Orange Flower Water
6th@Penn Theater

Marriages age, kids come, romance dwindles, the eyes wander; all of these are potential problems that affect over 50 percent of all marriages in the United States and are an active part of the daily political news. Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water details one possible outcome. Director Jerry Pilato directs the San Diego premiere of this highly controversial play at 6th@Penn.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Mystere

(see review(s) under Cirque du Soleil: Mystere)

Game On
Actors Theater of Louisville

Somewhere in deepest Africa, about ten thousand years ago, an ancient man proposed a contest: Who the farthest a rock could throw,
And that auspicious occasion, I am happy to report
Marked
the end of our animal nature
For on that day we gave birth to sport.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Little Night Music, A
Old Town Theater

Going to the Old Town Theater is like visiting an old friend. Great sight lines, nice stage, tiny lobby, and, well, the restrooms are inadequate. Great news, though: Cygnet Theater is taking over the facility, introducing their audiences to it with the production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Then, they'll close it down for some serious renovations.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Let the Eagle Fly
Southwestern Community College

Viva la causa!"

In the early '60s, Cesar Chavez began a drive to organize the farm workers in Delano, California. In 1970, the first-ever contract between the California grape farmers and the United Farm Workers was signed. Let the Eagle Fly is the story of this struggle and a look into the life of Chavez beginning in 1938 when he was 11 years old and his brother Richard was 9.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Man Who Lost the River, The
Sunshine Brooks Theater

The Man Who Lost the River is a one-man show with a cast of 10. We refer to this man who, at 74, couldn't get back to the Missouri River, as Mark Twain. He is content with just plain Sam Clemens, a one-time writer, now tired and written out. His two really big hits, about boys Tom and Huck, were published in 1876 and 1885, 25 and more years back.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Souvenir
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

Long before there were shows such as TV's "American Idol," there was another disillusioned woman who thought she could sing. But unlike today's memorable TV contestants who are criticized by the show's judges, Florence Foster Jenkins had no such limitations. Instead, Ms. Jenkins went on to fame and fortune and became somewhat of an oddball celebrity in the 1940s.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Momsy's Bad Boy
North Park Vaudeville

What genre of theater is meant to be bad? What scripts are designed to cause audiences to boo and hiss? Yes, melodramas! Playwright Summer Golden's opus, Momsy's Bad Boy or, The Saga of the Falsely Reformed Degenerate totally qualifies. Producer Jeff Bushnell's introductory comments implore the audience to boo and hiss the villain and all villainy and cheer and rave at the hero and heroine and all acts of goodness.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Hot Mikado, The
Historic Asolo Theater

In more ways than one, WBTT's Hot Mikado is a mixed bag. The vehicle itself blends a 19th-century operetta with 20th-century swing, jazz, R & B, and gospel. Onstage, a pagoda flanked by bridges and flowery trees denotes Japan. But it's occupied by Black Americans ruled by an Imperial (also imperious) Mikado (Nate Jacobs, like Cab Calloway with muted hi-dee-hoeing). Everyone has Japanese names, and most wear colorful, flowery kimonos, though the "Gentlemen of Japan" jive in multicolored-striped zoot suits. Brass rules!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
33 Variations
La Jolla Playhouse

This reviewer will admit to being a lover of Beethoven, which will no doubt color this review. Playwright/Director Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations brings the story of Beethoven's "Diabelli Variations" to stage. Loosely based on music publisher Anton Diabelli's request of Beethoven and others to write variations on his 45-second waltz, Beethoven went on to write 33 variations over a period of several years.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Thirty-Three Variations

(see all listings under "33 Variations")

Morning's At Seven
North Coast Repertory Theater

 Playwright Paul Osborn has crafted a delightful play that flows from character to character, telling the continuing saga of four sisters from small-town USA in the twilight of their lives. The play is an interesting character study of the sisters and their families. The stage represents the back porches of neighboring sisters' houses.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
La Gaviota
Ion Theater

 Anton Chekhov created The Seagull a bit over 100 years ago. Playwright/actor Claudio Raygoza moved ahead a few years (1910 and 1914) and places the action of his La Gaviota ("Grey Gull") in the state of Veracruz, Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The result is a riveting, personal look at Chekhov's classic characters in a new setting. Raygoza is faithful in storyline, the relationships, and the passions of the characters. There have been only minor plot changes which work well with this adaptation and the period.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Prelude to a Kiss
New Village Arts Theater

 Imagine for just a moment that the person you fell in love with, the person you just married, the person you intend to spend the rest of your life with has just had a personality change so different you are questioning them and your own sanity. Hold that thought.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Toxic Audio
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Stage III

