The Great Gatsby
Broadway Theater

If you’ve never read “The Great Gatsby” you will probably enjoy the new musical version now at the Broadway Theater after a run at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. If you have read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic examination of the American Dream and romantic disillusion, you will sense something missing. Book-author Kit Kerrigan’s Cliff Notes adaptation dumbs down Fitzgerald’s complex treatment of the title character’s vain search for perfection and happiness through the ostentatious display of wealth.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical
Marcus Performing Arts Center: Uihlean Hall

Considering the nearly sold-out house for the touring production of Tina, the Tina Turner Musical , one might have expected the show producers to issue a disclaimer. Probably no one in the audience was ready for the show’s amount of onstage violence. The first act in particular seems like a long road of abuse (lasting about 1 hour, 45 minutes). Much of the abuse is directed at Anna Mae Bullock – the teenager who rose to fame as Tina Turner.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul
Donelly Theater

Like an encyclopedic entry for the late musical marvel, Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul is principally a musical review embellished with biographic scenes at WBTT. Because of the excellent singing, onstage band, and choreography, the production greatly enlivens the script. It glorifies Gaye but gives short shift and time to the follies of the second part of his life. This makes the show seem mainly a tribute.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Wiz, The
Marquis Theater

There are a few bumps on the yellow brick road in the new revival of The Wiz at the Marquis Theater, but this shiny new rendition of the Tony-winning 1974 African-American retelling of L. Frank Baum’s beloved fantasy classic is a roof-raising crowd pleaser. Starting with the positive, the cast is full of exquisite triple threats who can sing, dance, and act their way into your hearts and make you believe all the magical elements of the story though you’ve heard them a thousand times before.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Cher Show, The
Hobby Center

I don't think I have seen so many smiling faces at Houston's Hobby Center since the last time I attended a Mamma Mia! production there. The audience was comfortably seated at the outset of The Cher Show (directed by Casey Hushion), but fans would be on their feet and dancing in the aisles by show's end. The opening number, "If I Could Turn Back Time," offers a question that would be superbly answered throughout this show, which seemed to do exactly that for all the devoted fans assembled.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Teeth
Playwrights Horizons

Teeth, Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, is another musical about female empowerment, but it takes a decidedly different tact. Rather than employing historical survey,  Teeth bites into the horror genre and tears off a satirical, darkly hilarious tale.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Suffs
Music Box Theater

When it opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theater for a relatively short run in 2022, Suffs, Shaina Taub’s sweeping musical history of the women’s suffrage movement, got lost in the shuffle of the end-of-the-season, theater-award-deadline madness. There were also several cancelled performances due to COVID infections among the cast. As a result, this promising show was shunted aside.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Legally Blonde
Class Act Theater

In the year 2001 author, Amanda Brown, published her novel, “Legally Blonde,” based, in part, on her own experiences as a blonde at Stanford Law School. The film rights were quickly captured, and in July of that year the romantic comedy, starring Reese Witherspoon, opened to popular acclaim. It was a box office hit just 2 months before the infamous events of September 11th shook the nation and the world.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Ibsen's Ghost
59E59 Theaters

Playwright, performer, and drag legend Charles Busch is back and Henrik Ibsen’s got him. This may seem like an unlikely pairing, but Ibsen’s Ghost, Busch’s latest parody-romp ranks with his funniest efforts. Previously Busch has written delightfully campy send-ups of Hollywood movies and lavish costume spectacles with himself as the leading lady, inspired by the likes of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Audrey Hepburn.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Outsiders, The
Bernard B. Jacobs

In her classic YA novel “The Outsiders,” SE Hinton’s teenage protagonist Ponyboy Curtis explains the difference between “tough” and “tuff”: “Tough and tuff are two different words. Tough is the same as rough; tuff means cool, sharp— like a tuff-looking Mustang or a tuff record. In our neighborhood both are compliments.” In the new musical version of The Outsiders, now at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater after a run at the La Jolla Playhouse, the creative team is trying for “tuff,” but the results are “tough” as in “rough.”

