Illinoise
Park Avenue Armory

Illinoise is innovative and startlingly different from most theatrical fare. Derived from Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 concept album “Illinois,” this dance-theater piece, now at the Park Avenue Armory after runs at Bard Summerscape and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, takes a fairly cliched trope about romance and tells it with vigor and excitement featuring electric choreography by Justin Peck. The central love triangle is nothing new, but the brilliant staging and the sheer magnetism of the cast of dancer-actors and singer-musicians brings it to vital life. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Notebook, The
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

If sentimentality is your thing, The Notebook is definitely for you. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 best-selling novel, which became Nick Cassavetes’s 2004 cult-favorite film, this conventional and predictable musical mines every treacly plot point for maximum tearjerking effect. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Scarecrow
Next Act Theater

A skilled storyteller could read the phone book, it used to be said, and people would sit up and listen. Playwright and actor Heidi Armbruster has much more interesting tales to tell in her one-woman show, Scarecrow, which has its Wisconsin debut at Milwaukee’s Next Act Theater. And audiences are sitting in rapt attention for the play’s 100 minutes (no intermission).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Ruby
1012 North Orange Avenue

After gaining numerous sponsors and waiting four years to show off Ruby, its principal creator (with brother Michael) and director Nate  Jacobs still had to add a program explanation of Ruby McCollum’s trial, a show focus. At intermission, many from the audience also picked up a booklet on Ruby and significant historical background. In the actual show Zora Neal Hurston appears as a character narrating, as the famous black author actually did, the trial story surrounded by details.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Intimate Apparel
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Centered on Esther, age 35, black seamstress creating for both white, married woman and black prostitute the titled garments in Intimate Apparel, Lynn Nottage’s play at Asolo Rep comes in the shape of an acted-out narrative book. Its scenic titles have mostly cloth and garment names yet what goes on beneath them is both very emotional and lyrical. The setting is Lower Manhattan in 1905 but with glimpses of faraway Panama as its Canal was built.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2024
Connector, The
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space

Theatrical productions are like collaborative jigsaw puzzles. When the pieces—script, acting, direction, design, etc.—fit perfectly together, you have a genuine, amazing experience. But sometimes you get some extremely well-done and satisfying pieces, but they don’t quite line up or they are matched with lesser elements and the whole is less than scintillating. You walk out with a sense that something vital is missing, and you can’t put your finger on what was lacking. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Seven Year Disappear, The
Pershing Square Signature Center - Alice Griffin Jewel Box

Theatrical productions are like collaborative jigsaw puzzles. When the pieces—script, acting, direction, design, etc.—fit perfectly together, you have a genuine, amazing experience. But sometimes you get some extremely well-done and satisfying pieces, but they don’t quite line up or they are matched with lesser elements and the whole is less than scintillating. You walk out with a sense that something vital is missing, and you can’t put your finger on what was lacking. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Night in November, A
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab

You don’t have to know a lot about “The Troubles” in the late 1900s in six Northern counties (formerly known as Ulster and now part of Great Britain as Northern Ireland) to realize how much they affected its citizens due due to their political and religious loyalties.  Everything’s clear in James Evans’  long monologue as he acts out how he as Kenneth McCallister came to attend a World Cup Tournament and its effects on him personally and regarding the political situation  in both parts of the island of Ireland.  It’s all interesting and may even be admirably right in the lar

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Clyde's
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

You won’t find a more detailed sandwich shop kitchen with refrigerator and food prep areas than at :”Clyde’s” presented by FSU/Asolo Conservatory at the very relevant-named Cook Theater for this play. The scene typifies work by award-winning Asolo Rep Scenic Studios under Vic Meyrich, perfect for Jeff Weber’s realistic, very detailed design.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Oh, Mary!
Lucille Lortel Theater

