Application Pending
Westside Theater - Downstairs

It took me 15 minutes watching Application Pending to adjust to Christina Bianco’s electrifying, over-the-top performance. Between her faster-than-a-speeding-bullet character changes, each with their own voice and mannerisms, and a surprisingly intelligent script that skewers just about everything and everybody in the most non-PC way, I had to reprogram my brain to take it all in. If I hadn’t, my head would have exploded with all of the different personalities and hot-button subjects being fired at me from the stage.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Under the Skin
Arden Theater

Michael Hollinger is the respected author of eleven full-length plays, including Opus and Red Herring, and he writes about serious issues, often historic — plagiarism, corruption among the priesthood, cold-war witch hunts for Russian spies — while leavening his stories with a great deal of humor. His latest is different. Under the Skin is a sober look at family strains that are aggravated when a man is in renal failure and needs a kidney transplant.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Sons of the Prophet
Blank Theater

Sons of the Prophet came to L.A. with a lot of hoopla propelling it: successful run at the Roundabout in New York, finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. That made me attend the L.A. premiere with a keen sense of anticipation...only to be badly let down.

Stephen Karam’s play about a Pennsylvania Lebanese-American family going through tough times has some good moments but never quite jells. Instead of being caught up in its story, I found myself feeling more and more detached and indifferent as it unfolded.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Fly
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

So true is the recreation of a final bombing scene in Fly that you for may forget you’re in a theater with actors rather than fliers. It’s the exciting climax to a poignant flashback story by a Tuskegee Airman of a tough path to acceptance and achievements of military African Americans from training to proving themselves as officers and pilots. First, they had to accept each other in brotherhood, despite their different backgrounds and values.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Constellations
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

It is sometimes the case that a less-than-wonderful play, in this case, Constellations, more an acting exercise than a play, the type traditionally found in acting classes, gets the most wonderful reviews and becomes a bona fide Broadway hit. There is no accounting for taste -- as they say, that’s what makes horse races – but one can conjecture as to why so many of the critics, major and minor, from the New York Times to the Hollywood Reporter to Time Out, have filed rave reviews.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival
Kirk Douglas Theater

Culture Clash, the L.A.-based, Latino comedy troupe, has given new life to its 2003 show, Chavez Ravine. As directed by Lisa Peterson, the show bites into a big chunk of local history: the post-WW II destruction of a thriving neighborhood by rapacious and corrupt politicians and businessmen.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2015
Tru
Theater Three

Theater Three is presenting Tru, the one-man show based on the life of novelist Truman Capote. I'm not sure why.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Good People
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

One of the best plays I’ve seen in a long time is the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production of Good People, a Tony-nominated play by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lindsay-Abaire. A top notch cast, under the superb direction of Kate Buckley, brings out the essence of this multi-layered play about contemporary life. Aptly named by another critic as “the defining play of the Great Recession,” Good People takes place in urban South Boston. Residents of this poor side of town call themselves “Southies.”

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Once on This Island
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

A child’s fairytale blossoms into a full-blown musical as Once on This Island appears on Milwaukee’s Cabot Theater stage, courtesy of Skylight Music Theatre. The show is bursting with wild colors, energy and fantastical characters. This Caribbean atmosphere is perfectly timed to help Wisconsin patrons forget about the chilling temperatures and snowdrifts outside.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Circle Mirror Transformation
Players Theater

In a Vermont Community Center, Marty, age 55, will teach and participate in a six week class in Adult Creative Drama with five others. What they create in their circle will mirror their selves and each other. Will their group dynamic then transform them?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Accidentally Like a Martyr
A Red Orchid Theater

Don't be fooled by the Bee Gees playing on the jukebox or the twinkling lights strung over the walls. This isn't 1973; it's 2005. The lights are because it's three days before Christmas, and the music is so Edmund, the heavy-drinking novelist, can delay returning home to care for his dying father.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle, The
Steep Theater

Consider for a moment how many great works of art originated with a young man trying to impress a girl (or boy—let's be fair), or a young woman pouring out her heart to an unseen listener/viewer. Consider, also, the popular icons whose acclaim faded with the passing of their fan base. (Thomas Kyd's dramas consistently outsold Shakespeare's, but how many theaters do The Spanish Tragedy nowadays?)

