Tea Room, where Hollywood types mostly convene).

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Elaine Stritch: At Liberty
Public Theater

Elaine Stritch doesn't just work in showbiz, she is showbiz. Now in her seventies, and in a new show highlighting her long, rocky career path from Broadway ingenue to industry survivor, Stritch doesn't pull any punches in relaying how she got where she is right now. And she doesn't apologize for any of it.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Elaine Stritch: At Liberty
Public Theater

Elaine Stritch's gravel-dusted voice bears witness to a lifetime of roaring successes, strange interludes, and hard times. But that voice also provides a stirring and sassy solo tour through this artist's sometimes funny, sometime frenetic, and more-often-than-not frenzied life in the theater. Although the trim and attractive Stritch is ill-served by the foolish-looking black tights that costumer Paul Taxewell has chosen for her to wear throughout the performance, she is otherwise brilliantly served by material she and John Lahr, as co-constructionists, have devised.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Everett Beekin
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Richard Greenberg's latest is a frustratingly elusive comedy, one that tracks two generations of a very Jewish family, the first in 1940s lower Manhattan, the second in 1990s La-La-Land. We're encouraged to play the inter-generational connections game (e.g., how was the sister in act one reflected in the daughter in act two?), but Everett Beekin's two parts really don't connect that well, the focus is often unclear, and the finale feels blah.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Everett Beekin
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

If there are skeletons to be found in a family, you can count on Richard Greenberg to exhume them. At least two, of his many excellent plays, Three Days of Rain, and Safe as Houses, are notable for their generation-bridging tremors and traumas. This time Greenberg shows a concern for the fate of a Lower East Side Manhattan Jewish family in the 1940s. If Greenberg makes their present and their future amusing to watch, he also keeps everything else about them obscure and strangely illusive.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

Plays in translation are bastard stepchildren of the originals, especially when the version presented is written by someone who cannot, and thus never has, read the original. I don't read Norwegian any more than Jon Robin Baitz does, but I have spent enough time in Norway, with Norwegian friends, and with direct translations of Ibsen plays, to know that Hedda is a peculiarly Norwegian type. (Buy me a drink and I'll tell you about the time, many years ago, when two local amazons abducted me off a railway bridge in Oslo, until they, both in their 20s, learned I was underage.

David L. Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Hollywood Arms
Cort Theater

There's an old saying: "Shoemaker, stick to your last." Remember when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball? Carol Burnett wrote a play (with her daughter), Hollywood Arms, now on Broadway. Sorry. She's a great performer. The acting, by Linda Lavin, Michele Pawk and Frank Wood, is fine, but you also know the one about a silk purse...

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Hollywood Arms
Cort Theater

Creaky and unfocused, this semi-autobiographical play by Carol Burnett and her late daughter, Carrie Hamilton, has stretches of entertaining humor and believable familial squabbles, but its parade of short scenes and lack of dramatic thrust take their toll early. Not bad (Burnett should definitely write another), just incredibly familiar stuff. Think of it as a weak, third-generation Brighton Beach Memoirs, and then see something else instead.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Noises Off
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Two years ago, the intricate beauty of Copenhagen reminded us what a great craftsman Michael Frayn is. Like Alan Ayckbourn on acid (and speed), Noises Off becomes a clockwork comedy machine, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny but mostly awe-inspiring, with the playwright five steps ahead of the audience (who are busy trying to take in five different gags all happening onstage at once). I'm with John Simon that the Broadway revival cast is good, but an all-British ensemble would be better.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Thou Shalt Not
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Sometimes there's no specific reason why a show doesn't grab an audience, and Thou Shalt Not is a puzzling case in point. Apart from a couple of easily-corrected directorial miscues (like expecting the audience to applaud after a scene of choreographed coitus), there's nothing wrong, per se, with this new musical by David Thompson, Harry Connick, Jr. and director/choreographer Susan Stroman.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, An
Atlantic Theater

In An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, six actors with range and flair play a series of extremely off-center characters in Silverstein's bizarre, quirky, mostly insightful short plays. It's sometimes outrageous, sometimes overdone, but most of it is lots of fun. Good abstract set by Walt Spangler, good lighting by Robert Perry, zany costumes by Miguel Angel Huidor, and snappy direction by Karen Kohlhaas contribute to an odd but enjoyable evening.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Ann Hampton Callaway
Feinstein's at the Regency

She opened her set with the Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh standard "The Best is Yet to Come" and Ann Hampton Callaway, in her debut at Feinstein's at the Regency, was not kidding. Two minutes later, we were getting our kicks as she went bouncing along Bobby Troup's "Route 66."

