Voca People
Westside Theater

Voca People, now at the Westside Theater, is a unique adventure in entertainment. Eight white-faced, white-suited singers, movers and vocal soundmakers throw a complex mixture of action and sound at us. The sounds range from squeaky gibberish to the sound of instruments to lovely harmonies of many familiar songs. Lots of references: James Bond, Pink Panther, Rocky, etc. They create a sound symphony and do lots of games with the audience (my least favorite part, but maybe the kids like it).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles
Hobby Center

Pinch me if I’m dreaming! It was, after all, a November night that was very much like a dream, as Houston’s Gexa Energy Broadway series presented RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Forgotten
Odyssey Theater

Actor/writer Pat Kinevan has been performing his solo show, Forgotten, for the past six years, beginning at Fishamble Co. in Ireland (his home base) and touring widely in Europe and the USA after that. Now Kinevan has brought Forgottento L.A.'s Odyssey Theater, as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland's year of Irish arts in America.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Women, The
American Airlines Theater

Don't be fooled by the many well-known names in the cast or the assumption that Clare Booth Luce's comedy is some kind of feminist classic; The Women is a dismaying experience, less for its comic misogyny than for its parade of really bad performances, from the intolerable (Heather Matarazzo) to the merely desperate (Jennifer Coolidge, Jennifer Tilly). Cynthia Nixon, as noble Mary, emerges unscathed, but it is the treasurable Mary Louise Wilson, all class and clarity as Mrs. Morehead, who truly shows what might have been.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Seminar
John Golden Theater

Notes taken while watching Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, a play about four writing students taking a private, expensive seminar with a renowned writer/editor played by Alan Rickman.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Private Lives
Music Box Theater

The present production of Noel Coward’s Private Livesis, in its totality, an exhilarating experience. A divorced couple, each just re-married, on honeymoons, are in adjoining hotel suites. They meet on the balconies. This first act is a shining classic theatrical gem. Starring Kim Cattrall, an exquisite comedienne with rare comic timing and nuances in her gestures, tones and subtle (and not subtle) actions, and Paul Gross, an excellent actor who gives a fine, straight-ahead performance as these two fight, love, battle, love and hate each other.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Night Watcher, The
Kirk Douglas Theater

Charlayne Woodard is back with another one-person show, her fourth. In The Night Watcher, the vivacious, charismatic Woodard takes immediate control of the stage and holds it tightly in her grasp for the next two hours. Her subjects are motherhood, children and familial responsibility, all of which she discusses anectdotally and passionately, keeping herself front and center.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Sylvia
Next Act Theater

Next Act Theater does a terrific job in presenting a smart and funny production of A.R. Gurney’s comedy, Sylvia.In essence, the play is about the marital strife that results when the husband returns home from New York’s Central Park with a stray dog. The dog’s arrival brings out tensions that this middle-aged couple thought they had conquered through 22 years of marriage. Apparently not.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Music Man, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

Milwaukee’s Skylight Opera Theater is one of the few places in town that can afford to produce a full-fledged version of The Music Man. This may sound odd, as almost every high school drama club in America probably has done the time-tested show at least once. However, the Skylight has sunk a ton of money (and talent) into their pre-holiday show. One can only imagine the stratospheric budget that was needed to bring 37 actors (many of them with Equity cards), eye-popping costumes and gorgeous sets to the Cabot Theater stage.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Godspell
Circle in the Square

Godspell, the joyous and often poignant musical from Grammy and Oscar-winning composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin), based on the Gospel of St. Matthew, needs little introduction today, but when it debuted Off Broadway in 1971, it broke new ground in its treatment of the historical Jesus. The current revival goes even further in the groundbreaking department. In fact, it’s a Godspell for a new generation.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
From Busk Till Dawn
Theater Row

