Me and My Girl
Shaw Festival - Festival Theater

This endearingly corny 1930s hit was successfully revived in London and soon after in New York in 1986 where it was the inaugural show at the then new Marquis Theater. There, it enjoyed a run of three years with its British star Robert Lindsay getting a Tony for his performance.

Revisiting this show thirty-one years later was a treat.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Evening at the Talk House, An
A Red Orchid Theater

It's been said that the most ruthless murderers are doctors-gone-bad, since "they have the knowledge and they have the nerve." Wallace Shawn presents us with another occupation endowing its representatives with an abundance of nerve, needing only the knowledge to apply it. They're not who you think they are, either.

Talk House is the name of an urban after-hours cocktail lounge, its sleek art-deco ambience reflecting its history as a refuge for theater people, while the rumble of traffic overhead lends an atmosphere of cozy seclusion akin to that of a bunker.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Two Mile Hollow
The Den

Arnel Sancianco's scenic depiction of the summer home once owned by now-deceased Hollywood mogul Derek Donnelly boasts a beachfront porch in its foreground and a large dining table farther upstage. Here, the surviving Donnellys—widow Blythe, stepdaughter Mary, sons Joshua and Christopher (the latter accompanied by "personal assistant" Charlotte, whose surname we never learn)—have gathered, following the sale of the property, to pack their belongings and discuss the terms of the late patriarch's will.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Honeymooners, The
Paper Mill Playhouse

For those who were weaned on Jackie Gleason’s sitcom, “The Honeymooners,” there’s cause to rejoice. There’s a new musical based upon the 1950’s classic characters, directed by award-winning John Rando (Urinetown, On The Town), premiering at The Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.

The musical with music by Stephen Weiner, lyrics by Peter Mills and book by Dusty Kay and Bill Nuss, follows the TV formula. Loud-mouthed Ralph Kramden (talented Michael McGrath) is passed over for a promotion.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Treasurer, The
Playwrights Horizons - Peter Jay Sharp Theater

According to Sartre’s No Exit, “Hell is other people.” If this is true, can we create our own hell by not loving those we are supposed to love?

As The Treasurer begins, it’s 7am in Denver. The Son (Peter Friedman) addresses the audience directly. He tells us he’s riding on his bike, that he was originally from Albany but moved to Colorado at his first opportunity, and “Somewhere in the future, I will be in hell,” because of his lack of affection for his mother (Deanna Dunagan).

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Picasso, A
Promenade Playhouse

Jeffrey Hatcher’s A Picasso has been previously performed by the Promenade Playhouse, first by an English-language theater company in Provence, then at the Playhouse in 2013. Next came a production (in 2015) in Paris, which was well received by both critics and public. Now “the show that never dies” has returned to Santa Monica in a production starring Natalia Lazarus (who also directed) and the French actor Charles Fathy. These bi-lingual actors did two performances in French, but have switched to English for the remainder of the run.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Wild Tales
Shaw Festival

In case you have forgotten, Oscar Wilde wrote short stories as well as plays. This is another clever and entertaining show geared for children, and it has an 11am curtain. It also runs for just one hour giving grown-ups time for lunch before any of the 2pm matinees.

A half dozen youngsters have been pre-selected to participate minimally in this amusing diversion that incorporates four parable-like stories as adapted for the stage by Kate Henning.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Time and the Conways
American Airlines Theater

As the old therapy saying goes, if it ain’t one thing, it’s your mother. Time and the Conways is about a well-to-do family Yorkshire family in the years bridging the two World Wars. 1919 is full of fun and silliness, a seemingly endless round of charades. In 1937, things are desperate. At the center of it all is mum, played to the hilt by the mesmerizing Elizabeth McGovern, of “Downton Abbey” fame. Only an actress of her caliber can make Mrs. Conway palatable.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
All the Great Books (Abridged)
Tenth Street Theater

Milwaukee’s In Tandem Theatre creates a sequel of sorts to its 2008 hit comedy, All the Great Books (Abridged). The paper-thin plot rests on the fact that many high school seniors (represented by the audience) have flunked Western Literature and need to retake the exam. According to the gym coach, the English teacher died during a stampede at a book signing. Inexplicably, it falls to the coach, a drama teacher and student aide to give the audience a crash course on the 89 great books of Western literature.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Choir Boy
Raven Theater

There are probably hundreds of private schools throughout our nation where young men complete their educations with no life-altering incident, but you won't find them in fiction. The premise of culturally unruly and hormone-racked adolescents confined within a unigender environment charged with indoctrinating them in the virtues (or pragmatics, anyway) of ethical discipline presents dramatic potential too irresistible to ignore.