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Explorers Club, The
WaterTower Theater

A co-production with Stage West in Fort Worth, WaterTower Theater's staging of Nell Benjamin's farce, The Explorers Club, is their best in many years. As you enter the house you are transported to Victorian England via the best set I've seen on any stage. One immediately notes the suit of armor on a pedestal stage right and the large circular bar stage left in front of a stained-glass window on a set by architect/set designer Clare Floyd Devries.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
No Child
Next Act theater

One cannot imagine a play more timely than the semi-autobiographical No Child by Nilaja Sun. First performed (by the playwright) in 2006 at New York City’s Epic Theater Center, the play has lost none of its power. Thanks to a strong performance by Marti Gobel and tight direction by Mary MacDonald Kerr, this production by Next Act Theatre is a reminder to bureaucrats of what is lost when performing arts such as music, theater and dance are stripped from school curriculums.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour
Ahmanson Theater

Barry Humphries, the Australian comic actor, has been channeling the outrageously egomaniacal housewife Edna Everage ever since he was a college student. Now, after some sixty hugely successful years, Humphries is finally putting Dame Edna (as she took to calling herself) to rest.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Both Your Houses
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The third year of Asolo Rep’s exploration of the American Character focuses on money, power, and sex. Both Your Houses concentrates on the first two in a play that won author Maxwell Anderson a 1933 Pulitzer Prize and is just as pertinent today.

The title comes from curses made on Romeo and Juliet’s two fighting families, with images here of the U. S. Congress, especially a House of Representatives shown to represent its own interests above those of the country.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
7 Easy Pieces

(see reviews under Seven Easy Pieces)

Seven Easy Pieces
Greenway Court Theater

That venerable theatrical organization Actors Studio has long been doing its work in private. Its acting, directing and writing units have been active on both coasts, but always behind the lines, far removed from the production battlefield. This was a conscious decision on the part of the Studio, whose emphasis has always been on “the work,” not the result.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them
Flatiron Center

The Tolentino family is not what is usually defined by that term. Doctor Mom died of cancer after divorcing Doctor Dad, who now lives with his girl friend, periodically depositing money in a bank account to cover the household expenses of 16-year-old son Kenny and 12-year-old Edith—the latter of whom considers herself guardian of the homestead, and will show you her BB gun to prove it. So successfully have the siblings adapted to this arrangement that they now regard adult interference as an unwelcome nuisance.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Keys of the Kingdom
Theater Wit

What we know for sure is that while in New York City for a book signing, high-profile preacher Ed Newell was shown a painting that the common citizens of Lower Manhattan worshipped as a shrine. Upon returning to his 400-member congregation, he commences hiring the artist to furnish his megachurch offices with a ceiling mural, despite Irene Hoff's status as an avowed lesbian atheist. This meets with the disapproval of assistant pastor Arthur Garrett, but as work proceeds on the project, the dissenter finds himself in need of an organ transplant.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Constellations
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

I’m recommending Constellations to every actor and acting teacher I know. This is the scene-study class taken to its highest level. Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson accomplish the nearly impossible task of keeping us fascinated while repeating the same scene over and over. For the most part, these are mundane encounters featuring a man and a woman meeting and ultimately ending up together. Along the way, they encounter the kind of pain and tragedy which is the stuff both of life and of drama.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Honeymoon in Vegas
Nederlander Theater

In Honeymoon in Vegas, once again, we have a heroine who desperately wants to get married (Guys and Dolls). Her screwed-up fiancé is in the clutches of his guilt-spewing mother (Bye Bye Birdie)who, it turns out, is long dead. Unfortunately, that doesn’t keep her from popping up in the most unlikely places, and the worst possible time, to remind sonny that she told him never to marry. Although she’s been disappointed many times, Betsy hangs in there, waiting for Jack to finally grow up and do the right thing. The question is…why?

