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
Urinetown
Henry Miller Theater

What's not to like about an entertaining, irreverent musical, performed by a superb singing and dancing ensemble with wonderful comedic gifts, that pokes fun at some of political theater's most enduring and boring pretensions?

Quite a lot, actually.

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Adding Machine, The
14th Street Theater

Elmer Rice wrote The Adding Machine in 1923. It was the first American foray into expressionism, and its best scenes successfully Americanize the bleak comedy of Carl Sternheim. It's the story of poor Mr. Zero, a bookkeeper who's replaced by an adding machine. Worse, he's executed for then murdering his boss. Thereafter, we find our hero in the afterlife. Imbued with the American work ethic, he escapes heaven in a panic when he learns that all they do there is enjoy themselves. He elects instead to count, summing up sand and pebbles.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Adding Machine, The
14th Street Theater

If Elmer Rice were writing plays today, he would probably take on the pernicious effects of globalism as applied to the little guy. Writing in 1923, Rice's metaphor for negative changes that new technology brings was the adding machine. In Jonathan Silver's adaptation of The Adding Machine, Mr. Zero (Paul Marcarelli) has been slaving away at a department store for ten years doing exactly the same job: adding sales receipts by hand. Precisely on his anniversary day, his boss (Joshua Dickens) fires him.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Balmoral
Taproot Theater

The special joy of great farce is in watching the precision workings of detailed parts, all functioning in a perfectly tuned, well-oiled machine. In Balmoral, the familiar types and devices of farce are melded to a social and political satire. It begins with the intriguing question, What if the Communist revolution had happened in England rather than Russia? How would a "class-less" utopia look in that most stratified of societies?

Jerry Kraft
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Blood Brothers
Theater Three

Rarely has so much exceptional talent been squandered as that which transpired at Theatre Three's production of Willy Russell's (Shirley Valentine) Blood Brothers. Under the disjointed misdirection of Terry Dobson, three of Dallas' finest divas managed to shine in spite of Dobson's focus totally missing the mark. Liz Mikel was superb as the narrator/seer and handled transitions seamlessly. Her stage presence was commanding, and her powerful voice complemented her actions. Sally Soldo as Mrs.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Chaplin
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

If only The Producers had got their hands on this -- a sort of "Wintertime for Chaplin"! Conceived to be "A Memory as Entertainment," the show presents the developmental stages in Charlie's life (birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) as they took place on theatrical stages (music hall, streets, vaudeville, movie sets). Scenes of his mother's artistic and mental deterioration, his father's drunken demise, his and brother Syd's consignment to workhouse change to ones of searching for love and (more successfully) artistic success and financial security.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
EAT-TV: The Gourmet Musical
Oregon Cabaret Theater

It's perhaps inevitable that the recent uptick in TV cooking shows would result in a musical spoof. But would you expect to find such a show in a remote town in southern Oregon? Well, get your utensils ready and prepare to dig into Eat-TV: A Gourmet Musical. It's playing all summer in a converted church that serves as the resident home of Oregon Cabaret Theater. This homegrown musical is the recipe of Ashland playwright/choreographer Jim Giancarlo, who is also the company's artistic director.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Enter The Guardsman
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

What's this, a musical on the stage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Bowmer Theater? I mean, real songs, a libretto, people holding hands, looking at one another moon-eyed and singing to one another? Welllll, times and policies do change. And in this case, it's definitely a change that is right on. Enter the Guardsman enters full-voiced, in full costume, and with full humor as the ensemble cavorts outlandishly. Based on Ferenc Molnar's droll and witty play, Guardsman is finely tweaked by writer Scott Wentworth, who has made it ripe for today's audiences.