Just as the aforementioned are closely identified with Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole, respectively, so are the rest of the tunes Callaway has chosen identified as "signature" songs for some of the greatest jazz and pop vocalists of our time.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Are You Dave Gorman?

What a fabulous idea: Londoner Dave Gorman got it into his head to meet as many other Dave Gormans as he possibly could -- even if it meant flying to New Zealand, Italy, the South of France or wherever else to meet them. In his genial solo, Gorman tracks his encounters, furnishing snapshots and tape recordings as proof.

At first it's amusing how he charts the miles traveled against the number of meetings to come up with a graph of an ideal ratio -- 400-500 mpdg (miles-per-dave-gorman).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2001
By Jeeves
Helen Hayes Theater

Now that we've all had our fill of critics telling us "what we need right now" (one would hope), I'm going to come right out and say what we don't need: lackluster Broadway shows that have found residence on the Great White Way out of a desire to fulfill audiences' cravings for frivolity, an excuse to suck away two hours or more of time and be convinced they're doing some good to the theater community. By Jeeves could the most odious example yet.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Buried Child
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

Nearly 20 years ago, Buried Child took America by storm. Playwright Sam ShepardÆs fresh voice was an energizing wake-up call for theater audiences. Buried Child is one of several plays Shepard wrote about the American family during this period. It is an allegorical play, full of raw energy, tension and surreal elements. Filled with contradictions, strange behaviors and a shocking secret, it entranced audiences and won the Pulitzer Prize. So how does it hold up?

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Butterflies Are Free
Venice Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Blind boy seeking an independent life meets scared-of-commitment hippie girl. The result makes for a sweet little play, a coming-of-age story with a twist. Don Baker (cute Jeff Sargent, convincingly sightless), in his 20s, has left his Scarsdale home and overly protective mother after an almost affair with his music teacher. In center city, next door to Don in what's described as an equally dreary but less neatly-appointed apartment resides eager-beaver Jill, 19. Married for six days three years previously, she's had numerous affairs since.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Cemetery Club, The
Bunbury Theater

If my complete delight and absorption in the lives and times of those three gutsy women and one man who light up Bunbury Theater's production of Ivan Menchell's The Cemetery Club mark me as a soft hearted old codger, so be it. No apologies! Director Juergen K. Tossmann, Bunbury's producing/artistic director, has assembled a dream cast for this touching and humorous look at three middle-aged Jewish widows from Forest Hills in Queens, New York, who once a month go to the graves of their husbands to talk to them and kibitz.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Chesapeake
Off-Broadway Theater

Washington, D.C.-based actress Holly Twyford makes her Milwaukee debut in Lee Blessing's Chesapeake, the fall season opener for Renaissance Theaterworks. Her performance is absolutely outstanding. Since she's the entire show in this one-actor production, it puts Chesapeake at the top of the "don't miss" category for the current season. Director Joe Banno also directed Twyford in the Washington production of this play, and he works his magic to excellent effect at the Off-Broadway Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Crucible, The
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

The mass hysteria the Salem witch-hunt provoked in the 17th century was no more or less insidious an epidemic than the one McCarthyism fostered during the 1950s. America need never forget the political, moral and ethical issues on trial, in either century, thanks to Arthur Miller's arresting drama of intolerance The Crucible. It is the play he wrote specifically to denounce the too-often-rampant inequities of so-called justice.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got The Will?
Poway Performing Arts Company