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Troubadour
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

The new musical drama Troubadour doesn’t refer to any French medieval lyric poet or to a minstrel. Now designating singer-writer or recording artist, the word “troubadour” fits both a Southern American father and son in that titled show at Florida Studio Theater. Will they both contribute to country music?  If not, why? If so, how? 

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Fish
410 West 42 Street

Like Henrik Ibsen, contemporary playwright Kia Corthron addresses social issues with precision, compassion and boldness.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Enemy of the People, An
Circle in the Square

 In Sam Gold’s electrifying revival of Henrik Ibsen’s classic social drama An Enemy of the People, Jeremy Strong of “Succession” fame as the idealistic Dr.Thomas Stockman tells his daughter Petra (a sterling Victoria Pedretti) that they should consider moving from 19th century Norway to the US since the persecution they have been experiencing wouldn’t happen there. This optimistic line is greeted with hearty skeptical laughter by the audience at Circle in the Square. This response shows that Ibsen’s play is as relevant now as when it premiered in 1882. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
The Who's Tommy
Nederlander Theater

Technology and the political zeitgeist have caught up with The Who’s Tommy, rendering the rock opera even more timely than during its initial release. The new revival, at the Nederlander after a hit run in Chicago, is a dazzling spectacle, a combination thrill ride, rock concert and social commentary with a breakout performance by super soulful and sexy newcomer Ali Louis Bourzgui in the title role.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Romeo and Juliet
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

It took me a while to figure out who’s who and where from and going to and why in FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s new staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Director Jonathan Epstein has put the story of the ill-fated lovers into two Acts of mostly rising action played by sexually nontraditional actors  impersonating a number of roles in textual nontraditional  sexes. The essential plot remains the same.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Water for Elephants
Imperial Theater

If you choose "the road," you have to be prepared for a rough ride. This is the lesson learned by Jacob Jankowski (Grant Gustin), a young almost veterinarian in the new Broadway musical Water for Elephants. Jacob has nothing. In the thick of the Depression, his parents have been killed in a car crash, and the bank  has seized his home. He jumps on a circus train, going who knows where.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Ally, The
Public Theater

Like the current Broadway revival of Doubt, Itamar Moses’s new play The Ally at the Public Theater, offers no comfortable, clear-cut resolutions to the difficult questions it poses. It also presents varying and articulate responses to its central question and allows the audience to decide the best outcome—if any.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Doubt
Roundabout Theater - Todd Haimes Theater

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Doubt: A Parable first appeared Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theater Club and then transferred to Broadway winning the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, NY Drama Critics Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. John Patrick Shanley’s compact and powerful morality play pitting a determined nun against a charismatic priest she suspects of sexual misconduct still shakes and shatters. Scott Ellis’s revival for Roundabout Theater Company is as sturdy and upsetting as Doug Hughes’ original and Shanley’s self-directed 2008 film version.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Brooklyn Laundry
City Center - Stage 1

Comedy, tragedy and romance collide in Brooklyn Laundry, John Patrick Shanley’s latest depiction of damaged souls stumbling towards connection, at Manhattan Theater Club’s Off-Broadway City Center space. Like his Oscar-winning screenplay for “Moonstruck,” Brooklyn Laundry matches two unlikely lovers coming together despite their troubled pasts. The comedy begins gently, but after numerous twists and turns into darker territory, this witty, endearing play evolves into a wise lesson on playing the hand life has dealt you.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Hamlet
Orpheum Theater

Off-Broadway’s topical drama Corruption creates an expansive picture of a political and newspaper scandal with a cast of 13 enacting over 45 characters. Eddie Izzard nearly outdoes them by playing 23 characters herself (sic) in the greatest corruption play of them all—Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This one-person production of the Melancholy Dane is now at the Orpheum Theater after a hit run at the Greenwich House.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Corruption
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Though J.T. Rogers is an American playwright, his new work Corruption at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse Theater, has a distinct British feel to it. And it’s not just because of the subject matter—the phone-hacking scandal of 2010-11 that temporarily damaged Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and forced the closing of his sensation-seeking English tabloid, News of the World. Corruption examines a political issue and how it impacts society as a whole, not just in one country but the entire world.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Pericles
Classic Stage Company

