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see Criticopia review under "El Baile"
After almost 80 years, The Man Who Came to Dinner still has lots of life. That obnoxious man the Stanleys had to host has only gotten more obnoxious. I've dubbed the Patio Playhouse production, running through December 16, "T.T.O.T.T." - Totally Over the Top. And what fun it is!
The Night of the Iguana is a depressing tale of defrocked Episcopal priest, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon (Rob Conway). Tennessee Williams' play, set in the steaming tropics of costal Mexico at the outbreak of WWII, began on Broadway in 1961, was made into films in 1964 and 2000, and this year, Joni Mitchell's title song on her album, "Shine," is a thematic and lyrical adaptation.
In the '50s, the Detroit Institute of Arts was doing a clean-up on "The Wedding Dance" created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder around 1566. They discovered an overlay paint covering up the men's codpieces. Altering art, it seems, goes back decades as well as centuries.
Following in the footsteps of actor, writer and director Woody Allen's 1997 film, "Everyone Says I Love You," writer and director Kenneth Branagh has fashioned a similar starring vehicle for himself with the 2000 film musicalization of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. You may recall that Allen's 1997 film featured dramatic actors, not known or remembered for their singing abilities, such as Edward Norton, Billy Crudup, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda (The Apple Tree Broadway 1967), Woody Allen and Julia Roberts.
It is hard to believe that with four active Gypsy CD recordings on store shelves (Merman, Daly, Lansbury, Midler), the film soundtrack album is not among them. This oversight has now been temporarily addressed with the recent release of the complete 1962 film soundtrack score of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim's "Gypsy," in a limited CD pressing.
t has been a unique recording trek for composer Sir Elton John's first original stage score, "Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida" now simply titled "Aida". The fun started with the star-studded promotional studio cast album released in 1999 and its advance promo, three-track CD with John and Leann Rimes performing two alternate versions of "Written In The Stars" (not released on the studio album). This was followed by an unofficial composers' demo CD culled from John's studio takes to illustrate his studio cast album.
Playwrights Amy Chini and Tom Zohar's Off the Ground may well become the alternative Christmas play. It has the elements that make for a good holiday play. There is conflict, there is personality, and there is a happy ending. Why alternative? There is also profanity. Lots of it, but not one word gratuitous.
It would be easy to copy last year's review of Amy Chini and Tom Zohar's Off the Ground, change the names, and call it a day. But that's impossible. New Village Arts' seasonal offering is different this year. Aside from being a wee bit shorter, John Decal and Jo Anne Glover took over the roles of Joel and Donna this year.
The action takes place in 80-something Grandpa Dick's home, currently occupied by him (Charlie Riendeau) and grandson Joel (John DeCarlo, another new actor).
Theatre Three opened the funniest play in all of 2007 with their production of Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings downstairs in Theater Too.
Under the able and clever direction of Kerry Cole, with wonderfully imaginative set design by Jac Alder and David Walsh, and a top-notch cast, it would be hard to go wrong. Season's Greetings is one of Ayckbourn's most outrageously funny plays. First produced at Ayckbourn's Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round in Scarborough in 1980, it is ideally suited to the Theater Too venue.
Kathy Burks Theater of Puppetry Arts opened its month-long run of The Nutcracker November 24, 2007, but make no mistake; this is not your grandmother's "Nutcracker." All the characters are puppets and inanimate objects, grown larger than life, embarking on a familiar adventure at a Christmas Eve party at Clara's home. If you're expecting to see ballet, well, you won't; unless you consider as ballet a large standard poodle executing some fancy pirouettes to the gleeful accompaniment of howling laughter from the moppets in the audience.
LaMaMa presented, in June, a new music-theater work by the Talking Band company called Bitterroot, which offers a clever play-within-a play. The frame: after Lincoln's assassination closed the theaters, the company that had been performing My American Cousin at Ford's Theatre (Abe was shot during a performance) goes on tour with an historical play about the Lewis and Clark expedition. They never get more than fifty miles from Washington, but we're always rooting for them.
(see Criticopia off-Broadway review of "Habladores") http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/2768
About two years ago, the Jarrett family suffered the loss of their oldest son Buck, while sailing with his younger brother, Conrad. A freak storm dismasted the sailboat. Buck, a sports jock and all round fun guy, drowned. Judith Guest's book, "Ordinary People," dramatized by Nancy Gilsenan, explores the effect of this tragedy on the family.
