Bus Stop
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The characters in William Inge’s classic, Bus Stop, are forced to face some hard truths about themselves in the hours they spend holed up in a small-town diner during a blizzard. Although it may not be Inge’s best play, Bus Stopcontains the distinctive touches he infuses into all of his work. He reveals the frustration and disappointment in ordinary people’s lives, especially those people who live in America’s Midwest.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
West Side Story
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Considered by many to be one of the best American musicals ever written, a new version of West Side Storyplayed in Milwaukee as part of the Time Warner Cable Broadway at the Marcus Center series. This is the national tour based on the 2009 revival, which played more performances on Broadway than the original or any other revivals that followed it.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
End of the Rainbow
Belasco Theater

I’m going to say some negative things about End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s play about Judy Garland’s last years. But bear this in mind-- Tracie Bennett who plays Garland, is a great singer, actress, dancer and athlete, and, when she is singing (which takes a while to get to), she rocks the house with both her voice and her performance, which captures nuances of Garland and gives us a geschrei from deep inside her agonized soul. In Act 2 her athleticism approaches Cirque dimensions.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Morini Strad, The
59E59 Theaters

Willy Holtzman’s The Morini Stradis an odd evening. The audience the night I saw it was full of white-haired music lovers, who, because of the subject matter, filled the theater. We all expected that there would be lots of good music played. Alas, the magical violin-playing of Hanah Stuart, isn’t 10 percent of the play, which studies a very old former violin prodigy (a totally convincing Mary Beth Peil whose depth of feeling fills the theater) who owns a Stradivarius violin that needs repair so she can sell it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
In Paris
The Broad Stage

Russian theater is not only alive and well, it is doing some remarkable things. A case in point is In Paris,a play adapted from the Ivan Bunin short story by Dmitry Krymov, who currently teaches at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts in Moscow.

Krymov, who is also a painter, has teamed up with Mikhail Baryshnikov, the most celebrated dancer of his time, who not only agreed to act in the play but to help Krymov develop it at his own arts center in NYC. The result of their collaboration is simply astounding.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Othello
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Some consider Othello to be Shakespeare’s greatest play It certainly is one of his most action-packed, filled with enough betrayal, intrigue, lust and suspense to captivate the most blasé audiences.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
one time
Next Act Theater

Next Act Theater concludes its 2011-12 season with the world premiere of Richard Lyon Conlon’s one time, a story billed as “a man, a woman, a park bench, and a need to share secrets from the past.” It is all that, and so much more. This romantic comedy for older adults is a “must-see” of the spring theater season.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Superior Donuts
Geva Theater - Mainstage

I read this play and liked it before I heard about and later saw Tracy Letts’ multiple-prize-winning August: Osage County. Now, a couple of years later, I’ve finally seen Superior Doughnuts performed. It has none of the bitterness and angst of Letts’ earlier plays; and though it lacks the ambitions and scope of Osage, it also never feels as interminable.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Ha!
WorkShop Theater

Rich Orloff is a very funny writer, and his HA! [sic], now at the Jewel Box Theater on West 36th Street, gives us a very entertaining evening: three stylistically different comedic ventures. The first, Oedi,is a straight-out farce mocking the Oedipus legend, full of laughs, with an absurdist flair, including a hilarious Gerianne Raphael as Oedipus’ Jewish mother/wife. Oedipus-schmedipus -- as long as he loves his mother!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Carrie
Lucille Lortel Theater

Carrie, based on a novel by Stephen King, with book by Lawrence D. Cohen and memorable music by Michael Gore and lyrics by Dean Pitchford, is a Broadway-level show in all departments including acting, singing (led by the amazing Marin Mazzie as the religious nut mother and a scintillatingly sensitive Molly Ranson as Carrie). The entire cast are all first-rate singers in this gripping, fascinating musical (even though, due to the movie, we know how it will end).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Death of a Salesman
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Attention must be paid to Mike Nichols’ stunning production of Death of a Salesman,the insightful American tragedy of Willie Loman, at the Barrymore Theater. Past and present weave smoothly through Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, again reaffirming its place as possibly the most perceptive drama of the American stage.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2012
Red
Historic Asolo Theater

After the budding young artist Ken enters the warehouse-like studio of Mark Rothko -- only to be told he’s there only as an employee and not to be parentally, spiritually, psychologically guided or taught -- we get ready for a Visiting Mr. Green (or Butley or even Educating Rita) type of play. Yes, in a way, over almost two years of Rothko’s fathering, guiding, teaching, we get a familiar drama.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Hamlet, Principe de Cuba
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The performances of fiery Frankie J. Alvarez as Hamlet and Douglas Jones as both a pompous Polonius and definitively comic Gravedigger would alone make Hamlet, Prince of Cuba worth watching and hearing. Not that this version of Hamletis a gimmick. It’s a much-edited adaptation of Shakespeare’s play to a different time (late1890s) and place (Cuba) with accommodations to cultural differences.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Lady from Dubuque, The
Pershing Square Signature Center - End Stage Theater

