Magnificent Dunbar Hotel, The
Los Angeles Theater Center

The protagonist of Levy Lee Simon’s world premiere play is an inanimate object: the Dunbar Hotel. Built in 1930, the Dunbar sat at the heart of south-central L.A.’s black ghetto (racial “covenants” prohibited blacks from living elsewhere in the city). The Dunbar was an elegant hostelry where such showbiz luminaries as Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Ethel Waters–-plus intellectuals like W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson–-could stay when they visited L.A. The Magnificent Dunbar Hotelcarves out a big chunk of history: seventy-eight years’ worth, to be exact.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Liberace!
Milwaukee Repertory Theater

In staging Liberace! , the Milwaukee Repertory Theater reprises one of its most-requested shows in the intimate Stackner Cabaret. This show is well worth an encore, both for the quality of its star performer – Jack Forbes Wilson, who again appears as “Mr. Showmanship” – and the elaborate costumes, sets and lighting. Together, they bring enough glitter and glamour to light up the Las Vegas strip (where Liberace became a household name, by the way).<

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Macbeth
Theatre du Soleil

Shakespeare is acknowledged by a huge portrait at the end of the Cartoucherie’s Grand Hall, surrounded by pictures of historical programs and scenes from his “Scottish Play.” They somehow subdue the often buoyant atmosphere of the place where one can watch the actors making up or enjoy a pre-performance, substantial meal. The current menu warms one a bit: a hearty soup, crusty bread, cheese rolls, fruit-filled custard or special pastry (called Portugeese), wine or water or tea as one might have in Scotland.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Submission, The
Apollo Studio

Writing under pseudonyms is hardly an unknown practice—consider the literary career of Jane Martin, the detective stories of Ed McBain, or Google a 1969 novel by Penelope Ashe called “Naked Came the Stranger.” Reputable artists may adopt noms de plumefor reasons involving contractual conflicts or simple mischief, but whatever the motive, sooner or later, the perpetrators are found out, and after owning up to their deception, everyone shares in the joke.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Death of a Salesman
The Latvian Society

When a small theater company does Death of a Salesman, you can’t expect it to present a superstar in the lead role. Instead, and quite naturally, you hope to see a fresh approach in its staging.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Show Trash
Connelly Theater

Most comedians and comic actors hide behind a mask, real or scripted, that allows them to play the character that has made them famous or infamous. Once stripped away, these actors become their real selves and generally the “real’ human is nothing like their stage alter ego. When John Epperson steps onto the stage and seas himself behind a baby grand, we can’t see Lypsinka his stage persona, in which he becomes Joan Crawford or other divas.

Tim Glasby
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Love Letters
Brooks Atkinson Theater

No one could have predicted that this "sort of a play," as it was described by its author A.R. Gurney when Love Letters premiered Off Broadway in 1989, would have achieved world-wide fame and success (a 1990 Pulitzer Prize finalist) in the ensuing years. In it, two actors simply sit next to each other at a table, never face each other and read their parts - love letters written to each other over a course of 50 years. Intentionally, the letters are not memorized.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Women at War
Rivendell Theater Ensemble

Women at War does for the female front-line grunts in the Iraqi wars what Tracersdid for their male counterparts in Viet Nam, breaking from conventional depictions of women-in-uniform as wholesome all-American campfire girls—or, more recently, Hallmark-card moms skyping smiley greetings to adorable moppets. Instead, Megan Carney's tone approximates the gritty intimacy of a barracks snapshot, creating a collage of desert-camo scrubbed bare of soapy sentiment.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Wizard of Oz, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

Although it’s not technically what one might consider a “Christmas show,” Skylight Music Theater’s Wizard of Oz provides all the magic, fantasy and good moral lessons that might be found in more “typical” holiday fare. Plus, there’s a cute little dog and two witches! What kids wouldn’t want to see a show about that? One hopes that audiences will turn out in large numbers to see this amazing production, which excels in both its casting and production values.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
What the Butler Saw
Mark Taper Forum

