Big Sky
Geffen Playhouse

In Big Sky, now in its world-premiere run at the Geffen, yet another dysfunctional family disintegrates before our eyes, in blackly comic fashion. Written by the much-produced playwright Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros and skilfully directed by John Rando, the play (which has its eyes on a Broadway run), is set in an elegant Ritz-Carlton condo in Aspen, Colorado, the rich-person’s favorite ski resort. Residing in the condo are Jack (Jon Tenney) and Jen (Jennifer Westfeldt), a tenuously married couple, and their precocious teenaged daughter, Tessa (Emily Robinson).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Chorus Line, A
Stratford Festival - Festival Theater

This wonderful revival of A Chorus Line has not exactly “been reimagined for its first major production on a thrust stage” as we were told it would be. Rather, Canada’s superb director/choreographer Donna Feore has made some additions and changed only an occasional emphasis, and truly re-choreographed only parts of a few dances. Her challenge and her longtime aspiration was to present her loving immersion into this show and combine it with her dedication to this world-famous stage.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Macbeth
Stratford Festival - Festival Theater

Canada’s great Stratford Festival began its 63rd season with a dazzling week of productions including a re-staged new version of the classic musical, A Chorus Line, a stunning production of the children’s play, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and ending with a new musical based on the beloved film, “Shakespeare In Love.”

But opening night was Shakespeare’s Macbeth presented with no timid wariness about “the Scottish play” but instead a dark, mysterious exploration full of visual and emotional surprises, including a sexy young Macbeth and a ter

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Taming of the Shrew, The
Delacorte Theater

Any current production of The Taming of the Shrew risks running afoul of modern audiences — big time. After all, the plot revolves around the brutalization of an intelligent, independent-thinking woman who rejects the notion that she must marry in order to please her wealthy father.

For years audiences have seen apologies onstage, sometimes actually recited before the show begins. Here, a unique approach is taken by having all the roles played by women.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Seven Guys You Date Before You Get Married, The
Actors Company

Nicole Burch, a fast-talking, wise-cracking, but attractive blonde wonders why she’s still single at the age of 33. Her quest to find a perfect prince obliges her to kiss a lot of frogs–“enough to ravage an entire koi pond.” Her comic misadventures with the opposite sex lie at the heart of The 7 Guys You Date Before You Get Married, now drawing laughs at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Burch, an alumnus of The Groundlings Sunday Company, not only stars in the show but has written all seven of its sketches.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Cockroach Dialogues
Dorie Theater

Franz Kafka meets Nathanael West in Cockroach Dialogues, William Whitehurst’s black comedy now running at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Hollywood is the setting – and the target – of this one-act play, which centers on Wayne (Mark Binet) and Tea (Kate Poisson), two young, impoverished performers trying to make it in the entertainment capitol of the world.

The fight for success, which wannabe actor Wayne describes as “a couple of greyhounds chasing a rabbit...which turns out to be tin,” has taken its toll.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Indian Summer
Playwrights Horizons - Mainstage

Yes, that’s real sand setting the tone for Indian Summer, the final production of the splendid Playwrights Horizons season. Waves are crashing on the beach as Daniel (Owen Campbell) tries to pass the time. He wears a plaid shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers, and sports long, shaggy bangs. His mom has dumped him off on his step-grandfather, George (Jonathan Hadary) for who knows how long. Daniel is bored, worried, and not having a very good time until Izzy (Elise Kibler), a local girl, shows up.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Taming, The
Shakespeare & Company

The thirtysomething Lauren Gunderson is widely regarded as among the best and brightest of the emerging generation of playwrights. During the 2014 Humana Festival in Louisville, Kentucky she was the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of American Theatre Critics Association. On that occasion she also was the recipient of ATCA’s prestigious Steinberg Award.

Charles Giuliano
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Fabulous Lipitones, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

Old-fashioned in a good new way, The Fabulous Lipitones takes up the quandary of a barbershop quartet that’s become a trio shortly before they’re to sing in a big national contest. The men experience difficulty finding their newly deceased member’s replacement and overcoming the newbie’s lack of experience with their kind of music. Just as unhelpful are their ample preconceived attitudes and misconceptions.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Hetty Feather
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theatre

A popular British children’s book made into a play, Hetty Feather is about a foundling who searches from infancy through teens for her biological mother. Hetty also relentlessly pursues happiness itself through hard times at the foundling home, a nicer short stay with a foster family, and finally, a hook-up with a travelling circus.