I am one of the few who saw the original Broadway production of this play in 1980 (it ran for 12 performances.) I thought it a brilliant work, though neither pleasant nor reassuring in its treatment of our inability to prevent a horrible death, in this case from cancer, or to alleviate its pain. The pain here is central and omnipresent: not only the victim’s physical pain but also the awful pain of loss.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Waiting for Godot
Mark Taper Forum

Center Theater Group has mounted a landmark production of Waiting for Godot, one which will not be topped in this, or perhaps any other, age. The production, now on tap at Mark Taper Forum, was directed by Michael Arabian and is acted by two specialists in Beckett, Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern (with strong supporting work by James Cromwell, Hugo Armstrong and LJ Benet).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Coronado
The Holding Company

Dennis Lehane, known primarily for his novels (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Mystic River,” “Shutter Island”), recently turned one of his short stories, “Until Gwen,” into a play, his first. Coronadowas originally produced by the Invisible City Theater in NYC; now a gutsy new theatre company in L.A., Player King Productions, has mounted the West Coast premiere of the play.

Director Drew Shirley has done Lehane proud, putting together an 11-person cast that deftly and flawlessly brings Coronado to life -- no mean feat, considering the challenges posed by the play.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon
Richmond Shepard Theater

Full Disclosure: Elizabeth Ahlfors has been a theater critic for TotalTheater.com since 2010. David Lefkowitz publishes TotalTheater.com and therefore edits Ms. Ahlfors' reviews for publication.

How does one describe Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon? A comedy, a passionate sermon, a witty diatribe, a musical? Actually it’s all of the above in full-volume yelling.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Diary of a Madman
Circle Theater

Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman was first written in 1833 as a short story; soon after that the author converted his work into a stage piece, a monologue. It takes place in a mental institution where Poprishkin, a minor government official (played masterfully by Ilya Volok), talks feverishly, compulsively, about his shattered hopes and dreams.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Imagining Madoff
Jewish Community Center

Let me confess that after a trying day I dozed occasionally during the early moments of this uninterrupted hour and forty-five minute play -- not to excuse my missing something but to possibly modify my impression that this drama never really discusses what Bernard Madoff’s crime actually was: a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Instead, it presents us with the playwright’s imagining what Madoff may have been thinking.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
American Idiot
Ahmanson Theater

Rash, brash and gutsy, American Idiot is a punk-rock musical with attitude -- lots and lots of attitude.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Steady Rain, A
GableStage at Biltmore Hotel

All elements combine at GableStage in South Florida to make the two-character cop drama, A Steady Rain, come off as significantly more than the sum of its storyline parts.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
In the Next Room: or, the vibrator play
Milwaukee Repertory Theater

You don’t easily forget a play with the word “vibrator” in the title, do you? That must have been the intent of author Sarah Ruhl. The noted playwright could easily have played up this title with a series of cheap laughs. However, she rewards us with a play that is as much about electricity, history and relationships as it is about sex.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Cages
Adler Theater

Drawing on his long experience as a psychotherapist in the California state prison system, Leonard Manzella has written a bold and shocking drama about the challenges he faced in his dealings with deeply disturbed inmates, those who used to be called the criminally insane.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose
Kirk Douglas Theater

Originally produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Joseis that rare, blessed thing -- an hilarious farce which also has a social bite to it, a bite that draws blood.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Daddy Long Legs
Skylight Music Theater

The newly renamed Skylight Music Theater (formerly Skylight Opera Theater) continues to bring exciting new work to the Milwaukee area. Years ago, Skylight audiences were treated to Midwest premieres of Floyd Collins and The Spitfire Grill. Last season brought the startling, brilliantly staged production of The Adding Machine. With Daddy Long Legs,Skylight proves its artistic direction is right on the money.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Celebration of Harold Pinter, A
Odyssey Theater

Harold Pinter is best known as a dramatist and screenwriter, but thanks to Julian Sands and John Malkovich, we must now recognize him as a poet as well, one of the finest of the 20th century.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Verizon Play, The

See listing(s) and review(s) under "Veri**on Play, The"

Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Veri**on Play, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Lisa Kron’s The Veri**on Play [sic], the first of seven full-length and three 10-minute offerings, opened this year’s 36th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville with a satiric blast at corporate America and its woefully boneheaded customer service.