The laughs come fast and furious in Center Theater Group’s revival of Joe Orton’s 1967 sex farce, What the Butler Saw, now in a holiday run at the Mark Taper Forum. Directed by John Tillinger, an Orton expert (Loot and Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Taper), Butler pokes rude, wicked fun at psychiatry, the police, marriage, publishing, nymphomania, religion and even Winston Churchill during the course of its madcap story.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Watch on the Rhine
The Artistic Home

It's easy for us Americans, safely barricaded on two sides by the earth's biggest oceans, to ignore the border disputes of countries sharing more closely forged histories and real estate. Ah, but what if those disturbances invaded our homes—indeed, our very families? Would you render their agents your assistance? How much? And for how long?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Country House, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

It won't take savvy theater audiences or more specifically those familiar with the plays by Anton Chekhov (notably Uncle Vanya and The Seagull) to recognize the playful conceit deployed by Donald Margulies in his play set in a country home in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Here, a family of self-centered theater folk feud, fret, and fuss about their careers while giving equal time to their complicated personal lives.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
River, The
Circle in the Square

Hugh Jackman - rugged, charismatic, he's The Man. Put him on a stage, and they will come. In The River at the Circle in the Square, audiences fill seats and stand in the back to look and listen as he waxes poetically about fish and love, or the search for both. They watch as he prepares a fish on stage. The Woman (Cush Junbo) caught it, but The Man guts and fillets it, chops the vegetables, and places it lovingly in a roasting pan for the evening meal. Is there more to this enigmatic play by Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) than a man loving to fish?

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Lieutenant of Inishmore, The
Raven Arts Complex

First, there's Padraic, an Irish "freedom fighter" whose tactics are so brutally implemented that even the IRA rejected him—but whose most terrible revenge is reserved for the assassin sending his beloved pet cat to its untimely end. This is Christy, leader of a rival self-styled patriot band likewise indifferent to human slaughter, albeit uneasy with the notion of cruelty to animals.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Inside, The
The Greenhouse

In the context of a linear plot, it would be called a "soliloquy"—like when Hamlet (or the King of Siam, for that matter) stops to mull over his next course of action. In The Inside, Lydia R. Diamond, however, dispenses with the frame altogether to base her entire play within the consciousness of a young artist—identified only as "Emma"—who surveys the participants of a party and wonders, "What am I doing here?"

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Tamer of Horses
Biograph

William Mastrosimone's reputation as a playwright is based in bunker-dramas premised on a few people in a small space exploring a single underlying question until its possibilities are exhausted. The thesis for this three-handed exercise—premiering in 1985 and twice revised since—is a variation on the homily "there's no such thing as a bad boy" and its forum, a barn and kitchen in rural New Jersey, where dwell prep-school professors Ty and Georgiane Fletcher.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Real Thing, The
American Airlines Theater

There is no denying that a fine cast can make an acclaimed and also familiar play resonate as if one is seeing it for the first time. If this third time for me around the park with Tom Stoppard's cleverly erudite play does not necessarily offer any surprises, the Roundabout production is grand and generally rewarding. It will undoubtedly dazzle those as yet unfamiliar with the renowned playwright's ultra sophisticated wordplay.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Bright Room Called Day, A
Chemically Imbalanced

Moral exuberance" declares Zillah Katz, our story's narrator-guide, is the key to escaping creeping despotism. No playwright was more morally exuberant in 1985 than Tony Kushner, his outrage so great that it would require the two-part, seven-hour Angels in America to contain it. In the meantime, he contented himself with drawing parallels between the Reagan administration and the rise of the Third Reich, speaking through the device of an insomniac conspiracy junkie haunted by flashbacks of her Weimar Republic-era predecessors.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Lady Balls
Annoyance Theater

Playwright John Loos was once a photographer for his school yearbook—duty endowing him with an insider's view of the "unchecked aggression, emotion, joy, loss and friendship" associated with women's collegiate basketball. In Lady Balls, his account of the fictional Tallahassee Lady Fireballs encompasses all of these themes, paying homage to the tropes of sweat-and-soap epics while still delivering plenty of Annoyance's trademark bawdiness.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Harvey
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