What ensues is a Victorian-age family show presented, not created, by Asolo Rep that may appeal to kids seven and (somewhat) up.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Cirque du Soleil: Paramour
Lyric Theater

No doubt about it; there are times Paramour does seem like a three ring circus, and it’s tough to know where to look. On the one hand, you have a classic romantic triangle, set against the background of grand old movie musicals. On the other, you have the daredevil excitement of classic Cirque du Soleil, including breathtaking acts of tumbling, high flying, and juggling.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Kinky Boots
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Kinky Boots finally makes its Milwaukee debut with a big splash of glitz, glamour, humor and heartfelt confessions – all a part of what makes the show a Broadway showstopper and a multi-Tony Award winner.

This isn’t the kind of show that yanks audiences from the lapels the minute the curtain goes up. It works its charm a bit more subtly. It finds a way to infiltrate the audience’s hearts the way an old-fashioned Broadway musical used to do.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2016
Prospect
IATA Theater / Teatro Circulo

In Octavio Solis’s play Prospect, Vince and Liza pick up Scout at a bar. Vince brings the two others home to meet his wife. Scout is intended to screen Vince’s relationship with Liza by appearing to be her date. Scout’s a bit of a dupe. But he and Vince’s wife, Elena, bond over being Hispanic and create a complex and subtle relationship.

Boundless Theater Company gives us a first-rate production of this script. In the masterful hands of director Elena Araoz, every scene is vital, replete with conflict. The drama is fluid and intense.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Peer Gynt
Classic Stage Company

Henrik Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt before he wrote the realistic dramas he’s so famous for (Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House). It’s a verse drama, published in 1867, based on a Norwegian folk myth. Its 40 scenes are sometimes realistic, sometimes surreal, and its many characters populate the stage for five hours or so. It’s enormously whimsical and theatrical, and it was originally paired with Edvard Grieg’s incidental music (which included “In the Hall of the Mountain King”).

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Honky
The Met

Playwright Kalleres satirizes racial politics and attitudes in Honky, his jaunty, fast-moving, and irreverent comedy now in its Los Angeles premiere run at Rogue Machine. Slickly and snappily directed by Gregg T. Daniel, and masterfully performed by its eight-person cast, Honky zeroes in on a Manhattan ad agency headed by Davis Tallison (Bruce Nozick) whose main client makes gaudy, overpriced sneakers — “Sky Ballers” — which are treasured by black kids in the ‘hood.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Hairy Ape, The
Odyssey Theater

First produced in 1922, Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape has been given an Expressionistic take by director Steven Berkoff. Shouted dialogue and choreographed movement are the order of the day, powered and punctuated by the drumbeats of percussionist Will Mahood. More surreal than real, this production goes all out for high energy and extreme emotion, sacrificing subtlety and complexity for excitement and drama with a capital D.

At the heart of all this frenzy is Yank, the head man in the stokehold of an ocean liner steaming toward England.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Shakespeare Show, The
Royal Shakespeare Company

Note: Reviewed via pre-recorded video electronically transmitted by Fathom Events to a movie theater in Florida.

Staged in the Main Theatre home to The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, “The Shakespeare Show” was introduced by the RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran. He provided a history of the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespearean theaters since the renowned actor David Garrick tried to present a Pageant at Shakespeare’s first Jubilee.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
City of Conversation, The
Bram Goldsmith Theater

First produced by Lincoln Center Theater in 2014, The City of Conversation is particularly relevant in this election year, dealing as it does with Washington DC politics. The L.A. production, now on tap at the Annenberg Center, stars Christine Lahti as Hester Ferris, an elegant DC power-broker who fights for liberal causes from the drawing-room of her DC townhouse (elegant set by Jeff Cowie).

The action of Anthony Giardina’s engrossing play takes place between 1979 and 2009, a time of significant change in the political landscape.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Pirates of Penzance, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The veteran Skylight Music Theater closes its current season with a joyous, charming and utterly daffy production of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic, Pirates of Penzance. . All the appropriate elements are assembled here to guarantee an audience’s satisfaction: gorgeous voices, attractive lovers, darling maidens, soft-hearted pirates, bumbling police officers, an outstanding live orchestra, and lovely sets that hint of the modern-day elements of this show.

Pirates was first performed in New York in 1879.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Mind Games
Starlite Room

In the one-act collection, Mind Games, Reverse Psychology (by George Freek) works on nice guy Ren Pearson’s approach to a job as Michael, who’s been told by fiance Sara (Samanta Centerbar, adamant) that he has to be more assertive. In an interview with Steve Bikfalvy’s surprising Charles, Michael is asked to seduce Charles’s wife Susan (Alana Opie, as forward as Sara had been) to prove how much he wants to work for them. Director Mark Woodland makes sure that his actors’ characters not only seduce but also surprise both each other and the audience.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Hillary & Monica
Odyssey Theater

No, Hillary & Monica is not a two-character play about a meeting between Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky, the White House intern who got it on with the president. It’s about a couple of comedy writers who are trying to write just such a play, on the assumption that it will hit big with the public.

