Women of Soul
Black Ensemble Theater

Federico Garcia-Lorca once defined duende as "a mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain." The same enigma may be applied to the concept of "Soul Music"—a predominantly (though not exclusively) African-American artistic genre associated with individual expression of intense emotion arising from personal or tribal experience, typically manifested in embellishments such as key changes, cadenzas and spoken-word asides. What distinguishes the female voice of Soul, however, is the subtext of defiance injected into even the most docile of lyrics.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ruffles, or a Progression of Rakes
The Tank

The theater of the absurd is alive and well, thank you. I don’t use the term in the loose sense, as applied randomly to nearly everything written after World War II that’s not realism. I use it in the strict sense,le théâtre de dérision, in which nonsense is baked into the form of the play as a philosophy.

I’m speaking of Normandy Sherwood’s play Ruffles, or a Progression of Rakes, recently produced by and at The Tank.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Resistible Rise of JR Brinkley, The
FringeHUB

JR Brinkley was a Kansas doctor—faux doctor, actually—in the 1920’s who gained fame with a cure for erectile dysfunction: implanting goat testicles in his patients. He was so celebrated that he ran for governor and won the popular vote, but his opponent won the election on a technicality, praise God (votes misspelling his name were discarded). He was ultimately exposed, discredited, and convicted of the obvious crimes. An American success story indeed.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Into the Woods
Crighton Theater

The music of Broadway composer, Stephen Sondheim, is unusually complex and sophisticated, but sometimes considerably dark as well. It would never be confused with the cheerful Rodgers & Hammerstein tunes that you might hum on the way home from a theater. So it is, that I tend to approach Sondheim with a bit of caution.

Such was the case when I attended last week’s opening weekend of Stage Right’s very wonderful production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, with its unique musical peek into the world of childhood fairy tales.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Vietgone
David Henry Hwang Theater

Here’s a blast of rude, irreverent humor mixed with heartfelt drama and spiced with hip-hop. I’m talking about Vietgone, the play by Qui Nguyen which has just kicked off East West Players’s 53rd season (EWP is the nation’s longest-running Asian-American theatre, by the way). Nguyen has been produced by EWP before; he wrote the book for the company’s 2011 production of “Krunk Fu Battle Battle.” The playwright also appeared on stage to introduce Vietgone in hilarious and rambunctious fashion. He should do a solo show one day.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ferryman, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

“To be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart.” This quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan readily applies to the dazzling production of The Ferryman. For all the dancing, singing, and telling jokes, at the heart is a terrible tragedy which we immediately sense will bear dire consequences. Quinn Carney (Paddy Considine), strong, affable, hard-working, lost his brother Seamus ten years ago.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Thurgood
Geva Theater - Mainstage

Despite already having knocked people out in splendidly acted versions, this important and enormously appealing play seems to be moving to “National Treasure” status in ever-more-polished versions. Geva’s has nowhere to go after its just-opened, new production, which closes November 16 and will probably sell out. But this one-actor account of the extraordinary life of our first African-American Supreme Court justice is so rewarding, inspiring, and just plain fun that succeeding versions are probably already in the works.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Gloria
Daryl Roth Theater

Christine Lahti isn’t doing an impression of Gloria Steinem. For example, she doesn’t attempt Steinem’s flat Midwestern regionalism, a product of growing up in Toledo, Ohio. But with the aviator glasses, the big streaked wig, and an outfit that could have come out of Gloria’s closet, she completely captures the look of this feminist icon, even down to the graceful hand movements.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Radiant Vermin
Odyssey Theater

L.A.’s newest theatre company, Door Number 3, hits a home run on its first at-bat with its production of Radiant Vermin, now running at the Odyssey Theater. Written by British playwright Philip Ridley, the play is about as savage an attack on petty bourgeois values as you’ll ever encounter.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Oxy, Ohio
McKaw Theater

More than a half-century ago—1956, to be exact—Michael V. Gazzo called our attention to the dangers of pharmaceutical drug addiction in a play premised on a returning war hero's craving for the morphine administered by medics during his recovery from wounds received in action. His entire family's happiness is soon threatened by affliction arising from his desperate search for the now-illicit curatives.

Nowadays we know better than to allow such suffering, right? Not according to S.J.