As the Milwaukee Repertory Theater dove into the holiday season with its perennial moneymaker, A Christmas Carol, it also sought another heartwarming alternative. So it turned to the chestnut, Harvey, a 1944 play that won a Pulitzer Prize for playwright Mary Chase.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
On the Town
Lyric Theater

There is a very good reason why members of the audience feel they can't help but dance up the aisles after the curtain falls on this exuberant, ebullient, effervescent revival of this classic 1944 musical about sailors on leave looking for love. It would be enough if you had only the gorgeous score by Leonard Bernstein to lift your spirits, but there is the warmly funny book written by geniuses Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and the alternately robust and dreamy choreography created by Joshua Bergasse to further enrich a show that may be familiar to many.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Side Show
St. James Theater

Blazing talent is center stage in this presentation of the cult favorite, Side Show. Erin Davie, as the gentle, shy, “Siamese twin” Violet Hilton is superb. If possible, Emily Padgett is even more outstanding as outgoing, aspirational Daisy Hilton. There is a real vein of sadness and horror in their story. As mere babies, they were put into the hands of cruel guardians who wished only to take advantage of them.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
River, The
Circle in the Square

Hugh Jackman is a powerful presence in Jez Butterworth’s play, The River: he’s handsome, physically agile, wonderfully charming, and clear spoken. He makes a seduction pitch that young swains might memorize. It’s irresistible. His ploy of seduction is to take a woman to his cabin in the woods to go fishing.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
You Can't Take it With You
Longacre Theater

The 1936 comedy about a crazy mixed up arty family by the masters of their time, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, You Can’t Take it with You, is just as much fun today as it has been all these years. (I played Mr. DePinna in 1947 at Emory University.) With a superb familiar Broadway cast led by James Earl Jones as the grandfather, we are also introduced to a comic gem: Annaleigh Ashford. She’ll go far and high.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Simon Stephens’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,based on a book by Mark Haddon, is a performance-art piece, a play that explores the world of an autistic boy (played by the physically flexible Alex Sharp) who speaks in announcements with crisp consonants, and reacts to the imaginative trips provoked by the world around him. It’s odd, brilliant, stylized, with lots narrated by his teacher and his mother. It’s also a light show, designed by Paule Constable, with active patterns that actually become a description of inner state.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Last Ship, The
Neil Simon Theater

Pop-rock star Sting (of The Police and solo fame) is making a splashy debut on Broadway. It is not with a personal appearance but rather as the composer of an impressive and rather traditionally conceived musical.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Belle of Amherst, The
Westside Theater

There’s nothing easy about performing a monologue for two hours, but Joely Richardson makes it seem like the most natural thing in the world. Reclusive poet Emily Dickenson is The Belle of Amherst, at least in her girlhood daydreams. She grows up in the Homestead, as she calls her father’s house. We learned that he was a strong, undemonstrative man but much loved by his daughter. Now that he’s gone, Emily lives in the house with her sister, Lavinia; she assures us that the rumors that Lavinia, too, has remained a spinster so she could stay with Emily are untrue.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Last Ship, The
Neil Simon Theater

Joe Mantello, with the help of choreographer Steven Hoggett, has outdone himself directing The Last Ship,book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey, music and lyrics by Sting. This is quite an interesting musical about a maritime town in Ireland that has stopped building ships and wants the workers, ship-builders for generations, to use their skills and tools to repair machinery. The townfolk want to build only ships, and they set out to build one themselves. Somehow they’re going to find the metal, engines, etc., and with a workman’s nobility and pride, build it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Side Show
St. James Theater

Side Show, book and lyrics by Bill Russell, music by Henry Krieger, is a stylized piece, brilliantly directed by Bill Condon, with miraculous choreography by Anthony Van Laast, based on the adventures of actual Siamese Twins, the Hilton sisters, who went from Side Show Freaks to Vaudeville and fame. The sisters, played by Erin Davie and Emily Padgett are remarkable -- beautiful, great singers and dancers, and where they found this pair of actual Siamese Twins is, I guess, a secret. They can’t fool me and say that they are two separate women!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Grand Concourse
Playwrights Horizons