Working from that dubious premise, playwrights Victor Hardack and Edward Michael Bell struggle mightily to make Hillary & Monica work.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Sweeter Than Justice
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Sweeter Than Justice plays more like the novel Robert Lipkin says he started out to write before he converted it to a drama. It’s hard to tell what the play’s point is. Is it how being raped completely changed the life of Geanina Palmieri? Is it how that crime got so involved in others’ lives? Is it that legal procedure can be twisted to go beyond justice or even pervert it?  Though all these ideas overwhelm Lipkin’s play, his ways  of posing questions about them are underwhelming. 

The central rape incident has a twist.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Long Day's Journey into Night
American Airlines Theater

It is almost pointless, almost futile, to start comparing one production of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night to another as each in turn resides in memory for different reasons. The thing about British director Jonathan Kent’s production for the Roundabout Theater Company now at the American Airlines Theatre is not that it may not be the most definitive but that it may be the most atmospherically haunting.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
In & Of Itself
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

Derek DelGaudio, the magician/illusionist, returns to the Geffen with his latest one-man show, In & Of Itself. Directed by Frank Oz, the show hopes to duplicate the success of DelGaudio’s previous appearance at the Geffen, Nothing to Hide, which was so popular that it got extended to 18 weeks and became one of the five-highest-grossing productions in the theater’s 20-year history. In & Of Itself is a collaboration with producer Glenn Kaino (DelGaudio’s partner in the art duo A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Long Day's Journey into Night
American Airlines Theater

British director Jonathan Kent helms the current production of Eugene O'Neill's epic of a doomed family. The Roundabout Theater Company's exceptional revival of A Long Day's Journey into Night reminds us of the prominence theater can achieve in the arts.

The three and three-quarter hour semi-biographical play follows a long day from morning to midnight, a harrowing and riveting focus on the epic, artistic Tyrone family and its fatal flaws. Kent evokes the essence of its characters and the life of desolation they all live, engrossed and repelled by each other.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Josephine
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The curtain of art nouveau, illustrating the kind of dance and music to which Paris was treated in the first third of the 20th Century, opens on a Folies Bergere progression of near-nude but jeweled-all-over gorgeous women down a glittery stairway. The orchestral accompaniment suits their parade and their meeting up with tuxedoed men in song and rhythmic movement. Then, banana-clad Deborah Cox as Josephine Baker shakes all as quasi-native dark dancers surround her doing the same. It’s the high point of a show that descends from there on.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Endgame
Kirk Douglas Theater

Hail and Farewell. Alan Mandell, the distinguished, 88-year-old L.A. actor, has said that his performance in Endgame might be his final one, citing the difficulty of learning lines at his age. If that’s the case, he has gone out in a blaze of theatrical glory, giving us a Hamm we will long remember, a blind tyrant with a sly, sardonic sense of humor. With his oracular voice and instinctive feeling for the music and rhythm of Beckett’s language, Mandell is a commanding presence from beginning to end.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
American Psycho
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

The year is 1989, and in the Masters of the Universe world of New York City’s high rollers, it’s all about me, me, me. Patrick Bateman (Benjamin Walker) admires his nearly naked body, spouts the brand names of everything he wears and owns, and likes himself a lot. He’s at the top of his game, and like the Mad Men who have gone before, he’s an expert at selling the sizzle. Life is all about going to the flashiest clubs, snorting cocaine, being seen with the most attractive women, and above all, winning.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Sex with Strangers
Philadelphia Theater Company - Suzanne Roberts Theater

On a snowstormy dark night, tending a Northern Michigan B&B for a friend, Olivia (handsome Joanna Rhinehart) is curled up on a couch next to the fireplace. No internet connection or phone, just pen in hand as she works on a paper. She hears the screeching halt of a car, then at the front door, a man pounding on it, roaring a need and right to enter. So the dignified 39 year old teacher lets the guy in. Yeah, sure.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Long Day's Journey Into Night
American Airlines Theater

Long Day’s Journey into Night is aptly named. At nearly four hours long, this glimpse into the life of a highly dysfunctional family can take its toll. The Tyrones are a mess. James, the patriarch (Gabriel Byrne), is a second rate actor who gave up dreams of playing great Shakespearean roles for a quick buck touring around the country in potboilers. His wife, Mary (Jessica Lange), is a morphine addict and obviously has other psychological problems to boot.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Tuck Everlasting
Broadhurst Theater

Tuck Everlasting may be that musical you’ve heard about, the one where you go out humming the scenery. That’s how gorgeous the sets are, as created by Walt Spangler. The woods in back of little Winnie Foster’s house are green on green on green, with boughs overlapping to create what turns out to be a truly magical place. The tree that Winnie (Sarah Charles Lewis) climbs with her new friend, Jesse (Andrew Keenan-Bolger), takes up nearly the whole stage and moves to accommodate those who choose to climb. At the bottom of the tree is a hidden spring.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2016
Fences
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

To borrow from the world of sports, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater hits a home run with its end-of-season production of Fences.

