Steppenwolf First Look Repertory of New Work: Okay, Bye; Ironbound; Hushabye
Steppenwolf Theater

Each of the three plays running in repertory under the collective banner of Steppenwolf Theater's First Look Festival raises the question of whether suicide is the answer when you think you've hit bottom. Only one sends us home wholly convinced that it isn't.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Hellish Half-Light
Angel Island

Actors love the plays of Samuel Beckett for the same reasons that audiences hate them. As with his successors, Harold Pinter and Vaclav Havel, they propose a universe steeped in ambiguities itching for performers to lend them coherence. When this mission is accomplished, deep insights into the human condition are revealed. When not, the confusion is enough to trigger howls of frustration in both presenters and witnesses.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Geezers
Redtwist Theater

At first glance, we think we've stumbled upon a sitcom. The setting is a retirement home's "day room," where a few of the residents gather in the evening to socialize before bedtime. Since the title of the play is Geezers, we anticipate a light-hearted comedy of geriatric hijinks and toilet jokes.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Normal Heart, The
Eastline Productions

There is something obviously historic, but also mythic, about Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart,which recently concluded a noteworthy run at Eastline Productions in Wantagh, New York. The show, one of only a few well-known scripts about the advent of AIDS in America, tells the story of a man’s efforts to attract attention to the disease, even before it had a name.

Claude Solnik
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Qualms
Steppenwolf Theater

At a well-planned sex party—or just about any kind of party, for that matter—there is an understanding that you don't have to engage in sex but are free to enjoy the occasion in whatever manner you wish. At poorly-planned sex parties, by contrast, group pressure frequently makes for divisive confrontations between those seeking mindless sensory indulgence and those bent on analytic discussion as a preface to the evening's activities.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Beaux' Stratagem, The
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Festival Theater

The only time I had ever seen The Beaux’ Stratagembefore was in a knockout version in London starring a young Maggie Smith way back in January 1970. I suppose I can understand why this long, messy, expensive, early 18th century offbeat comedy is seldom produced in our time and has had very few major productions on this side of the Atlantic. It requires a half-dozen leading actors and a very large supporting cast, an elaborate staging with period costumes and changing sets, music, dancing and sword-fights.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Jewish Chronicles
The Wee Coo

Daniel Cainer is the Jewish Tom Lehrer. With his satirical songs and clever story-telling, the British-born, piano-playing entertainer calls to mind Lehrer in his heyday — with one important difference: Lehrer lampooned the politics and social issues of his day (the threat of atomic warfare, the nefarious influence of the Vatican, etc.), while Cainer's targets are smaller and more personal: the Jewish world he grew up in.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Intimate Apparel
The Athenaeum

Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel has everything historical-romance fans could want: a gilded-age urban setting, ragtime music, long dresses and frilly underwear. Its personnel are women, mostly the poor-but-independent variety (with a lone rebellious socialite, for contrast), accompanied by handsome rakes and shy admirers. This is no frivolous bodice-ripper, however, but docudrama steeped in grim compromise and survival bought at the expense of happiness.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Churchill
The Greenhouse

Despite our professed love of democracy, we Yanks are even more enamored of monarchies, with their promise of destinies determined by luck and lineage. This tendency to mythologize our Anglo-Saxon ancestors may explain why playwrights so frequently balk at the contradictions of Winston Churchill, whose historical importance in the 20th century is as undisputed as its sheer volume renders it difficult to document.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Minetti
Royal Lyceum

Thanks to the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, English-speaking audiences had a rare chance to see a play by Thomas Bernhard, the celebrated (and controversial) Austrian playwright whose works are, unfortunately, rarely performed in the USA or UK.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show, The
Pleasure Dome

Here's a perfect way to launch your day at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: make one of the daily 10.30 a.m. Bite-Size Breakfast Showsat the Pleasance Dome. Over fresh strawberries, croissants and coffee, you can enjoy an hours' worth of edgy, scintillating short plays with an international appeal.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
James Plays, The
Festival Theater

