Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

In Three Tall Women, Edward Albee painted a brilliantly caustic portrait of a tyrannical old woman through the lens of three women at various points of life, illuminating the absurdist battle for survival. These "three tall women" earned Albee his third Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and, after his years in Broadway's shadow, they revived his place on a top rung of American theater.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Rosenkranz Mysteries: Physician Magician, The
Royal George Theater

If the notion of a physician who professes to believe in magic makes you uncomfortable, remember that the initial step in any scientific discovery is a perceptual one: First you observe that something works, and then you search for the secret of why it works. The shamans of yore may have bowed to expedience in the execution of their practice, relying on divine intervention for explanation of its efficacy, but medical technology today continues to acknowledge the importance of unseen factors in determining the outcome of pathogenic wars.

Ricardo Rosenkranz—that's Dr.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Spitfire Grill, The
Windy City Cafe

The location of the diner lending The Spitfire Grill its title is identified in the playbill as "Northern Wisconsin" (though textual clues indicate the state's southwestern counties)—specifically, an economically depressed town ironically named Gilead. Here the young Perchance "Percy" Talbot arrives, after serving time in prison, seeking sanctuary and a fresh start. As she struggles to overcome the suspicions of the citizens, we learn that they, too, chafe under regrets too long unacknowledged.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

It would be difficult to think of Three Tall Women with a cast that’s anything less than stellar. How privileged we are to be able to behold Glenda Jackson, the force of nature, as A, whom we understand to be patterned after author Edward Albee’s mother. This is her first return to Broadway in 30 years, and it was well worth the wait. At 79, now through with a career in politics, Jackson has all the sass and vitality needed to power this demanding vehicle.

Ably supporting her are two fine actors, Laurie Metcalf as B and Alison Pill as C.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Lobby Hero
Helen Hayes Theater

What if you are asked to provide a false alibi for someone you love? Add to that pressure the fact that you are an intensely law-abiding citizen at heart, that you are pretty sure your loved one is guilty, and that you know that he may not receive a fair trial? Would you do it? What if you’re a police officer, and you know your partner is doing something he’s not supposed to do while on duty? What if this cop has protected you, then lied to you and threatened your job? The questions in Lobby Hero aren’t easy ones.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
How I Learned to Drive
The Artistic Home

Throughout the ages, love obsessive, forbidden and/or undying has been exalted in Romantic literature. Pity the man who pledges his heart to a damsel herself little more than a child, however. (Before you go "eeew," remember that this category includes Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll and Elvis Presley.) Not only must he suffer the censure of society and, in many instances, the law, but his devotion is doomed to end in disaster and ruin. Little girls don't remain little girls, you see, but grow into adult women, who leave youthful companions to follow their own path.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2018
Three Tall Women
Golden Theater

It’s only a few months before the 26th anniversary of the first American appearance of Edward Albee’s masterpiece, Three Tall Women, yet we’ve seen surprisingly few revivals. It’s admittedly difficult to perform, but hundreds of our high schools have performed the extremely demanding constant dance numbers of A Chorus Line without even one cast member who can really dance. Certainly those who love Albee’s plays can rejoice at this masterful new version.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Angels in America
Neil Simon Theater

A commendable theater experience, London's National Theatre's revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, has arrived at the Neil Simon Theater with the same powerful significance it had at the time of its original production in the early 1990's. Looking back to that time of the chaos surrounding AIDS and the Cold War, a timeliness continues, strikingly emphasized by an estimable cast of actors whose impressive energy delves into the American mind and soul.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Angels in America
Neil Simon Theater

Angels in America deserves highest marks for several reasons. The sheer audacity of staging nearly eight hours of theater is a major challenge in itself; add to this the responsibility of presenting an iconic play with the fresh perspective of years and hindsight; and to top it off, both Andrew Garfield as the stricken Prior Walter and Nathan Lane as the repugnant Roy Cohn give earth-shatteringly brilliant performances. This is the go big or go home moment of the season, and the audience that takes in the pageant is dazzled.

