Safe House, The
Edgewater Presbyterian Church

There's this house, you see—a modest mid-20th-century family-sized dwelling in Lansing, Michigan. The ambience is a study in Norman Rockwell warmth and tranquility, with a laundry room in the basement, a garden by the kitchen door and a grandmother who grows vegetables that she cooks into hearty stews (recipe in the playbill).

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Ghosts
Redtwist Theater

Over a century ago, Henrik Ibsen declared Victorian morality—to women, especially. Ever since, allegedly enlightened societies have continued to hide behind equivocation, speculation, and flat-out denial in their attempts to rein in the vehemence of his diatribe on the folly of blind obedience to rigidly inhumane convention.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Mother of the Maid
Public Theater

People on trial, especially women that end up being executed, make good theater and film, as well as subjects of art. The two reigning queens whose lives still continue to resonate long after their deaths are Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the last Queen of France, who literally lost her head, and Jeanne d’Arc (1412-1431) who went up in flames nearly seven centuries ago. Done in by politics, both were captured, jailed, put on trial, dragged through the streets, and summarily executed, as a kind of entertainment before a boisterous crowd of unruly citizens.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Lifespan of a Fact, The
Studio 54

Does anyone care about getting the facts right anymore? After all, in an age when anyone who disagrees with you is declared to be spreading “fake news,” isn’t it easier to just shrug and say “Who know?”

But it does matter, to the point of near mania, to Jim Fingal (Daniel Radcliffe), an intern assigned to fact check an essay by writer John D’Agata (Bobby Cannavale) by his high-powered editor Emily Penrose (Cherry Jones). He not only has to be accurate, he also has to be fast. Jim assures Emily that it’s in the bag.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
American Son
Booth Theater

I am pleased that American Son has found its way to the Booth Theater on Broadway following its premieres at the Barrington Stage and then last season at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J. Sad and disturbing but also compelling, it remains on second viewing one of the more unnerving plays I’ve had to wrap my head around.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberly
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

Love is in the air for Miss Mary Bennet this Christmas, in a holiday-themed sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Austen neglected to give much attention to Mary, a middle sister in the Bennet family, as she wrote her masterpiece early in the 19th century. So this has made her character irresistible to modern playwright Lauren Gunderson, working in conjunction with Margot Melcon. They have created the delightful Miss Bennet , a show for the whole family to enjoy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Music Man, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Classically, con man Harold Hill talks his swindling ways into tough-to-outsiders River City, Iowa folks. Asolo Rep now has him tenderizing the population by tap dancing in and getting everyone to thus move musically as he moves in on his goal: cashing in on their costs for a boys’ band. Hill still gets stopped in his tracks—out of town—by falling in love with librarian Marion. But who wouldn’t with Britney Coleman, of gorgeous soprano voice, finally acting out what she’s only read about?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Finks
Electric Lodge

“We’re caught up in a whirl-wind,” says one of the left-wing artists who has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 about possible “subversive” activities in radio, TV, and theater. Finks, a drama by Joe Gilford now in a West Coast premiere at Rogue Machine, takes the audience right into the eye of the whirlwind which devastated so much of this country’s cultural landscape in the fifties.

The HUAC, led by the Hon.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Normal Heart, The
Lone Star College - Mainstage

For weeks Americans across this land have been virtually paralyzed with a sense of hopeless despair as they watch reports of the unprecedented California forest fires destroying entire towns while leaving thousands of our fellow citizens displaced and homeless with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The heart-wrenching scenes seem apocalyptic in scope.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Bitter Game, The
Wallis Center

It began with fun ‘n games and ended in blood and murder. That is the essence of The Bitter Game, Keith A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Hughie & Krapp's Last Tape
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

These two short plays, Hughie and Krapp’s Last Tape, are studies in human isolation and desperation, which is undoubtedly why The Geffen has linked them in a home-grown production directed by the gifted Steven Robman.  Starring in both of these one-acters is Brian Dennehy, an actor who has appeared in numerous plays by the respective playwrights, Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett

In Hughie, Dennehy takes on the role of Erie Smith, a small-time gambler and hustler living in a seedy Manhattan hotel circa 1928.  Smith has just come off a four-day bender but he’

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Swansong
Studio Theater

Swansong is an 80-minute monologue by Conor McDermottroe presented by L. Wolf Productions as part of the United Solo Theater Festival. It’s a study of a criminal—a punk from the word gopresented with such insight that we leave the theater simultaneously appalled by the character and sympathetic to him. This is what it means to hold the mirror up to nature, non-judgmental and charitable.

