Jungle Book, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

A multimedia spectacular, this Jungle Book is based on Rudyard Kipling’s original work of that title. Its plot, though, gives a modern view of Mowgli, a human raised as a wolf and torn between human and animals’ worlds. It transports us (aged 5 upward) from today’s New York City to a jungle and nearby town in Madhya Pradesh, India. Magnificent technical-staging means of transportation bring us to share in Mowgli’s worlds with its problems, happily with suggestions for solutions.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Revolutionists, The
The Greenhouse

The first thing we hear in The Revolutionists is a female quartet crooning a song extolling the value of "stories." The second is the ominous crunch of a guillotine blade. The third is a cheerful young woman dressed in fashions of the French Directoire, declaring, "Well, that's not the way to start a comedy!"

We don't know it yet, but Lauren Gunderson has just apprised us of the agenda for her latest play—a smart, eloquent, multiple-metatheatrical romp that gallops apace without ever leaving us in the dust of boring facts.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Secret Life of Humans
59E59 Theaters

In David Byrne’s Secret Life of Humans, Ava, a young scientist and lecturer, poses a pivotal question, "What does it mean to be human?" How different is it from the rest of the animal kingdom? Byrne's creative exploration of this basic question is inspired by the work of the late mathematician and scientist Jacob Bronowski, creator of the popular 1973 television series, “The Ascent of Man.”

Bronowski traced human progress with his optimistic view that was reflected in the TV series.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Falling Forward
Symphony Space

Ten-minute plays are very difficult to write well. Actually, all plays are difficult to write well, but ten-minute plays give playwrights a particular challenge. They need to create a reality quickly. Nonetheless, a ten-minute play can be great. After all, drama needs compression.

Falling Forward: An evening of ten-minute plays, from Athena Theater at Symphony Space, gives us 11 plays that succeed to various degrees. The scripts, which are mostly mediocre, are well served by some good acting.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Diana Tapes, The
HERE

Princess Diana was certainly a phenomenon. Wikipedia reports that 750 million people watched her televised marriage to Prince Charles in 1981. She was, of course, a media sensation until her death in a car crash in 1997.

I’ve always failed to see what there was to admire in this woman. She was not a Cinderella, and if she was exploited for her pedigree, she apparently did not object. After all, she was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana. She was killed returning from an evening of clubbing in Paris—at the age of 36—with a man not her husband.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
There's Blood at the Wedding
La MaMa

There’s Blood at the Wedding uses puppets and “performing objects” to relate the deaths of six innocent Americans killed by police: Philando Castile, Amadou Diallo, Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, Justine Damond, and Eric Garner. (To be fair, Sandra Bland’s inexplicable death may have been a suicide after she was jailed for not using her directional when she changed lanes.) It’s created, designed and directed by Theodora Skipitares and presented by La MaMa and Skysaver Productions.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Always...Patsy Cline
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Patsy Cline may have died young, but she and her music still live impressively—for the third time at Florida Studio Theater—in a musical about her relationship to number-one fan Louise Seger. Just as Seger’s enthusiasm for country-western vocalist Cline helped propel her to fame, Susan Greenhill’s Louise acts as an irrepressible conduit to audience appreciation of Meredith Jones’s Patsy.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Our Lady of 121st Street
Pershing Square Signature Center

There is trouble at the Ortiz Funeral Home Funeral Home. Flower arrangements bank the open casket, chairs are ready for expected viewers in respect to the late beloved nun, Sister Rose. But where is the corpse, Sister Rose?

In Our Lady of 121st Street, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis has fashioned a dark, insightful and strangely hilarious local slice of life at the Signature Theater. Detective Balthazar has been sent to the Ortiz Funeral Home to investigate.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
June 2018
Damascus
Strawdog Theater

Crime writers claim that inexperienced killers are easy to catch because they only plan up to the moment of the murder, neglecting such post-op measures as escape routes or disposal of evidence, so that even if suicide wasn't part of the original mission, confusion during the aftermath often drives them to view self-destruction as the only way out of the emotional turmoil.

This principle is what locates us, five minutes into our play, inside an airport shuttle van making its way from Minneapolis to Chicago.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Seafarer, The
Irish Repertory Theater

“Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste”

Scott Bennett
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Marlowe's Fate
Studio Theater

It is late afternoon on May 30 in 1593 at the house of Eleanor Bull that is both a tavern and rooming house in Deptford, England. A small group of men meet to deal with a problem one of them has caused with the Privy Council of Elizabeth I; that man is Christopher Marlowe. It has been decided that Marlowe, the man, must die, but Marlowe, the poet and writer, must live. How this is to be accomplished is what we are about to learn, and, importantly, the reasons.