See all Criticopia reviews under "Thirty Nine Steps, The"
The best reason to see Topdog/Underdog in its limited engagement at Actors Theater of Louisville is the mind-blowing performances of Stephen Tyrone Williams as Booth and Don Guillory as Lincoln in the Pulitzer Price-winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks. As two African-American brothers whose father gave them those names "as a joke," they live together in a seedy rooming house and constantly lament their unfortunate circumstances that began with parental abandonment. Their promiscuous mother first deserted them. Two years later, their alcoholic father did the same.
By the numbers: 4...27...24...38. Four Actresses. 27 roles. 24 perfect pearls. 38 years.
This is Michelle Lowe's String of Pearls, currently on the boards at North Coast Repertory Theater, under the direction of Karen Carpenter. There is just a slight touch of Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde as the pearls make their way through 38 years, beginning and ending at the same point.
I remember how pleased a well-known actor and I were when we saw a pre-opening performance of Arthur Miller's The Price on Broadway 42 years ago. Miller's plays had been disappointing for awhile, and this was undeniably a moving, thought-provoking, rewarding drama. And funny! Moments in Miller's earlier plays had hinted at the comic talent in his remarkable ear for realistic dialogue and behavior, but his 89 year-old Jewish antiques dealer, Gregory Solomon, delighted audiences with wise, insightful, offbeat, and altogether hilarious comments.
Any time of year would be appropriate for a comedy by renowned British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, but the winter holiday season may be the best. Around the holidays, theatergoers are looking for lighthearted entertainment -- something fun and funny and Ayckbourn can always deliver.
In Kenneth Lonergan's This is Our Youth, Dennis Ziegler (Joshua Everett Johnson) is a small-time drug dealer and user. He is a mental mess. As with his two contemporaries, he comes from an affluent family but prefers to live in an unkempt dump. Warren Straub (Tom Zohar) has a hero-worship complex of Dennis. He is emotionally immature and has run away from his wealthy, abusive father, impulsively absconding with $15,000.
Michael Cristofer's The Shadow Box is not for the faint of heart. It is an intense story of three dramatically different, terminally ill patients and their loved ones. The setting is a hospital campus. The playwright's inspiration was his personal experience with two of his friends with terminal cancer. Still, it is not a depressing play, rather an insightful one with touches of humor.
Unequivocally, Cygnet's production of August Wilson's Fences, under the brilliant direction of Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, is the best production I've seen this season.
Legs! Legs! Legs! All shapes and sizes, all high stepping and well-practiced, and all triple threats. They dance, they sing, and they act...for they are all in Coronado Playhouse's production of the perennially popular Bob Fosse hit, Sweet Charity. This non-stop dancing-and-singing show, which turns 41 on January 29, 2008, is a vital middle-ager under Chrissy Burns's excellent direction.
Disney has taken over plenty in the entertainment world, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when they moved onto Broadway with adaptations of their animated musicals. Beauty and the Beast is an uneven experience, full of bright lights and spectacle, but not much meat for me to chew on. The story is familiar: young woman meets a savage man-beast, is first frightened by him and then learns to love him. The Disney version gave life to inanimate objects, all of which are featured in the stage play. It feels like two shows in one; there's the original Disney material
What you don't want to happen is to be interrogated by a "good cop/bad cop" routine in a totalitarian country. That's exactly what happens to Katurian (Jeffrey Jones) in Ion Theater's current offering of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman. Claudio Raygoza is directing.
The terrors of old age permeate the text of Harold Pinter's 1975 play, No Man's Land. First performed at the Old Vic with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud in the lead roles (directed by Peter Hall), the drama has now been revived at Odyssey Theater Ensemble with Lawrence Pressburger and Alan Mandell doing the honors as Hirst and Spooner, respectively. The director is Michael Peretzian.
In Come Back, Little Sheba, William Inge captures a reality and makes the ordinary engaging and dramatic as a lonely middle-aged woman, beautifully played by S. Epatha Merkerson, trapped in a blank, unloved marriage, interacts with her off-center girl boarder, a quirky Zoe Kazan, and her jock boyfriend. Kevin Anderson gives a wonderful, multifaceted performance as her complex husband, sober almost a year.