Occi, as he is called, tells us about his life, starting with his habit of robbing the rich boys as a young hooligan.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Waiting for Godot
Gerald W. Lynch Theater

Waiting for Godot is flatly the most important play of the 20th century (the reader will remember that the comparable monuments of modern drama were written at the end of the 19th century). Samuel Beckett’s extended metaphor, often thought abstruse, has been more victimized by wayward criticism than any other modern drama. However, Edward Albee said to me when we discussed it: “If Waiting for Godot had been set in a living room, nobody would have had any trouble with it. It's this fucking blasted heath that got in everybody's way.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Cost of Living
Fountain Theater

Two of the play’s four actors are people with disabilities; the other two are their caretakers. But Cost of Living by Martyna Majok—whose gritty working-class play “Ironbound” was seen at the Geffen last year—is much more than just another disease-of-the-week tale of woe.  Its deeper concerns, the struggle to overcome loneliness, the need to connect to another human being, provide the real drama of this young playwright’s latest work.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Christmas Carol, A
Geffen Playhouse - Gil Cates Theater

Jefferson Mays has given Los Angeles an ideal Christmas gift: a one-man, thrilling performance of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which he adapted along with Susan Lyons and director Michael Arden.>I Am My Own Wife” and “Yes, Prime Minister,” returns with a much-abridged but moving version of the Dickens classic tale.  In it he impersonates some fifty characters, giving each of them a distinctive voice and manner.  Mostly, though, he addresses the audience in the voice of Ebenezer Scrooge, the old ski

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Valley of the Heart
Mark Taper Forum

The intertwined history of two minority groups in California, Latino and Japanese, is the basis for Valley of the Heart, the latest work by Luis Valdez, founder of El Teatro Campesino and author of Broadway’s first Chicano play, Zoot Suit. Valdez, the child of Mexican migrant workers, grew up in the Central Valley, where his father toiled for a Japanese-American family until the attack on Pearl Harbor. After FDR signed the shameful Executive Order 9066, the Japanese-American family was forcibly relocated to an internment camp.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Lady in Denmark
Goodman Theater

Historical fiction typically recounts its chronicles from the vantage of a humble witness whose proximity coincidentally enables them to observe—perhaps even participate in—the significant events under scrutiny.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, A
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

When your mother’s died leaving poor you surprised that you’re ninth in line to become rich, what do you do? What Monty Navarro does is set out to get rid of all other heirs from the family who snubbed his mom for marrying beneath them. He concocts A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, enhanced by music, while also romancing a mistress and a future wife. With immoral delights, he invites you to enjoy his quest and its ends.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Sight Unseen
The Players' Backstage

Sight Unseen proves to be about the importance of past to the present with changes brought about by family influences and time on personal relationships, art, historical viewpoints, jealousy, commercialism. The play time-travels among rural England and a London gallery in 1992 and about 17 and 15 years earlier in an art school studio and digs in New York City.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Steambath
Odyssey Theater

Watching the Odyssey’s revival of Bruce Jay Friedman’s 1970s Steambath was a painful experience, largely because the play seemed dated and unfunny. Then I realized that maybe the play would have worked better had there been a larger audience. But it was a Thursday night, and the handful of people in attendance never once laughed out loud. With no giveback from the audience, the actors were left to work in a vacuum, fighting desperately to pump life into the text.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
King Kong
Broadway Theater

It has been nearly a century since a 1933 film made “King Kong” one of the greatest monster movies of all time. Sadly, the King Kong which opened recently at Broadway’s Broadway Theater was not, to borrow from another critic’s comments, “as fun as a barrel of monkeys.” Although the giant, animatronic beast was by far the best element of this $35 million musical, the rest of the cast come off like chumps (or chimps, as the case may be).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Scientific Method
Rivendell Theater