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Reborning
Fountain Theater

In its Los Angeles premiere, Reborning explores the dark side of maternal love with considerable bravery and skill. The play by Zayd Dohrn is set in a grungy loft in Queens where Kelly (the uncanny Joanna Strapp) is a doll-maker for a special clientele comprising women who have either suffered miscarriages or find themselves unable to conceive. Kelly turns store-bought dolls into hyper-realistic facsimiles of the real thing–-in effect, giving birth to them.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Beautiful Music All Around Us, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

It takes more than two hours for musician, author and performer Steven Wade to persuade audiences that the roots of American music are as much a part of our collective history as the written word. The Beautiful Music All Around Usis a one-man show based on Wade’s recent book of the same name. Researching and writing the book has consumed a good chunk of Wade’s professional life, and one guesses he could easily go on for another two hours once he’s onstage.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Forbidden Broadway
Manatee Center for the Performing Arts - Stone Hall

Though Gerard Alessandrini stopped doing a yearly version of Forbidden Broadway, we now get to see “Greatest Hits” of the past along with satirical takes on current shows and stars. Rather than stretch their considerable talents to present mostly numbers that often employed a dozen acting/singing dancers, the cast of four emphasize solo performers. So even if people haven’t seen all the musicals satirized, they can recognize by whom and how cleverly.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Bye, Bye, Liver: The Chicago Drinking Play
The Public House (moved to Stage 773)

Just as any two coinciding activities can be turned into a competition—e.g., penny pitching, centipede racing—almost any fixed text can serve as the basis for synchronized consumption of intoxicating beverages. In 2006, Byron Hatfield's comedy troupe, finding their late-nite audiences at Gorilla Tango to be dominated by Bucktown hipsters coming off pub crawls, began incorporating drinking rituals into their sketches. Eight years and three locations later, the interactive revue dubbed Bye, Bye, Liver continues to draw crowds of thirsty pilgrims.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Kiss Kiss Cabaret
The Uptown Underground

A licensing delay postponed the opening of this latest addition to Chicago's historical "speakeasy" district at Broadway and Lawrence Avenue—recently targeted by Mayor Emanuel for rejuvenation—but the Kiss Kiss Cabaret forged ahead with a "press rehearsal" in the newly-furbished Uptown Underground, a basement hideaway (rumored to have been Al Capone's annex to the Green Mill across the intersection) snuggled into a 1926 Walter Ahlschlager building just north of the El tracks.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Foursome, The
Manatee Performing Arts Center - Kiwanis Theater

The actors all fit their roles so well physically and emotively in The Foursome that it’s a shame they have to sustain a long, drawn-out version of a reunion of college best friends. During 18--count ‘em 18--scenes that begin and end on the holes of a golf course, each person’s shots laboriously frame the really important conversations that occur among those waiting to move on.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Revival
Acting Artists Theater

Carla Neuss’s Revival, now in a world-premiere run in West Hollywood, is an odd, whimsical play about the patrons of a snobbish bar (handsomely designed by Yuri Okahana) that has an other-worldly feel to it. More sanctuary than saloon, as one of patrons insists, the place operates under some strict rules. First, no vodka can be served (because it has no flavor); second, men must not speak to women unless invited by the latter; third, you must tell a story if you wish to get served.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Queen of Colors, The
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Queen of Colors, based on the renowned children’s book by Jutta Bauer, uses ingenious puppetry to weave a simple story about kindness and originality. The Court Painter (accompanied by a Court Musician) creates vivid backdrops for the feisty little puppet queen who ventures into her kingdom to experience the personalities of each color of the rainbow. However, while fun comes in all colors, too much of a good thing can turn into a grey mess.