One can’t really say that Artistic Director Mark Clements has saved the best for last, because most of MRT’s productions this season have been very strong. The musical Dreamgirls and Of Mice and Men immediately spring to mind as representing some of Milwaukee’s best theater. And although Clements didn’t direct Fences, he certainly left the job in good hands.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Two Trains Running
Arden Theater

The time is 1969. The place is Pittsburgh, more specifically The Hill (or Black) District, most specifically a restaurant going downhill because its area’s slated for destruction as urban renewal. A first production problem at Arden Theater’s staging of Two Trains Running is that the restaurant’s sign and entrance with unused cashier’s counter space is angled so it’s readable only from the audience’s left. The sign covers projections on opposite outer walls that seem to have important pictures but who knows?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Waitress
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Some actors are so instantly lovable that from the moment they step onstage, they can do no wrong. Add an unmistakable sincerity, a glorious voice, and real acting chops, and you’ve got Jessie Mueller in a nutshell. For her turn as Jenna, the put-upon Waitress of the title, she also has just enough spice to strive to break free from her dreary life with her totally boorish and self-pitying husband, Cal (Eric Anderson).

Jenna hasn’t had much of a role model; her mother was also married to an insufferable lout. But she did teach Jenna about the joys of baking.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
She Loves Me
Studio 54

The year was 1963 and the lovers of Broadway show tunes were singing and listening to the title song from Hello, Dolly!, and “People” from Funny Girl, the year’s biggest musical hits. But there was another wonderful song – “Ice Cream” – that didn’t make the hit parade but that many people loved yet few had the technique to sing. It was from the less popular but highly praised musical She Loves Me, and sung in the show by lyric soprano Barbara Cook, who subsequently made it her signature song.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Crossing Swords
Union County Performing Arts Center - Hamilton Stage

It is a shame to have to write about a terrific almost-new musical knowing that it is about to close this weekend (Sunday May 1). But that is the case with the disarmingly performed, musically pleasurable, altogether winning Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe (rhymes with “the bay”) in which its 20th century plot pivots off the classic 19th century romantic drama Cyrano de Bergerac. It is a teenaged twist on the old “he loves her but she loves another.”

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Effect, The
Barrow Street Theater

Connie and Tristan are volunteers in a four-week residential study of a new anti-depressant, RLU37. The drug, as it happens, contains dopamine, the chemical associated with general good feeling and, specifically, with love. One of the doctors involved calls RLU37 “Viagra for the heart.”

Such is the premise of Luce Prebble’s fine play The Effect, at the Barrow Street Theater. Connie and Tristan quickly fall in love. But what is this thing called love? Is it just the effect of the drug? This is the central question of the play, but it gets more complicated.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Fully Committed
Lyceum Theater

It’s very possible that we’ve gotten so comfortable watching Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Modern Family that we’ve forgotten how superb an actor he really is. The fact is that even though he makes delivering those funny lines look effortless, comedy is not easy. No one can deny that being the only one on stage for 90 minutes is hard work; add to that the fact that he’s playing at least 40 different characters, and even the most hard-boiled theatergoer has to marvel at how well he brings Fully Committed to life.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Bald Soprano, The
Plymouth Church

Veteran director and Boulevard Theater founder Mark Bucher has thrown local audiences a screwball pitch. He has turned Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano into a hilarious farce. Whether or not Ionesco would approve, he undoubtedly would have admired Boulevard’s brave and hysterically funny treatment. After all, it sure beats one of Ionesco’s own suggestions: to have the audience mowed down by machine guns at the end of the play. (Thankfully, no one has attempted such a bloody ending.)

Nothing of the sort happens here.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2016
Crucible, The
Walter Kerr Theater

Whatever was anticipated or expected from the provocative and always challenging director Ivo Van Hove, his unique approach to the classics (A View from the Bridge) as well as to modern works (Lazarus) virtually insured us a stunning and arresting revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Be prepared for a staging that more than equates this classic drama to its theme and to its relevancy in today’s world.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
April 2016

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