What distinguishes the lads of the Charles R.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Making of a Modern Folk Hero, The
Chicago Dramatists

You wonder how cults are born, swelling from small enclaves to encompass tribal sects worldwide. In The Making of a Modern Folk Hero, Martin Zimmerman offers a cautionary fable of a massive messianic movement whose origins lie in an actor of pudgy physique and modest talents, a cheap Halloween mask-and-cape costume and a populace desperate for a prophet to lead them out of their oppression.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Desperate Measures
York Theater

With a dash of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, the York Theater Company opens its 2017-2018 season with delicious dish of mercy and virtue spiced with Old West country-western-folk music. A spirited musical, it is not called “Desperate Measures” for nothing.

Lyricist Peter Kellogg’s slick book features rhyming couplets and a score of 18 catchy tunes by David Friedman (Scandalous) matched to Kellogg's (Anna Karenina) lyrics.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Tiny Beautiful Things
Public Theater - Newman Theater

Today, when confusion, fear and pessimism intrude daily into our lives, the profound humanity of Tiny Beautiful Things moves beyond the natural catastrophes and possible terrors of tomorrow.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Red Sand
Santa Monica Playhouse

Red Sand, a recital by Serena Dolinsky and her small physical-theater company, was produced by Chris DeCarlo and Evelyn Rudie, co-artistic directors of the Santa Monica Playhouse, one of the country’s most respected intimate theatrical centers. Since 1973, the Playhouse has been honored with over 250 awards and has presented 600 classic, contemporary and original productions. The educational wing of the Playhouse has also thrived over the years, touching the lives of nearly a million theatre students through its on-site and public-school classes.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Mack the Knife
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

There’s an amazing amount of variety in exploration at Florida Studio Theater’s Court Cabaret of the music of Bobby Darin, who became a major star at 25 and died at 37. This holds true also of the performances by two energetic guys telling Darin’s story and singing songs he wrote and others he was famous for stamping with his style.

Just as Darin was a formal Copa and Vegas star, Brandyn Day and Dan Faber take the stage in tuxes, backed by an equally formally clad band.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Captain Greedy's Carnival
The Actors' Gang Theater

Captain Greedy’s Carnival is an agit-prop musical, a full-out assault on savage capitalism (which is how the French describe our economic system). Now in a world premiere at Actors’ Gang, the musical uses a carnival sideshow as its m.o., replete with barkers, animal acts, games of chance, puppets and freak shows. A 17-person cast brings the satirical proceedings to life, belting out 23 songs by Jack Pinter and Roger Eno, a couple of Brits who gleefully take the mickey out of free enterprise.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Rent
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

More than 20 years ago, Rent opened Off-Broadway, and forever changed the direction of American musical theater. The show was created over a span of many years by Jonathan Larson, who worked as a waiter to pay the bills during its creation. Larson died on the night before Rent’s first Off-Broadway preview.

These tragic circumstances only increased the attention that Rent initially received. The show moved to Broadway (the Nederlander Theater) in 1996.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Breathing Hole, The
Stratford Festival - Studio Theater

I doubt that this ultimately moving and enlightening new play will continue to be shaped, trimmed, and revised after the long, elaborate development it has received before Stratford’s brilliant world premiere. But that’s a sad conclusion, because it’s still too long and diffuse and uneven, yet promises to be an important original Canadian contribution to world drama. Hardly anyone leaves a performance of Stratford’s The Breathing Hole unaffected.

Nothing ambitious here!