In From Busk Till Dawn: The Life of a NYC Street Performer,the highly talented, technically accomplished actor/mime Tim Intravia gives us a totally engaging presentation about part of his life -- he performs as a silver-painted statue/robot interacting with people, mostly near Times Square, to support himself between legit acting jobs on stage or on television. The skills he displays are unique and exciting, his stories are full of humor as he shifts mood, tone and action as he tells his tales in the one hour show which is well-directed, with perfect timing, by Rebecca Yarsin.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Blues for an Alabama Sky
Pasadena Playhouse

Pearl Cleage's 1995 drama, Blues for an Alabama Sky has long been a favorite of Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse. (Epps successfully mounted the same writer's Flyin' West some years ago). Now Epps has been able to catch up with Blues,bringing it to vibrant life in a production that skillfully surmounts the play's problems.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Million Dollar Quartet
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Relatively few musicals have caught fire in the way that Million Dollar Quartet seems to. But then, what other musical can lay claim to some of rock’s most familiar icons – Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins? This name familiarity may be a part of the show’s appeal, but it can’t fully explain this jukebox musical’s worldwide success. On the night when Quartetopened its Milwaukee premiere, other casts were performing the same show around the country, in New York and even in London.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Red
GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel

After seeing Redat GableStage in South Florida, you’ll want to head straight to the nearest art museum and spend the drivetime debating the commercial and personal properties of painting, the succession of generations and whether natural light is overrated. And you’ll be marveling at this sparkling production of the Tony- and-Olivier-winning two-man play that centers on abstract expressionist Mark Rothko as he struggles to train a young assistant and create “pulsing” rectangles of muted colors for a new high-priced restaurant.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Guys and Does
Tenth Street Theater

True to its name, American Folklore Theater presents a homespun deer-hunting story in its new musical, Guys and Does. Despite the show’s cornball humor, the often smart and funny musical is wowing audiences throughout Wisconsin as the company takes its first statewide tour. In Milwaukee, the producers wisely decided to rent an intimate theater space with a thrust stage to allow the audience to get close to the action. It works.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Relatively Speaking
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Brief notes on the triple bill, Relatively Speaking:

Talking Cure, by Ethan Coen: light fare about an aggressive postal worker and his doctor, then, in part 2, his parents at the time of his birth. It’s all over the top — some funny stuff, but not a believable moment in the acting. John Turturro directed.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Charity Case, A
Harold Clurman Theater

A Charity Case, written and directed by Wendy Beckett, a confusing mish-mash of a play, is supposed to be about abused adopted children, but it could be about any neglected offspring with a solipsistic parent. Characters introduced are: a colorfully dressed street (bag?)lady (Alysia Reiner), a mother (Alison Fraser), and her 17-year-old adopted daughter (Jill Shackner), which I thought was a look back at the colorful lady’s past as she lurked, high up behind a grill, looking down at her adoptive mother and her younger self. But maybe not.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Venus in Fur
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

If you want to see the most entertaining actress on the New York stage, go see Nina Arianda playing an actress who comes late to an audition, in David Ives’ Venus in Fur. Her range, depth, variety, supple physicality and total investment in each of her portrayals is astonishing.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Other Desert Cities
Booth Theater

Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities is actually two plays with the same characters. Act one starts as a lightweight domestic comedy about a successful showbiz (and literary) family -- writers, an ex-movie star/ambassador (Stacy Keach) who is a moneyed, right-wing Republican; his dominant wife (Stockard Channing), their son, a TV producer (Thomas Sadoski), their disturbed daughter who has written a book about the family (Rachel Griffiths), particularly about her revolutionary dead brother.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Other Desert Cities
Booth Theater

Write about what you know, that’s what they say, but be prepared for the aftermath. Not to spoil the anguished twists of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities,but when the affluent Wyeths of Palm Springs come together to celebrate the holidays, the Christmas spirit is shattered by daughter Brooke’s gift, the manuscript of her unpublished book. Unfortunately, it is a family memoir. Suddenly the holiday cheer turns threatening.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Vigil
Mark Taper Forum

Center Theater Group has caught up with Morris Panych's much-produced, well-honed two-hander, Vigil. Starring at the Taper in the slight but amusing and ultimately moving play are Marco Barricelli and Olympia Dukakis, both of whom turn in scintillating performances.