Black curtains, black floor, a black back screen projecting definitions of "voice" and, at one point, giving directions for audience oral participation, three men and two women performers in black trousers and black and/or white tops comprise Toxic Audio. Voices supply music as well as lyrics for songs such as "Route 66" and "Stand By Me" with minimal but appropriate movement, "Autumn Leaves" in various languages from French to Pig Latin, "Why Don't We Do It On the Road" also using an audience ninny with a dozen cue cards saying the same thing.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Hysterical Blindness
Cygnet Theater

We're in this bar in Bayonne, New Jersey. That's across the river from Brooklyn and south of Manhattan. It's a dive called Oliver's. These two broads come in. One is named Debby and the other Beth. I don't think they've ever been out of Jersey. Being a Californian, it took me quite awhile to interpret their accent. They were dressed like, well, I don't want too be uncomplimentary, sorta flashy, ya might say. . . weird, really weird those two.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Talley's Folly
Milwaukee Chamber Theater

 An unlikely romance set within the timeframe of World War II is the heart of Talley's Folly, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by noted playwright Lanford Wilson. It is the story of Matt, a big-city Jewish accountant, and Sally, a pretty younger woman who lives in Missouri. They are the play's only characters.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Patio Playhouse

 Five Women Wearing the Same Dress by playwright Alan Ball takes place in Meredith's (Tiffany Paster) bedroom, which overlooks the festivities of her sister's wedding reception. She and four others are the bridesmaids. Don't get the idea that this is a saccharine 50s romantic afternoon. It's 1993 in Knoxville, Tennessee. These are modern southern belles in atrocious dresses. They also speak their minds and their minds are full of contemporary language, blasphemous commentary, and the desire to have sexual satisfaction above all.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Piano Lesson, The
Geva Theater Center - Mainstage

Most August Wilson plays build initial momentum with a loud, annoying character who often turns out to be the center of the play's ideas. The tough assignment is for the actor to make him rankle enough to stir things up but not turn the audience off so much that they stop paying attention to him. In 1989's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson, Boy Willie disrupts his sister's, Berniece's, household wanting to sell the family piano. Dynamic Carl Coffield makes Boy Willie annoying and disturbing but sexy and intriguing enough for us to want him to stick around.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Speed-the-Plow
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Once controversial, Mamet's play is as much old hat now as classic. For a prestigious conservatory for actor training to showcase only three actors in a class is unusual; maybe it's an attempt to scoop London's Old Vic. Of course, the sureshot dialogue between the two male leads makes for an interesting acting -- and listening -- experience. But what's said is hardly fresh.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
Tale of Higgledy-Piggledy Mumbo Jumbo, A
Compass

 Saturday I learned all about reduplicative compounds, not from San Diego's friendly verbavore Richard Lederer, but from 11-year-old Lily Corbett. Ms. Corbett plays Mabel in Open Curtain Troupe's production of A Tale of Higgledy-Piggledy Mumbo Jumbo. The show has a one-date-a-month schedule throughout the summer.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Mid-Life!
Theater Three

If you guffaw at scatological humor and knock-knock jokes, and your development was arrested at puberty, then Theater Three's production of Mid-Life! The Crisis Musical may just be your cup of tea. Made up of two hours of singularly un-funny sketches about the alleged pitfalls of mid-life, most likely written by two men (brothers Bob and Jim Walton) who know of mid-life only from learning about it from the History Channel of which the cast sings, their attempts at humor fall far short of their mark.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Scripps Ranch Theater

 Scripps Ranch Theater is all show biz for I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (hereinafter referred to as ILYYPNC). Brian Redfern's showy set is accented by brightly colored pivoting panels, giving a happy feeling of bubbling champagne. Bob Eisele accents the stage with colorful lighting plots. It is Marjorie Mae Treger, however, who puts it all together with her excellent casting and playful direction.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Lady
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

 In Lady, a cork-like oaken box purports to be woods outside of Bethany, Illinois (though the only thing authentically Southern Illinois about it is the lighting). It shuts in three men who meet annually to hunt and supposedly renew a friendship since childhood that's frayed of late. But this "concept" set is all metaphor with no particular basis in reality. A huge rectangular inset is planned to come down at one point and reveal a clearing under a sky.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Holy Ghosts
Swedenborgian Hall

 Coleman Shedman (Michael Barnett) is having a bad morning. He wakes up on the floor with a bad hangover. Moments later he discovers the furniture gone. As the brain fog clears, he can't find his wife nor his cherished old pick-up truck. Yes, Coleman's day does not start out well. He hoofs it into town, finally finding his wife, Nancy (Melanie Sutherlin), praising the Lord at the fellowship hall. A confrontation ensues. Plus, this is a day of worship, and the parishioners begin to arrive.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Groucho: A Life in Revue
OnStage Playhouse

I was raised on TV's "You Bet Your Life." From 1950 to 1956, the show was a weekly ritual. Even when I was in Asia in the late 50s, I could see it. Then there were Groucho Marx's films, solo or with Harpo and Chico. Groucho was part of my life.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Rocket City
Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Octagon Theater

