Other Josh Cohen, The
Westside Theater

Okay, so you missed this terrific show during its brief Off-Broadway run in 2012 and then perhaps missed it again when it showed up at your regional theater. Well, don’t let this new opportunity to see this totally disarming musical entertainment pass you by. Why it remains relatively unknown beats me as it is a joyfully and artfully crafted musical play.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Choir Boy
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Tarell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage II in 2013. It is now in revival with extensive rewrites (according to the press department) in a new and impressively staged production on MTC’s main stage at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Merrily We Roll Along
Laure Pels Theater

It has become a pleasure for me to look forward to performances by The Fiasco Theater, the company that created something like minimalist magic with Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and then with even more unpretentious inventiveness with the challenging Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, each to wondrous results. I am not surprised that they have gone right back to Sondheim to tackle his difficultly structured 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, but this time with the production resources of the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Requiem for a Heavyweight
The Artistic Home

Author Rod Serling once admitted to making the hero of his American tragedy, Requiem for a Heavyweight, an aging prizefighter in search of a personal dignity because, “I thought there was particular poignancy in having an ex-fighter begin this kind of quest [since] his background provided him with the least possible chance.” Written as a teleplay in 1956, and viewed on the then-innovative medium of television, those narrow options were echoed by thousands of real-life war veterans likewise struggling to find their place in a society offering them few opportunities for

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Chinese Lady, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

Lloyd Suh’s play, The Chinese Lady, takes us on a journey with the first real-life Chinese woman to enter the United States. In 1834, Afong Moy (Lisa Helmi Johanson) was brought over from Beijing to America and put on display by U.S. distributors attempting to sell Chinese goods. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater takes this fascinating pearl of a play and examines each of its facets. Under May Adrales’ able direction, Suh’s characters raise questions about identity, cultural stereotypes, and ageism.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Lights Out
Geffen Theater - Gil Cates Theater

Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole is a musical portrait of the great pop ballad singer, centered around his national TV show which was aired for a season in 1957.  Despite Cole’s popularity with white audiences, the show’s chicken-livered sponsor (the Revlon Company) bowed out, on the grounds that a Negro could not sell cosmetics. Cole was prompted to remark: “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”

Lights Out is set in the TV studio where his last show is taking place before an unseen live audience.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
42nd Street
Crighton Theater

Even if you have not yet been a lucky audience member for Stage Right’s new production of the legendary Broadway musical, 42nd Street, perhaps you have heard the cheers and tap shoes now blowing the roof off the Crighton Theater in downtown Conroe. Better hurry if you want to get tickets for this one.

Director, Manny Cafeo, has spared nothing in creating this sensational musical blockbuster, and choreographer, Dinah Mahlman, must have magic powers of her own as evidenced by the stunning performance of her talented dancers.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
True West
American Airlines Theater

What is it about Sam Shepard's True West that packs a wallop each and every time I see it—and that is four times, if memory serves? Thank goodness I have kept my journals and notes going back to the 1980s for an occasional reference or simply a nostalgic rainy-day trip down memory lane. The first time I saw it was in 1980 at the Public Theater. It was a troubled production that disturbed its author sufficiently for him to disassociate himself from it.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Doll's House, A: Part 2
Steppenwolf Theater

There are three things you can count on theater audiences liking in 2019: husbands and wives bickering, elderly women in long dresses talking potty-mouth, and, if it's a Steppenwolf audience, anything uttered by company member Yasen Peyankov. These reliable motifs, when coupled with an A-List ethnically-diverse cast and a trendy stage picture featuring spectators seated in full view of the audience, makes it all too easy to mistake Lucas Hnath's sequel to Henrik Ibsen's groundbreaking social commentary on marital discord for a pilot episode of a modern television sitcom.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Witness Uganda
Wallis Center - Lovelace Studio Theater

Witness Uganda tells the true story of a young, white do-gooder, Griffin Matthews, who traveled to Uganda after graduating from Carnegie Mellon to help build a school for orphaned kids.  Matthews ended up starting his own non-profit aimed at making it possible for those orphans to get a high school or college education.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Fiddler on the Roof
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

The US national tour of the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof arrived in Milwaukee at the mid-point of the tour’s run. The cast offered a zesty, fresh-looking take at the familiar tale of Tevye, a poor milkman; Golde, his wife; and their five daughters. The show’s exuberant singing and newly designed dancing frame the musical’s quieter moments in a perfectly pitched presentation.