Steve & Herb Heiman
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
Triad

This musical review based on Allan Sherman's lyrical parodies set to familiar music, welded into a very entertaining pastiche by Rob Krausz and Douglas Bernstein, is now playing at the cabaret space Triad on West 72nd Street. With a lively cast, talented at both singing and comedy, great absurd costumes by Michael Louis and zany staging by Krausz, it's a fun-filled evening.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Arsenic and Old Lace
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Randall L. Jones Theater

Arsenic and Old Lace is kind of an old chestnut, but J. R. Sullivan's farcically savvy direction and the cast's inspired comic performances fill it with exuberant fun. Mortimer (Brian Vaughn) seems the only normal note in a zany family. One of his brothers thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt (Kieran Connolly), and the other is a criminal whose latest face-lift makes him resemble Boris Karloff (David Ivers). His maiden aunts, Abby (Laurie Birmingham) and Martha (Leslie Brott), have developed a unique way of practicing Christian charity.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Intimate Evening With Sam Harris, An
Arci's Place

Singer/actor Sam Harris scored big on Broadway, earning a Tony nomination for his starring role in the Cy Coleman musical The Life. More recently he won acclaim in the West Coast revival of "Hair." The trim, boyish-looking Harris is scoring big in his debut at Arci's where his friendly demeanor and stand-up comedy-implemented set proves an asset in this intimate room. Dressed in Ninja warrior basic black, Harris has a somewhat retro look that is as disarming as the casual attitude with which he frames his diverse and varied material.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Annie Get Your Gun
Marquis

One of the songs in Irving Berlin's delightful score to Annie Get Your Gun states, "anything you can do, I can do better," and that adage has never been more pertinent to this show's surprising longevity on Broadway. The unflappable lead character, Annie Oakley, has been played by Ethel Merman, Debbie Reynolds, Bernadette Peters, and most recently to reportedly wondrous effect by C&W superstar Reba McEntire.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Absence of a Cello, The
Lamplighters Community Theater

Ira Wallach's The Absence of a Cello explores that special terror of getting hired. Ex-physics professor Andrew Pilgrim (Donal Pugh) is in the interview process. His wife, Celia Pilgrim (Kathy Hardman), a renowned authority in her field, and he quickly learn that deception is the only way to get a job with "Corporate America." In consort with the deception is their daughter, Joanna Pilgrim (Jennifer Cruz), and Andrew's sister, Marian Jellicoe (Jeannine Morton), along with neighbor Emma Littlewood (Lois Corbett) and her grandson, Perry (Jonathan Kabacek).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Ah, Wilderness!
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Randall L. Jones Theater

The most luminous production at the Utah Shakespearean Festival this season is Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!, a gentle family portrait dramatically different from the tragic depictions he usually penned. Although O'Neill calls the play "a comedy of recollection," wish fulfillment describes it more accurately. This is the family O'Neill would like to have had rather than his dysfunctional real one (indelibly chronicled later in Long Day's Journey Into Night).

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Anything Goes
Derby Dinner Playhouse

What's not to love about Derby Dinner Playhouse's sparkling take on Cole Porter's giddy romantic shipboard musical in which, indeed, Anything Goes? The dazzling music and lyrics by this native son of Peru, Indiana, are excuse enough to brush aside the silly plot and simply revel in the non-stop gorgeous and witty songs: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Easy to Love," and "It's De-Lovely," to name just a few.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Blue Window
MCC space

Julia Gibson's remarkable restaging of Craig Lucas's acclaimed 1984 play Blue Window is further evidence that instead of mounting lackluster new plays by such playwrights, maybe we should just relive their older, great ones. In the wake of David Rabe's horrifying The Dog Problem (a real dog if there ever was one on stage), David Mamet's trite The Old Neighborhood, and even Lucas's own misguided folly Stranger recently, we seem to need to be reminded of why we once thought they were great.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Blue Bird, The
Williamstown Theater Festival.

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian, writing in French in the first decade or so of the twentieth century. His work epitomized symbolism. Nonetheless, his The Blue Bird was first produced at that bastion of realism, The Mosow Art Theater, in 1908, directed by Mr. Stanislavski himself. The play's success led to the Nobel for Maeterlink in 1911.