Sexism, Racism, cronyism, backbiting, misappropriation of funds, intellectual property theft and general ass-covering in the academic world is no news these days, but when the arena is a research lab and the hostage is a cure for cancer, the stakes are considerably higher.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Back to the 80's
Music Box Theater

Regular customers of The Music Box Theater (and there are plenty of them filling the house at each performance), are very familiar with the way each month-long production has a creative new theme. The current offering, Back to the 80s, may sound familiar to those who attended their similar production titled, “The 80's Mix Tape Diaries” just two years ago. At that time, the plot thread was built around a fictional tale of characters involved in the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Waverly Gallery, The
Golden Theater

It is a heartbreaking study in human decline, watching the indomitable Elaine May play 86-year-old, hard-of-hearing Gladys Green, fiercely grappling with dementia as she clutches her dignity, fights for lost words and finally cannot even recognize those closest to her. Written by Kenneth Lonergan (Lobby Hero), The Waverly Gallery is a touching memory play based on his grandmother. It offers no happy ending, a trail of losses, anger, frustration, a picture of decline and dependency, eloquently honest and crushingly sad.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Marriage Zone, The
Santa Monica Playhouse

In the words of the legendary S.J. Perelman, comedy is a tough dollar. Perelman’s remark came to mind while I was watching The Marriage Zone, Jeff Gould’s comedy which has been revived at the Santa Monica Playhouse after a successful run at Secret Rose Theater in 2017, where it won a Valley Theatre Award. Although I went to the play hoping for some badly needed laughs, I was sadly disappointed. Very little that happened on stage tickled my funny bone.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Silence! The Musical
Venice Theater- Pinkerton

It’s not necessary but it is helpful to have seen the movie Silence of the Lambs, which the musical Silence! parodies. Its heroine Clarice hopes to become a full fledged FBI investigator by finding killer Buffalo Bill. She has to seek help from Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a cannibalistic killer in prison. A group of lambs helps narrate her quest.

Unlike the movie, the stage musical is almost incredibly vulgar, especially being shown in a staid place like Venice, Florida.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Frankenstein
Theater Wit

Imagine a newborn baby—not a round, cuddly, greeting-card cherub, but a thin, pale, hairless anthropoid with the complexion of a peeled twig and a skull like a cracked eggshell. Now imagine this helpless infant's first experiences being rejection, privation, brutality and betrayal by those whose kindness cannot protect him.

Does it come as any surprise when this "monster" strikes out in mimicry of the cruelty shown him by his mentors?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Arcadia
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Defying classification, Arcadia is a satire on “English country house plays” and excesses of academic and literary theories and research, a comedy because often funny and it ends mainly happily and with a dance, a drama because of conflicts between order and chaos as well as people and their times and indeed one that deals with the problem of time itself. Some will note there’s tragedy in what befalls a heroine and reputation for her scientific-mathematical findings.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Quack
Kirk Douglas Theater

The wellness industry takes a drubbing in Quack,  Eliza Clark’s acerbic comedy now in a world premiere at the Kirk Douglas. The quack in question is Dr Irving Bauer (Dan Bucatinsky), a vain, narcissistic, excitable dispenser of medical advice on national TV. His afternoon show (think Dr.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Popcorn Falls
Davenport Theater

Call it “lesser tuna” with a greater heart. Much like the still-remembered comedy, Greater Tuna, James Hindman’s Popcorn Falls is a two-hander where both hands play myriad roles to tell the story of a small community and its eccentrics. Here, the crisis is that the titular town has gone bankrupt and is about to be taken over by an evil mogul who has cut off their water rights. He demands payment and fully anticipates their default. One obstacle to his victory: a big check arrives, earmarked for the town’s theater.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Broadway Lights
Match Theater Complex