Fiddler returned to Broadway in 2015 for its 51st anniversary, under the direction of Tony Award-winner Bartlett Sher.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Glen, The
Shetler Studios

The Glen, written, produced, and directed by Peter B. Hodges is a “must see” play. Currently running through Saturday, February 16, 2019 at Shelter Studios’ intimate 60-seat theater, The Glen is one of those productions, due to its short run, that sadly disappears as quickly as it appears. Hopefully future mountings—its writing, direction, and acting are wonder-filled—will keep it alive and kicking.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider
Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

It’s really a stand-up routine, but it’s being performed at a major theater in L.A., so we can treat Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider as a theater event, especially since the show is now selling out at the Geffen’s black-box space, it marks a return to the stage for Sweeney after an absence of some fifteen years, though she has worked sporadically on TV in that time.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Wonder Years, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

You won’t find a more exuberant quartet than the singers-dancers at Florida Studio Theater’s Court Cabaret.  They’re re-creating how baby boomers brought us into a new era of new culture, and no more so than of music. They punctuate, with every “number,” Richard and Rebecca Hopkins’s chronicle of changes, starting with previously unheeded teenage musical preferences that are wielding influence even today.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Nude/Naked
McCadden Place Theater

Nude/Naked, Paul Hoan Zeidler’s study of sexual and social pathology, is now in a world-premiere run at McCadden Place TheatER. The play looks at the intense, complex relationship between photographer Bennett Duquesne (Bjorn Johnson) and his daughter Addy (Sorel Carradine).  Although Bennett has earned kudos for his war photography (Syria) and his fashion shoots, he has become recently notorious for his graphic images of Addy, some of which involve nudity.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Sweat
Asolo Repertory Company

Playwright Lynn Nottage for years interviewed—to use in her play Sweat— working class people in Reading, PA.  She dramatized what typical representatives of them went through economically, socially, and emotionally from 2000 to 2008. Though basically a chronicle, Sweat shows how individuals responded as workers to their one-factory town crisis and its effects on their personal relationships.

At Asolo Rep, projections of the era’s political situations over the realistic tavern where workers socialize indicate Nichole A.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Nina Simone: Four Women
North Shore Center for the Performing Arts

Nina Simone is nowadays more often referenced for her historical significance than for her artistic accomplishments.

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, the daughter of ordained ministers and a recognized prodigy, her music education was hindered by the racial prejudice prevalent throughout the Southern United States in the mid-20th century.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Father, The
Theater Wit

A number of playwrights have written about the troubles of adult children faced with elderly parents crippled by Alzheimer's disease and dementia, but how often do we see a play allowing us to witness the neurodegenerative process from the perspective of the afflicted?

We begin in a Paris apartment decorated in Mid-Century Modern, where a cantankerous old man complains of losing his wrist watch while his grown daughter apprises him of her plan to join her boyfriend in London.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2019
Girl in the Red Corner
The Den Theater

The tale of the poor boy who acquires confidence and self-esteem, often accompanied by fame and fortune, resulting from participation in athletic activities is a familiar trope in western literature. The formula applies to poor girls, too, but our heroine's deliverance from bankruptcy, divorce, unemployment, an alcoholic mother, a rebellious niece, and a sister's troubled marriage is not forged on traditional feminine accomplishments, but instead upon the gladiatorial sport of Mixed Martial Arts.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, A
Porchlight Theater - Ruth Page Auditorium

Those lamenting the reduction of the North American musical to pop-playlists augmented by the skimpiest of narratives can take heart from Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak. From a cluster of threadbare, overworked and potentially offensive genres, this talented duo has cobbled a frothy, witty, irreverent romp reaching across a century to address social customs yesterday and today.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Amen Corner, The
WBBT Theater

“Amen” means “so be it” and in a corner of a small Harlem church where Margaret is pastor, members enthusiastically say and even sing the word.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Dada Woof Papa Hot
Theater Wit

This play should be required viewing for anybody contemplating, however briefly, starting a family.