Scott Bennett
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Anna Christie
Lyric Stage

During a recent visit to Boston, we attended one of the final performances of a riveting production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie which closed on May 6, 2018. It was the first of four of his plays to win a Pulitzer Prize (the fourth was the iconic Long Day’s Journey into Night, which was produced and won the award posthumously).

The Lyric Stage production, directed and adapted by Scott Edmiston, attempted to tighten and contemporize the compelling but cumbersome 1921 play.

Charles Giuliano
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Children of a Lesser God
Studio 54

Joshua Jackson, starring as James Leeds in the revival of Children of a Lesser God, has to be one of the hardest working actors on Broadway. Not only does he speak and sign his own dialogue, he must also speak and sign for Sarah, a deaf former student who becomes his wife. In fact, at one point in the second act, James even complains of arm cramps. Jackson, who is known to TV audiences from “Dawson’s Creek” and “The Affair,” is surprisingly good, evincing a broader range of emotions and ability than his TV roles have shown.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Mean Girls
August Wilson Theater

Tina Fey, of “SNL” fame, can do no wrong. She’s a comedy writer and a TV and movie actress. Now she has adapted her 2004 cult movie "Mean Girls" into a rollicking musical, one that been nominated for several Broadway awards.

High school was always a challenge, but it's even harder for Cady (Erika Henningsen) who has come from Kenya where she was homeschooled. Cady goes from a jungle of wild animals to a school of human animals whose pack is led and ruled by Regina George. An Alpha animal, Regina is gorgeous and imperious with two loyal followers.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Travesties
American Airlines Theater

Be sure to bring a dictionary and a copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest with you when you attend the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties. Starring the masterful actor Tom Hollander, the play requires rapt attention. It’s not a play to see at night if you are tired. The lines are often sometimes rapid-fire, and there are jokes and gibes, puns and plays on words. If you aren’t listening carefully, or like me are taking notes, you might miss some gems.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Carousel
Imperial Theater

“When You Walk Through A Storm” has always been one of those overly-sentimental overdone songs that make me cringe … until I heard the glorious voice of Renee Fleming as Aunt Nettie singing it in the revival Lincoln Center of Carousel at The Imperial Theater. It was like hearing an angelic hymn. Never have I heard the song so beautifully sung.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Long Reunion, The
Manatee Performing Arts Center - Bradenton Kiwanis Theater

The Long Reunion actually contains five special, funny, sometimes frazzled meetings of three friends after their high school class reunions for a 25th anniversary of their graduation. Then and every tenth year afterward, each meeting also draws the friends closer in a different way—into a dangerous environment.

In their riverside restaurant meeting place, the friends first gather for their 25th year after leaving Manatee High. Their personalities apparently haven’t changed, but circumstances have.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Mind Reader
Greenhouse Theater Center

Mentalism—more commonly called "mind-reading"—may be the most invasive of the bamboozle-based arts. Sleight-of-hand locates its unknown factors securely within the objects undergoing manipulation (a person who disappears from inside a box, for example, is understood to accomplish this feat exclusively in that particular box). Clairvoyant sightings occupy a milieu safely distanced by time, past or future. The prospect of the last boundary protecting your individual privacy dissolving into a portal facilitating disclosure of its secrets, though—now that's disturbing.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Summer
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

What? Another jukebox musical? On the surface, singer-songwriter Donna Summer is an ideal subject for a jukebox musical. She sold more than 140 million records worldwide during her career, winning five Grammy Awards and releasing 32 hit singles, 14 of which reached the Top Ten. So why isn’t the new musical Summer: The Donna Summer Musical better?

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Saint Joan
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Who was Saint Joan? Subject of many books, movies and plays, The Maid, as she was sometimes called, has been a fascinating historical figure. Defying her gender and station, she was able to rally the French troops and lead them to victory over the British soldiers.

Was she mad or did she really hear the voice of God?

