Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

Both script-wise and stage-wise, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Florida Studio Theater is deeply involving. It’s more of a dramatized novel than a typical mystery play.  Its hero, who either is autistic or suffers from Asperger’s, is portrayed by an autistic actor. It’s full of mathematical reasoning but also of contradictions to it. It reveals neighbor and family relationships along with cosmic ones, all of which become interdependent.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Inspector Calls, An
Wallis Annenberg Center - Bram Goldsmith Theater

The National Theatre of Great Britain’s successful 1993 production of An Inspector Calls is making a new swing through the USA in a production once again directed by Stephen Daldry. In its three-week stop at the Wallis, the play (by J.B. Priestley) dazzles with its technological wizardry: a toy-like, collapsing house on stilts, eerie war-torn landscape, gloomy storm clouds, nightmarish music and sound effects. If Hitchcock were a stage director, this is how he would have gone about mounting this play.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
American Son
Booth Theater

Some plays look at the world with a semi-engaged gaze, as if the playwright is already wondering what his characters’ troubles and longings will look like to critics watching a revival of the show twenty years hence. Other plays take the temperature of the times and, when things are burning, come away white hot and ready to shatter. American Son, by Christopher Demos Brown, falls into the second category.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Linda Vista
Mark Taper Forum

The remarkable Ian Barford commands the stage in his role as Wheeler, a burnt-out but likable grouch,  in Tracy Lett’s new comedy, Linda Vista, now in an L.A. premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, under the direction of Dexter Bullard. Letts, Barford, and Bullard are longtime members of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, where Linda Vista was first performed two years ago.  Five of the six other actors in the play were also in the original production, which accounts for the polished and skillful acting on display at the Taper.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Junk
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

The searing cauldron of greed, dominance, power and treachery on Wall Street, so brilliantly captured in the Michael Douglas film, “Wall Street,” gets another look in Junk, Ayad Akhtar’s drama of life in the 1980s. Although not as precisely tuned as Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Disgraced, Junk is a tautly conveyed, briskly paced drama that occasionally starts to believe the lies it spins.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
St. Nicholas
Goodman Theater

Before he emerged from his own alcoholic fog, Conor McPherson often wrote plays about drunks for drunks, their narratives winding back on one another in the manner characteristic of those whose universe spans the interior of their own cranial cavity, making his stories—while damn good stories—often hard to follow. What rescues this import from London's Donmar Warehouse from suffering a similar fate is its willingness to proceed at a leisurely pace allowing us to fully absorb every last savory detail of its progress.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Doll's House, A: Part 2
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

There’s so much comedy in A Doll’s House, Part 2 that its serious essence might easily be overlooked.  Yet Asolo Rep’s production always clings to the play’s serious core, substantiating its achievement.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Hand to God
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne Lab Theater

Despite being tagged as “profane but profound,” Hand to God is more of a puerile presentation of puppetry as a psychological retreat turned takeover. You won’t find God in the Texas small town Church basement setting except sometimes in side-of-stage projections simulating Christian images and a stained glass window bearing scriptural behavioral messages.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Matilda
Todd Wehr Theater

There’s a new kid in town and, from the looks of it, she’s going to smash some box office records while she is here. Milwaukee’s First Stage has taken a giant leap in producing a full-length musical, Matilda, the Musical, with the help of original Broadway creators Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly.

Previously, First Stage has limited its productions to about 70 minutes – a nod to children’s limited attention spans. That’s a tradition going back to 1987, the year First Stage was born.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Crucible, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The mise en scene of Asolo Rep’s The Crucible takes place in a closed-in, heavy wooden-walled room, that will become a metaphor for each scene to follow.  At first, the cast of 17th Century Massachusetts co-religionists, facing forward, file in to fill left and right aisles. Their minister leads his assembly in “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” until a crash and bolt of light scatters all into darkness.  Then the play begins in low light with the minister praying over an unresponsive girl in bed in her wooden-walled attic room.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Book of Mormon, The
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Not since The Book of Mormon’s national tour rolled into Milwaukee three years ago has the city seen such an irreverent, zany, sophomoric – and hilarious – brand of musical theater. Created by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone, The Book of Mormon is still going strong, almost eight years since it opened on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Misunderstanding, A
Ruby Theater @ The Complex Hollywood

Matt Chait is that rare theatrical animal, a playwright of ideas. The veteran actor/writer—and overseer of The Complex, a cluster of small theaters in Hollywood—takes on the controversy over the origins of life on earth in his new play, A Misunderstanding, now in a world premiere run at The Complex’s Ruby Theater. Darwinism and Intelligent Design duke it out in this drama, with both sides expressing themselves in lucid, impassioned fashion.