Wherever you happen to fall on the male-female, gay-het, single-married, young-old, Hallmark-Handmaid's Tale spectrum in your assessment of the Reproductive Imperative, Peter Parnell's survey of marital and procreative practices raises long-overdue questions best asked before all the little Nikkis, Zachs, Jareds, Ollies, and Lizzies are tasked with fulfilling the unresolved longings of their custodians.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
What We're Up Against
Raven Arts Complex

It doesn't take us long to separate the bad 'uns from the good 'uns at this generically stark corporate office: Stu is a swaggering, foul-mouthed, testosterone-spewing windbag who spends his time swilling expensive hooch and reviling his co-workers. Weber is his air-headed lackey, dispensing supportive flattery ensuring favor. Ben's support is less enthusiastic, employed as an apology for his sincere work ethic.

It's not just a Boys' Club, however.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

Both script-wise and stage-wise, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Florida Studio Theater is deeply involving. It’s more of a dramatized novel than a typical mystery play.  Its hero, who either is autistic or suffers from Asperger’s, is portrayed by an autistic actor. It’s full of mathematical reasoning but also of contradictions to it. It reveals neighbor and family relationships along with cosmic ones, all of which become interdependent.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Inspector Calls, An
Wallis Annenberg Center - Bram Goldsmith Theater

The National Theatre of Great Britain’s successful 1993 production of An Inspector Calls is making a new swing through the USA in a production once again directed by Stephen Daldry. In its three-week stop at the Wallis, the play (by J.B. Priestley) dazzles with its technological wizardry: a toy-like, collapsing house on stilts, eerie war-torn landscape, gloomy storm clouds, nightmarish music and sound effects. If Hitchcock were a stage director, this is how he would have gone about mounting this play.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
American Son
Booth Theater

Some plays look at the world with a semi-engaged gaze, as if the playwright is already wondering what his characters’ troubles and longings will look like to critics watching a revival of the show twenty years hence. Other plays take the temperature of the times and, when things are burning, come away white hot and ready to shatter. American Son, by Christopher Demos Brown, falls into the second category.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Linda Vista
Mark Taper Forum

The remarkable Ian Barford commands the stage in his role as Wheeler, a burnt-out but likable grouch,  in Tracy Lett’s new comedy, Linda Vista, now in an L.A. premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, under the direction of Dexter Bullard. Letts, Barford, and Bullard are longtime members of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, where Linda Vista was first performed two years ago.  Five of the six other actors in the play were also in the original production, which accounts for the polished and skillful acting on display at the Taper.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Junk
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

The searing cauldron of greed, dominance, power and treachery on Wall Street, so brilliantly captured in the Michael Douglas film, “Wall Street,” gets another look in Junk, Ayad Akhtar’s drama of life in the 1980s. Although not as precisely tuned as Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Disgraced, Junk is a tautly conveyed, briskly paced drama that occasionally starts to believe the lies it spins.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
St. Nicholas
Goodman Theater

Before he emerged from his own alcoholic fog, Conor McPherson often wrote plays about drunks for drunks, their narratives winding back on one another in the manner characteristic of those whose universe spans the interior of their own cranial cavity, making his stories—while damn good stories—often hard to follow. What rescues this import from London's Donmar Warehouse from suffering a similar fate is its willingness to proceed at a leisurely pace allowing us to fully absorb every last savory detail of its progress.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Doll's House, A: Part 2
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

There’s so much comedy in A Doll’s House, Part 2 that its serious essence might easily be overlooked.  Yet Asolo Rep’s production always clings to the play’s serious core, substantiating its achievement.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Hand to God
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne Lab Theater

Despite being tagged as “profane but profound,” Hand to God is more of a puerile presentation of puppetry as a psychological retreat turned takeover. You won’t find God in the Texas small town Church basement setting except sometimes in side-of-stage projections simulating Christian images and a stained glass window bearing scriptural behavioral messages.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Matilda
Todd Wehr Theater

There’s a new kid in town and, from the looks of it, she’s going to smash some box office records while she is here. Milwaukee’s First Stage has taken a giant leap in producing a full-length musical, Matilda, the Musical, with the help of original Broadway creators Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly.

