Boys Next Door, The
North Park Vaudeville

Tom Griffin's The Boys Next Door, directed by Summer Golden, is set in a communal residence in New England. Jack, an increasingly "burning out" young social worker supervises the four mentally challenged men sharing the residence. What is strikingly different about this production is that several members of the cast, in fact, fit the description and are members of STARS, a performing troupe of mentally challenged actors.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Brassy Broads
Florida Studio Theater - Cabaret Club

Like fine old wine in a new bottle, Kathy Hallenda pours herself into velvet, deep and shiny scarlet as her lipstick. Jeweled at the neck above considerable cleavage and with a long fuchsia feathered boa as a wrapper, she's bubbly as spumante with a voice strong and clear as corks popping. A year ago she gave Sarasota a taste of Sophie Tucker and became the red-hottest, longest running attraction ever at Florida Studio Theater's Cabaret Club. This time, Sophie's just one of the "Brassy Broads" Kathy identifies with and persuades audiences to celebrate with her.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Brave Smiles
Diversionary Theater

What happens when you mix one of the top directors in San Diego (Kirsten Brandt, Artistic Director of Sledgehammer Theatre), an extremely talented cast (Wendy Waddell, Allison Riley, Robin Christ, Jeannine Marquie, Melissa Fernandes), and a brilliantly comedic script by the Five Lesbian Brothers (Manhattan based Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey & Lisa Kron)? You get a highly entertaining evening at Diversionary Theater with Brave Smiles . . . Another Lesbian Tragedy.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Bravo, Caruso!
Off-Broadway Theater

Next Act Theater can indeed take a bow for its production of Bravo, Caruso!. It is one of the end-of-year highlights of the Milwaukee theater season. While the play may seem to be an odd choice for this time of year, the events of Bravo, Caruso! occur on Christmas Eve, 1920.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Break Up Notebook, The
Diversionary Theater

Breakups are difficult. Almost all of us have experienced the collapse of a relationship, and the hurt has no relationship to our sexual orientation. Pain is pain.

In Diversionary Theater and Rose Marcario's great production of The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical, it is Helen (Beth Malone) who is suffering.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Lion King, The
Milwaukee Theatre

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.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Enchanted April
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

Is Matthew Barber's Enchanted April truly an enchanted production? Thankfully, yes. A stellar cast brings this period piece to life, under the astute direction of Michael Halberstam.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
In the Belly of the Beast
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Stage III

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.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Breaking The Code
Diversionary Theater

Prior to WWII, mathematician Alan Turing, age 24, distinguished himself at Cambridge with his published work, "On Computable Numbers..." During the war, he broke Germany's Enigma code, and his theories led to the invention of the computer. Winston Churchill presented him with the Officer of the British Empire, the empires highest civilian award. In the mid-fifties, after admitting to homosexuality, he died, allegedly at this own hand.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Breath of Spring
Poway Performing Arts Company

Ah, the joys of a cast totally into their assigned dialects! Lee Donnelly, as maid Lilly Thompson, has a cockney accent that almost needs translation. Shari Lyon, as Miss Nanette Parry, has a proper educated way of speaking, Jeff Laurence's (Brigadier Albert Rayne) speech is peppered with a military flavor. Dialect coach Helen McGuinness brings this authenticity to Breath of Spring, which adds so much to the piece's humor. Each actor not only speaks properly, but with just the right dialect for the character. No easy task!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bride Of Frankenstein, The
TheatrX

Stephen Storc has written 37 musicals in the last few years, among them revues and very serious works. is an enjoyable satire. The show not only pays homage to the classic works of 1930s film director James Whale but also includes Brad and Janet from the 1975 cult classic, The Rocky Horror Show. Bride opens with Igor (Julie Schwaben) in the cemetery collect body parts for Dr. Frankenstein's (Ron Lipps) latest creation. Ms. Schwaben is brilliant as the overworked, underpaid, and constantly complaining hunchbacked lab assistant.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Bridge to Terabithia
Children's Theater of Charlotte

Children's Theater is pioneering beyond their comfort zone with Bridge to Terabithia. We've seen CT musicals before, and we've certainly had brave confrontations with dark, disturbing themes. But we've never had an intermission during a CT production—or a Newberry Award medalist fielding audience questions on opening night. Regardless of author Katherine Paterson's appearance, signaling an auspicious hook-up with the Library's Novello Festival, there's no precedent in Charlotte for the rich package that Terabithia can deliver to children and families.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Davidson College - Hodson Hall

There's good news up north. Davidson Community Players is presenting Neil Simon's autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs with a finely detailed set from Sandra Gray and evocative lighting from John Hartness. More importantly, there's an outstanding performance in the lead by the diminutive Anthony Napoletano as 14-year-old Eugene Morris Jerome.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Bristol Renaissance Faire
Bristol Renaissance Faire

Do you want to see blood?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Broadway
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Hard to believe Broadway debuted as a fresh backstage story of a song and dance man hoping to become a star along with gaining a partner for his act and in marriage. She's the fresh young thing, so familiar in gangster movies, who has also attracted mobster boss Steve Crandal. They've since been seen in dozens of Prohibition-era backstage and gangster plays and movies, featuring more or less important music and comedy.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Broadway
Tomlinson Theater

