All the Rage
Peter Jay Sharp Theater

The great monologist Martin Moran is the most charming entertainer in town in All the Rage,the solo show written and performed by him. He explores the roots of anger, forgiveness, people open, people blocked, in America and as an interpreter in Africa. He’s a masterful story-teller from start to finish, with the agility of a dancer, who, as he gives flesh to people in his encounters, touches the heart and the funny bone as he tells of his adventures with a poignant sense of humor and basic human truthfulness that is rare.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Gift, The
Geffen Playhouse

Credulity is strained mightily in The Gift, Joanna Murray-Smith's 90-minute comedy about two dissimilar couples forming an odd emotional bond. Smith, an Australian playwright whose work has been done before at the Geffen (The Female of the Species),investigates how a single accidental moment -- the sinking of a small boat -- manages to transform all four lives in a twinkling.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Family Thing, A
Stage 52

"The play's about three brothers raised by wolves," says director Chris Fields about A Family Thing, the blistering new drama by Gary Lennon which has just been mounted by the Echo Theater Company. Both Fields and Lennon happened to grow up in the Hell's Kitchen section of NYC; their matching sensibilities mesh to good effect in the production at Stage 52.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
I Wanna Be Loved: Stories of Dinah Washington, Queen of the Blues
Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center

The great singer Barbara Morrison pays tribute to another great singer, the late Dinah Washington, in her solo show, I Wanna Be Loved, now in its world premiere run at BMPAC, the performing arts center named after the show’s star.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Heap of Livin', A
Odyssey Theater

The always-stalwart actor Lawrence Pressman plays a once-famous folk singer, Ramblin' Harry, in A Heap of Livin’,a new play by Elliot Shoenman now in its world-premiere run at the Odyssey Theater.

Ramblin' Harry, a kind of poor man's King Lear, may be old, widowed and dying, but he is still raging against the dark in his ramshackle home in the Los Angeles hills, much to the consternation of his two daughters.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Beyond Words
Historic Asolo

In the eleven episodes comprising Beyond Words,Bill Bowers narrates, mimes, sometimes dances and acts parts of his life. From his sketch, “What Is a Boy?” through “What Makes a Boy a Man?”, he matures to his present self--happy as a performer and as a partner in a gay marriage.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Clockmaker, The
Next Act Theater

The most challenging aspect of Stephen Massicote’s The Clockmakeris getting past the first few scenes. They seem to be entirely disconnected, and time must pass before the audience has any idea of what it is watching. But that’s exactly what the playwright is striving to achieve – the experience of not entirely knowing what is coming next. Under Mary MacDonald Kerr’s sure-footed direction, the early confusion eventually comes into sharp focus.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Clybourne Park
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powehouse Theater

Sometimes referred to as a play about “race and real estate,” Clybourne Park (and its issues) goes much deeper. However, “race and real estate” may be the simplest way to describe this complex and fascinating look at the prejudices – and general views – of our society. It is a play about lonely people, barely connected to each other but too desperate to break free from each other. Under the superb direction of artistic director Mark Clements, a top-notch cast at Milwaukee Rep gives this play all the various nuances it deserves.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Kimberly Akimbo
Backstage at the Players

It’s a comedy, yes, but a dark one. Although that’s not how The Players bring off their too-surfacey Kimberly Akimbo.

Because a rare condition ages her four and a half times faster than normal, Kimberly at 16 doesn’t “fit in” at school or home. She not only looks older than her family but appears more developed morally. Her father Buddy drinks and avoids even meals at home. Her pregnant mother Pattie, hands bandaged due to carpal tunnel syndrome, expects to be waited on. She tapes messages to the fetus she wants to care for her in her old age.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2013
Annie
Palace Theater

Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin’s classic musical Annie, with a fun book by Thomas Meehan (later, The Producers),is all too often considered a children’s/family musical. Of course, it is that. But the current revival has lots of great songs and humor – including in jokes – to satisfy adults.

At the performance I attended, it wasn’t particularly surprising to hear several adults saying they were at the revival because it was the first show their parents took them to or a show they saw when a kid and still vividly remember.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Backbeat: The Birth of the Beatles
Ahmanson Theater

Backbeat is literally a blast from the past, a near-three-hour explosion of Beatles history, dance, music and song. Performed by a 21-person, youthful and multi-talented cast (many of whom have previously done the show in Glasgow and London), Backbeat dramatizes the early years (1960s) of the Liverpudlian lads who honed their craft in Hamburg's red-light district, playing eight hours a night in a strip club owned by a sleazeball ex-Nazi named Bruno Koschmider (Edward Clarke).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
All the Rage
Peter J. Sharp Theater

All the Rage is a first-rate one-man show written and beautifully performed by Martin Moran. This is a work of non-fiction that humorously and poignantly explores the special and painful events that were a part of his growing up and how those experiences shaped the character of the man on stage.