However, everything is not perfect.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Women Laughing Alone with Salad
Theater Wit

Vance Packard first blew the whistle on Madison Avenue in 1957, so it should come as no surprise in 2018 to hear that advertisers are out to manipulate us into spending money on their products. Sheila Callaghan, however, also sees our cultural values reflected in this seemingly benign capitalistic propaganda—specifically, the proliferation of images depicting the solitary bliss of attractive young women smiling open-mouthed as they cheerfully fork fresh green plant fiber past teeth unmarked by chlorophyll stains.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Merchant on Venice
The Greenhouse

There's this Hindu import-export mogul operating out of Los Angeles, you see—Venice Boulevard, to be exact. His Hollywood homey plans to woo a Monterey-county heiress to finance his next movie, but in order to raise travel money, they must secure a loan from the Muslim moneylender that both have previously vilified for his conservative practices. The Shia broker agrees to provide them the necessary funds, contingent on a contract involving collateral too grotesque to be taken seriously—perhaps.

Wait! Didn't Shakespeare write a play very similar to this in 1596?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Frozen
St. James Theater

Frozen is heartwarming. Yes, this is one of many word plays engendered by the stage adaptation of the Disney blockbuster movie. The film, in turn, was loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, “The Snow Queen.” If you know anything about the works of HCA, you know that there’s plenty of Danish gloom combined with the Disney pizzazz. But the most important question at the end of the day is whether or not the musical is entertaining.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Always...Patsy Cline
Stackner Cabaret

A timely retelling of the story of one of country music’s greatest stars gets off on the right note, with a young Patsy Cline (Kelley Faulkner) warbling one of her songs. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is reviving its hit show of 2012, when Faulkner first channeled the unforgettable Patsy Cline in Always … Patsy Cline.

In the same month as the production debuts, A PBS-TV documentary on Patsy Cline also airs. This March marks 54 years after Cline died tragically in a private plane accident.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Things They Carried, The
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab Theater

As a story, The Things They Carried gives a chilling personal account by an aging Viet Nam veteran about before, during, and after he was drafted into the army. Actor-narrator David Sitler stoutly acts out the story, colored by extraordinary lighting and realistic sound. But this adaptation basically retains a narrative structure in which there’s neither a sustained conflict nor an end that grows from it.

The engaging story begins with Tim’s long, impressive account of his fellow soldiers in Nam.

Marie J> Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence
La MaMa

Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence, presented by La MaMa at La Mama, was written by two playwrights, one in New York and one in Tokyo. The segments of the final script alternate between the work of the two of them. The play, then, is modeled after a renga, a Japanese verse form in which multiple writers collaborate.

The creative method is interesting, but Distant Observer reflects nothing of this dyad process. It simply makes no difference, as we can’t discriminate between the style of the two writers, at least in translation.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Bright Star
Hobby Center

With claims of being “inspired by real events,” and with fine direction from Walter Bobbie, the current Theater Under the Stars production of the Broadway musical, Bright Star, has no shortage of charms.

A delightful collaboration of music and story by Steve Martin & Edie Brickell, the show has a compelling book by Mr. Martin and pleasant lyrics from songwriter, Brickell.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea
The Den

Tribal histories featuring forced migrations can exacerbate the propensity of young people to speculate on fanciful origin stories beyond those imparted by their immediate kin. Who knows what secrets may lurk beneath the prosaic (read: boring) lineage promulgated by parents bent on steering adolescent imaginations toward practical considerations? Dontrell Jones III is grateful for the scholarship at Johns Hopkins University awaiting him at the end of this, his 18th summer, but when his ancestors call to him in a dream, a spiritual odyssey is inevitable.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Shooter
TheaterLab

Sam Graber’s skillfully written play Shooter is a study of “a pre-emptive shooting massacre.” Jim has shot to death a would-be mass killer and seriously wounded a student in order to prevent the killer from “shooting up a high school.” We learn this through well-placed delayed exposition after meeting Jim and his attorney—an old buddy—in the first scene. Most of the play consists of flashbacks. Its scenes fill in the back story and relate the circumstances that lead to Jim’s preoccupation with his handgun.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Extreme Whether
La MaMa

Karen Malpede’s play Extreme Whether, presented by Theater Three Collaborative at La MaMa, describes itself as “a Cli-Fi drama.” Its concern is climate change, and it explores the issue through a family drama. John is a climate scientist, Rebecca West his live-in colleague. Living with them are his 13-year-old daughter and an older gentleman called Uncle. John’s sister, Jeanne, and her husband, Frank, are visitors. The home is on protected land that John and Jeanne have inherited.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
At Home at the Zoo
Pershing Square Signature Center

In 1958, Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, a one-act play destined to become an American classic, premiered in Berlin paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Almost a half century later, Albee created Homelife as a prologue to The Zoo Story, and in 2009, the two one-act plays were combined as At Home at the Zoo, currently in production at the Pershing Square Signature Theater.