This production is a rare revival of a melodrama co-written and originally directed by George Abbott. The play premiered in 1926 and was directed by Abbott in New York again the year he turned 100. Though Abbott was known for his touch with musicals, this is a straight play in three acts, one of Abbott's earliest successes as a director and playwright. The setting is backstage in a nightclub, so we see rehearsing of musical numbers and we hear the beginnings of songs when the performers exit through an upstage curtain to go onto the club stage.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Broadway Bound
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Broadway Bound is more than Neil Simon's autobiographically inspired account of Eugene Jerome and his older brother Stanley's entry into show biz from pedestrian jobs and lower-middle-class home in Brighton Beach. It's Eugene's story of the final stages of an entire family breakup.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Brooklyn Boy
Lyceum

Donald Margulies has given us some really great theater. My two favorites are Dinner with Friends and Collected Stories. The current offering of San Diego Repertory Theater is his Brooklyn Boy, under the direction of Todd Salovey. The latter's direction is flawless. He uses pauses—sometimes very, very long pauses—much better than most playwrights use words. His grasp of the material: the humor, the pathos, and the high emotions, is intuitive.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Brooklyn Boy
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Like his hero, novelist Eric Weiss, playwright Donald Margulies returns to the Jewish neighborhood of his youth and a father-son relationship pivotal to his art and life. After two critical but not popular successes, Eric's new autobiographical novel has hit the best-seller list. His father Manny's hospitalization makes Eric leave his promotional tour for a visit that renews familiar antagonisms. A chance meeting with old friend Ira sharpens Eric's view of the life he escaped.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2005
Brothers All
Sixth at Penn Theater

6th @ Penn Theater is known for bringing audiences new and challenging plays, well scripted, directed, and performed. The current Sunday-through-Wednesday offering, Brothers All, penned by Howard Rubenstein and directed by Barry Bosworth, does not come close to the degree of excellence one expects from this small theater.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Bruschetta
Act One Studios

If Bruschetta means a crusty bread topped with various flavors, then this group of six one-acts is represented by a misnomer: they are all too easy to take in and forget about to be hard to chew on.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Brutality Of Fact
Actors Theater of San Francisco

Contemporary American life -- heaven help us -- is reflected in Keith Reddin's quirky, funny yet sad, tale of a mixed-up family.  Mother Val (Niki Hersh) appears to have Alzheimer's, believing one of her daughters, the feisty Maggie (Catherine Castellanos), is dead.  Val is abetted in this belief by daughter Jackie (Rachel Klyce), a religious nut who passes out Watchtower pamphlets to hostile neighbors.  Maggie drinks, and after attending an AA meeting, is befriended by an all-too-friendly lesbian (Susi Damilano).  Jackie's ex husband Harold (Paul D'Addario), who is trying to get custody of

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Buddy's Gift
Coronet Studio Theater

Stand-up comic Jack Simmons turns serious in this monologue about the mystery of death, though he does try to lighten the subject with little sprinkles of humor. His approach is strictly personal: the Buddy in question is his late father, patriarch of a large Irish-Catholic family, who was diagnosed with incurable liver cancer in his late fifties.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Bug
Cygnet Theater

Agnes White (Robin Christ) is no angel. She smokes, she drinks, she uses cocaine and she freebases. She lives in a motel beside a highway on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. When we first meet her, she is bedraggled and being harassed by late-night phone calls. Thus begins Tracy Letts's tale, Bug, currently playing at Cygnet Theater.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Bullshot Crummond
FSU/Asolo Conservatory in Cook Theater

Mix up all the typical characters, plots, situations, locales, and staging devices from B movies like the Bulldog Drummond detective mysteries and WWII Gothic spy story serials; make 'em go crap-spackle poop; and the result is tasty spoonfuls of spoof. As the dastardly German Otto Von Brunner tells his black-leathered accomplice Lenya after a poorly-screened parachute drop, "We seem to have crashed in the right place." They repay bushy-white-haired Prof.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Bully Pulpit, The
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage / Gompertz (2005)

How well Theodore Roosevelt's ornate but warm, comfortable Sagamore Hill home reflects the man!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Bunbury
Diversionary Theater

At least two years of college English Literature should be a requirement for seeing Tom Jacobson's recent work, Bunbury. However, were that true, many of us would miss one of the funniest shows of the season. Arrive a few minutes early, open the program to the page headed, "Referenced Works of Literature," and refresh your memory. It would help to reread Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and the Bard's Romeo and Juliet, but not much!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Bungler, The
North Coast Repertory Theater

We're sitting in a public square in Messina, Sicily in 1655. To our left is the home of Trufaldin (Dimiter D. Marinov) and his charge, Gypsy beauty Celie (Janel DeGuzman). To the right is an empty residence owned by Pandolfe (Wayne Jordan) and under the care of valet Mascarille (David Ari). Between the two are three arches and beyond, the sea. In the center of the square bubbles a fountain. It is here that North Coast Repertory Theater stages the hilarious Moliere farce The Bungler.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2005
Buried Child
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

Nearly 20 years ago, Buried Child took America by storm. Playwright Sam ShepardÆs fresh voice was an energizing wake-up call for theater audiences. Buried Child is one of several plays Shepard wrote about the American family during this period. It is an allegorical play, full of raw energy, tension and surreal elements. Filled with contradictions, strange behaviors and a shocking secret, it entranced audiences and won the Pulitzer Prize. So how does it hold up?

