Biloxi Blues
Sunshine Brooks Theater

New Vision Theater at the Sunshine Brooks Theater in Oceanside opened Biloxi Blues. Part of a semi-autobiographical trilogy, which also included Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, Biloxi Blues covers the first eight weeks in boot camp circa 1943.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Bird Sanctuary, The
Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Carolyn Blount Theater

You wouldn't know it from the way Eleanor Henryson has strewn flowers, paints, papers, table, chairs around the dingy room. Nor from the colored-photo-like portraits of a man against one side of the worn, flowery-papered back wall or the mother with her young children on the other. Eleanor has to tell you that this room overlooks a wonderful Dublin Bird Sanctuary. She's made herself a recluse, painting to memorialize it. So, too, she wants to preserve the house, once so handsome that Queen Victoria stopped to look in.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Birds, The
Yale Repertory Theater

The Yale School of Drama annually presents its Graduate Acting Class in a separate production from Yale Rep's regular schedule.  It is an event I've looked forward to and attended, with few exceptions, for more than 20 years, for it offers an opportunity to see potential stars of the future.  Many productions have been of Shakespeare plays, the most memorable one featuring Jane Kazmarek and Kate Burton.  This year, the choice is a free-wheeling adaptation of Aristophanes' classic, The Birds.  Written by Len Jenkin, playwright and teacher, and directed by Christopher Bayes, it employs

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Birthday Suite
OnStage Playhouse

Not only does Birthday Suite fit the classical definition of farce, but Robin Hawdon's newest play, direct from the UK and under the talented direction of Bob Christensen, is hilarious. (Hawdon's Don't Dress for Dinner was well received a few years back.)

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Black Comedy
Wilma Theater

When Black Comedy begins, the stage is in total darkness, but we hear actors moving about and talking normally, describing objects in a room - chairs, a piece of sculpture and so on û as if they see them clearly. Suddenly bright stage lights come on, as the characters exclaim: "Oh, a fuse must have blown. I can't see a thing."  This is the brilliant conceit that Peter Shaffer uses in this short comedy from early in his career. It is totally different from his dark, dramatic, best-known plays, Equus and Amadeus, and is a total delight. 

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Black Nativity
Backlot Theater

For its fifth, amplified presentation of Langston Hughes' "lyrical poem" recounting and celebrating The Nativity of Christ, WBTT garbs its gospel figures in shimmering African-inspired attire. Though it contrasts with less-polished aspects of the performance, the latter constitute part of Black Nativity's charming "folk" quality.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2005
Blackbird
Profiles Theater

During a scene late in Blackbird, Froggy, who shares an apartment with Baylis, finds one of Baylis' short stories. Froggy, in her sweet, always amazed, slangy voice says it's pornographic, and Baylis, in his experienced, gruff tone, replies that it's also an intimate love story. Such a description is apt for writer Adam Rapp's own play as well.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Blithe Spirit
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

Elvira Condomine has been a Blithe Spirit for 65 years. She oozed from the pen of Noel Coward in 1941 to haunt Charles Condomine's house in Kent, England. Her current revival at Scripps Ranch Theater makes for a delightful production.

The Condomine living room is suggestively elegant due to Chris Kennedy's creative open design. Walls are suggested by glazed doors open to the rest of the estate and out to the garden and stairs leading to the upper chambers, with a hall off to the rest of the main floor.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Unexpected Man, The
Historic Asolo Theater

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.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Blast!
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

For those of us who could not attend the opening and closing ceremonies at the recent Olympics in Sydney, Blast! is a satisfying substitute. Its nonstop energy and innovative rhythms capture the exhilaration one would have expected to share as part of the festivities in Australia.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Blithe Spirit
Theater Charlotte

It's been awhile since we've seen Lon Bumgarner directing an utterly carefree comedy -- so long, you may have forgotten how good he is at it. When he was dominating the Loaf's directing awards from 1987-90, Bumgarner certainly garnered accolades for his Hamlet, Macbeth, and Three Sisters with Charlotte Shakespeare Company. Yet his work was sometimes even more revelatory in frothier fare such as Scapino!, House of Blue Leaves, You Can't Take It With You and What the Butler Saw.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Blithe Spirit
Peninsula Players Theater In A Park