Although most Milwaukee theatergoers may be more familiar with the 1992 film of Glengarry Glen Ross, with its star-studded cast including Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin, it's truly the original Pulitzer Prize-winning play that provides a more visceral and edge-of-your-seat experience. The play, which premiered at Chicago's Goodman Theater in 1984, is about the dealings in a seedy Chicago real estate office. Specifically, it's about the small-time, ruthless salesmen who will do almost anything to stay on top of the heap in this dog-eat-dog world.
What a joy it is that Julie Harris has been touring with The Belle of Amherst. Younger readers may not know that Ms. Harris portrays Emily Dickinson in William Luce's one-woman play, which incorporates her poems into the monologue. This partnering of actress, director and playwright is a classic and distinctly American landmark. It gave new life both to the legend of the poetess and to the solo form when it opened in 1977, directed -- as it is now -- by Charles Nelson Reilly.
See review in Criticopia Regional under Fritz Blitz 2008: http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/1947
Ten Minute Madness is an extension of the very popular short-play festival held at North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe. The major difference is that the proprietors, under GB Productions, selected and directed all of the plays. The result is a higher degree of professionalism, very good casting, and a more accomplished cast.
Put down the paper and read this review later -- after you've called Theater Three to reserve a seat for the funniest frenetic frivolity you're likely to see for a long time. The Big Bang, by Boyd Graham and Jed Feuer, opened in the intimate downstairs space Monday night for a limited run.
In an isolated villa on the coast of Italy, a most unusual story is developing. Fifty sisters have fled their native Greece to escape marriage to 50 American brothers. All they want, the sisterly leaders tell the perplexed residents of the villa, is safety. But their suitors quickly follow. That's the set up to Charles Mee's Big Love, which recently had an athletic and entertaining production at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Big Love -- from an opening nude scene to an end with bodies strewn on the stage -- pushes plenty of buttons, dealing with gender, relat
Banyan, having put down roots as Sarasota's special summer theater company, branches out with a special brief winter treat for fans and to introduce itself to "season" playgoers and new residents. Typically, the company chose a literary work. An off-beat offering by Yasmina Reza, in a translation typically stamped by a Brit who tends toward adaptation, The Unexpected Man is less drama than incident.
What is there to say about one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history? Well, here's a new one: it has taken 11 years since The Lion King opened on Broadway, and this is its first appearance in Milwaukee. How can this be? For starters, the show had a lengthy run in Chicago many years ago (Chicago was the first stop for the first national tour). Due to some archaic rules about overlapping geography, The Lion King was basically "banned" from Milwaukee. The show's first appearance in the state was last year in Appleton, a small town about 90 minutes from Milwaukee.
Prison is the principal setting for the story of Jack Henry Abbott. It's as solid a place as the theatrical backdrop of a concrete wall, jaggedly cut away to reveal a vertical steel door. It closes, with thunderous clang, on Abbott, thrown in to confront us.
A bit of Broadway buzz comes to Boston's Huntington Theater as Nathan Lane assays the title role in Simon Gray's seminal dark comedy, Butley. In retrospect, the play feels like the bridge between Harold Pinter's grim view of male relationships in the 60s and the explosion of gay theater in the late 1970s. Alas, the piece has little else to recommend it these days, as its look at one long, bad day in the life of a burnt-out professor of literature has the structure of a poignant—or at least spark-filled—character study, but proves merely a long day's journey into doldrums.
A Chorus Line is back on Broadway, and it's easy to see why it ran for fourteen years. This splendid production, directed by Bob Avian, based on creator Michael Bennett's conception, with the brilliant mirrored set by Robin Wagner, Tharon Musser's super lighting plan (adapted by Natasha Katz) and costumes by Theoni V. Aldredge (the gang's all here), with a dynamite Broadway cast including Charlotte d'Amboise as Cassie, this is Broadway at its best.
"Racist!"
A single word that changed the destiny of so many people. One word spoken in anger drives Irish-American playwright Thomas Gibbon's Permanent Collection. The writer explored race relations in an earlier work, speaking with both the white voice and the black voice (for which he has been be criticized).
see Criticopia review(s) under Barbara Cook
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