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Burkie
OnStage Playhouse

It's a four-letter word with five letters. We don't want to talk about it. We are afraid of it, but we can't avoid it. I've witnessed it twice. One from afar (as does Burkie's Jess) and once very close-up and personal (as does Jon). The word—dying.

Why would anybody want to see a play about dying? Possibly to understand the process of watching it happen? To prepare ourselves for the inevitable? And, in the case of OnStage Playhouse's Burkie, to experience excellence in theater.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Burn This
Cygnet Theater

A roommate and his lover, Dominic, are killed in a freak boating accident in the bay off of Manhattan. His two roommates are in mourning. Anna (Jessica John), a choreographer, was his dance partner at times. Larry, a gay advertising designer, was a close friend. The latest Lanford Wilson play to hit San Diego, Burn This, graces the stage at Cygnet Theater. Set in a two-level loft in a Manhattan warehouse, the apartment is graced with unpainted drywall and a modest attempt at a kitchen.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Burn This
Studio Theater

Renaissance Theaterworks has staged the hit of Milwaukee's spring theater season with a powerful production of Lanford Wilson's Burn This. Four terrific actors portray the full range of dramatic intensity in this incendiary play. Loss and love are strong emotions, after all. When they are intertwined, as Wilson artfully demonstrates, they can be as powerful as any force in nature.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Butley
Huntington Theater

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.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Butterfingers Angel, Mary And Joseph, Herod The Nut, And The Slaughter Of Twelve Hit Carols In A Pear Tree, The
Bunbury Theater

For six years William Gibson's offbeat Christmas play with the wordy title, The Butterfingers Angel, Mary and Joseph, Herod the Nut, and the Slaughter Of Twelve Hit Carols in a Pear Tree, has been a crowd-pleasing holiday favorite for Bunbury Theater patrons. After all those years it's remarkable how fresh this seventh presentation seems under Robin Hunter's direction and with a cast that never overdoes the laugh cues.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Cabaret
Studio 54

I have to admit, the Sam Mendes/Rob Marshall revival of Cabaret is one of those shows I just wasn't on the same page as others about. When I first saw it (well after Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming, both Tony winners, had left), I found it too cynical and more than a little smutty. The glorious music created by John Kander and Fred Ebb seemed like a backdrop to a lot of inventively conceived but ultimately trivial business, and Bob Fosse's extraordinary 1972 film seemed like the final word in terms of its potent statements about WWII Berlin.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Butterflies Are Free
Venice Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Blind boy seeking an independent life meets scared-of-commitment hippie girl. The result makes for a sweet little play, a coming-of-age story with a twist. Don Baker (cute Jeff Sargent, convincingly sightless), in his 20s, has left his Scarsdale home and overly protective mother after an almost affair with his music teacher. In center city, next door to Don in what's described as an equally dreary but less neatly-appointed apartment resides eager-beaver Jill, 19. Married for six days three years previously, she's had numerous affairs since.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
By Mercer
Florida Studio Theater Cabaret Club

Johnny Mercer wrote at least 1,000 song lyrics and music for some more. What a task to represent his accomplishments in a brief revue! Maybe that's why there's so little spoken about him or them; his words, after all, are the important things.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea
Adams Avenue of the Arts

A common theme and a single set make for an interesting evening at Adams Avenue of the Arts. By The See By The Sea By The Beautiful Sea, include Dawn by Joe Pintauro, Day by Lanford Wilson, and Dusk by Terrence McNally. The setting is a sandy beach with a backdrop of ocean and sky. Dawn features Kathy Song as Pat the wife of Quentin, played by Robert Jenkins and friend of Quentin's sister, Veronica (Hilary White).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Bye Bye Beeler Canyon
Poway Performing Arts Company

Playwright Kirk Irvine follows the 17th through 19th-Century definition of melodrama: a romantic dramatic composition with music interspersed, with his Bye Bye Beeler Canyon, Hello Poway Daze currently at PowPAC in Poway. The show is in a limited two–week run in conjunction with the Poway Days annual celebration. The evening opens with pre-show "Groaners and Knee-Slappers" by Danny Morris and Barbara Seagren. The jokes are old, the questions for the audience real groaners, and the audience is slapping their knees. Then it's on with the show.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Bye Bye Birdie
Coronado Playhouse

Bye Bye Birdie never really grows old. There are always ardent fans, young of age, that idolize their favorite talent. The plot is simple. Rock idol Conrad Birdie is drafted into the Army. His PR flak/manager creates a media moment in Sweet Apple, Ohio. And, of course, we get love requited and unrequited, the balloon-sized ego of the idol, swoons by the thousands from adoring teens, preteens, and pre-preteens; and frustrated parents.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2002

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