The playbill for the Peninsula Players' production of Blithe Spirit notes that the play is "a witty comedy by Noel Coward." That certainly is the truth. One-liners and bon mots fly from the characters' mouths. But it is the actors that carry the day in this sometimes rough and slow-moving production of the show. The Coward chestnut—or is that war horse?—is a comedic take on the afterlife and haunting spirits. It's all about a seance gone horribly wrong that brings back the wife of writer Charles' dead wife, Elvira.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Blithering Heights
Ivanhoe Theater

Blithering Heights is another of the full-length improv offerings by The Free Associates, this one in the style of the Bronte Sisters. The evening I watched, they worked with audience suggestions to come up with heroine Catherine Milton, in love with Hunter, a man whose family business was secretly running a bordello. The family who take care of Catherine (by turning her into a servant and convincing her she was ugly and going bald) try to keep her from meeting the hero by locking her in the cellar.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Blood Brothers
Downtown Cabaret Theater

Tell me it's not true. Say it's just a story, Something on the news. Tell me it's not true, Though it's here before me.

Those are the touching words that open Blood Brothers, the musical that the far-sighted Executive Producer Richard Hallinan brought 13 years ago on an incredible journey from England to the Downtown Cabaret in Bridgeport for its American Premiere. It was a courageous act. Here was a theater known best for its good solid revivals. Would its audience support an unknown work? The answer was a resounding YES!

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Blood Brothers
Theater Three

Rarely has so much exceptional talent been squandered as that which transpired at Theatre Three's production of Willy Russell's (Shirley Valentine) Blood Brothers. Under the disjointed misdirection of Terry Dobson, three of Dallas' finest divas managed to shine in spite of Dobson's focus totally missing the mark. Liz Mikel was superb as the narrator/seer and handled transitions seamlessly. Her stage presence was commanding, and her powerful voice complemented her actions. Sally Soldo as Mrs.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Blown Sideways Through Life
Florida Studio Theater

Everything that made me a misfit in the world made me right for the theater, Claudia Shearer decided. Michelle Gardner, wonderfully genuine as the author, takes us through 64 jobs she was unsuited for. With energetic, compelling force she makes the 65th -- this tour de force--a success, personally and professionally. Simplicity is the key, including the set (a glass-paneled backdrop that changes backlit colors moodily) and props consisting of a large elevated platform with steps and a ladder at one side.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Blue/Orange
Nova Southeastern University's Mailman Hollywood Center Auditorium

All elements are in top form and work together in The Promethean Theater production of Blue/Orange: worthwhile play, direction with a vision, performances that deliver, and sound and light designs that set the stage, then get out of the way.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Blue/Orange
Intiman Theater

Joe Penhall, now in his mid-thirties, has been writing plays for a decade. His biggest success has been Blue/Orange, which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2000, transferred to a West End run, and understandably won the Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play. The Intiman Theater has mounted a stunning production that is fully the equal of the London original.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Blue Bird, The
Williamstown Theater Festival.

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian, writing in French in the first decade or so of the twentieth century. His work epitomized symbolism. Nonetheless, his The Blue Bird was first produced at that bastion of realism, The Mosow Art Theater, in 1908, directed by Mr. Stanislavski himself. The play's success led to the Nobel for Maeterlink in 1911.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Blue Bird, The
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

It's a brave director that takes on the rarely-produced (since its Moscow premier in 1908) Maeterlinck fantasy, The Blue Bird and comes away from the challenge unscathed. Unfortunately, Bonnie J. Monte, artistic director of the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, doesn't escape the curse. No matter that she states in the program that the play is close to her heart, the result of her efforts is a deadly dull and ponderous consideration of a very strange and remote children's adventure tale.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
Blue Man Group
Briar Street Theater

