Mountaintop, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop gives us two super performers, the rather real Samuel L. Jackson and the effervescent, delightful, beautiful Angela Basset. They're in a fanciful mixture of politics of the time and the life-like inner turmoil of Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he is assassinated. Bassett plays the room-service person who brings him a cup of coffee. This segues into an imaginative, fun fantasy-- a comedy framework for political ideas at a critical time and the upcoming tragedy.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Pins and Needles
Theater 80

Pins and Needles, Harold Rome’s 1937 musical revue pushing for unions, the rights of the poor, satirizing the reactionary right, is a lot of fun for an old “Lefty” like me. Rome has written some of the cleverest lyrics in town, with tunes that bounce as they sing about being shackle-free, about love ("Union for Two"), depression problems and stirring up the workers.

A rich woman sings “It’s Not Cricket to Picket,” there’s Don’t Sit on the “Status Quo,” and the old hit, “Sing Me a Song of Social Significance.”

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Yellowman
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

It’s not often that theater audiences will come in contact with a world as bleak as the one portrayed in Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman. The two-actor play is set mostly in South Carolina, in a community where hierarchy among blacks is determined by the color of their skin. Alma, the female character, repeatedly tells the audience that she is “big, dark, and ugly.” Her mother first tells this phrase to her. She repeats it over and over until Alma begins reciting it in her own mind.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Hamlet Redux
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Hamlet Redux is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s lengthy, complex tragedy to perform mainly for middle-schooled kids to young adults. From all of the actors, or each in turn, rendering lines from the Speech-to-the-Players comes a one-act coming-of-age play centered on a young Hamlet. He reaches Court after a scene in which his mom Gertrude kisses his dad, and then as King Hamlet lies asleep, summons his brother Claudius to poison him.

I've Never Been So Happy
Kirk Douglas Theater

Rude Mechs, the Austin-based theater company, is credited with the creation of I’ve Never Been So Happy, a farcical look at the Wild West now fighting hard for laughs in L.A. Billed as a world premiere even though it ran last April in Austin, Happyhas the slapdash feel of a meal prepared by too many cooks. The story is beyond silly, the characters are loonytune caricatures, the songs are loud, many and mostly forgettable.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 9, 2011
Red Noses
Ivy Substation

Peter Barnes' Red Noses, which won a London Observer Best New Play Award back in 1985, has been revived in raucous, bawdy fashion by The Actors Gang, a company that specializes in physical theater with a social bent.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
`Night Mother

(see review(s) under Night Mother (no apostrophe))

1966

see review(s) under "Nineteen Sixty Six" in Criticopia

(W)hole
Flea Theater

see review(s) under "Whole" in Criticopia

Abarcas del Tiempo, Las

see review(s) under "Las Barcas del Tiempo" in Criticopia.

Woman In Black, The
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Theatergoers "on the other side of the pond" (that's us) may not be as familiar with The Woman in Black as their London counterparts. The reason? London audiences have kept one of their theaters filled with this hit show since 1987. Thankfully, one needn't book airline tickets abroad to see the play. Renaissance Theaterworks has taken on the challenge of mounting Woman in Black in Milwaukee's intimate Studio Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
My Fair Lady
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

If music makes the musical, then who can argue with those who call the legendary My Fair Lady, "the greatest musical of all time?" Over the years, many of the show's lovely songs have become "standards." Who cannot hum a few lines from, "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Get Me to the Church on Time," or "On the Street Where You Live?"