How nice it is to be personally moved and stimulated by a new play as happened with Grand Concourse by Heidi Schreck. First introduced to the playwright when her There Are No More Big Secrets was produced at Rattlestick Theater in 2010, I am not familiar with her writing for the TV series "Nurse Jackie." That she is also a fine actor with numerous New York and regional credits only confirms her as multi-disciplined and talented.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Heresy
Next Act Theater

There seem to be no taboo topics at Next Act Theater, which has made its reputation by producing work that sometimes provokes its audience, causing it to question, to think, and perhaps to re-evaluate its own beliefs. Next Act’s current offering, A.R. Gurney’s Heresy, sounded like it would be a perfect fit. However, that’s not the case. The only thinking that audiences are likely to do while viewing this fiasco is: “When is the play going to end?”

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Hairspray
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Emphasizing the fun in Hairspray’s many funky features, the stars and all who support them at Florida Studio Theater never let their energy or smiles flag. Like their 1960s hairdos, they represent sky-high hopes, then actions of the big-hearted to win out against the pig-and-wrong-headed in a contest that’s silly on the surface but will have a serious purpose deep down.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Billy & Ray
Vineyard Theater

It’s hard for us to imagine a time when film noir was considered daring and even dangerous. We’ve seen so many parodies of men in fedoras with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, growling “Stick with me, Baby.” Billy & Ray is the story behind the story, the tale of how the renowned writer/director Billy Wilder (Vincent Kartheiser) teamed up with novelist Raymond Chandler (Larry Pine) to create what became a movie classic.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Night Mother
The Lost Studio

Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Night, Mother has been winningly revived at The Lost Studio, thanks to outstanding performances by Sylva Kelegian and Lisa Richards (who honed their work at the Actors Studio). Kelegian plays Jessie, the woman who is so bored and disappointed by life that she has decided to commit suicide; Richards plays her elderly mother Thelma, a woman fighting with all the weapons she can muster to keep her daughter alive.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
South Pacific
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

A friend asked about Asolo Rep’s new season opener: “Why South Pacific?”I explained that it fits artistic director Michael Donald Edwards’s commitment to a five-year exploration of the American Character. It would seem this third-year start also aims at getting a sizable audience right off (as musicals are loved in Sarasota) as well as giving a timely tribute to service people, especially veterans.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Lion King, The
Milwaukee Theater

The Lion King, the most successful musical in American history, roars into Milwaukee for the first time since 2008. It will play a four-week run at the cavernous Milwaukee Theater. The theater, with more than 4,000 seats, is nearly twice the size of Lion King’sfirst home, Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater in New York. (The show is now playing at the Minskoff Theater). The extra space comes in handy for some of the animal effects for which the show is known.

Annie Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Whether or not you have read Mark Haddon's novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” this imaginative stage adaptation, originally produced by London's National Theatre, works beautifully as a marvel of stage craft wizardry and high-tech design. More importantly, as a play it can be enjoyed as a mystery thriller with an unusual twist.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Water Engine, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theatre

David Mamet originally wrote The Water Engine in 1977 as a radio drama, and that’s how the Asolo Conservatory actors start out playing it. But the presentational style becomes a backdrop for downstage representational acting of the story. Here, the mix makes for progress that echoes the time and setting: Chicago, 1934, at the height of the Century of Progress Fair. It touted science and industry as the ways out of recession, leading to everyone’s getting work and achieving the American Dream.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Exit the King
East Line Productions

When the king in EastLine Production’s presentation of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King finds out a doctor has given him very little time to live, his reaction is normal. He says what most of us would think, and many of us would say. “Tell me this isn’t true,” T. Gregg McClain, clad in a crown and royal attire, says as King Berenger.

Claude Solnik
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Real Thing, The
American Airlines Theater

If you love Noel Coward, chances are you’ll like The Real Thing. There’s a similar voice; four people who are supposed to love each other snipe, cheat, and yearn for the better something that’s just around the bend. Whether or not the characters in this play achieve that happiness is open for debate. During the course of the comedy, themes are developed delving into the nature of what reality and truth actually mean, especially as it applies to relationships.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
November 2014

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