Mavis Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Serrano
Matrix Theater

The theatrical antecedents of Serrano are many: there’s Cyrano for starters, followed by Pygmalion, “The Godfather” and Guys and Dolls (with “The Sopranos” bringing up the rear). When you add such spicy ingredients as bawdy humor, political incorrectness and a big dose of transvestism to the pot–not to speak of two dozen terrific songs–well, what you end up with is one helluva crazy, mixed-up, hilarious musical comedy.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Good People
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Exploring class and its effects on people’s opportunities and personas has been powerful in British drama, especially since playwright John Osborne looked back in anger. Good People brings the exploration, much subdued since Odets’s plays were popular, to contemporary America. Realistically serious yet not without humor, David Lindsay-Abaire questions whether chance and a person’s circumstances in life influence the direction it takes, as much as or more than character.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Delicate Balance, A
John Golden Theater

Examined through Edward Albee's ironic mindset, marriage and life are a balance of friends and family, morals and manners, neatly sidestepping messy complications. Under the nuanced helm of director Pam McKinnon (director of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance is currently in revival at Broadway’s John Golden Theater.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
Venice Theater Stage II

Hollywood 1933 isn’t a place where Negro actors thrived. As Lynn Nottage points out, Vera Stark typically works as maid to Gloria Mitchell, a Mary Pickford-like “Sweetheart” who privately drinks, smokes, and has to work up to posing for her public. She’s also working on a prominent director to make her the star of a Selznick-type epic, “The Belle of New Orleans.” Vera wants to play her maid, one of the few roles open to a black woman, but that can be made more than the popular stereotype.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Knock Me a Kiss
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe Theater

Knock Me a Kiss, a fictionalized account of what happened before and after the spectacular wedding of W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter and Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen focuses on the former. But the frame of the picture is her father’s major role in the Civil Rights Movement and his desire for integration.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Life Upon the Wicked Stage
The Studio at 620

“Life Upon the Wicked Stage” according to the song “ain’t nothing like a girl supposes.” In Jo Morello and Jack Gilhooley’s same-titled ensemble of one-acts, it ain’t always what actors and especially playwrights would like to experience. Yet it certainly holds its shares of laughs for audiences.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Blonde Poison
Theater Forty - Reuben Cordova Theater

The desperate fight to survive is what powers Gail Louw’s Blonde Poison along the dramatic rails. Louw, a British playwright who lost her grandparents in the Holocaust, won prizes when her play premiered two years ago in the U.K. Now Theater 40 has mounted the U.S. premiere of her solo drama about a German-Jewish woman, Stella Goldschlag (1922-1994), who survived the Holocaust by becoming a Greifer, an informant for the Gestapo.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Matchmaker, The
Asolo Repertory Theater

How does playwright Thornton Wilder make philosophy entertaining?
Answer: When he embodies it in widow Dolly Levi’s confidences to us about the relationship between money and happiness, about how spreading the first to the young can bring about growth of the second, and about how both can be intertwined with success in romance and love.

Wilder’s Dolly the Matchmaker puts her actions where her philosophizing is, and Horace Vandergelder--his fortune, and everyone connected with him and it--will never be the same. What fun for us to watch and learn!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Anything Goes
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

For a musical written in 1934, Anything Goes still has a lot going for it. The national tour, based on the show’s 1987 revival, proves why it was such a hit on Broadway and beyond. Director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall wisely trimmed the script (which was never this musical’s strong suit).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2015
Second City, The: Panic on Cloud Nine
Piper's Alley

Unlike such niche-market troupes as Annoyance, the Public House, the Cornservatory, Gorilla Tango and the Cupid Players, Second City's international status attracts patrons of all demographics, reflecting cultural backgrounds ranging from urban neighborhoods and nearby suburbs to faraway countries. Faced with the task of finding comedy appealing to such a diverse audience, it's as easy to err on the side of dumb as on the side of smart in selecting material.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2015

Pages