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Visit, The
Signature Theater - Max Theater

 Signature Theater's ambitious recreation of Kander and Ebb's final work, The Visit, was proof of the 18 year-old D.C. metropolitan-area theater's deserved national reputation as creator of new versions of musicals and new plays. Stretching their intimate black-box space to its limits, it utilized a topnotch small orchestra, a cast of 23 including world-class stars, and a constantly changing, elaborate production, brilliantly acted, sung and danced.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Dividing the Estate
59E59 Theaters

I love Horton Foote, and his Dividing the Estate confirms my romance with his work.  As impeccably cast and deftly directed by Michael Wilson, the show puts us in the midst of the family interactions on the stage in the drama of a Southern family, its foibles and mistakes, and the death of a matriarch. There is not a false note in the interaction of these relatives and their economic problems which partly grew out of hopes and unrealistic dreams.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Seven Crimes
Tenth Avenue Theater

It's that time of the year again. Blood runs like two–buck-chuck Merlot. Screams start their crescendo, climaxing on the 31st, Halloween. Sledgehammer Theater will get you into the mood with Seven Crimes: A Celebration of Murder, Mayhem and Mutilation at the Tenth Avenue Theater. Presumptuously billed as the First Annual, I expect many annuals if they maintain the bloody humor of their first production.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
North Park Playwright Festival (2007)
North Park Vaudeville

The North Park Playwright Festival is unique in many ways. It is open to first-time playwrights, directors and actors in a time that has become exceedingly difficult for tyro theater folks to learn their art. The mission of North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shop is to provide a platform. The festival attracts scripts from around the world and local talent, both brand new and well experienced.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Lamplighters One-Act Play Festival, The
Lamplighter Community Theater

Lamplighters Community Theater's One-Act Play Festival features two of the top playwrights in San Diego: David Wiener and Jim Caputo. Three of the plays are directed by actor Mark Loveless and one by actor Les Payne. Here's a quick look at what you can see.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Side by Side by Sondheim
The Coronado Playhouse

If you love Stephen Sondheim, you'll love Coronado Playhouse's production of Side By Side By Sondheim. If you love the excellent voices of Brett Daniels, Lisa Goodman, Julia Celano, you'll love director Daniel Logan's take on Side By Side By Sondheim. If you love the antics, both song styling and narrating, of Adrienne Renè, you'll laugh with Side By Side By Sondheim.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Wonder Bread Years, The
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts - Vogel Hall

The Wonder Bread Years is a G-rated trip down memory lane for Baby Boomers. Like Wonder Bread itself, this one-man show is more carbs than nutrients. But that's the way it's supposed to be, and it allows the audience to sit back, relax and laugh at the common memories that connect this generation. The lone actor (John McGivern) basically plays himself as a young boy growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Milwaukee during the 1950s. He performs on a set that represents a stylized version of the back door to his family home and the concrete stoop below it.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Almost Famous

(see Criticopia review(s) under "Bruce Vilanch: Almost Famous")

Callaway, Ann Hampton

(see Criticopia review(s) listed under Ann Hampton Calloway)

Aristocrats
Lincoln Center Festival `99 at La Guardia Theater

In a rural community in Ireland, the Catholic, once-wealthy O'Connell family molders in their decaying mansion. Outsiders on two fronts, they're amongst predominantly Protestant gentry, and they keep their distance from the lower class Catholics of the village. All have broken lives.

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
1776
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Recreating the Continental Congress of May through July of the year of its title, a musical centering on debate comes out firmly in the affirmative in a production as warm as summer. So realistically presented are the viewpoints challenging John Adams, we seem to be in the crowded Philadelphia "court" and...is that suspense we feel? Gary Marachek's firm Adams grounds the action with help from Robert Turoff's alternatingly wise and funny ole Ben Franklin. Hopping in with humorous heroics is Ben Turoff's Richard Henry Lee, a nice counterpart to Chris O'Brockto's serious Jefferson.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Seventeen Seventy Six

(see Criticopia review(s) under "1776")

15 Minute Play Festival, The
Bunbury Theater

Bunbury Theater's current offering of six 15-minute plays in celebration of its 15 years entertaining Louisville audiences turns out to be one of its finest -- a real treat to mark the occasion. Entries were submitted from all over the country, and the excellence of the final choices would seem to indicate that overall quality was high, indeed.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Fifteen Minute Play Festival

(see Criticopia review(s) under "15 Minute Play Festival")

1940s Radio Hour, The
Lamplighters Community Theater

It was a time before television, CDs, DVDs, and surround sound. Commercials were live, as were most of the shows on the East Coast. Sixteen-inch transcriptions were used to record shows. It was the time of live radio, the time of The 1940's Radio Hour.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Nineteen Forties Radio Hour, The