In what is a landmark achievement for the national theaters of Scotland and Great Britain, the Edinburgh International Festival has mounted an epic trilogy of plays that are surely deserving of the highest praise. Written by Rona Munro and directed by Laurie Sansom, The James Plays— James I, James II and James III — tells the bloody and tumultuous story of the trio of kings who consecutively ruled over Scotland in the 15th century.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Master Class
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

Milwaukee Chamber Theater kicks off its 2014-15 season by reviving one of its greatest hits, Terrence McNally’s Master Class. The theater company is to be applauded for bringing back local actor Angela Iannone to star in a part that has become her signature roll. This production marks Iannone’s eighth incarnation of opera legend Maria Callas, on which the play is based. Over the years, Iannone has appeared in productions of “Master Class” throughout the Midwest. But this is her first chance to play Callas in Milwaukee in 15 years.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Candy Barr's Last Dance
Theater Three

Actress/playwright Ronnie Claire Edwards' play, Candy Barr's Last Dance,opened on August 11, 2014 at Theater Three. Candy Barr, aka Juanita Dale Slusher, began her career as an underage stripper circa 1949 at the Theater Lounge in South Dallas. She went on to perform at the Colony Club in downtown Dallas and later in Las Vegas. Her colorful life included a friendship with Jack Ruby.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Tarzan
Manatee Performing Arts Center - Mainstage

Everyone seems to be having such fun onstage and regaling friends in the audience, especially when jumping up over them along railings and from seat fronts! The flying on vines and wires goes without a hitch. Costumes give new meaning to “camp,” while apes and Tarzan have dreadlocks. How could one not like the rock musical Tarzan?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Somewhere Over the Rose: The Songs and Stories of Judy Garland and Bette Midler
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

As somewhat of a fan for years of Kathy Halenda, I’m disappointed in her exploration of the music of her heroines Judy Garland and Bette Midler. Her script, noting bio facts comparing the two at various ages and stages of personal life and professional musical performance, is banal. She’s best musically displaying “brassy chops,” but they’re not always apropos or varied in arrangement or tone. She could use a director or at least a dramaturg.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Talking With
The Players Theater

Though the eleven women of Talking With mostly talk at us, their differing stories match differing persons who draw us in. Ostensibly feminist, the monologists are, in the main, not admirable. Nor do they achieve their potential to the fullest. But we’ve got to applaud them for trying.

“Fifteen Minutes” has Lynne Doyle as an aging Elaine Stritch-type of actress. She’d like to know her audience as they do her from program biographies. She’s tough enough to get to us under turned-up house lights. We wonder, then, will she go on? No spoiler here!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Collected Stories
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

There are three story-tellers in Collected Stories.Ruth, a long successful writer of short fiction, now mainly teaches graduate students, like Lisa, who aspire to write good stories. Professing deep admiration for Ruth’s writing and teaching, a panting Lisa snags her as a mentor and then becomes her personal assistant. During their six-year relationship, playwright Donald Margulies poses dilemmas -- one of ethical import -- that arise from the give-and-take between teacher and student.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Wizard of Oz, The
Westchester Broadway Theater

It is altogether fitting that Westchester Broadway Theater is enchanting audiences with The Wizard of Oz.As legend goes, the author of the original book, L. Frank Baum, was told to “Follow the yellow brick road” to the William Henry Jackson military academy in Peekskill, N.Y. Baum was 12 years old at the time; he was not cut out for the military regime, and he became miserable at the institution.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
August 2014
Down Range
Preston Bradley Center

Jeffrey Skinner is a poet, and he writes plays like a poet—that is, long on soliloquies and short on facts, with non-chronological scenes arising from a nebulous void to dissolve before achieving consequence. The only solution capable of redeeming such narrative conceits is for the author to pull forth a revelation of sufficient dazzle to lend coherence to everything preceding its disclosure. Skinner, to his credit, delivers.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Dreams and Other Nightmares
Tron Theater

Edwin Morgan, the subject of Liz Lochhead's biographical play, Dreams and Other Nightmares, was a Glaswegian poet, teacher and translator (“Beowulf”) who lived two separate and contradictory lives, one conventional and cozy, the other secret and stormy. The psychic split stemmed from his closeted life as a homosexual; he didn't come out until he was seventy. That meant having to hide his true nature from his parents and the world, even as he was regularly prowling parks and cinemas for rough, anonymous sex.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Small Fire, A
Steep Theater