Interesting: The opening line in the Act I, “Homelife,” is "We should talk," Ann's comment to her husband, Peter, in their Upper East Side apartment.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Roe
Florida State Uuniversity Center for the Performing Arts -Mertz Theatre

Powerfully going beyond a courtroom drama, Roe depicts a controversial Supreme Court decision and the polarized movements it generated. A turbulent history proves inseparable from the biographies of Norma McCorvey, depicted as plaintiff Jane Roe, and her lawyer Sarah Weddington. As their lives continue to affect continuation of women’s most personal rights, are there also responsibilities? Do answers appear in the superbly written and wonderfully acted, directed, produced drama at Asolo Rep?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Until the Flood
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

When the riots erupted in Ferguson, Missouri about four years ago (after a young black man died in a police shooting), the nation took notice. Although those headlines have since faded, the rippling waves of emotion sparked by this tragic event have been captured and expressed by Dael Orlandersmith. The the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright is the author of Until the Flood. The show is performed as a one-woman piece that lasts a bit more than an hour.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Escape to Margaritaville
Marquis Theater

If “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” is your idea of an idyllic Escape to Margaritaville, this is the show for you. If you’re a Parrothead and can sing along to all the Jimmy Buffett songs offered here (as many in the audience apparently are), you’ll be right at home. Despite a talented cast and the obvious technical expertise it took to put on this production, I found myself yearning for The Band’s Visit and Come from Away, musicals with real heart and better tunes.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Price, The
The Players' Backstage

Contrary to Arthur Miller’s title, The Price involves not one but a number of past-paid prices that will bring out a family’s values. How those will determine their future and that of an appraiser of their inherited furniture ends the dramatic story. Two Chairs Company presents all in an intimate space so actors and audience share a close-up emotional experience. They also partake of Miller’s powerful social and philosophical views.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Three on a Match
IATI Theater

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, New York City based IATI Theater Todo Vanguardia, which is devoted to contemporary, cutting-edge Latino works, could not have selected a more compelling and beautifully crafted play than Rhett Martinez’s Three on a Match, which examines state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America during the 70s and 80s, and by a short stretch of the imagination, similar horrors currently going on in other parts of the world.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Kingdom
The Den

Our paradisiacal realm might be a commercially crafted amusement park in Florida encircled by the hostile culture endemic to that gulf-rim state, but the magic empowering true love and lovers is no less efficacious for being cobbled from the gospel according to Batman and Walt Disney, augmented by folk wisdom, astrology, and Everglades voodoo.

The cataclysm in Michael Allen Harris’s Kingdom precipitating crisis, ironically, is the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Girl Who Knew Too Much, The
Public Theater - Joe's Pub

“Every time I have sex I get into a relationship. Every time I get into a relationship I stop having sex. I found the Bermuda Triangle. It is between my legs. Everyone who goes there disappears out of my life.” (Penny Arcade from her Longing Lasts Longer).

After three years of touring her one-woman show around the world, the eminently quotable performance artist Penny Arcade, an uncanny, in-your-face, truth-telling Cassandra that people actually believe, is back at Joe’s Pub at NYC’s Public Theater.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Sell/Buy/Date
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

Another master of the solo show, Sarah Jones follows up on her Broadway hit Bridge and Tunnel with Sell/Buy/Date, a one-person play about sex and sexual politics, directed by Carolyn Cantor. Jones, who is both a writer and performer, approaches her themes from a feminist position but doesn’t lecture or rant. “When people come to the theatre, I want to provoke thought and laughter, not prescribe what they should think,” she explains in a program note.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
El Niño
The Met Theater

El Niño, L.A.’s bizarre winter weather pattern, (bursts of ferocious rain interspersed with blazing sunlight), is the symbol for Justin Tanner’s new comedy, now drawing laughs in its world-premiere run at Rogue Machine.  Tanner, a much-produced L.A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Tragic History of Dr. Faustus, The
Off the Wall Theater

There may not be any real devils in Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan-era classic The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus, but Off the Wall Theater director Dale Gutzman makes some devilishly clever choices in taking the audience into Faustus’ world.