In The Blue Bird, two children set out to find the elusive Blue Bird, with the help of a magic hat that lets them see the souls of all things.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Cirque Plume: Melanges
Big Top in Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center Festival 2001 presented Cirque Plume for its annual foray into noveau cirque.  The group is the oldest one of this kind in France, where the genre originated.  After presenting street theater for a few years, they created their first show in 1984, even before this kind of show had a name.  Melanges (Opera Plume) is part street theater, part mime and part bravura acts with a generous dose of the poetic thrown in.  The overall concept brings a four-member ragtag rock band together with assorted odd types.  A feisty

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Central Avenue
Fountain Theater

Central Avenue was Los Angeles' Beale Street or Bourbon Street, the heartbeat of a black ghetto which thrived from the 20s to the 50s, replete with churches, vaudeville and movie houses, restaurants, nightclubs and after-hours joints.  Anchored by the famous Dunbar Hotel where the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Paul Robeson and W E B DuBois stayed, Central Avenue was passed over by historians and writers until recent years.  Thanks to books by Bettye Cox, Stephen Isoardi, Johnny Otis and Buddy Collette, Central Avenue has finally been paid its due.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Cirque du Soleil - Mystere
Mystere Theater

Las Vegas seems the perfect venue for this colorful, glitzy extravaganza.  Part circus, part theater, and a whole lot of pizzazz -- "Mystere" is a spectacle of sight, sound, and sensation.  It is essentially a series of astonishing feats of physical strength and agility accompanied by spectacular lighting, costumes, and special effects.  The live music adds another dimension, heightening the aura of excitement.  Each of the acts is unique so that it is almost impossible to single one out above any other.  Among these remarkable performances is the balancing act of "Hand to H

Irene Herman
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Dying Gaul, The
Intiman Theater

Stories of how Hollywood corrupts the artistic temperament with its toxic brew of power, money and glamour are hardly new. Playwright Craig Lucas is interested in something more substantial and more interesting than that hackneyed formulation. In The Dying Gaul, he uses a deceptively simple story of one writer's unhappy experience of L.A.-style compromise to examine essential questions of self. It is an exploration of how identity, persona, authenticity, social role-playing, ambition, desire and repression combine to shape and distort the individual.

Jerry Kraft
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
George Gershwin Alone
Helen Hayes Theater

It's tricky putting someone's life on stage. Especially if they're quite famous, because growling watchdogs of accuracy will leap on your presentation of the facts, which almost always have to be fudged a little for the sake of drama. In the case of George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder's solo, 90-minute excursion through the life of the composer of the title, who died at a very young 38, you almost wish there were more created drama.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
If You Ever Leave Me, I'm Going With You
Cort Theater

Critics have tried time and again to kill old-fashioned, punchline-laden boulevard comedy, but audiences end up having the last laugh—literally. Even the most familiar jokes and situations, if handled snappily, can make for a pleasing night of relaxed entertainment.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine
City Center - Stage I

I can't wait for the movie version of Warren Leight's Side Man. Many plays make for very awkward, stagy films, but Leight's wonderful ode to jazz musicians and their tumultuous offstage lives, I think, will translate beautifully. It seems that way because Leight writes his characters not unlike the 1950s heyday of the motion picture, where actors were given great dialogue that seemed a little larger than life but true to their natures, not to mention that it was great to listen to from an audience perspective.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Major Barbara
American Airlines Theater

Capable mounting of G.B. Shaw warhorse, as usual proving that the playwright can be astonishingly brilliant yet still anemic when it comes to flesh-and-blood drama. Playing the title, Cherry Jones does her patented Cherry Jones; it's more fun to watch David Warner's matter-of-fact Undershaft, Dana Ivey's snappy matriarch and Zak Orth as mama's boy Stephen.

The trouble with Major Barbara is that it hits its dramatic height in scene two (at the Salvation Army) and becomes little more than a verbal tennis match after that.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Thousand Clowns, A
Longacre Theater

If nothing else, this revival of Herb Gardner's modern classic erases the bad taste left by the sour Judd Hirsch revival a few years back. Iconoclastic Murray has become sympathetic again, and for once we really understand why his well-paid job writing for a children's TV show has become an unendurable nightmare. Helping are fine supporting performances from Robert LuPone, Mark Blum, and especially Bradford Cover, who imbues the thankless role of social worker Albert with pathos and confusion.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Among the Thugs
Goodman Theater

When American journalist Bill Buford set out to explore the roots of the violent behavior exhibited by British soccer fans, he never thought his report would contradict all the common theories regarding working-class hostility and economic disenfranchisement.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Blur
Manhattan Theater Club: Stage II