(see Criticopia review(s) under "1940s Radio Hour")

3hree
Ahmanson Theater

A triptych of one-act musicals developed by Harold Prince at his New York workshop and world-premiered last fall at Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater, 3hree features the work of a batch of gifted young writers and composers. There is no over- riding theme or concept to the evening, except that all three pieces take place in small towns and are acted by the same team of actors (whom we see in the two brief act breaks changing costumes and wigs right on stage -- a clever touch).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Three

(see Criticopia review(s) under "3hree")

4.48 Psychosis
Tenth Avenue Theater

4.48 Psychosis. Rebecca Johannsen, the artistic director, directs this, the last work of Kane, completed shortly before the playwright committed suicide. Stone Soup is one of the few theaters that mandates taking risks with less commercial plays that challenge their audiences. Kane's plays easily fit that requirement. Like her Crave, 4.48 Psychosis is guaranteed to challenge directors and producing companies. Truly an experimental play, it assigns no lines to a given character.
4.48 Psychosis is an experience.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Four Point Four Eight Psychosis

(see Criticopia review(s) under "4.48 Psychosis")

42nd Street
Welk Resort Theater

42nd Street crosses Broadway at Times Square, and it crosses our path joyously at the Welk Resort Theater, just north of Escondido. It hit Broadway with a bang, garnering Tony awards for Best Choreography (Gower Champion) and Best Musical in 1982, running for an astounding 3,486 performances. Remember "We're In the Money," "Lullaby of Broadway," and “Shuffle Off to Buffalo?”

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Forty-Second Street

(see Criticopia review(s) under "42nd Street")

42nd Street
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

As the ur-backstage musical, ironically first "staged" on screen, 42nd Street is famous for its story of the small-town girl who steps out of the chorus of a show opening on Broadway, replaces the incapacitated leading lady. and becomes a star. With her last-minute triumph, she restores her director to fame, keeps cast and crew from falling out of work in hard times, and finds off-stage romance with her on-stage partner. It's all with the blessings of the last star, who hooks up with a romantic offstage co-star of her own.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2001
42nd Street
Theater at the Center
It's all in the feet -- ten pair of those dancing feet striking the floor at precisely the same instant in patterns complex enough to make Michael Flatley's kids look like toddlers. And in the costumes that make you want to forget your arthritic knees and two left feet and become a dancer, just so you can wear dresses like the "beautiful dames" in the song of that title. Of course, it's also the sturdy score reflecting a universe where boy gets girl -- even if the boy is old enough to be the girl's father -- means happy ever after.
Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2001
42nd Street
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Among those rare chestnuts that stand the test of time is 42nd Street, which tap-danced its way into Milwaukee for a week-long run. This town doesn't get many national tours, but when it does - wow! The pure energy of more than 50 tap dancers onstage was a sight to behold, not to mention the zillions of gorgeous, glittering costumes and the Art Deco-themed sets. This is a dance show to end all dance shows, and it makes this point very clear from the opening number.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Eighty-Four Charing Cross Road

(see Criticopia review(s) under "84 Charing Cross Road")

Turn of the Screw, The
Cygnet Theater

It was just before the twentieth century when Henry James' novella, "The Turn of the Screw," brought a ghost story to his readers. In it, we're faced with the dilemma: is the story true or a mere figment of a deranged mind?

With a cast of only two, as written by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, the density is only compounded. The first stage adaptation was by William Archibald in 1950. Benjamin Britten created an opera in 1954, and a movie was produced in 1961. In the former productions, the cast was somewhat larger, leading to less ambiguity.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Jerry's Girls
PowPAC

Two revues in two weeks, as different as night and day, makes for a happy reviewer. This week's was PowPAC's very ambitious Jerry's Girls, directed by Jeffrey Gastauer, with Rich Shaffer as musical director and Alisa Williams on the choreography. This is a big show with a large cast, and lots of production numbers and dance routines.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2007

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