Dukakis is Grace, an old woman living alone and near death in her cluttered, badly-skewed apartment (slanting design by Ken MacDonald). Barricelli is Kemp, her sharp-tongued nephew who suddenly shows up after an absence of thirty years, ostensibly to comfort her in the final days of her life.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Next to Normal
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

We don’t expect mental illness to be the subject and a bipolar mom to be the protagonist of a Broadway musical, but this basically sung-through drama is an engrossing, rewarding surprise. To start, “Another Day” brings to Stacia Fernandez’ magnetic Diana pain from a death in the family and nearness to another breakdown. Yet she has blank feelings induced by years of medication.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Next Fall
Geffen Playhouse

Playwright Geoffrey Nauffts takes some familiar dramatic setups -- believer vs atheist, gay hiding sexual identity from straitlaced family -- and puts a fresh wrinkle on them in Next Fall, now in is West Coast premiere (after a recent Broadway run). As slickly directed by Sheryl Kaller (on an ingenious set by Wilson Chin), the play centers on Luke (the buoyant James Wolk), a young New York actor, and Adam (a low-key Nauffts) a 40-year-old substitute teacher, who meet at a party and fall in love...somewhat.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2011
Hermetically Sealed
Skylight Theater

In the world premiere of Kathryn Gras' Hermetically Sealed, we meet the May family. The mother, Tessie (Gigi Bermingham in a riveting performance), and her 15-year-old son Conor (the remarkable Nicholas Podany) are trying in different ways to cope with the recent death of 17-year old Jimmy (Wolfie Trausch). The latter, it is revealed slowly, died in a car crash involving drugs and drink and possible homosexual high jinks. His presence in the play is ghostlike but all-important.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Relatively Speaking
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Woody Allen fans--there’s a treat waiting for you on Broadway. Allen’s Honeymoon Motel takes over the last half of Relatively Speaking, an evening of three comedies by three funny folks. Prepare for a feast of vintage Woody one-liners flying around the set of the tackiest honeymoon suite this side of Atlantic City. His is the most hilarious of the three one-act plays.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Kissless
Theater at St. Clement's

Some months ago I began to hear reports that the Houston Family Arts Center had a cast of area youngsters being selected to participate in the eighth annual New York Musical Theatre Festival. As I split much of my time between New York and Texas, it piqued my interest to learn that a group of young actors from the Lone Star State was being so honored with a couple of weeks to perform in America’s capital city for theater.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Damaged Divas of the Decades
Music Box Theater

At long last it has finally dawned on me how appropriately Houston’s Music Box Theater has been named. I say that because while it casts itself as a comedy club, music is central to its irresistible allure.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
That's Life Again
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

Little talk, lots of singing-and-dancing talent. A fulsome foursome engages in songs, mainly from the 1950s to 1970s, against a mainly blue background, with balls of light under a taut gauzy surface. Microphones (with hats, typical of Sinatra's, atop them) against the gathered drapes point to the predominant singing styles of the era: crooning, dramatizing lyrics, synchonizing group delivery, and solos being backed up but not elipsed.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Disenchanted: The Bitches of the Kingdom
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

The staged is framed with portraits of pretty heroines of Disney movies, TV and theme park attractions. In Disney’s kingdoms, the gals usually are distressed, helpless. They have the job of looking cute while sighing for their prince (or similar guy) to come save them. Typically, they get to wed the royals and live happily ever after.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Bus, The
59E59 Theaters

I imagine most of we theatergoers have traveled enough to realize that a bus, like many other modes of transportation, can sometimes be a helpful conveyance, while at other times it may experience mechanical problems. The same can be said of James Lantz’s intriguing new play, The Bus,currently in performance at the 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Gorgons
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

When two aging female stars try to revive their fading Hollywood careers, the results can be hilarious. Such a comedy is Don Nigro’s Gorgons. A production of Gorgonsopens Renaissance Theaterworks’ fall season. The two-character show is performed in the intimate, black box performing space in Milwaukee’s Broadway Theatre Center. It is a superbly constructed, close-up setting to observe this battle between divas.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Bhutan
Theatre Theater