Previously, First Stage has limited its productions to about 70 minutes – a nod to children’s limited attention spans. That’s a tradition going back to 1987, the year First Stage was born.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Crucible, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The mise en scene of Asolo Rep’s The Crucible takes place in a closed-in, heavy wooden-walled room, that will become a metaphor for each scene to follow.  At first, the cast of 17th Century Massachusetts co-religionists, facing forward, file in to fill left and right aisles. Their minister leads his assembly in “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” until a crash and bolt of light scatters all into darkness.  Then the play begins in low light with the minister praying over an unresponsive girl in bed in her wooden-walled attic room.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Book of Mormon, The
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Not since The Book of Mormon’s national tour rolled into Milwaukee three years ago has the city seen such an irreverent, zany, sophomoric – and hilarious – brand of musical theater. Created by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone, The Book of Mormon is still going strong, almost eight years since it opened on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Misunderstanding, A
Ruby Theater @ The Complex Hollywood

Matt Chait is that rare theatrical animal, a playwright of ideas. The veteran actor/writer—and overseer of The Complex, a cluster of small theaters in Hollywood—takes on the controversy over the origins of life on earth in his new play, A Misunderstanding, now in a world premiere run at The Complex’s Ruby Theater. Darwinism and Intelligent Design duke it out in this drama, with both sides expressing themselves in lucid, impassioned fashion.

On one side is Prof.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
Ghosts
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at its debut shocked all of Europe not only for its subject matter but for the new theatrical style of Realism. FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s different production is on a set full of abstracted elements and three huge colorful doors that seem at first to herald farce. Ghosts, of course, refer to legacies of immorality, hypocrisy, deadly secrets and disease.

An assured Carla Corvo manages to maintain Mrs. Alving’s control of her 19th century estate in Norway.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2019
King Kong
Broadway Theater

Obviously, Broadway was calling and here comes King Kong to the Broadway Theater, in all his gargantuan splendor. The gorilla superhero was one of the most famous movie monsters, premiering in a 1933 film, a remake in 1975 and again in 2005. On the theater stage, while the gorilla himself is fantastic, the musical is hardly razzle-dazzle.

A giant of stagecraft and puppetry, King Kong is the star in this spectacle, a chest-beating, teeth-baring colossal creature, with an earsplitting roar as he crashes through jungles of Skull Island in the Indian Sea.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Barney the Elf
Pride Arts Broadway

Marley isn't the sole casualty this yuletide.

Bryan Renaud and Emily Schmidt begin their story of Barney the Elf with the violent death of the North Pole's patriarch—Santa Claus, to us—in an industrial accident. Leadership of his toymaking empire reverts, not to his widow, but to their son, who promptly inaugurates policies designed to increase the productivity of his elvish staff to the detriment of its morale.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Clueless
Signature Center - Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater

For those who loved Clueless, the 1995 cult movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, watched the TV series (1996-99) based on the film, and perhaps read all twenty-one of the Cher young adult books, well, Clueless is back, this time as a two and a half hour, acrobatically dance-heavy, in-your-face, over the top, teenage hormonal-exploding, fun-filled, six-piece band-backed musical. And that’s saying a mouthful!

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
December 2018
Hellcab
Raven Theater

The Famous Door Theater's Hellcab that opened in 1992 and didn't close until nearly ten years later was big, loud, and rude—hey, that was "Chicago-style" acting in those days, and the twenty-three passengers making the hapless hackie's Christmas eve anything but merry and bright were played by nine actors, switching off personae at adrenaline-pumping velocity. The 2010-2016 Profiles Theater revival, on the other hand, opted to cast each role with a different actor, who would then have to make the most of their few seconds onstage.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2018

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