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Lyric Theater

With Jack Thorne's original, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the renovated Lyric Theater is experiencing a spectacular takeover in the realm of J.K. Rowling's multi-book cosmos featuring Harry Potter, Muggles, Puggles, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While the theatrical two-part stage continuation presents the world of amazement and fantasy, the core of the story comes down to the personal world of family, friendship and change presented in two performances.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Gentleman Caller, The
Cherry Lane Theater

Just as Tennessee Williams called his first great work, The Glass Menagerie, a “memory play,” playwright Philip Dawkins (Charm) patterns his new Abingdon Theater Company production, The Gentleman Caller, as a memory play. True enough. The events in both plays are narrated by one of the lead characters and rely on memories.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Urinetown
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

“What kind of a musical is this?” wails Little Sally (Kaylee Annable), a distraught orphan who appears onstage as a cross between Annie and Raggedy Ann in the musical, Urinetown. At first, it seems that the downtrodden townspeople have risen to reclaim their right to pee without paying a price by overrunning the locked public restrooms controlled by an evil corporation, the Urine Be Good Company. But then things start to turn sour. “Well, reminds the show’s narrator, a crooked cop name Officer Lockstock, (Rick Pendzich), this isn’t a happy musical.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Days are Shorter, The
Pride Arts Buena

Contrary to popular stereotype, women's midlife crises are not always easily remedied with hormone supplements and jewelry. Sometimes it takes a full-blown visitation by a spectral succubus or two to dispel the unsettling prospects of encroaching bioturbulence making the cosmological confusion of puberty pale in comparison.

Our reluctant voyager is 53-year-old Julia, a once-hopeful photojournalist who now lies about her age when on assignment for the lesbian "walker" service providing her income. Ex-spouse Pax (age 58) is an attorney considering a change of career.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Soft Power
Ahmanson Theater

East collides with West in broadly satirical fashion in Soft Power, the David Henry Hwang/Jeanine Tesori musical now in a world-premiere run at the Ahmanson. Directed by Leigh Silverman, the show—which prefers to call itself “a play with a musical”—uses big brushstrokes to paint its comic picture of two super-powers, America and China, competing for cultural and political dominance. Hwang, who was commissioned by CTG to create this show for the company’s 50th anniversary season, based some of his script on personal experience.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Fun Home
Arden Theater - F. Otto Haas Stage

Many plays have dealt with dysfunction, but the perspective is what makes Fun Home unique. It portrays a troubled family from the points of view of a child at different ages, and it combines this with the self-discovery of the young woman’s homosexuality. If actors or director underline any one of the themes, they risk upsetting the delicate balance — and the Arden’s artistic director, Terrence Nolen, maintains a symmetry. Of the three productions I’ve seen of Fun Home, this Arden staging is the most communicative.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Lydie Breeze Trilogy
Christ Church Neighborhood House

John Guare is known for his comedies Six Degrees of Separation and House of Blue Leaves. The playwright, however, considers a different work to be his masterpiece. Guare’s Lydie Breeze Trilogy has just been performed as a continuous entity for the first time by EgoPo Classic Theater in Philadelphia. Although these are three full-length plays, Philadelphia’s Barrymore committee agreed to judge Lydie Breeze as a single unit for its awards in October, and I’ll treat it that way here.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Bad Jews
Odyssey Theater

“How religion poisons everything” is the sub-title of the late Christopher Hitchens’s “God is not Great,” his 2007 book about his intellectual journey toward a secular view of life based on science and religion. Hitchens’s title came to mind while I was watching Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon’s ferocious family drama, unfold at The Odyssey Theater. If ever there was a play that depicted religion’s malignant effect on the human race, Bad Jews is it.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
To Catch a Fish
Baird Hall

If this scenario weren't almost all true, you'd think David Mamet plotted it.

There's these three scruffy hustlers, you see—outlaw biker Dex, tattooed skateboard-bum Ike and Pam Grier-lookalike "G"—managing a pop-up dollar-shop outlet in Milwaukee's borderline-gentrified River North district.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Hear What's in the Heart
Next Act Theater

There’s much to enjoy in the autobiographical, Hear What’s In the Heart: An Italian Shoemaker’s Tale, in which Los Angeles-based actor/writer Steve Scionti brings to life eight members of his Sicilian-American family. This one-man, one-act show revolves around the life and death of Scionti’s grandfather, Angelo Morello.

According to the theater program notes, the first glimpses of the show came together in one of Scionti’s acting classes.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Saint Joan
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

In the 15th century, a young French country girl, inspired by saints' voices, persuades the socio-religious powers-that-be to allow her to lead the French army against the British occupation during the ongoing 100 Years War. No small feat for a 17-year-old girl in a patriarchal society She was called "The Maid," "Joan of Arc," and later, five centuries after her death, she was acknowledged as Saint Joan.