Entering Poway Performing Arts Company's home, it's apparent this will be a different kind of theater experience. Mounted animal heads, antlers, Texas memorabilia, and much more adorn the walls and lobby. A second clue of things to come is the pre-show music. It's been a long time since I've seen an audience listening and reacting to pre-show and between-scene music. Sound Designer Lou Alliano's selection of country tunes enhance the jocular mood of the evening. The John Ivey set, dressed by Camel, Inc., has the perfect feel of a large country farmhouse.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Dance of Death
Broadhurst Theater

Think of Edgar and Alice as the Swedish Al and Peg Bundy, trading barbs and dirty tricks up until the very last moment when they realize that despite everything, they can't live without each other. By treating August Strindberg's play more as wickedly dark comedy than viciously Bergmanesque drama, director Sean Mathias gives the estimable Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren much to play with, even if they can't quite make the underplotted, repetitious first act and occasionally off-the-wall second act turn into some kind of powerful statement about codependency.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

Everybody's favorite female monster is back on Broadway in a new translation by Jon Robin Baitz (Three Hotels), and none other than Richard Burton's capable daughter Kate playing the lead role. One of the unlikeliest of Broadway offerings, this Hedda Gabler is much like the bold, reptilian woman who bears the name: crafty and admirable but chilly and distant, making this well-mounted affair ultimately an exercise in futility.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

I've never understood why Hedda Gabler is considered one of the most interesting and complicated heroines in dramatic literature. She always comes off as a capricious, cruel viper without being decent enough to evoke sympathy or vivid enough to cast an Iago-like fascination. Nicholas Martin's current Broadway revival of Ibsen's drama, while solid and lively, does little to make the play a grabber for our times.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

The current production of Hedda Gabler, in a lively adaptation by Jon Robin Baitz, is a peculiar mixture: the play, as usual, starts off with so much exposition that it tends to bore. Then a gushing, very fey, Michael Emerson bursts in as Tesman, a mode he retains throughout the play, tilting all in a novel direction.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Mamma Mia!
Winter Garden Theater

There's no getting around that Mamma Mia! is -- as a friend who used to denigrate commercial Broadway product once put it -- crap.There's no defending it on artistic or intellectual grounds. It's a loud, glitzy excuse to shoehorn a bunch of ABBA songs into a ridiculous plot. Like so many new Broadway musicals, the show overwhelms the audience with volume, assuming that decibels will murder dissent. But is Mamma Mia! hateful? Far from it. The writers and performers are, if nothing else, cheerily blatant about the show's dumbness.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Mamma Mia!
Winter Garden Theater

I would give totally different reviews to the two halves of Mamma Mia!. Act One is sweet trivia of no consequence, with a couple of cute songs and some oldies but goodies that work fine. But the enthusiasm on the stage doesn't quite conquer the inane dialogue and foolish plot to reach the audience. The not-very-imaginative choreography is all right on the beat, with most people doing exactly the same thing at the same time. The costumes are a mish-mash of decades.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Noises Off
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Michael Frayn's Tony-winning play Copenhagen, which concentrated on the meeting of two scholars commiserating over atomic theory, left me colder than a blizzard breeze in Niagara Falls in January. Many adored this brainy, ultra-serious account of science versus intellect, but I likened it to a lecture by a brilliant professor who knew little of the ways of the human heart. The show was a surprise hit, though I suspect many patrons went along with it while secretly wishing they were having more fun elsewhere.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Urinetown
Henry Miller Theater

A one-joke musical it may be, but Urinetown has so much fun with the joke, not to mention so many other well-aimed satirical and sociological barbs, the overall effect is of something as fresh and urgent as it is laugh-getting. The Brecht-Weill-style tunes click, the lyrics tickle, and the supporting cast (especially Spencer Kayden as a little twerp and Ken Jennings as a Fosse-posed psycho) is a hoot and then some. A dash of second-act cynicism hampers some of the fun, but that's only because the authors really do have the courage of their convictions.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Always...Patsy Cline
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

If you like country music, this "Patsy Cline song revue" is for you. And if you like pop music but think you don't like "country," this revue may make you think again. After all, Cline was a pioneer crossover songstress. She nuked the "sub" in a subgenre, her songs surfing into traditionally country waves such as "Honky Tonk Merry Go Round" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on to sophisticated ballads like "You Belong to Me" and "True Love." They're among two dozen numbers well paced and distinctively rendered by Kyle Ennis Turoff as Patsy Cline.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Agamemnon and His Daughters
Arena Stage