In the rear, a long curtain before multi-tiered circle and ovals; in the foreground, space for changes of scene via prop placement: how fitting! The story of the U. S. Military bringing into Huntsville, Alabama, a team of former Nazi scientists headed by Wernher Von Braun, and how this affects the townspeople intertwines with that of Jewish Amy Lubin (Lori Prince, sweet but tough). She has come from the Bronx to wed Alabaman Jed Kessler (always amiable, romantic Daniel Talbott).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Catered Affair, A

 You only have to listen to the first seven minutes or so of A Catered Affair on the PS Classics cast album to get a good idea of the show's strengths as well as its flaws. After a brief orchestral prelude, the CD begins not with a song but with nearly two full minutes of spoken dialogue over music -- and, by the way, there's actually much more dialogue at the start of the show as seen at the Walter Kerr Theater than is included on the recording.

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Adding Machine

 I haven't done any digging, so I don't know whence came all of the money behind Adding Machine, which has been transplanted from Chicago to the Minetta Lane Theater. We've all read and heard a great deal about how the current economics of Off-Broadway work against the financially successful production of musicals unless they're have teeny-tiny casts and modest production values. So I was amazed by the sets, lighting, costumes, and video design of this arresting musical based on Elmer Rice's expressionist 1923 play about a poor sap named Mr.

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Number, A
Cygnet Theater

What is truth? Is there truth? Ask the Bernards and Michael and Salter in Caryl Churchill's haunting A Number, the current offering at Cygnet. The short play, 62 intermissionless minutes, explores cloning and much, much more.

Salter (D. W. Jacobs) visits with his three sons, Bernard One and Two and Michael Black (Francis Gercke). Salter's relationship to his three sons, two cloned from Bernard One, is, in reality, a trial conducted by the three.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Working
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Like spaces for nine of TV's old "Hollywood Squares," Beowulf Boritt's three-tiered set is a backstage scene. Before the performance, audiences can see actors putting on make-up, sound and stage manager going over cues, and musicians warming up. Clearly, they are exemplifying the title of this "Reimagined Musical," most of the action of which will happen downstage. The backstage wall will often contain projections connected with the work being described or sung about (e.g., fast food pix for the delivery boy of same).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Visit, The
Signature Theater

The Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia recently did some major damage to its own good name by sending to Broadway the painfully amateurish Glory Days, which closed on opening night. An excellent way for the company to fully restore its reputation in the eyes of New Yorkers would be to bring its superb production of the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Terrence McNally musical The Visit, to town.

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Joe Egg

(See reviews under "Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A")

Dearly Departed
Westminster Theater

 In 1991 two Kentucky-born actors co-wrote Vanguard's current production, Dearly Departed, playing at the Westminster Theater. This piece of charmingly funny rural humor has been called "drop dead funny" -- an amusing pun.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Pride and Prejudice
Geva Theater Center - Mainstage

There doesn't seem to be a great need for another new stage version of Jane Austin's most beloved novel, but Geva's Pride and Prejudice is a handsome, well-produced and smartly repackaged one, and Austen's period romances seem to be oddly in vogue now that they seem entirely foreign to our society. They are, of course, women's novels, entirely concerned with who should marry whom and what each should wear and the glories of moving up in a rigidly class-conscious society.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Romeo and Juliet
Festival Theater

Much was riding on Stratford's opening-night production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the great Canadian Festival's landmark Festival Theater. The 2008 season had been chosen by three artistic directors under the general direction of Antoni Cimolino; but a few months before it opened, Marti Maraden and Don Shipley resigned as artistic directors, citing interference by Cimolino and favoritism toward the ideas of artistic director #3, Des McAnuff.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Inspector Calls, An
Festival Theater

The Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has established such an impressive tradition of top-level theater, mixing modern classics with newly discovered or rediscovered thought-provoking plays and musicals in impeccable productions, that expectations always run high for each season. Canada's best actors join, return to, or continue in Shawfest's superb ensemble. So the accomplished new offerings of their 2008 opening week had no productions to absolutely avoid, but, unfortunately, only one that was memorably thrilling, The Stepmother.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Tempest, The
Players Theater

Although there are textual and character cuts, The Players' version of The Tempest also adds modern magic to the play's "rough magic" with rocking music and spinning lighting. And oh, yes, the hero's a heroine: Prospera (played with full authority by Linda MacCluggage, done up in spun gold right down to her sandals).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
American Airlines Theater

 Eddie Izzard gives a star turn in Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, bringing a gentleness to the very stylized character of the husband in a couple who have a totally disabled daughter whom they care for. It's an odd play which unconventionally breaks the convention of the "fourth wall," and each character addresses the audience directly. Izzard gives great Fuddy Duddy as he shows us various doctors or a vicar and keeps his performance underplayed in what is actually full-out broad comedy, making this very heavy play humorous.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

 (see Criticopia listing under "How The Grinch Stole Christmas")

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