Shakespeare’s Pericles is rarely performed, likely owing to its numerous unbelievable plot twists as it follows the titular troubled prince from shipwreck to captivity to final credulity-defying reunion with his loved ones. In its story-theater version at Classic Stage (CSC), Fiasco Theater pulls off a similar feat of rescuing a potentially soapy production from too many suds.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
White Chip, The
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab

A white chip is a fundamental remembrance to an AAA recovering alcoholic to stay on such a path. In a way, so is The White Chip. Its author Sean Daniels means to keep himself working on keeping sober. He is also taking part in a Recovery Project at Florida Studio tackling mental problems like addiction. His play thus fits into both FST’s edgy Stage III Series and Bowen Lab, with its brick-backed stage, minimal scenic elements, and often glaring light.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Dial M for Murder
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Jeffrey Hatcher has kept the 1950s time for Dial M for Murder but, somewhat daringly, since two main characters are revealed as lesbian, rather than traditional sexual lovers. Still,  the basic plot is the same: a husband hires a man to kill his wife (for her money and due to her affair) but she kills him in self-defense. Then she, instead, is convicted of killing him. She’s to suffer the death penalty, but will that happen? The suspense ends by answering that.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Cecile, or the School for Fathers
Plymouth Church

For the first time post-pandemic, Milwaukee’s Boulevard Theater returns to its former “home” on the Upper East Side to present a spring production of Cécile, or the School for Fathers . The relatively brief run of this charming show didn’t give the local theater community much time to turn out and support Boulevard Theater, which is entering its 38th season. And yet, audiences made the commitment to support this pillar of the theater community, which has been known for years as a place where theater pros and young actors mix their talents.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Sign of the Times, A
New World Stages

A Sign of the Times, at New World Stages, is the latest in a seemingly endless parade of shows made up of pop hits from either a particular time period, or from a particular artist. This time it’s not even entirely from one artist; most songs here were made famous by Petula Clark in the early 1960s. The rest are songs that were on the radio at around the same time Clark was topping the charts. The songs are catchy and nostalgia-inducing (“Downtown” is one of my favorites from childhood), but the paper-thin story surrounding them is predictable and shallow. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Dead Outlaw
Minetta Lane Theater`

In this crowded Broadway season of movie adaptations, revivals, and Off-Broadway transfers, the most original and captivating tuner so far in 2023-24 can be found far from Times Square at the intimate Minetta Lane Theater. Dead Outlaw is a dark, fiercely funny satire on America’s warped obsession with crime, fame and death. Based on a true story, the titular stiff is one Elmer McCurdy, a small-time, incompetent train robber whose mummified cadaver is discovered in an amusement park horror ride in 1976.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Illinoise
Park Avenue Armory

Illinoise is innovative and startlingly different from most theatrical fare. Derived from Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 concept album “Illinois,” this dance-theater piece, now at the Park Avenue Armory after runs at Bard Summerscape and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, takes a fairly cliched trope about romance and tells it with vigor and excitement featuring electric choreography by Justin Peck. The central love triangle is nothing new, but the brilliant staging and the sheer magnetism of the cast of dancer-actors and singer-musicians brings it to vital life. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Notebook, The
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

If sentimentality is your thing, The Notebook is definitely for you. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 best-selling novel, which became Nick Cassavetes’s 2004 cult-favorite film, this conventional and predictable musical mines every treacly plot point for maximum tearjerking effect. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Scarecrow
Next Act Theater

A skilled storyteller could read the phone book, it used to be said, and people would sit up and listen. Playwright and actor Heidi Armbruster has much more interesting tales to tell in her one-woman show, Scarecrow, which has its Wisconsin debut at Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater. And audiences are sitting in rapt attention for the play’s 100 minutes (no intermission).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Ruby
1012 North Orange Avenue