On one side is Prof.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Ghosts
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at its debut shocked all of Europe not only for its subject matter but for the new theatrical style of Realism. FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s different production is on a set full of abstracted elements and three huge colorful doors that seem at first to herald farce. Ghosts, of course, refer to legacies of immorality, hypocrisy, deadly secrets and disease.

An assured Carla Corvo manages to maintain Mrs. Alving’s control of her 19th century estate in Norway.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
King Kong
Broadway Theater

Obviously, Broadway was calling and here comes King Kong to the Broadway Theater, in all his gargantuan splendor. The gorilla superhero was one of the most famous movie monsters, premiering in a 1933 film, a remake in 1975 and again in 2005. On the theater stage, while the gorilla himself is fantastic, the musical is hardly razzle-dazzle.

A giant of stagecraft and puppetry, King Kong is the star in this spectacle, a chest-beating, teeth-baring colossal creature, with an earsplitting roar as he crashes through jungles of Skull Island in the Indian Sea.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Barney the Elf
Pride Arts Broadway

Marley isn't the sole casualty this yuletide.

Bryan Renaud and Emily Schmidt begin their story of Barney the Elf with the violent death of the North Pole's patriarch—Santa Claus, to us—in an industrial accident. Leadership of his toymaking empire reverts, not to his widow, but to their son, who promptly inaugurates policies designed to increase the productivity of his elvish staff to the detriment of its morale.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Clueless
Signature Center - Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater

For those who loved Clueless, the 1995 cult movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, watched the TV series (1996-99) based on the film, and perhaps read all twenty-one of the Cher young adult books, well, Clueless is back, this time as a two and a half hour, acrobatically dance-heavy, in-your-face, over the top, teenage hormonal-exploding, fun-filled, six-piece band-backed musical. And that’s saying a mouthful!

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Hellcab
Raven Theater

The Famous Door Theater's Hellcab that opened in 1992 and didn't close until nearly ten years later was big, loud, and rude—hey, that was "Chicago-style" acting in those days, and the twenty-three passengers making the hapless hackie's Christmas eve anything but merry and bright were played by nine actors, switching off personae at adrenaline-pumping velocity. The 2010-2016 Profiles Theater revival, on the other hand, opted to cast each role with a different actor, who would then have to make the most of their few seconds onstage.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Doll's House, A: Part 2
George Street Playhouse

Nora slamming the door at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House has to be one of the most famous exits in all dramatic literature. It stunned and excited audiences in 1879 enough to insure the popularity of this decidedly verbose play over the years. It continues to be a challenge for the actor playing Nora.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Holiday Inn
Paper Mill Playhouse

Forgive me if I am not playing fair when I say that this absolutely delightful production of Holiday Inn has the sparkles even if it is not generating quite the same sparks that made it the best Broadway musical of 2016.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Winter's Tale, The
Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey

You can really feel the chill of winter in the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's production of Shakespeare partly morose, partly magical A Winter’s Tale. The affection and attention given to the Bard’s late-in-life play is obvious in the direction of Bonnie J. Monte. It may be considered a lesser work, but it has remained an audience favorite. Whether or not it is the best choice for a holiday entertainment is a matter of taste.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Old Woman Broods, The
Trap Door Theater

Early in The Old Woman Broods, the Old Woman referenced in the title complains about the "dregs" muddying the bottom of her teacup. On the page, Polish playwright Tadeusz Rozewicz’s splenetic 1969 diatribe—translated in 2004 by Chris Rzonca and Krystyna Illakowicz—comes off as the dregs of Absurdist Theater, the post-World War II literary movement once much-imitated, but nowadays a quaint relic of midcentury irreverence.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Winter Wolf, The
Otherworld Theater

Introducing children to the concept of death is a slippery proposition: Consider the shock of discovering that the security engendered by long games of peek-a-boo promising infants that losing sight of a parent's face is only a temporary condition was a falsehood from the beginning.