"Cruel is the strife of brothers." Aristotle's aphorism rings true yet again in Daisy Foote's Bhutan,now in its West Coast premiere at Rogue Machine. The family in question lives in Tremont, New Hampshire, a grim working-class town whose main employer is a state prison. Mary (powerhouse performance by Ann Colby Stoking) is the matriarch of the family. Widowed in middle-age, she is a tough, hard-drinking woman with a realistic outlook on life. She knows she's blue-collar and hard-up but doesn't bitch about it.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 23, 2011
Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them
New Theater

Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them,as staged in South Florida by New Theater as part of a rolling world premiere, is a startlingly affective comedy/drama that’s likely to move anyone – to both laughter and tears – who has ever been 12 or 16 years old. The laugh lines, and there are plenty, are warmly funny, and the heartbreak proves almost palpable for more than a few people in the audience in Coral Gables. Credit goes to New Theater artistic director Ricky J.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Cirque de Legume
59E59 Theaters

Attention Dear Readers: Have you been getting your recommended servings of fresh vegetables each day? If not, you may want to hurry over to the 59E59 Theaters for one of the final amusing performances of Cirque de Legume. As the name suggests, it is a bit of a circus, at least to the extent that there is plenty of clowning around from the two clever stars, Jaimie Carswell and Nancy Trotter Landry, with cheerful direction from Pablo Ibarluzea.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Dracula
Geva Theater - Mainstage

Geva Theater Center’s program for Dracula includes a credit for “Dental Prostheses,” an unfamiliar category we may be seeing increasingly with the current popularity of vampire stories. This co-production with Indiana Repertory Theater was assembled with Indiana Rep’s directorial and design staffs to play in Indianapolis immediately before coming to Geva.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Man and Boy
American Airlines Theater

Frank Langella delivers a masterful performance in a difficult, albeit timely play by Terrance Rattigan. While the story of Man and Boytakes place in 1934, one cannot ignore the similarities to Bernard Madoff and the current economic crisis. Frank Langella never fails to rule the stage as Gregor Antonescu, a manipulating financier who lacks a conscience and abuses not only his business dealings but his wife and especially his son, Vassily (Adam Driver). “Love is a commodity I can’t afford,” he tells Vassily.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Lombardi
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

In a post-performance talk on opening night, Milwaukee Repertory Theater artistic director Mark Clements shared a bit of background about the intense negotiations involved in obtaining the rights to Lombardi. The New York producers originally wanted to stage the Midwest premiere in Chicago (Bears country, for all you football fans). Horrified, Clements and other Milwaukee Rep administrators petitioned for the show’s opening at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Wisconsin’s undisputed flagship theater. After months of discussion, the producers agreed.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Exonerated, The
Next Act Theater

Next Act Theater opened the fall season in its brand-new home, a converted manufacturing building located in a warehouse district, just a few blocks south of downtown Milwaukee. Donations for the building project topped $1 million - quite a feat in these tough economic times.

To open its new facility, the company mounted an ambitious production of The Exonerated. The “ambitious” aspect is that the play involves 10 characters – far more than Next Act typically employs. Plus, noted director Ed Morgan was brought onboard for the production as well.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Man and Boy
American Airlines Theater

In Man and Boy, a revival of Terrence Rattigan’s 1961 play about a flamboyant financial trickster, Frank Langella, surrounded by a mostly excellent cast, gives a tour-de-force performance as he encounters his estranged son, played by Adam Driver in a rushed, overacted performance, singing many of his lines, partly in soprano, contrasting with the solid Zach Grenier, Michael Siberry, Virginia Kull and the rest of the cast.

Driving Miss Daisy
Milwaukee Chamber Theater

It’s not easy to find a starring role for an actress in her 80s, but Chamber Theater has succeeded with its production of Driving Miss Daisy. Ruth Schudson, who co-founded Chamber Theatre in 1975 and has acted in more than 65 productions, stars as the feisty Daisy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011

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