Arena Stage's contribution to the "Greek Invasion" during this season of the classics in Washington, D.C., is the world premiere of an intriguing Agamemnon and His Daughters. Kenneth Cavender provides a colloquial and intelligible adaptation of six plays by Euripides, Aischylos, and Sophokles (the program utilizes the Greek spellings) into a marathon three hours of theater.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
As Bees in Honey Drown
Pilsen Theater

You can't cheat an honest citizen, and whether to remind audiences of that fact shapes productions of Douglas Carter Beane's cautionary tale about a con artist on the loose in fashionable boho circles. Most theaters play it safe, making the prey a calf-eyed innocent, the predator a giddy young gamine on a fling and their encounter something that could only happen in the never-never-land of New York City. Cenacle Theater director David Hart Waggoner, unafraid to put an edge on the satire, has instructed his actors accordingly.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Blue
Gramercy Theater

Phylicia Rashad makes a triumphant return to the stage in Blue, a breezy, wonderfully pleasing new work by Charles Randolph-Wright. Seeing how effortlessly she commands the stage, you wonder why she isn't on one more often. Best known as Claire Huxtable on the wildly popular "Cosby" shows, Rashad seems born to the stage, with her unmistakable presence and quiet gravity.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Bee-Luther-Hatchee
Off Broadway Theater

Next Act Theater opens its 12th season in Milwaukee with a provocative new work, Bee-Luther-Hatchee. It's clear why this play appealed to Next Act, a company that often delves into issues of gender, race and family relationships. In Bee-Luther-Hatchee, Shelita Burns, a young African-American woman, publishes the memoirs of Libby Price, a 72-year-old first-time author. The book, "Bee-Luther-Hatchee," tells of Libby's life in the South.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
California Suite
Coronado Playhouse

Coronado Community Theater's current offering is California Suite, New Yorker Neil Simon's not-always-subtle slap at Californians' life style. This 1976 classic refuses to age; it is still a delightful mixture of humor and drama as five couples, in four short plays, occupy a suite in Beverly Hills.

Hanna and Bill Warren (Allison Evans and Dave Rivas) are a long-time divorced, bi-coastal couple trying to determine the residency of their late teen daughter. Evans is a stereotypical New York power executive.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Chorus Line, A
Paper Mill Playhouse

It has been ten years since the Paper Mill Playhouse last staged A Chorus Line. That we can still feel responsive to the passionately shared personal life stories of dancers says something about the durability of one of the most emotional musicals you are ever likely to see. For those not in tune with the difficulties that mark the life of the gypsy, the musical will feel like a music and dance-propelled, group therapy session.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Danny And Sylvia: A Musical Love Story
American Century Theater

Every celebrity should be so lucky as to have his biography written if not by his mother, then by his publicist. Danny Kaye, entertainer extraordinaire, lucks out in "Danny and Sylvia: A Musical Love Story," with lyrics provided by Bob McElwaine, who between 1953-59 served as Kaye's personal manager, confidante and publicist. (McElwaine's previous theatrical credits include a commission to musicalize Herman Wouk's "Marjorie Morningstar," which effort was subsequently vetoed for production by the novelist.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
First Love
New York Theater Workshop

The premise of Charles Mee's experimental comedy is laudable: compress a lifelong romantic relationship (and, metaphorically, all relationships) into its high and lowpoints -- first meeting, restaurant date, sharing of cultural signposts and sexual appetites, dish-smashing fight, mournful farewells, reunions, and resigned resumptions.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Homecoming
Westside Theater

You could say that Lauren Weedman's one-actor, multi-character, autobiographical, 90-minute play starring herself -- Homecoming - is about her identity crises as a teenager. Adopted as an infant, Lauren lets us know she is growing up rather uneventfully in your conventionally functional middle-American family. Except for grandmother harboring suspicions that she might have been dropped on her head as a newborn, and her condescending older sister Lisa reminding her that she has two moms, the real one and this one, Lauren is otherwise content with her family.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2001

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