Scott Bennett
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Zelda at the Oasis
St. Luke's Theater

A sparkling performance by Gardner Reed carries the two-hander, Zelda at the Oasis,a sympathetic look at the life and psyche of the woman married to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Living in the shadows of her husband’s acclaim and in the margins of his work schedule, Zelda compensates with drink and flirtation, all the while fearing that the madness that runs in her family – and has led to her occasional institutionalization – will overtake her for good. Reed stresses Zelda’s feistiness, even as her underlying desperation becomes increasingly apparent.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
The Hebrew Hillbilly
Santa Monica Playhouse

Shelley Fisher is one of the last of the red-hot mamas. At 63, the Memphis-born singer is still belting out blues, rock and country in feisty fashion. Despite numerous professional setbacks and disappointments, she hasn't quit on herself. On the contrary, she has taken on one of the theater's toughest challenges -- a solo show.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf, An
freeFall Theater

The Cafe du Grand Boeuf is not only the best restaurant in 1961 Paris but perhaps in the world. It exists only to serve multimillionaire Victor. Chef Gaston and maître d’Claude with his waitress wife, Mimi, keep always ready for their boss’ arrival. Claude is training Antoine to replace a waiter who died.

In from a Madrid sojourn with customary companion Mademoiselle (a.k.a. Miss Berger), comes a sad, weary Victor. Alone. He announces he is going to starve himself to death at his dinner table.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, The: Version 2.0
Geva Theater Center

Geva Theater Center’s own version [the title reads “Version 2.0”] of Mike Daisey’s fascinating, hilarious, and deeply disturbing monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,is audience-rewarding proof that Daisey’s notorious polemic is going to continue in our theatrical repertories, perhaps with many small genetic alterations in its progeny.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich
Freud Playhouse

Back to Back Theater, an Australian company comprising actors with a disability, recently brought its provocative and startling production of Ganesh Versus the Third Reichto UCLA's Freud Playhouse for a brief run.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
To the Promised Land
Todd Wehr Theater

The world premiere of local playwright Jonathan Gillard Daly’s To the Promised Landattempts to parallel the conditions faced by African Americans in the 1960s with those faced by Jewish immigrants several decades earlier. According pre-show remarks made by First Stage artistic director Jeff Frank, the play is presented as “the company’s gift to our community.”

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Richard Rodgers Theater

With lots of noise but little action, the heat of sensuality is surprisingly low-temp in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.Scarlett Johannson charges her interpretation of Maggie the Cat with fierceness, desperation, and determination, but her feline is more lioness than sex kitten. She cajoles, challenges and demands her aloof, alcoholic husband, Brick (Benjamin Walker), to impregnate her and thus insure his inheritance. But Brick is a disgruntled ex-jock shorn of all hope or ambition. He despises Maggie and has no interest in his family plantation.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Heidi Chronicles, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Better to call this production “The Heidi Cartoons.” Its unlucky 13 scenes even get introduced by projected montages intended to characterize women navigating the 1960s,’70s,’80s. They’re more like Saturday newspaper pages of political funnies or collections of feminine “Zits” strips.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Educating Rita
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Renaissance Theaterworks continues its 20th season with Educating Rita, a play that teams a young, uneducated woman in her mid-20s with a cynical, boozy academic. It doesn’t seem like a match made in heaven. But this excellent production, directed by Jenny Wanasek, creates a captivating connection between these two people. Both start out as lost souls. By the time the play winds down to its bittersweet ending, only one of the souls finds itself and soars toward fulfillment.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Picnic
American Airlines Theater

Dark themes of loneliness, smashed dreams and sexual frustration simmer beneath the illusory charm of small-town Americana in the Roundabout production of William Inge’s Picnic at the American Airlines Theater. Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba, Splendor in the Grass, Bus Stop and Picnic all resonate with the influences that formed his writing; small towns, aimlessness, family complications, the tug of restraint and yearning.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
How the World Began
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio Theater

There’s far more going on than initially meets the eye in Catherine Trieschmann’s How the World Began, staged at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s intimate Studio Theater. The Rep’s smaller theater space is ideal for the size of the small cast and the tension they maintain throughout the show’s 80 minutes. This is not an easy play to watch, but it is also impossible to look away once it begins. It’s a thought-provoking work that couldn’t be timelier.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Beyond Dark: Theater in the Dark Festival
Odyssey Theater

The Odyssey ran two separate evenings of in-the-dark plays late last year; reactions were positive enough to encourage the company to create a composite evening called ”Beyond Dark”. The new show, which opened in early January 2013, melds key short plays from Theater in the Dark, Parts One and Twointo a single 90-minute whole.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Nora
Pacific Resident Theater

Nora, Ingmar Bergman's stripped-down version of Ibsen's A Doll’s House(the modern translation is by Frederick J. Marker & Lise-Lone Marker), has been running in L.A. for the past four months. That a 134-year-old, musty drama could become a hit is a testament to the PRT's stellar production.