Don't be fooled by the TV-movie premise of A Small Fire. Author Adam Bock's specialty lies in seemingly harmless settings spotted with empty spaces for audiences' imaginations. Theatergoers anticipating a tidy explanation offering insight into the domestic crisis depicted in this curiously unfinished play are hereby warned that what they take away may well be largely what they brought in.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Get Your Hands Off Me, Chekhov! & Flip Flop
Annoyance Theater

Most comedy nowadays relies on familiarity with current movies and television, but not since the Free Associates disbanded has there been a show geared toward playgoers who spend their leisure time seeing other plays. The syllabus of Anne and Greg Taubeneck's two-person musical romp references a number of classic playwrights—Shakespeare, Williams, Chekhov and Beckett, among others—and while everybody might not see the humor of a convent so small "it only had three sisters," they can always chuckle over its being financed by "a loan from Penny Pritzker."

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Marvelous Marvelettes, The
Black Ensemble

Even for those with personal memories of the era that spawned the so-called youth market, it comes as a shock to recall just how young some of its early "teen idols" were. (Paul Anka had his first hit at the age of 14, and Stevie Wonder, when he was only 12.) The five vocalists who would become Motown's inaugural crossover girl-group under the collective name of “The Marvelettes” were members of their high school glee club when they came to the attention of the legendary Berry Gordy.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Phantom of the Opera, The
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

This summer marks the Phantom of the Opera’s first appearance since 2009. Better yet, Milwaukee gets an early look at this restaged version of the best-selling and longest-running show in Broadway history (in fact, it’s still running). The “new” version has some strong points, including a tightened script (the show has been shortened by 15 minutes) and a more fluid approach. By this, one means that there is rarely a “static” moment in which the characters are merely standing around, trading dialogue. One sees movement everywhere.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Taking Shakespeare
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

For a considerable amount of time during Taking Shakespeare, I thought John Murrell had titled his play ”Talking Shakespeare” because that‘s mainly what occupies the two characters. Murph, 24, a slacker addicted to video games, can’t “connect” to Shakespeare and thus “make it” in college. His mom, dean of humanities, sends him to her once-inspiring Prof, hoping she can link up boy and bard.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Annapurna
Alley Stage

When artists are on a creative roll, they often ignore housekeeping chores and personal hygiene in their quest to concentrate on their work. This may explain why, when we first encounter reclusive, emphysema-racked poet Ulysses, he is wearing nothing but an apron and an oxygen tank, and his trailer in the Colorado Rockies contains a refrigerator filled with rotting meat.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Marvin Gaye: Prince of Soul
WBTT Theater

Sheldon Rhoden looks, acts, sings and returns triumphantly to Westcoast Black Theater Troupe like the real Marvin Gaye as “Prince of Soul” music. Nate Jacobs’ revisal of an earlier version of Gaye’s story covers his career from 1950s to mid-1980s, reigning over developments in and of Motown music. The production boasts typical features that have audiences filling the space WBTT newly owns.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Dead Man's Cell Phone
The Athenaeum

There's this guy in a café, you see, who quietly dies in his chair, and then his cell phone rings. A stranger at the next table answers the noisy device and discovers that it has been rendered ownerless—forever. At first, Jean is reluctant to alarm the callers and takes messages that she knows the man they identify as Gordon Gottlieb will never answer. Later, her self-imposed duty to the dead grows to include consolation—most of it improvised as needed—for his family members.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Sharon McNight: Red Hot Mama - Sophie Tucker's Farewell Tour
Metropolitan Room

Sharon McNight at The Metropolitan Room in Red Hot Mama: The Sophie Tucker Farewell Tour really is hot – a conflagration. Tucker, the blonde, zaftigsinger/comedienne, who was the rare performer doing “blue” material in the 20’s and 30’s, is powerfully portrayed by McNight, who has the vocal power and musicality for the songs, and the pin-point comic timing and the pizzazz for the slightly “off color” comedy delivered with the authority and voice of a master. It’s a marvelous re-creation of a unique legend.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Sty of the Blind Pig, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