There's a reason people who've seen Blue Man Group balk at describing it to anyone who hasn't. It's not that the event was witnessed in a state of intoxication -- though the show does bear a passing resemblance to the best of the psychedelic happenings of the Sixties -- nor is it sadistic glee at contributing to the unenlightened's suspense. It's that there's so much and so many kinds of everything that even as you're watching, you want to see it again: huge, turbo-hydraulic waterspouting thingmawhatsits. Smartass printout signs issuing orders to the audience.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 1997
Blue Man Group
Charles Playhouse

In Tubes, Blue Man Group offers a frenetic clown show, exploring competition, conformity and technology with an anti-intellectualism that pooh-poohs art criticism even as it invites analysis. It's mask work—three blue, bald, silent heads with the timing of the Russian clowns. Their understated mime looks effortless, but there's careful analysis behind it. If you don't dig one element of their work, you'll dig another. They lunge at the information superhighway with metaphors on screen, and make audience members feel like Alice at the mad tea party.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Blue Room, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

What made Arthur Schnitzler's 1896-97 (not staged until 1921) round of sexual sketches history-making were its explicitness and dramatizations of Freudian findings. With his updated full circle of couplings, moved from Vienna to New York, David Hare says nothing new about their psychology or any other phase of the human condition. Nor does he shock. About all I can figure of the play's box office success in NYC and London is that audiences wanted a glimpse of Nicole Kidman nude.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Blue Room, The
Second Stage at the Adrienne

Here we go again: Another go-round at the La Ronde cycle. (Also see my recent Delaware regional review of Hello Again.) This is David Hare's contemporary adaptation of the old play by Arthur Schnitzler that was set in 19th century Vienna. Five men and five women of different social position, class and education have sexual encounters that form a daisy chain. In each scene, two characters meet, seduce or are seduced by each other, and leave with a sense of disappointment.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Blue Room, The
Broadway Studio Theater

Oh, how the sexual landscape has changed in the past 100 years, when Arthur Schnitzler penned the original La Ronde. What shocked 19th-century audiences barely causes a murmur in today's updated version, even with nudity thrown in for good measure. Although this production of The Blue Room lacks the star power that attracted Broadway audiences (to see Nicole Kidman in the nude), it is witty, powerful and completely entertaining. Renaissance Theaterworks is an up-and-coming Milwaukee theater company that excels in presenting plays from a woman's point of view.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Blue Rose
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

The perfectly titled Blue Rose: The Rosemary Clooney Story is a valentine to one of the greatest vocal interpreters of the past 60 years. Clooney was indeed as lovely and fragile as a rose, with a silken, sophisticated voice that captured audiences worldwide. Her sunny smile, bobbed blond hair and trim figure were only part of her charm. Once she'd begin to sing, the audience would almost forget about the singer and get lost in the music. The show features two dozen of Clooney's best-known hits, such as "Come on-a My House," "Tenderly" and "Mambo Italiano."

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Blues in the Night
Florida Studio Theater

Bookless but not pointless, Blues in the Night finds three ladies of the night, each in a run-down Chicago hotel room. "The Woman of the World" (Jannie Jones in boa) drinks cheap wine from cut-glass, recalls "Stomping at the Savoy" and lustily rasps for a "Rough and Ready Man." Barbara D.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Bluff
MeX Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

The terse, unappealing title Jeffrey Sweet has chosen for his unsettling comedy-drama about mismatched young lovers is appropriately descriptive, both literally and symbolically. The play's resolution stems from a verbal duel in which one character's bold show of confidence causes another to capitulate. Symbolically, the people in Bluff can be seen as teetering on the edge of a precipice. And Gene (Tad Chitwood), the dental supply salesman and detested stepfather of prickly, mixed-up Emily (Carla Witt), is certainly bluff in manner and speech.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Bob Called Hope, A
Summer Cabaret At Yale

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Bold Girls
Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater - Studio

Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K., in 1991, Bold Girls can be seen as a treatment of the Troubles in England's last colonial outpost. More profitably, it can be taken as a look at the yearnings of four women in constricting surroundings. That's the tack taken in Fort Lauderdale by the Women's Theater Project in the play's southeastern premiere. (Theaters in Atlanta and the Washington, D.C., area have openings scheduled for April.)