The wonderful Broadway Lights production Kelli Estes’s Lone Star Lyric troupe just provided Houstonians was performed at the local MATCH Theater Complex, located at 3400 Main Street in Houston. The event was a follow-up to the recent roadshow performances that took place during the group’s cabaret tour across North and West Texas under the auspices of both the Texas Hill Country Opera & Arts,and the Sweetwater Municipal Auditorium Applause Series.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ferryman, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

The Ferryman is Jez Butterworth's exemplary peek into the makeup of a rural Northern Irish family during the long-running political "troubles." On the stage of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, a suspicious meeting in a dark Derry alley evolves into a personal generational play, lavish with emotion, laughs, tears, and especially secrets. The secret in the alley weaves as an undercurrent through the extended family further north.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wiz, The
Hobby Center

It was just before curtain time when Dan Knechtges, the very enthusiastic artistic director of Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars, stepped on stage to welcome the audience of the current run of the new TUTS production of the Charlie Smalls musical, The Wiz. Mr. Knechtges promised the audience it was “in for a treat,” and I am sure many agreed when the final curtain came down. With its creative book by William F. Brown, this 1975 Broadway success was a pioneer in the use of an all-black cast.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Midnight at the Never Get
York Theater at St. Peter's Church

If you want a bit of theatrical heaven, along with a smidgen of hell, a mini primer of late 60s gay history—with the obligatory nod to Stonewall included—and a lot of love, all both literally and figuratively, get thee to Midnight at the Never Get, the York Theater’s latest musical production, before it closes on Sunday, November 4th. With a 5-piece backup band, two talented leads, and a roster of original songs about life and love, both found, lost, and found again, the 90-minute musical is part theater and all cabaret, and the place to be.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Apologia
Laura Pels Theater in the Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center

Alexi Kaye Campbell's play, Apologia, presents a birthday celebration with little party spirit. In 2009, Kristen Miller (Stockard Channing), a bitter activist/art historian, born American is now living in an English countryside cottage, where she waits for her party guests. Expected are her grown sons, Peter and Simon (both played by Hugh Dancy) and their girlfriends and also her long-time best friend, Hugh (John Tillinger).

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Girl from the North Country
Public Theater

What do you get when you cross The Iceman Cometh and Pump Boys and Dinettes? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it would resemble Girl from the North Country, a downbeat jukebox musical set in a Depression-era boarding house full of lost souls who interrupt their unhappiness long enough to sing snatches of roughly two dozen Bob Dylan songs.

For about an hour, this conceit works amazingly well.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Desperate Measures
New World Stages

If musical geniuses can update Romeo and Juliet to follow warring gangs the west side of New York or The Taming of the Shrew to poke fun at feuding actors who open in Venice, no one’s stopping those with lesser (but still notable) gifts from doing their own bard raiding. Good thing, too, or else we wouldn’t have the always entertaining, occasionally inspired, new musical comedy Desperate Measures by composer David Friedman and librettist/lyricist Peter Kellogg.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Winter Solstice
City Garage

’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house….some very nasty things were taking place.

German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig doesn’t offer much Yuletide cheer in Winter Solstice, now in an American premiere at City Garage.  The play, a subtle political allegory, is set in Germany and centers on Albert (Taylor Lee Marr) and his wife Bettina (Natasha St.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Waverly Gallery, The
Golden Theater

It’s interesting to note that The Waverly Gallery begins with a solid brick wall, as does The Ferryman. It could also be said that while both plays inject humor into a difficult situation, the audience feels mounting trepidation. In this case, it’s 1989 in New York City; the action moves from Greenwich Village to the Upper West Side. The tiny underwhelming gallery of the title is run by an elderly, scrappy aging hippie named Gladys Green.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Pillowman, The
Underground Collective

When one of Milwaukee’s newest theater companies decided to mount a production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, they got permission from McDonagh himself to cast the main character, a dark fantasy writer named Katurian, as a woman. The result is both powerful and mesmerizing.

The Pillowman, one of McDonagh’s earlier works along with The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara , opened on Broadway in 2005 at the Booth Theater. It starred Billy Crudup (from the film, “Almost Famous,”) and Jeff Goldblum (“Jurassic Park”).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2018

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