Working in an intimate black-box space, PRT's cast of five--Bergman having eliminated children and servants from the Ibsen original -- is able to plumb the depths of Nora’s main characters and bring out their contradictions.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Glengarry Glen Ross
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Attending Glengarry Glen Ross during its U.S. premiere in Chicago in 1984, I found the shock value palpable. But that didn’t stem from David Mamet’s characters, dilemmas and values as much as from the play’s language, delivered in staccato. In 2013, Asolo Rep yet issues various related warnings to prospective audiences.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Next to Normal
Geva Theater - Mainstage

Geva Theater Center is certainly getting more bang for their bucks by co-producing a number of first-class works with other leading regional theaters, in this case presenting a superb production of an important new musical drama in association with Atlanta’s Alliance Theater.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Grand Irrationality, The
The Lost Studio

Keep your eye on Jemma Kennedy, the young British playwright whose snappy comedy, The Grand Irrationality, is now in its world-premiere run at The Lost Studio. Kennedy, a published novelist (“Skywalking”) and recent playwright-in-residence at the National Theatre, takes aim at several targets in her new play -- the ad world, mismatched lovers, astrology, a dysfunctional family -- and hits the bull's-eye with just about every shot.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Memphis
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Memphis is a potentially explosive combination of race, sex and rock n’ roll set in 1950s Memphis. It is more of a music-and-dance show than a book musical, but that doesn’t disappoint. (It’s a bit surprising that the show won a Tony Award for Best Book, but maybe that says more about the contenders that year.) Memphispays a high-energy tribute to rock’s emergence over the sleepy love ballads of Perry Como and Gene Autry, artists that a Memphis radio station used to play before hiring Huey Calhoun.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Other Place, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Manhattan Theatre Club’s presentation of Sharr White’s The Other Place, at the Samuel Friedman Theater, is a taut, thrilling puzzle of the cruelly ironic disease of Dr. Juliana Smithton. Laurie Metcalf delivers a magnetic performance as the eminent neurological researcher who must cope with the deterioration of her own mentality.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Urban Cowboys
Florida Studio Theater - John C. Court Cabaret

Urban Cowboys strikes me as a performance by six characters in search of a script. It’s a parade of country and western and a combination of both types of music followed by blending with pop and rock.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Aliens, The
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Evan, a loner high school senior working in a rundown Vermont coffee shack, comes of age under the influence of two slackers who hang out in back. Both KJ, a psychotic druggie dropout from college and life, and Jasper, a chain-smoking aspiring novelist, are consummate outsiders. They once had a garage band but broke up after not being able to agree on what to call it. (They’d favored, though, Aliens, after a work by Jasper’s favorite Charles Bukowski, the antisocial writer.)

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
My Name is Asher Lev
Westside Theater

Aaron Posner’s play, My Name is Asher Lev, adapted from Chaim Potok’s novel, has a convincing premise about art: An artist must be true to his inner consciousness and pursue the nature and inspiration that God gave him, or he can become a whore. The drama also sets up a good conflict: an Orthodox Jew paints Jesus, to the consternation of his father (Mark Nelson, who also plays The Rebbe and an old artist who guides the boy). Jenny Bacon plays the understanding mother (as well as an art dealer and a model).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Here's a Howdy-Do: The Mischievous World of Gilbert and Sullivan
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

If there’s one thing Milwaukee audiences associate with Skylight Music Theater, it’s Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas. In the company’s 54-year history, it has racked up 55 productions of G&S shows. In order to insert a bit of G&S into its current season, Skylight has come up with a new, topsy-turvy revue, Here’s a Howdy Do; The Mischievous World of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
You Can't Take it With You
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

“Relax...let it come to you,” says Grandpa Martin Vanderhof of life. And that’s how director Peter Amster takes us into You Can’t Take it with You.We find Grandpa’s family at an easy pace in 1938 as they fill his homey, traditional, two-story wood-paneled house with joy toward what they’re doing and each other.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Mummenschanz
New York University - Skirball Center

Mummenschanz, celebrating its 40th year as the world’s premiere Mask Theater company, gives us a wonderful experience in imagination.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2013
Who Killed Santa?
Carte Blanche Studios

One of the last-to-open holiday shows in Milwaukee is also one of the funniest. Who Killed Santa? , a musical murder mystery, is the perfect antidote for those who have endured too many Christmas songs on the radio or viewed too many holiday TV commercials. Perhaps it’s also for those who’ve eaten too many candy canes – who knows?

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2012
Annie
Palace Theater

The revival of the musical Annie, book by Thomas Meehan, is a great show in all departments.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2012
Sense and Sensibility
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

The plight of two unmarried sisters takes center stage in Mark Healy’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, staged by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Marianne, 16, is the “sense” in the play, which is set in England around 1800. Lithe, energetic and flirtatious, she often behaves the way one would expect of a girl blossoming into womanhood.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2012
Golden Boy
Belasco Theater

Lincoln Center Theater packs a wallop with Golden Boy at the Belasco Theater, the same venue where Clifford Odets’ neglected classic premiered in 1937. With a sure hand and skillful timing, director Bartlett Sher deftly conducts the sounds and sights of the fight game, focusing on inspiring talent instead of impressive names. A cast of 19 reenacts a familiar story with emotional performances and snappy street patter. With two intermissions, Golden Boy is a golden opportunity for theatergoers to watch one man battle the universal temptations in life.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2012

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