It is not a spoiler to say that the zealous teenage heretic warrior won the battle but lost her own war. She was captured, labeled a heretic and burned at the stake.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Blues in the Night
Lovelace Studio Theater

Like a shot of adrenalin, Blues in the Night gave me a real pick-me-up, a feeling of joy, hope, and delight. The two-hour tour through the jazz and blues songs of the 1920s and 30s, was first seen two decades ago at the Pasadena Playhouse when it was under the leadership of Sheldon Epps. Epps, who conceived and directed the show (which later won acclaim on Broadway and the West End), has revived it at The Wallis, with equally successful results. It wouldn’t surprise me if the revue ended up on Broadway again.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Randy Writes a Novel
Clurman Theater

Randy is a purple hand puppet who gives an 80-minute monologue from behind a table on stage, speaking educated Strine. It’s a stand-up comedy act called randy writes a novel. The premise is that he’s going to read to us from the first draft of his novel. He’s reluctant to read, and by way of diversion, he flies off on comic tangents.

The program credits the actor playing Randy as Randy, but between us, the comedian’s name is Heath McIvor. Presenting himself through a felt puppet puts a whole new complexion on his comedy.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Ragtime
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

What’s abbreviated in Asolo Rep’s production of Ragtime? Not the plot, music, or lyrics from the original Broadway production, but rather the number of the cast and the orchestra. Both may be smaller but they’re greatly talented. They pull off an undeniable tour de force.

As fans of “Ragtime” the book, the film, and the original staging know, the musical involves three segments of American society in the early 19th century. It traces the progress of their worlds and their intersection along with that of representative celebrities. Henry Ford, Booker T.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, A
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

It has been four long years since A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder received the Tony Award for Best Musical, but that seemed not to matter a whit to the packed house that flocked to Milwaukee’s Marcus Center for the Performing Arts on opening night to see its first performance here.

For musicals that have an extended run in Chicago—such as A Gentleman’s Guide—it typically takes months or years for musicals to make their way north to Milwaukee. It should be noted, however, that this same tour appeared in Madison, WI in October 2017.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Dance Nation
Playwrights Horizons - Peter Jay Sharp Theater

The title for Dance Nation, the latest offering from Playwrights Horizons, is a bit misleading. This isn’t really a play about dance, but rather, a look into the ambitions and emotions of young teenagers. They’re in a small group hoping to go to Nationals in Tampa. There, having gone through several ordeals at other venues, they’ll win the grand title. Why this is so important to them is revealed in a series of monologues and short scenes.

From this point, it gets pretty confusing.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Summer
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

The last ten minutes or so of Summer are absolute magic. The stage is lit up, everyone’s wearing a beautiful sparkly outfit, and the dance music flows. The great disco songs “Hot Stuff” and “Last Dance” are belted out by all three Donnas, and the whole company is onstage to join in. This is what we’re been waiting for from a show about “The Queen of Disco.”

Unfortunately, it’s the book of this musical that lets us down. Unlike Jersey Boys and On Your Feet, dialogue for Summer lags miserably. Bring back the music and the glitz!

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Madres, The
The Biograph

Don't be fooled by the convivial chat of the priest making a friendly visit to an elderly widow in the first scene of Teatro Vista’s production of Las Madres. Padre Juan's nostalgia for sentimental love songs and Senora Josefina's home-baked medialunes camouflages inquiries into treasonous activities, just as his hostess’s pride in her granddaughter Belen's accomplishments as a film student in Paris conceals her fear that the pregnant young newlywed is being detained in a government prison.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Memphis
Ruth Page Center for the Arts

The pantheon of musicals documenting the triumph of rock-and-roll as a multicultural phenomenon transcending global boundaries—a catalogue encompassing The Buddy Holly Story, Hairspray, Jersey Boys, Million Dollar Quartet and practically everything written by Jackie Taylor—has now been expanded to restore Dewey Phillips, Tennessee's real-life pioneering prophet, to his rightful place in a myth too long dominated by East Coast imitators Alan Freed and Dick Clark.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
May 2018
Escape to Margaritaville
Marquis Theater

If Broadway musicals were rated the way movies are, Escape to Margaritaville, the jukebox musical crafted around Jimmy Buffett songs, would be rated R. It features lots of beautiful beach bodies, lots and lots of drinking (in the audience as well as on stage) and an emphasis on meaningless sexual hook-ups.

The hero of the story, Tully (attractive Paul Alexander Nolan) the Buffett-figure, is all about casual relationships. His mantra is exemplified in the song, “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018

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