There are many things going on in The Sty of the Blind Pig but all so s-l-o-w-l-y. This despite the play being altered from three acts to two. With the change come constant blackouts or dimmed lights to the tunes of jazz or, in a jarring switch toward the end, train sounds. Lost in the change is the fundamental structure of exposition, embroilment, resolution that author Phillip Hayes Dean’s text would seem to demand.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Othello
Gift Theater

Shakespeare never tells us how ethnically diverse the Venetian army was before an African soldier named Othello distinguished himself honorably in the war with Turkey for possession of Cyprus, but the recognition granted this valiant warrior would probably have stirred rancor among his subordinates regardless of his complexion or his marriage to a senator's daughter. The resentment is especially malignant in his immediate subordinate, Iago, already chafing under the indignities of a disabling injury and an indifferent wife.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Persuasion
Concordia University - Todd Wehr Auditorium

At first, it’s difficult to see the connection between Jane Austen’s final novel, Persuasion, and the Christian themes within it. But trust Acacia Theater Company, the area’s only Christian-based theater, to detect them.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
When We Were Young and Unafraid
City Center - Stage 1

Manhattan Theater Club's production at City Center Stage 1 is called, When We Were Young and Unafraid,yet a climate of fear shrouds the characters, both young and old. Playwright Sarah Treem sets the time in 1972, when the Women's Movement for equal rights was a controversial buzz through society. It was the tail end of the era when getting and/or performing an abortion in the United States was still a crime.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Sarasota Improv Festival 2014
Florida Studio Theater - Keating, Gompertz & Goldstein Theaters

Florida Studio Theater’s 6th annual Sarasota Improv Festival proved the best yet of its yearly performances of theater made up mostly on-the-spot. In general, the most experienced troupes showed that practice makes more perfect, and those who practiced a variety of short skits and games came off better than long-form practitioners. An exception to the latter was Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company, this year’s featured long-form troupe, cast from Chicago and NYC improv stars.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Monstrous Regiment
Lifeline Theater

Move over, Dirty Dozen! At ease, Inglorious Basterds! The members of the undefeatable squad called by its foes the "monstrous regiment" are a team of literally monstrous misfits: Carborundum, the phlegmatic troll; Igor, the hunchbacked field surgeon; Wazzer, the sky-pilot mystic; Maladict, the recovering-addict vampire; Tonker and Lofty, the orphanage runaways; and Ozzie, the former bartender. Their superiors in the Borogravian army are the weaselly Col. Strappi, the wise Sgt. Jackrum and the effete Lt. Blouse.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Death and the Maiden
Biograph

The allegorical theme often found in medieval art lending our play its title shares its cognomen with a string quartet by classical composer Franz Schubert, the latter a favorite of the "doctor" who assisted in rape and torture of political prisoners during a recent occupation by military insurgents.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Golf Ball, The
First Lutheran Church

There's this twentysomething playwright named Ian, see, who's in love with a would-be actress named Sheena. He's written a play for her, rented the Theatre at the Lake facility and invited all his family to see it, but Ian's showbiz-diva mom sneers at both his art and his muse—even as she, herself, cougar-stalks a novelist more than a decade her junior.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Partners
Den Theater

If you ever become the recipient of a large amount of money, your wisest course of action is to immediately store it in one or more bank accounts until you can think about it without your heartbeat racing. Do not share the news of your windfall with others, or spend time staring at the check ("Wow! Look at all those zeroes!"), or you could succumb to the hazards of unexpected loot and end up like the characters in Dorothy Fortenberry's play.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014
Late Henry Moss, The
Artistic Home

It's not a cheerful reunion: after hearing that his father has gone missing, Ray Moss arrives at a squalid desert shack to find the family patriarch dead, laid out on his bed with his hands clasped over an empty bottle. Sitting vigil is Ray's long-absent brother, Earl, who refuses to allow the three-day-old corpse to be disturbed. As the siblings squabble over widely differing childhood memories, Ray demands to know the facts of the late Henry Moss's final days, ruthlessly interrogating witnesses to the events culminating in the cryptic homecoming.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 2014

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