The production begins in 1920s Germany, as a singer (Kristen Pagenkopf) entertains a party crowd. The guests sip wine delivered by a butler, and soon the good times seem headed towards debauchery.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2018
Jackie Unveiled
Lovelace Studio theater

Write about kings and queens, urged Aristotle, and since celebrities are the closest thing we have to royalty (in the USA), it stands to reason that countless plays will be written about them.  The latest example is Jackie Unveiled, Tom Dugan’s solo show about Jackie Kennedy, starring Saffron (“Mozart in the Jungle”) Burrows, directed by Jenny Sullivan.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
West Coast Black Theater Troupe

A star of Broadway is portraying a legendary singer in 1959 in a Philadelphia dive of a nightclub. The reenactment will foretell the end of her career as she relates her life of body and soul abuse. There’s music with potent lyrics at every turn of her story. They’re what makes the performance of a biography special.

At WBTT, the Emerson stage is backed with red velvet curtains. The color repeats itself in shades on little lamps at the stage’s sides and on posts that define the space where tables and chairs bring patrons up close to the performance area.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Hail, Hail Chuck: A Tribute to Chuck Berry
Black Ensemble Theater

Just to ascertain that we know where our journey starts, Black Ensemble raises the curtain on its latest revue, Hail, Hail, Chuck, with performances of two classics emerging from the Southern regions of the United States: Ruth Brown's "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and Jerry Lee Lewis’s "Great Balls of Fire." Both share a 12-bar, three-chord melodic structure and lyrics differing in their arrangement of verse and refrain.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Anna Karenina
Lifeline Theater

Compared to his earlier “War and Peace,” Leo Tolstoy's thousand-page “Anna Karenina” may have been a light read for the Russian intelligentsia during the turbulent years before the revolution. However, while its tale of passion among the privileged continues to resonate in 2018, literary consumers today are more likely to encounter it within the abbreviated dimensions of its many adaptations—cinematic, operatic and balletic—making Jessica Wright Buha's tidy two-and-a-half-hour synopsis a welcome addition to the list.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
One House Over
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

As playwright Catherine Trieschmann points out in the world premiere of One House Over, immigrants come to America in all shapes, sizes and nationalities. They also use different methods for coming to the U.S. It’s clear that Trieschmann sides with undocumented Mexican immigrants who wish to become legal citizens after spending a lifetime within our borders, creating a play that is timely as well as thought-provoking.

One House Over is being produced by Milwaukee Repertory Theater in conjunction with the Geva Theater in Rochester, NY.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2018
Surely Goodness and Mercy
Redtwist Theater

The publicity synopsis may read like a listing for the Hallmark Channel, but playgoers should not be hasty in dismissing Chisa Hutchinson's Surely Goodness and Mercy as simplistic sentimentalism. The belief that optimistic endings are incompatible with intelligent arguments is only one of the popular misconceptions debunked by this prolific author.

Our story's hero is 12-year-old Tino, whose mother died, literally, taking a bullet for him—trauma remanding her orphaned son to the reluctant care of his ill-tempered Aunt Alneesa.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2018
Outgoing Tide, The
Tenth Street Theater

From the title to the sounds of migrating geese heading south for the winter, one expects this play to be about death and renewal. Playwright Bruce Graham doesn’t disappoint, as his moving and poignant The Outgoing Tide traces how one man takes control of his own destiny.

That man would be Gunner, a fast-talking, wisecracking man in his early 70s.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2018
Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Class Act Productions

For over two decades Class Act Productions has astonished audiences in The Woodlands, Texas with the quality of its performances while becoming one of the most widely recognized and honored youth theatre programs in the nation.

Skillfully directed by company founder/producer, Keith Brumfield, last weekend’s stunning performances of The Hunchback of Notre Dame at The Nancy Bock Performing Arts Center, made it clear those accolades are well-deserved.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
February 2018
In the Body of the World
City Center - Stage 1

The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play, first came to the attention of New York audiences when it opened Off Off Broadway in 1996. Since then, it has been published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Fashioned from some 200 interviews that Ensler conducted among woman in all walks of life and ethnicities, the play openly deals with sex, sex work, body image, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth and orgasms, all subjects that the playwright, performer, and activist is still involved with.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2018
In the Body of the World
City Center - Stage 1

"A mother’s body against a child’s body makes a place. It says you are here. I have been exiled from my body. I was ejected at a young age and I got lost...For years I have been trying to find my way back to my body, and to the earth." For writer Eve Ensler, the return back to her body and to the earth began with cancer.

Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), centers her new play, In the Body of the World, in the core of her body.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
February 2018

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