Quite possibly the worst production to grace the usually strong stages of Manhattan Theater Club, Melanie Marnich's Blur couldn't possibly be more like its title. Hazy, plodding and lacking any genuine emotion, this production (helmed by MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow), chronicling the regressive eyesight of a LOA (Leber's Optic Atrophy) patient, shows a lack of eyesight on the part of its makers as well, turning a potentially interesting, loopy play into a "what-are-they-thinking?" spasmodic mess.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Book Of Liz, The
Greenwich Street

I don't agree with a friend who thinks that Comedy Central's wacked-out sitcom "Strangers With Candy" is the best thing on television, but I can certainly see why he would think so. It is a comic program that is truly, genuinely odd and operates on such gonzo logic, it becomes addicting. You just can't wait to see what weirdo will pop up next and what he'll say, and the show's refreshing bravado is appreciated in this age of sanitized blurs mistaken for ace comedy.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Butterfly Dreams
Bank Street Theater

The best stories of all are the ones that teach us something, still better if they are true. This Chinese tale is based on the life of Zhuang Zhou, noted philosopher of the Confucian school. He absented himself from society for long periods to continue his quest for wisdom (Tao). Even coming closer to his goal did not prevent him from misjudging human nature.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beard Of Avon, The
South Coast Repertory

Amy Freed's contribution to the "who wrote Shakespeare" controversy is a sometimes sharp and witty, sometimes dubious and too-cute comedy that receives an A-level production at its SCR world premiere. Sparkling performances by Mark Harelik (as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford), Douglas Weston (as Shakespeare) and Nike Doukas (as Queen Elizabeth) help lift the text and make it fly, though not without much flapping of wings.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beauty And The Beast
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Technical wizardry and scenic design dominate the current production of Beauty and the Beast, which is now making its initial Milwaukee appearance. The Disney musical made its Wisconsin debut in Green Bay about a year ago, and it also has played in nearby Chicago. Of course, the Broadway production is still going strong in its fifth year. That longevity says a lot about the Disney mystique, which has turned a simple fable into a slick, well-paced and dazzling theatrical production.
 

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beehive: The 60s Musical
Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theater

Last summer, the Egyptian Theater Company got a great idea: Why not stage a couple of musicals in repertory throughout the summer? That way short-term visitors would get to enjoy one show, and residents or those who were around longer could see a couple of them. They called the program Summer TheatreFest, and the idea was so popular that this season it returns with two new, quite diverse musicals.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Body of Bourne, The
Summer Cabaret At Yale

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Body of Bourne, The
Mark Taper Forum

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Candida and her Friends
Theater For The New City

A college professor (Brian Runbeck) is about to have his comfortable worldview upset.  He accepts an invitation to visit a former student, Candida (Caroline Strong), but instead finds she has become a siren with a live-in transvestite "slave" Rudolph (Neil Levine).  Candida peppers her reminiscences about the Italian classes she attended nine years previous with Latin sayings and suggestive remarks.  Her offer of a fun time in the bedroom prompts the professor's hasty retreat.  As he muses in his office over this episode, another former student appears. 

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Compania
Teatro La Tea at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center

Quick mood shifts, absurd happenings and unexpected consequences -- this is Eduardo Rovner's fast-paced comedy. Since its premiere in 1995 Compania has been widely performed throughout Latin America and Spain, but incredibly this is its first appearance on New York stages.  The tranquility (and boredom) that empty nesters Ana and Osvaldo enjoy is broken when he returns late one evening.  It seems he has met a woman, Magda. Too excited to notice Ana's increasing unease, Osvaldo tracks his adventure from glances to hand holding to renting a hotel room.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Charlie Victor Romeo
MacGowan Little Theater

Man vs. Machine is the theme of NYC-based Collective Unconscious' powerful new play, Charlie Victor Romeo. The 10-person company based its text on black-box transcripts of six plane disasters.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Continuum, The
Yale University

This must count as one of the more moving presentation of the genocide inflicted on the Cambodian people during the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. Yet Singapore-based director Ong Keng Sen uses essentially clear-headed, non-sensationalist means: spoken and taped descriptions, film clips and projected text. At the center is Em Theay, once a dancer in royal court spectacles in Phnom Penh but now, at age 69, a main contributor to the recovery of Cambodian traditional arts. It is a wonder that she is still alive.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001

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