Mary Todd Lincoln is an odd choice as the main character of a raucous, drag-centered satire. Most campy stage spoofs written by and starring either Charles Busch or Charles Ludlum have usually focused on movie heroines played by the likes of Joan Crawford or Bette Davis in spectacularly soapy melodramas, or they are historical epics featuring over-the-top royalty in divinely diva-ish gowns. Mrs. Lincoln’s story is a truly tragic one and does not afford much opportunity for sartorial fabulousness.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Miss Julie
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

In theater history annals in the 19th century Western World, Swedish August Strindberg’s Miss Julie was considered an innovative naturalistic play, though structured as a realistic one for audiences to follow drama done in a room with no front wall. In FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s two-tier set that could be in Ireland, following Frank McGuinness’s script, it’s a graphic experience. Audiences get to see class and gender distinctions embodied and intertwined as well as an explicit sexual tryst.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Flip Side, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Promoted as a tribute to comedic musicians and songwriters, “The Flip Side” features selections of their creations but doesn’t say much, if anything, about either of them. Both the fine performers and what they perform come on basically the same way throughout—with  small dance moves, the same order of entrance, and maybe a distinguishing mark (usually moves or changed costume) throughout. The show’s best when these are funny.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Born with Teeth
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

The major reason to see Alley Theater’s Born with Teeth is the dynamic acting of Matthew Amendt and Dylan Godwin. Director Rob Melrose has wisely kept them distinct both physically and attitudinally and, most praiseworthy, also vocally.  They speak prose and poetry differently despite a sameness in author Liz Duffy Adams’s script that makes the drama basically a series of arguments.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Our Class
Brooklyn Academy of Music - Fisher

Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class, presented by Arlenkinz Players Theater at BAM’s Fisher - Fishman space, has a bold, inventive sense of theatricality that leaves a striking impression, particularly since it is derived from real events: a political and social crisis involving Russia. The former Soviet Union is not the direct backdrop of the massive, yet intimate three-hour drama, but it plays a vital part.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy
Vineyard Theater

The line between the truth and fake news becomes a blurry limbo pole the characters dance around, above and below in Sarah Gancher’s brilliantly relevant and wildly funny new play, Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy, now at the Vineyard Theater. This inventive playwright starts out with the shockingly real fact that Putin’s government interfered in the 2016 presidential election by sending out conspiracy-theory-laden tweets and social-media messages from thousands of fake accounts, tipping the scales for a certain orange-hued candidate.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Good Soldier Svejk and his Fortunes in the First World War, The
Theater for the New City

A good-humored, simple-minded man is a stock character used by storytellers for thousands of years in many different styles and settings. These characters are usually secondary or adjuncts to the main character, often as a sidekick or employee. Court Jesters are a typical example of such characters: jokesters who can speak truth to power through humor. They are usually depicted as naive and treated as ignorant or stupid, but they deliver critical insights into the story's structure.

Scotty Bennett
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Days of Wine and Roses
Studio 54

Exploring dysfunction and its corrosive effect on relationships. Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s musical version of Days of Wine and Roses, JP Miller’s teleplay and film about an alcoholic couple’s struggles with addiction, has transferred from its Off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company run last year to a limited engagement at Broadway’s Studio 54. During its ATC stand, I found this tuner slight and less impactful than the 1962 film version directed by Blake Edwards and starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Jonah
Steinberg Center - Laura Pels Theater

“The present and the past. But everything is slippery.” So reads the time of the play in the program from Jonah, Rachel Bonds’s somewhat confusing but ultimately affecting new work presented by Roundabout Theater Company at its Off-Broadway stage, the Laura Pels. The confusion is prevalent at first. But by the final curtain, all the disparate pieces of the scattered plot come together to form a full portrait of the lead character, Ana, a shattered young woman, beautifully played by the intense and versatile Gabby Beans.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Lehman Trilogy, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

Everything seems to come in threes in The Lehman Trilogy at Florida Studio Theater. Exception: 164 years covered from the family’s first economic hope entering America,1844, to utter despair in 2008’s Depression. Three brothers who start all are played by three actors for three acts set in three major socioeconomic, geographic, and morally-changed eras. Everything and everyone works remarkably well for three hours that audiences should not soon forget.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2024
Soldier's Play, A
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe - Donnelly Theater