The science fiction/fantasy literary genre offers a modicum of respite from the immediacy of our emotional response to descriptions of irrevocable loss, but the necessary analogies of its universe to our own can unleash crippling real-life dread, all the same.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
To Kill a Mockingbird
Shubert Theater

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird was a national favorite book and film, widely read and watched. When it was first scheduled for production on Broadway I wondered, a bit skeptically, if it would stand the test of Broadway. Would the story of racial prejudice during the Great Depression come across as a sepia-colored memory piece out of touch in this tech-heavy millennium?

And those precocious children being played by adults, how is that going to come off?

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The
Classic Stage Company

“Every day I read the play. I think I hear the words these words on CNN as I read them on the page… It is fitting that it reminds us of the choices that are available to us in relation to the way the world can go… Classic plays have politics at their heart—you take a play like Richard III or the Scottish Play—they’re warnings. And there’s a warning in Arturo Ui. This is a time for theater to say something; if we’re not screaming and shouting now, when are we ever going to do it?” —John Doyle, Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Love Actually Live
Bram Goldsmith Theater

It’s a mish-mosh, but a delicious one.

Anderson Davis and his For the Record Company have made a specialty of turning well-known movies into stage musicals. After working out of a small theatre in Los Feliz, where they adapted things like “Boogie Nights,” Davis and FTR have now teamed up with The Wallis in tackling Richard Curtis’s immensely popular 2003 rom-com, “Love Actually.” A new theatre hybrid is the result. Love Actually Live is part film show, part jukebox musical.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Network
Belasco Theater

A significant satire, an imaginative director and a powerhouse star, odds are good that you're in for a compelling show. With Network, you will not be disappointed.

Originally written by Paddy Chayefsky, Network was an acclaimed 1976 film with memorable actor, Peter Finch, playing the doomed TV commentator, Howard Beale.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Straight White Men
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Stage

Its title has lately brought the curious to the play Straight White Men as if it’s something new and daring. It’s mainly, though, a pretentiously melded lot of old stuff. At a Christmastime family reunion, a widowed traditional father hosts three sons. Each is in some way dysfunctional. That they are straight and white is not of basic import to their dramatic interaction. Not even to the world outside their father’s house.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberly
American Stage

In two American playwrights’ sequel to the novel “Pride and Prejudice,” American Stage has a Christmas comedy aimed to please readers of the book, fans of two movies, or the more recent extended TV episodes made from it, or all of these. But those who know nothing of Jane Austen’s iconic work can enjoy an introduction to her characters in situations two years after the novel’s end. However, the enjoyments may be different.

Unlike the novel, the play does not revolve around Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet, now mistress of her husband Darcy’s inherited great estate of Pemberley.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Familiar
Steppenwolf Theater

In theatrical combat, a scene of comic violence occurring in a dramatic context is called a "Moliere-and-Curly" fight. By that definition, Danai Gurira has written a Moliere-and-Curly play, its family squabbles transpiring within a Minnesota community on the eve of their daughter's wedding to a WASP missionary. Ah, but this time, the bride's relations are African immigrants, from Zimbabwe, and when was the last time you saw the words "African" and "comedy" in the same sentence?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
American Son
Booth Theater

Christopher Demos-Brown's drama, American Son, unfolds in agonizing real time, drawing together four characters in a South Florida police station waiting room. It is 4 A.M. sometime "this coming June," which is the playwright's way of warning that the American Dream was, and still is in a racial war and we can expect continued bitterness between young African-American males and law enforcement.

The night is stormy and tension is palpable in the large waiting room throughout the play.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Bus Stop
Reuben Cordova Theater

The search for love lies at the heart of Bus Stop, William Inge’s 1955 play which has been revived at Theatre 40 with Nico Boles and Kaitlin Huwe taking on the lead roles first performed by Albert Salmi and Kim Stanley. (Don Murray and Marilyn Monroe starred in the 1956 movie).