After gaining numerous sponsors and waiting four years to show off Ruby, its principal creator (with brother Michael) and director Nate  Jacobs still had to add a program explanation of Ruby McCollum’s trial, a show focus. At intermission, many from the audience also picked up a booklet on Ruby and significant historical background. In the actual show Zora Neal Hurston appears as a character narrating, as the famous black author actually did, the trial story surrounded by details.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Intimate Apparel
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Centered on Esther, age 35, black seamstress creating for both white, married woman and black prostitute the titled garments in Intimate Apparel, Lynn Nottage’s play at Asolo Rep comes in the shape of an acted-out narrative book. Its scenic titles have mostly cloth and garment names yet what goes on beneath them is both very emotional and lyrical. The setting is Lower Manhattan in 1905 but with glimpses of faraway Panama as its Canal was built.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Connector, The
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space

Theatrical productions are like collaborative jigsaw puzzles. When the pieces—script, acting, direction, design, etc.—fit perfectly together, you have a genuine, amazing experience. But sometimes you get some extremely well-done and satisfying pieces, but they don’t quite line up or they are matched with lesser elements and the whole is less than scintillating. You walk out with a sense that something vital is missing, and you can’t put your finger on what was lacking. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Seven Year Disappear, The
Pershing Square Signature Center - Alice Griffin Jewel Box

Theatrical productions are like collaborative jigsaw puzzles. When the pieces—script, acting, direction, design, etc.—fit perfectly together, you have a genuine, amazing experience. But sometimes you get some extremely well-done and satisfying pieces, but they don’t quite line up or they are matched with lesser elements and the whole is less than scintillating. You walk out with a sense that something vital is missing, and you can’t put your finger on what was lacking. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Night in November, A
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab

You don’t have to know a lot about “The Troubles” in the late 1900s in six Northern counties (formerly known as Ulster and now part of Great Britain as Northern Ireland) to realize how much they affected its citizens due due to their political and religious loyalties.  Everything’s clear in James Evans’  long monologue as he acts out how he as Kenneth McCallister came to attend a World Cup Tournament and its effects on him personally and regarding the political situation  in both parts of the island of Ireland.  It’s all interesting and may even be admirably right in the lar

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Clyde's
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

You won’t find a more detailed sandwich shop kitchen with refrigerator and food prep areas than at :”Clyde’s” presented by FSU/Asolo Conservatory at the very relevant-named Cook Theater for this play. The scene typifies work by award-winning Asolo Rep Scenic Studios under Vic Meyrich, perfect for Jeff Weber’s realistic, very detailed design.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Oh, Mary!
Lucille Lortel Theater

Mary Todd Lincoln is an odd choice as the main character of a raucous, drag-centered satire. Most campy stage spoofs written by and starring either Charles Busch or Charles Ludlum have usually focused on movie heroines played by the likes of Joan Crawford or Bette Davis in spectacularly soapy melodramas, or they are historical epics featuring over-the-top royalty in divinely diva-ish gowns. Mrs. Lincoln’s story is a truly tragic one and does not afford much opportunity for sartorial fabulousness.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Miss Julie
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

In theater history annals in the 19th century Western World, Swedish August Strindberg’s Miss Julie was considered an innovative naturalistic play, though structured as a realistic one for audiences to follow drama done in a room with no front wall. In FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s two-tier set that could be in Ireland, following Frank McGuinness’s script, it’s a graphic experience. Audiences get to see class and gender distinctions embodied and intertwined as well as an explicit sexual tryst.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Flip Side, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Promoted as a tribute to comedic musicians and songwriters, “The Flip Side” features selections of their creations but doesn’t say much, if anything, about either of them. Both the fine performers and what they perform come on basically the same way throughout—with  small dance moves, the same order of entrance, and maybe a distinguishing mark (usually moves or changed costume) throughout. The show’s best when these are funny.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Born with Teeth
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The major reason to see Alley Theater’s Born with Teeth is the dynamic acting of Matthew Amendt and Dylan Godwin. Director Rob Melrose has wisely kept them distinct both physically and attitudinally and, most praiseworthy, also vocally.  They speak prose and poetry differently despite a sameness in author Liz Duffy Adams’s script that makes the drama basically a series of arguments.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024

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