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Head of Passes
Mark Taper Forum

Lawdy, lawdy what a bad play. Head of Passes (the awful title should have been a warning of things to come) is a retelling of the Book of Job set in a Black household where “the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.” There Shelah (the valiant Phylicia Rashad) rules over a family beset by enough problems to fill a chapter in the Old Testament. For starters, Shelah is ill (you know she isn’t long for this world when she gives her first wheezing cough).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2017
Taming of the Shrew, The
Navy Pier

Yes, it's Shakespeare and, yes, its text includes the male-female repartee we find so sexy, but there's no disguising a plot that revolves around a bunch of men bullying a lone woman. That's not the way we do things nowadays, so how do you make this repugnant behavior funny in 2017?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Legend of Georgia McBride, The
North Shore Center for the Performing Arts

There was a time once, when men who did drag were regarded as specialty performers, a cult fraternity schooled in arcane skills forbidden to ordinary actors. Times have changed, of course, and now it is not only commonplace to see drag divas out of uniform (so to speak), but also for their craft to be embraced by all males pursuing a career in the theater. Playwright Matthew Lopez now takes another stiletto-heeled step toward the demystification of drag in a comedy proposing an all-American het boy who becomes a better man after donning lipstick and wig.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Silent Sky
Next Act Theater

Audiences don’t need a degree in astronomy to get the full impact of a turn-of-the-century woman who virtually changed the way we look at the universe. Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater offers a near-perfect production of Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Julius Caesar
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Publicity has it that “Julius Caesar endures as a provocative examination of personal responsibility against the backdrop of great political consequences.” That may be true of Shakespeare’s play, but Tyler Dobrowsky’s adaptation for FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s touring production is mainly a story of a murder to gain the kind of power sought on Wall Street in the 1980s.

The opening set makes clear that a lot of liberties have been taken both with Shakespeare’s play and with historical fact.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Who and the What, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

In the pivotal opening scene of Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and the What, two grown sisters are calmly chatting in a kitchen. The audience can tell that these Pakistani-Americans are thoroughly Americanized, from how they dress to how they talk (in slang). At one point the sisters agree that their loving, ultra-conservative father can be difficult to live with, tied as he is to Muslim traditions.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Guys and Dolls
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

One of the most cherished musicals in the American theater canon, Guys and Dolls, is currently being revived at Milwaukee Repertory Theater. It would be difficult to rise above the high standard set by last season’s musical, Man of La Mancha and, frankly, this year’s show doesn’t come up to the bar.

Yet that’s not to say there isn’t much to like (or even love) in this flashy glimpse of New York during the Roaring Twenties.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Small Things
Boulevard Theater

One of the rare delights of Milwaukee’s fall theater season is the scope of its productions. One finds locally staged, extravagant musical productions with full orchestras and large casts, as well as chamber pieces such as Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor’s new play, Small Things. Its US premiere is being produced by Milwaukee’s Boulevard Theater in its temporary home, a church located on the outskirts of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus.

Despite an impressive number of plays to his credit, MacIvor isn’t particularly known in America.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
View from the Bridge, A
Goodman Theater

Arthur Miller made no secret of his desire to write plays exhibiting the gravity and grandeur of classical tragedy, nor his disappointment at having to convey—and in his eyes, diminish—those qualities in contexts easily comprehended by mid-20th-century North American patrons.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Sylvester
Lifeline Theater

Regency Romances, preferably adapted for the stage by Christina Calvit, never fail to delight Lifeline audiences, who could happily revel in ladies wearing long dresses and gentlemen clad in tight breeches for as many seasons as Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer et al. are able to provide material. Every so often, however, the company (celebrating its 35th anniversary) departs from conventional historical accuracy to impose an innovative visual metaphor on its literary universe.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Playwright Terrence McNally is a funny guy with a keen ear for conversation. These talents come together in one of his best plays, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Happily, Milwaukee Chamber Theater pairs two terrific Equity actors, Marcella Kearns and Todd Denning, in a performance that brings out the complexities in these seemingly ordinary folks.

Frankie is a waitress and Johnny a cook who slings hash; they both work at the same restaurant. They spend monotonous days serving comfort food and wondering how they ever got to this place in their lives.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Br'er Cotton
Theater Planners

A play that’s been made painfully relevant by recent headlines, Br’er Cotton deals with racism in America, particularly the kind directed at black folks. Written by a young, promising playwright, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, the play centers on Ruffrino Witherspoon (Omete Anassi), a 14-year-old kid seething with rage against white people, especially those who have systematically exploited and murdered African-Americans.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Dance of Death, The
Odyssey Theater

August Strindberg died in 1912. One hundred years later, a small theater in London mounts Conor McPherson’s version of The Dance of Death, which the Swedish playwright had written in 1900. Now the Odyssey has produced McPherson’s rewrite of Dance, which one British theatre critic has described as “flintily sharp, caustically comic.”