A Soldier’s Play is a murder mystery one, based on an investigation to find the killer of a Black sergeant in a segregated army stationed in Louisiana during WW II. But whose story is told and dramatized?  Is it mostly of the victim’s? Or that of a soldier of either race associated with him either positively or negatively? Or that of the “detective” of the case? Or of an officer in charge of verifying the perpetrator and getting him punished?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Ugly Lies the Bone
Florida Studio Theater - Bowne's Lab

Jess almost seems to find coming home to Space Station territory as difficult as grappling with burned disfigurement, weak limbs, and little of once-glowing hair from combat in Afghanistan. Nothing and no-one are the same as they used to be. Especially Jess, who’s bitterly embarking on a novel virtual-reality therapy to rid herself of pain and problems at home, both past and present in Ugly Lies the Bone.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Inherit the Wind
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Asolo

A play based on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial”, centered on whether Evolution is a fact to be taught or held as anti-religion untruth, Inherit the Wind has not lost its dramatic currency.  As Asolo Rep’s season opener directed by lover-of-musicals Peter Rothstein, it also takes place in an atmosphere of sacred music, not unconfined to questioning what is or is not profane.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Night of the Iguana, The
Pershing Square Signature Center

The revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana from La Femme Productions at the Pershing Square Signature Center sounded so promising (Note: this is not a Signature Theater production).

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
All the Devils are Here
DR2 Theater

During the holiday theater lull, I caught up with Patrick Page’s brilliant solo show All The Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Created the Villain at the tiny DR2 Theater. In a dazzling 70 minutes, this dark-voiced thespian explores the Bard’s development of his sinister characters, making them multidimensional.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Prayer for the French Republic
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

In the two years since it premiered at Manhattan Theater Club’s City Center stage Off-Broadway in 2022, Joshua Harmon’s moving, funny and challenging play Prayer for the French Republic has become even more relevant and immediate. Now on Broadway at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Harmon’s multigenerational tale of a French Jewish family confronting endless anti-Semitism is a harsh and difficult reminder of the perilous times we live in.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Last Five Years, The
Greendale High School Auditorim

The leafy Milwaukee suburb of Greendale contains one of the area’s most intriguing community theaters, in terms of the productions it stages. For its winter season, Greendale Community Theatre is reviving Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, which it first produced in 2006 under the moniker, All-In Productions.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2024
Becoming Chavela
Theater for the New City

Becoming Chavela, written by Stephanie Trudeau and directed by Joyce Callo, is a true story of a Costa Rican lesbian singer by way of Mexico, as told by a Puerto Rican woman. It’s bout Chavela Vargas, a renowned singer of Mexican ranchera songs, and was performed worldwide as a cabaret show to enthusiastic responses.

Scotty Bennett
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Manahatta
Public Theater - Anspacher Theater

Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta at the Public Theater somewhat jarringly juxtaposes a contemporary story against an historic one. The flimsy plot draws parallels between the 2007-08 subprime mortgage crisis and the Dutch colonists’ takeover of what becomes Manhattan Island in the early 17th century. In the modern story, ambitious Jane Snake becomes the first Native American to work on Wall Street, selling derivative mortgages.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Gardens of Anuncia, The
Lincoln Center Theater

Michael-John LaChiusa’s musical The Gardens of Anuncia at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, is a gentle, fragmented memory piece inspired by the childhood and early adult years of choreographer-director Graciela Daniele. The 90-minute piece is a sweetly nostalgic ramble with no clear plot or driving storyline.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Appropriate
Helen Hayes Theater

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate premiered at the Actors Theater of Louisville in 2013 and subsequently opened Off-Broadway at the Signature Theater Center in 2014, winning an Obie Award. Now this explosive play is making its Broadway debut in a searing, dangerous, and hysterically funny production by director Lila Neugebauer from Second Stage Theater at the Helen Hayes. In the years since its regional and Off-Broadway runs, it’s become even more relevant and hot.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Hell's Kitchen
Public Theater - Newman Theater