Mary Shen Barnige
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Something Rotten!
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

For once, Broadway musical fans are treated to an original show that doesn’t derive from a cartoon (Spongebob Squarepants, Annie), an ancient novel (Les Miserables), or an old film (King Kong). Instead, audiences are treated to something that, while not completely fabulous, at least it isn’t something that’s pulled off a shelf. It’s something completely new, and refreshingly so.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Winning Side, The
Acorn Theater

Hearing Tom Lehrer's song about Wernher Von Braun, a world-famous scientist, some may remember the lines, "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department!" Yet, the song continues, "Some have harsh words for this man of renown/But some think our attitude/Should be one of gratitude." This satirical song about is sung at the opening of the second act of The Winning Side, a stamp on this challenging play exploring questions about one man's politics, science, and ethics.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wild Abandon
Irish Repertory Theater

The Irish Repertory Theater’s production of Wild Abandon, Leenya Rideout’s intimate one-woman autobiographical extravaganza—housed in the Rep’s second venue, an intimate 50-seater—is one of a handful of Off Broadway plays that everybody is talking about. Critics are raving, and audiences are returning again and again with friends in tow, as they simply cannot believe that any one person can be that talented and not already household name.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Hysteria of Dr. Faustus, The
Paradise Factory

The Hysteria of Dr. Faustus, produced by The Seeing Place Theater at The Paradise Factory, is yet another turn on the Faustus myth. It’s written by Brandon Walker, who also plays the title role, and it’s directed by Erin Cronican, who also plays Wagner and Mephistopheles.

The play opens with the 80-year-old Heinrich Faustus addressing his Wittenberg class (us). He storms off after some inexplicable student heckling. When he’s at his home desk we meet his assistant, Wagner.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Salome
Irondale Center

What a wonder Salome is! Oscar Wilde wrote it in French in 1891. His infamous crush, Lord Alfred Douglas, translated it into English, but Wilde was so dissatisfied with his work that, some critics tell us, he essentially translated it again. At any rate, the Lord Chamberlin suppressed the London production (which would have starred Sarah Bernhardt) and the play premiered in France.

It’s unabashedly hyperbolic, deliberately overwritten, as extravagant and overblown as dramatic prose can be. Wilde tells us everything six times. What style is this?

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Johnny Got his Gun
Ivy Substation

Like Joe Bonham, Johnny Got his Gun refuses to die. First a 1938 novel by Dalton Trumbo (later one of the Hollywood Ten), then a movie and now a play, Johnny Got his Gun has a life that will not quit. Good thing too, because its anti-war message remains relevant and important.

The latest version is an adaptation by British playwright Bradley Rand Smith which was first done in England a few years ago as a one-man play. Now Tim Robbins, artistic director of Actors’ Gang, has added an eight-person chorus to enhance and expand Smith’s text.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
On Beckett
Irish Repertory Theater - Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage

There are some performers who can do no wrong. Case in point: Bill Irwin. Who else could keep an audience richly entertained for an hour and a half with a subject as difficult and often unfathomable as the writings of Samuel Beckett? But Irwin loads the deck. Far from delivering a stuffy lecture, he allows us into the world where he and the Irish author meet through dialogue and stage directions.

Irwin offers us different interpretations of several Beckett passages, and to see the machinations worked out is as intriguing as anything now on stage.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wild Abandon
Irish Rep - W. Scott McLucas Studio Stage

God bless the Irish Repertory Theater for providing such an inviting venue for performers like Leenya Rideout. Yes, she should be starring in a musical on Broadway, but here, we get the benefit of hearing her speak her own words, and sing her own songs. She is a dazzling talent; I lost track of how many instruments she plays, chief among them the violin. Her singing voice is delightful in several genres, equally comfortable in folk, rock and classic Italian. She’s lovely to look at, with undisputable acting chops.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Six Degrees of Separation
Redtwist Theter

You may think you know this play. Since its premiere in 1990, John Guare's observations on fashionable Manhattanites jolted out of their comfort zone by a hustler in search of glamour have been a popular fixture in the repertoires of commercial companies and after-school drama clubs alike.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Mother Night
59E59 Theaters

It would be so great if Mother Night were less topical. If we could listen to the hate filled propaganda which is being spewed out without having to ponder our current social and political situation. But no thinking person can fail to note the uncomfortable truth that so much of what we’re seeing onstage relates to what we hear on the news and read about in “the failing New York Times.”