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Bonnie Parker
Trinity River Arts Center

Diminutive actress Dixie Lee Sedgwick performed her one-woman show, Bonnie Parker, on May 1, 2002 at the Trinity River Arts Center in its next-to-last workshop production before opening May 21 for a two-week run at Blue Heron Arts Center in New York. Sedgwick, who also wrote the show, has been refining it since spring 1999 at numerous Dallas area venues. She has done extensive research on the distaff half of the outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde (presented on celluloid in 1967 with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty).

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
bobrauschenbergamerica
Actors Theater of Louisville - Humana Festival

What a feast this play is! Like the art of Robert Rauschenberg himself it's a feast for the eye, the brain, the heart, and the funnybone but also a feast for the ear because of Charles L. Mee's gloriously clever and involving script.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Body of Bourne, The
Mark Taper Forum

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals. Born in 1886, Bourne (played by the compelling Clark Middleton) survived a "messy" birth that left him physically disfigured and stunted.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Book of Candy, The
Playwrights Theater of New Jersey

I nspired by the Old Testament "Book of Esther," The Book of Candy is author Susan Dworkin's contemporary spin on the story of Queen Esther, a Jewess, who, in order to save the lives of her people, becomes the anti Semitic King of Persia's most trusted and beloved concubine. If the result, taken from Dworkin's own novel of the same name, is a bit labored and unwieldy, it is also an entertaining and topical consideration of current mores in the light of ancient history and biblical lore.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Book of Days
OnStage Playhouse

San Diego is currently blessed with two plays by the Pulitzer-winning Lanford Wilson: Book of Days is at OnStage in Chula Vista, and Burn This is at Cygnet in East San Diego. The former chronicles events in the small Missouri town of Dublin, population just over 4,000. (Wilson, incidentally, was born in Lebanon, Missouri in 1934.)

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Book of Days
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

Lanford Wilson's Book of Days, written in 1999, opens in a style reminiscent of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, with citizens of a small Missouri Bible-Belt community spotlighted inside a circle of chairs as they take turns enumerating the place's assets and good points. But when Walt Bates (an excellent Larry Singer), the town's rich and respected "feudal lord," who owns the local cheese factory, is murdered during a tornado, the civilized veneer that masks the evil buried in hearts and minds of nearly everyone gradually crumbles.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Book of Liz, The
Cygnet Theater

The Book of Liz is quite entertaining, totally eccentric, and takes a little getting used to. Before us is a light-blue meeting room, sterile in its simplicity. Across the back wall is a row of hat pegs. Several hats are hanging, also in the same pale blue. There is a door in each of the side walls. This is the meeting room of a religious group, the women dressing plainly in black and blues that match the walls. Bearded men are clad in simple black and white. The group does not believe in any advanced creature comforts such as cars or electricity.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Book of Liz, The
Bathhouse Cultural Center

Bootstraps Comedy Theater opened The Book of Liz by the Sedaris siblings, David and Amy, on May 11, 2007. If this were a TV show, I would tell you to settle down in front of the tube with a big bag of popcorn, hit the mute button, and enjoy 90 minutes of some outlandish mugging by five very talented actors. If the drama teacher in Acting 101 told the students to come up with a script that would showcase their versatility, the result would be The Book of Liz, some of the most inane drivel I've witnessed in several years.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Born Yesterday
Utah Shakespearean Festival

While experiencing Garson Kanin's old chestnut, Born Yesterday, at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, I could close my eyes and hear Judy Holliday, as Anne Newhall essayed a delightful characterization of Billie Dawn.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Boston Marriage
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

Elaborate Victorian language and modern slang. Semi-circular backdrop of 20th century abstract frolicking nudes (on -- could it be -- burlap?) cut out between one nude's legs as an entrance to a boudoir with old fashioned chaise. Contemporary glitzy black pants suit for Anna and sequin-topped pink evening gown on Claire, waited on by maid Catherine, with a lace-curtain apron over black swaddling cloths. Everything's mixed up with a parcel of artsy, once-innovative techniques that now simply make a mess.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2005

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