While Stephen Sondheim and David Ives’s musical Here We Are aims at the lofty goal of questioning the nature of human existence,  Hell’s Kitchen at the Public Theater has a lower target of telling a familiar story of teen self-discovery — but it hits a bull’s eye. Pop songwriter-singer Alicia Keys has taken several of her hits songs, written some new ones, and along with book-writer Krisoffer Diaz, has woven pieces of her own past growing up in the titular Manhattan neighborhood into an entertaining, colorful, but not-too-unusual tapestry.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Here We Are
The Shed - Griffin Theater

It should come as no surprise that Here We Are, the final effort by Stephen Sondheim, is unlike any other work from the late master of the American musical theater. Never content to examine the same subject matter or to repeat his style, each of the masterpieces and near-misses in Sondheim’s canon are unique, save for the brilliance and daring they all share. Sweeney Todd is nothing like Company. Follies does not resemble  Assassins. Pacific Overtures is not a mate to Sunday in the Park with George.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
I Can Get it for You Wholesale
Classic Stage Company

I Can Get It for You Wholesale is not based on real events, but the Classic Stage Company revival of the 1962 rarely-seen curio does explore jarring issues of anti-semitism while providing a taste of mid-20th century entertainment, Broadway style.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Buena Vista Social Club
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

Buena Vista Social Club was the subject of Wim Wenders’s 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary which spotlights the making of the titular album and a legendary Carnegie Hall concert celebrating the musicians of pre-revolutionary Cuba. Like the current musical How to Dance in Ohio, which is also based on a documentary, the new stage musical version of Social Club emphasizes soap-opera-ish aspects of the story.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
How to Dance in Ohio
Belasco Theater

In the 2015 HBO documentary “How to Dance in Ohio,” filmmaker Alexandra Shiva focuses on three young autistic women and their struggles with social skills and entering the adult world independent of their families. In Rebekah Greer Melock’s book for the musical version, now on Broadway at the Belasco Theater, the scope is expanded to seven protagonists. The engine of the plot remains preparation for a prom-like event. That is the most moving element of the show as the participants learn to cope with their anxieties and the challenges of interacting with others.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Pictures from Home
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Presenting memories of a family dramatically through photos and and narrative, Pictures from Home basically stages both as created and remembered by Larry Sultan. HIs father Irving and mother Jean are the stars, along with the son. Scenes show them interacting in Larry’s decade of visits from the late 1980s. It was to the San Francisco Valley home where he grew up but where memories of earlier family places and conditions remained vivid.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Joyful! Joyful!
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe - Donnelly Theater

Joyful! Joyful!, this year’s holiday offering by Westcoast Black Theater Troupe, lives up to its name in every way. Nate Jacobs, WBTT founder, producing artistic director, and show director, has delivered a high-energy musical revue, showcasing superb performances by the company’s troupe, whose talent the company develops and nurtures. All cast members are WBTT veterans except one, who brings his own strong credentials. Although the actors are listed in the program as “Ensemble,” each could be a featured performer.

Jo Morello
Date Reviewed:
December 2023
Stereophonic
Playwrights Horizons

If the Vineyard Theater’s current Scene Partners is the fever dream of a movie fan desperate for acceptance and fulfillment, Stereophonic, at Playwrights Horizons, is a brutal reality check and harsh reminder of the cost of fame.

Scene Partners
Vineyard Theatr

As he did in his previous work Wet Brain, which ran at Playwrights last summer, John Caswell mixes a believable situation with the fantasies of his characters to create a weird, dream-like world in Scene Partners. Wet Brain had a family dealing with the father’s alcoholism and descent into madness fused with allusions to sci-fi and outer-space aliens.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
November 2023
Harmony
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Harmony, the long-gestating musical about the Comedian Harmonists, a real-life singing group in 1920s and ’30s Germany, whose careers and lives were destroyed by Hitler’s anti-semitic policies, has its heart in the right place, but hits a few discordant notes along with melodious ones.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
November 2023

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