Most of the production belongs to the talented Gabriel Grilli as Howard W. Campbell, Jr. He’s an ordinary guy with an ordinary name.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Arendt-Heidegger: A Love Story
Theater for the New City

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between the true and the false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist.” – Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Thinking is not merely l’engagement dans l’action [engagement in the action] for and by beings, in the sense of the actuality of the present situation. Thinking is l’engagement by and for the truth of Being.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Nap, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

If you are up for the "fast-paced, comedy-thriller," promised by this production, you may find yourself snookered by Richard Bean's latest play, The Nap. Previously, Bean succeeded in solidly potting the cue balls (so to speak) in One Man, Two Guvnors, his British farce that had nothing to do with snooker and earned a 2012 Tony Award for its star, James Corden. Unfortunately, The Nap is not as solid, not as thrilling, and nowhere as hilarious.

A Manhattan Theater Club Production at the Samuel J.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Raisin
WBTT Theater

Two things affected my viewing of Raisin, the Musical. I love and don’t think any version or adaptation can beat the ur play, A Raisin in the Sun. Like its author, Lorraine Hansberry, I was a born and bred Chicagoan, though a few years younger than she in 1951 and we lived apart in predominantly Black and White areas of the city.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Oppenheimer
Rogue Machine at the Electric Lodge

Rogue Machine has celebrated its move to a new home in Venice by mounting an impressive production of Oppenheimer, starring James Liebman as the brilliant, tormented physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, popularly known as the father of the atom bomb.

Written by the British playwright Tom Morton-Smith and first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2015, the play tackles Oppenheimer’s life in a bold, full-frontal way: sweeping story, huge cast, video projection, dance numbers, complicated sound and lighting effects. L.A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Bernhardt/Hamlet
American Airlines Theater

You can't take your eyes off her, Janet McTeer playing Sarah Bernhardt ("La Divine Sarah"), the charismatic French actress of the late 19th century. In playwright Theresa Rebeck's fact-based Bernhardt/Hamlet, McTeer, commanding in high black boots and tights, brings out the intense fierceness and sensuality of one of the primary divas in theater history. At the same time, McTeer reveals the undercurrent of bittersweet as Bernhardt is forced to face hard-set traditions, biases and the dark years of aging before her.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Downstate
Steppenwolf Theater

Whenever we hear the words "child molester," our imaginations immediately conjure the worst case scenario, but Bruce Norris asks us to consider the many different actions grouped under that particular label, as well as the varying circumstances leading to individuals being branding of with that stigma, the severity of punishment meted out on the perpetrators, the opportunity for exploitation by interested parties taking advantage and the illusion of successful re-integration into a hostile society.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Final Follies
Cherry Lane Theater

Final Follies is a loose confederation of three plays by the late A.R. Gurney. Widely known as “Pete,” Gurney is now firmly affixed in the lexicon of celebrated American playwrights. He wrote from first hand knowledge about WASP cultural, gleaned from his experience growing up on the right side of the tracks in Buffalo, N.Y., a once affluent and important city.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Hurricane Party
Cherry Lane Theater - Studio Stage

Drunken, promiscuous, brawling, foul mouthed. If there’s a worse stereotype of poor white people in the South, I’ve yet to see it. Yes, it’s true that Southerners along the coast do have a tradition of getting together to party during a hurricane, but if I were from that part of the country, I’d be deeply offended by this play.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Unchained Melodies
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Florida Studio Theater has a great audience pleaser with Unchained Melodies to start its new Winter Cabaret Season. Four energetic men give out four-part harmonies from doo-wop in the 1940s all the way to the titled and other representative songs of the ‘50s and ‘60s. With attention to groups proliferating along with social consciousness, FST’s show combines histrionics with historical commentary.