The play may be 63 years old and a bit creaky around the edges, but it still came to vibrant life at Theater 40 thanks to the splendid acting of the 8-person cast and to Ann Hearn Tobolowsky’s able direction. Theater 40 also did not stint on production values, beginning with Jeff G.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Network
Belasco Theater

Very few actors can bring to the stage what Bryan Cranston contributes to this production of Network; the combination of brilliant talent, total commitment, and pure magnetism make this a performance that shouldn’t be missed by anyone who loves the theater. Add to this his sheer, unadulterated joy in performing, and the atmosphere becomes even more rarified; Frank Langella and Hugh Jackman come to mind.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some)
free/Fall

What does a regional theater do to avoid offering again A Christmas Carol as its classic theater piece during end-of-year holidays? Probably it will offer some alternative based on a contemporary popular story, modern seasonal classic, well-known holiday song or movie, or even some dredged-up foreign Yuletide celebration. At freeFall Theatre, all of these prove useful.

Since the show begins on a set for A Christmas Carol, and someone playing someone like Charles Dickens starts narrating, there’s suspense over will it continue and, if so, how and when?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Very Judy Christmas, A
Kalita Humphreys Theater

A star was born on the stage of the Kalita Humphreys Theater as Janelle Lutz commanded the stage for the entire production of A Very Judy Christmas. This original work by B.J. Cleveland pays homage to the 1960s TV holiday specials and is chockful of 22 feel-good Christmas and Broadway songs leading off with Judy's signature, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” followed by “Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend.” You can close your eyes for this one and imagine Carol Channing.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Merry Chris-Mess
Tenth Street Theater

There’s an old saying about laughter being the best medicine. Well, laughter can make a pretty good holiday gift, too. That point is made loud and clear by In Tandem Theatre, which has audiences practically rolling in the aisles with its “alternative” Christmas show, Merry Chris-Mess.

This year, In Tandem is putting aside some of its popular holiday specials from past years in order to offer a blend of old skits, silly songs, and some new material. It’s not exactly a “mess,” as advertised by the title, but audiences need to be prepared for almost anything.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul
West Coast Black Theater Troup

A reworking of one of Westcoast Black Theater Troupe’s most popular shows, this new Marvin Gaye biographical musical is stronger on details of his life and career. As almost a revue, Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul won permission from the subject’s estate to use all his hit songs, and WBTT’s Nate Jacobs now employs them as well as enhanced dancing to delight Gaye’s many fans.

Details of accomplished Sheldon Rhodes’ Marvin Gaye’s early years at home foreshadow his ultimate deadly treatment by his father (Leon Pitts II, sanctimoniously strict).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Revolutionists, The
Strawdog Theater

You probably haven't thought about revolution—not the kind extolled by advertisers, but the capital "R" off-with-their-heads variety—since history class, but try now to recall what you were told about the toppling of monarchies that didn't focus exclusively on males butting heads and making speeches. The documented contribution of women to the quest for independent rule, however, has always been largely restricted to wives, mothers, daughters and sweethearts serving as figureheads or martyrs in support of their sires.

Lauren M. Gunderson disapproves this injustice.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Buttcracker, The: A Nutcracker Burlesque
Reggie's Music Joint

When the Uptown Underground abruptly ceased operations earlier this year, Jaq Seifert's annual Yuletide revue, The Buttcracker, found itself searching for a place to pitch its tent—not just any church basement or banquet hall, either, but a campground capable of hosting pyrotechnics, floor acrobatics and exotic acts of nebulous infrastructure. Furthermore, the location of this vaudeville also needed to promise a comfortable environment for audiences entering into the spirit of its gender-fluid body-positive manifesto.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Meantime at HoJo's
Complex Theater

For the past sixteen years, Christian Levatino has been running the Gangbusters Theater Company which, as its moniker suggests, specializes in plays done in comic-book fashion. Levatino, who writes and directs the plays, has built a fairly sizable cult following. Although I don’t normally like comic-book plays (or movies), I did decide to go see two of the three plays culled from his “Black Bag Pentalogy,” King Dick and …Meantime at Hojo’s. They’ve been running, with a break, since October, in rep with Sunny Afternoon (which I was not able to cover).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
King Dick
Complex Theater

For the past sixteen years, Christian Levatino has been running the Gangbusters Theater Company which, as its moniker suggests, specializes in plays done in comic-book fashion. Levatino, who writes and directs the plays, has built a fairly sizable cult following. Although I don’t normally like comic-book plays (or movies), I did decide to go see two of the three plays culled from his “Black Bag Pentalogy,” King Dick and …Meantime at Hojo’s. They’ve been running, with a break, since October, in rep with Sunny Afternoon (which I was not able to cover).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 2018

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