Kron herself plays befuddled Jenni, plunged into customer-service hell when the phone company and its robotic minions keep bugging her about a billing problem she consistently asks them to correct.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Chosen, The
Tenth Street Theater

Chaim Potok’s bestselling novel, “The Chosen,” comes to life in a mesmerizing play by Potok and Aaron Posner. The Wisconsin premiere of The Chosenwas produced by In Tandem Theater in Milwaukee. “The Chosen” is perhaps best known from the 1981 film starring Maxmillan Schell, Rod Steiger and Robby Benson.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2012
Raisin in the Sun, A
Geva Theater - Mainstage

The revival of a modern classic is always an occasion for reminiscence, celebrations and some recriminations by nostalgic fans of the original production. In the case of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s great breakthrough drama of African-American struggles against inequality, every revival – and there have been very many distinguished ones worldwide – has to deal with comparison to the historical 1959 Broadway original, which was mostly exactly repeated in the classic 1961 movie.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Robbers, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

It is the final decades of the 18th century in Germany, a period of the literary and social “Storm and Stress” movement. In the conflict between two sons of a Count for their father’s affections, power and wealth, the brothers claim corollary personal liberty to pursue their personal, social, and political aims.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Two Things You Don't Talk About at Dinner
Denver Center

One of the problems of staging a play that largely takes place around a long table — with a number of place settings — is how to permit the audience to see the facial expressions of all the characters, especially if some have their backs to the viewers. Last February, when Lisa Loomer’s provocative play, Two Things You Don’t Talk About at Dinner,was aired in a Play-Summit reading at the Denver Center, this was not a problem, as all the players were more of less in line at their respective music stands.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Winter
New Theater

South Florida’s New Theater presents its second consecutive world premiere of the season in Winter,in which the adult he-and-she twins of Elinor Winter do battle at mom’s London home after her sudden death. There’s only the relatively young, live-in aide to explain the circumstances – until, that is, the discovery of a not-quite complete journal. But Robert Caisley’s play isn’t a mystery so much as a comedy with serious undertones. Under artistic director Ricky J.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Whale, The
Denver Center Theater - Ricketson Theater

Tom Alan Robbins may not actually be playing Moby Dick, but he certainly looks like a great white whale in Samuel D. Hunter’s whale of a play.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Taming of the Shrew, The
Denver Center Theater

When the establishing shot of the Denver Center’s new Shrew turned-up on its website — an obviously Cowbo -Petruchio with a Wild-West Kate on his back — this image reminded your arts reporter of the Wild-West Shrewthat Charles McCalley staged long, long ago, at the Globe-of-the-Great-Southwest, in Odessa, TX. Since that epic adventure in updating Shakespeare, Mantua and Padua have occasionally been relocated to Western-American sites in Utah, Arizona and New-Mexico.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Wit
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Cynthia Nixon as Vivian Bearing, PhD, gives one of the best performances of any actor on Broadway this season in a beautifully realized production of Wit by Margaret Edson and directed with great skill by Lynne Meadow. Witis told from the perspective of a woman with Stage Four ovarian cancer in a series of flashbacks showing the progress of the disease from diagnosis to death.

Scott Bennett
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Fall to Earth, The
Odyssey Theater Ensemble

The Fall to Earth starts out as a play in a comic vein: daughter obliged to share not just a motel room but a single bed with her estranged, control-freak mother. Gradually, though, the comedy begins to give way to drama and then horror as the story unfolds.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Look Back in Anger
Laura Pels Theater in the Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center

In 1956, John Osborne shocked theatergoers with his examination of the Britain’s angry young men coming out of the post World War II years. These were the blue-collar lads with ability, some with education, but all missing the key to a better life in the white-collar stratum of society. There is more than a hint of relevancy to the current economic troubles and explosive frustrations.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
Vigil
Next Act Theater

If Next Act Theatre administrators were looking for a comedy to fill this dead-of-winter time slot, one wonders what made them choose Morris Panych’s play, Vigil. There is a glimmer of humor here, but the comedy is about the blackest this critic has seen.

Two exceptionally talented actors, Ruth Schudson and Mark Ulrich, do about the best job one could wish in delivering this odd play. Ulrich is an unhappy bank teller who rushes to the deathbed of his elderly aunt. They haven’t seen each other in 30 years. It is not a happy reunion.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2012
To Kill a Mockingbird
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most passionate, powerful novels about the American South, circa 1935. It dredges up everything that is good and bad in a medium-sized town in Alabama. It exposes hatred and prejudice that, unfortunately, cannot be confined to this era.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2012

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