“Remember Then” begin the harmonizers in their properly formal black tux suits with sequined ties to match and starched white shirts. Shoes are shiny black. Nathaniel P.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Indecent
The Biograph

The Klezmer band welcoming us to the auditorium promises a low-stress evening, but there are things you need to know before the play starts (and your playbill doesn't include a syllabus), so here they are:

In 1910, a play by a young Polish author named Sholem Asch premiered in Berlin, titled (in English) God of Vengeance. It was an immediate hit, touring throughout Europe for the next ten years and eventually making its way to the United States, where it enjoyed similar success in the Yiddish Theater flourishing on New York City's Lower East Side.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Bernhardt/Hamlet
American Airlines Theater

Bernhardt/Hamlet is nothing short of a total triumph for Janet McTeer and company. This is theater at its best, full of passion, humor, and heartbreak. As the great diva of the stage, Sarah Bernhardt, McTeer shows us the many sides of this complicated woman. At the center of the drama is Bernhardt’s decision to portray arguably the greatest Shakespearean role, the tormented Prince of Denmark. She argues her viewpoint persuasively, but at the root is her feeling that she wants something new, something different—and she really needs the money.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, A
St. Clement's Theater

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is one of Tennessee Williams's later plays and not often produced although it exhibits Williams' beauty of language, his grace, and his search for human sensitivity and endurance. At the Theater at St. Clements, La Femme Theater Productions explores how four single women on one Sunday in Depression-era St. Louis, battle against the human loneliness reminiscent of previous Williams's literary ladies like Blanche, Amanda and Laura. It is essential Tennessee Williams, touching, delicate and yet earthy.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Eagle in Me, The: An Evening with Carl Sandburg
Tenth Street Theater

Program notes reveal that several years of effort have been poured into actor Jonathan Gillard Daly’s valentine to a famous American, The Eagle in Me: An Evening of Carl Sandburg. This aptly-named show allows us to have a bird’s eye view of the world around us, as filtered through the eyes of this famous Renaissance man.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Tempest, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Except for many of its Shakespearian speeches, The Tempest being blown to 15000 students throughout Florida by Asolo/FSU’s Conservatory seniors has been adapted to become a three-part comedy. It’s enhanced by rousing music and beautifully choreographed dancing as well as some creepy crawling. The likeness- difference between it and Shakespeare’s play should give teachers a great way to approach teaching his.

The instigator of the major plot is Prospera, who has escaped her brother Antonio’s takeover of their kingdom.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, A
Theater at St. Clement's

The set features shabby-not-so chic furniture, crowded together and covered with lots of flower patterns. In other words, largely the cliched vision held by many urban Northeasterners of how Southern people live. In fact, this is St. Louis, 1937, deep in the heart of the Great Depression. People are doing what they can to survive and, if possible, to rise above their situation. A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is so quintessentially Tennessee Williams, it’s almost a parody of itself.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Nap, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Q: Do you like snooker? A: I don’t know, I’ve never snooked. But enough joviality. A large problem for The Nap to overcome is that most Americans have never heard of snooker, much less do we understand the rules of the game. It’s tough to absorb why a snooker tournament is so important to people in Britain and around the world. So…forget about it. As it turns out, the game itself is just a platform from which the laughs and the somewhat convoluted plotline are launched.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Frankenstein
Lifeline Theater

Two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, struggling with grief over a series of untimely deaths in her immediate family, told the story of a man's audacious attempt to overcome mortality by creating a human being in his own image. His hubristic proposal does not end well.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Not for Sale
Batey Urbano

It's not your imagination. The scenic design looks familiar because you just walked to the playhouse through its real-life counterpart in Humboldt Park's Paseo Boricua. To be sure, the imposing Puerto Rican Flag sculptures at Western and Division are missing from the stage, replaced by a sign re-christening the promenade "Dr.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Old Clown Wanted
Odyssey Theater

The Odyssey has opted for a major dose of European avant-garde theatre with its current production of Old Clown Wanted, written by the Romanian-born Matei Visniec and directed by his fellow-countryman, Florinel Fatulescu. (The English adaptation is by Jeremy Lawrence).

Visniec, who is little known in this country, had to flee Romania during its Communist years because his poems and plays were deemed subversive. He was given political asylum in France in 1987, but moved a year later to London, where he worked for the Romanian section of the BBC.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Taming of the Shrew, The
Off the Wall Theater

William Shakespeare must be smiling down on local theater impresario Dale Gutzman these days, as Gutzman’s Off the Wall Theatre continues its production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Gutzman demonstrates a lot of guts for staging such a play as Shrew in the middle of the Me Too movement, but he seems to make the 400-year transition from Shakespeare’s time to ours look easy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2018

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