McPherson hasn’t changed the play all that much, just pared it down by eliminating one character (the servant), dropping the dream sequences and the impact of a violent storm.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday
Playwrights Horizons

When did you finally grow up? When you got married? When you graduated from college? After the birth of your child? Yet aren’t there times when you wish you were a kid again?

Despite some darker themes, James Barrie’s classic character Peter Pan is the epitome of perpetual youth. Playwright Sarah Ruhl uses the boy “who wouldn’t grow up” to explore the themes of aging and death in her latest play, For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
In the Heights
Geva Theater - Mainstage

The only misgiving that Geva’s artistic director Mark Cuddy might have about this superb new production of the crowd-pleasing In the Heights is that at the beginning of a crowded season, it has no space available to extend its virtually sold-out run. Were it scheduled at the season’s end, it would surely add a number of performances before closing. On opening night, everyone in the theater – from old, expected attendees to first-time youngsters – seemed involved and excited throughout.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Big Night
Kirk Douglas Theter

In Big Night, Paul (I Hate Hamlet) Rudnick’s latest comedy now in a world premiere at the Kirk Douglas, a gay actor faces a test of conscience. The actor, Michael (Brian Hutchison), has an excellent chance of winning an Oscar. His conscience, prodded by Eddie (Tom Phelan), his  militant transgender nephew, tells him he should make a strong statement on behalf of gay rights. His agent, however, thinks such a public act would be foolhardy. As Cary (Max Jenkins) points out, the Star Wars franchise wants to sign him to a multi-million-dollar contract.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Prince of Broadway
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

One might think that after winning a record 21 Tonys for producing or directing (and sometimes both at the same time) many of Broadway’s most popular and critically acclaimed musicals like West Side Story (1957), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Cabaret (1966), Company (1970), Follies (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979), Evita (1979), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), the latter still up and running after 30 years – that the return of Hal Prince’s to The Great White Way with his latest venture, Prince of Broadway, a compen

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Annie Get Your Gun
Westchester Broadway Theater

Like Taming of the Shrew, the premise of Annie Get Your Gun may be uncomfortable for modern audiences to embrace. After all, don’t we know now that if the only way to get a man is to pretend you’re not as good as he is, maybe he’s not worth getting? There are also some pretty insensitive comments about Native Americans. Our modern-day enlightenment has to be pushed to one side so we can enjoy this legendary show.

Front and center in this production as Annie is Devon Perry. She is absolutely — sorry, there’s no other word for it — adorable.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Vino Veritas
Reuben Cordova Theater

It’s no secret that people who drink too much will lose all restraint and say some pretty rude things to each other. Playwright David MacGregor, a member of Jeff Daniels’s Purple Rose Theater in Michigan, has fashioned a play out of that notion, Vino Veritas, now in a West Coast premiere at Theater 40.

The set-up is this: four middle-aged friends and neighbors get together on Halloween night to enjoy drinks and snacks before going off to a costume party.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Terms of My Surrender, The
Belasco Theater

Except for one small thing, sitting in the Belasco Theater watching Michael Moore's lively, informative call-and-response discourse, is probably somewhat like a Trump campaign rally. That one small thing here, of course, is that there is no Donald Trump but there is a lively vibe to this audience which is definitely the "choir" to whom Moore is preaching.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Invisible Scarlet O'Neil, The
The Factory

Sorry, Wonder Woman, but your long-lost older sister is back to resume her place in superherstory. Scarlet O’Neal, Russell Stamm's comic strip focusing on the adventures of a scientist's daughter turned crime-fighter after a laboratory mishap renders her the power of invisibility, made its debut on June 3, 1940, in the Chicago Times—a full year before the arrival of an immigrant princess out of Greek myth.

To be sure, Scarlet O'Neil was slow in acclimating to her extraordinary abilities, having no role models to educate her.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017
Heavens are Hung in Black, The
Theater Wit

The year is 1862. The secessionist rebellion that was to have been resolved in a few months continues to escalate in volume until refugees crowd our nation's capital, and president Abraham Lincoln, beset by dissenting factions in both parties, is warned not to travel in public unescorted. Our commander-in-chief must also contend with his grief-stricken wife's response to their son's recent death from fever contracted in the sweltering heat and sewage-polluted metropolis.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2017

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