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
Closet Land
Olney Theater Center

The advisory posted in the lobby stated "Absolutely no children will be admitted." Midway through the show, I wished I qualified, so I could be home safely watching the game. Closet Land is hard on spectators and apparently painful for the actors as well, since the curtain call found them with wet eyes and tense faces. Within the intimate space, there was no escaping the intensity of the brutal interrogation withstood by the Woman (a delicately lovely Shannon Parks) from her tormentor, the Man (Paul Morella, malevolently alternating between good and bad cop).

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
January 1997
Cloud Nine
Diversionary Theater

Cloud 9: Act I: 1880, Plantation in Africa. The height of British imperialism.  Act II: 1980, London. While taking place 100 years later, three continuing characters age a mere 25 years. While technology has taken quantum leaps, human social progress has barely moved. Confused yet?

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Clue: The Musical
Derby Dinner Playhouse

Many a murder mystery in book, play, or TV form has baffled me pleasurably up to the point where the guilty party is finally exposed.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Cocktail Hour, The
Bunbury Theater

WASPS -- the derisive acronym pinned on white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in our diverse society -- may, as some contend, be a dying breed, but playwright A. R. Gurney has found them to be fertile ground for canny observations throughout his career. The Cocktail Hour, in Bunbury Theatre's hugely enjoyable production, crisply directed by Juergen K. Tossmann, is classic Gurney, in which he gently kids but also uncovers certain values in the culture that produced him.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Cocktail Party, The
Patio Playhouse

Patio Playhouse's current production, T. S. Eliot's Tony-winning play, The Cocktail Party, staged by Richard Gant, opens closes with a cocktail party.  In between, the play ponderously explores relationships, morality, and bad cooking. Why is the hostess missing? What is her husband's relationship with one of the guests? Who is the stranger at the party? Who is deceiving whom?

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Les Ephemeres
Cartoucherie - Theatre du Soleil

As the title, “The Ephemerals,” implies, scenes played by actors from recollections of their own experiences pass like vignettes set in changing times. On a runway between two galleries where spectators become like mirroring Daumier sketches, roll out petits mondes ("little worlds") from one to three at a time. Actors, crouching, propel and constantly turn the rectangular or circular mini-sets on wheels.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
By the Bog of Cats
Venice Little Theater - Pinkerton Stage II

With its Medea theme obvious from the start, there's little doubt what will happen in By the Bog of Cats. A gypsy-like bog denizen, Hester Swane (Sara Trembly,powerfully pagan) has been Carthage Kilbride's lover for years. She's killed to make him a success. She's had and raised his child , Josie (restrained, at ease Alexa Ditaranto), 7. Now Carthage (Mike DeSantis, well spoken but not old enough for the part) is about to marry young Caroline (beautiful, sensitive Chelsey Panisch), daughter of rich Xavier Cassidy (imposing Tom Bahring).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Collected Stories
FSU/Asolo Conservatory in Cook Theater

 Asolo's Producing Artistic Director has saved his company's best-of-season for its end, a play with poetic ambiguity in a crystalline, compelling production. A relationship grows between a writer/teacher who begins as a tough, almost unwilling mentor and a student who mirrors her own talent when younger but is otherwise rapturously enthusiastic and pushy. The two become colleagues and, in mother-to-daughter fashion, share their feelings and experiences. Then, near her professional and physical end, Ruth feels her life and talent usurped by Lisa with a first novel.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Sixth at Penn Theater

I was just taken on the emotional rollercoaster ride of my life. It seems these six lovely ladies, who graduated from high school just two years after me, decided to have a 20-year reunion on September 30, 1975. Those gals really knew how to party. We were all at the five and dime an' Sissy (Leigh Scarritt) brought the Lone Star. I don't know who brought the bourbon, but Stella May (Wendy Waddell) was swigging it like it were water. Man, that woman can drink.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2007
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
Underpants, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

When an adaptation is true in substance and effect to the original play while the adaptor both cuts and adds matter so as to make the play work for a contemporary audience, it's cause for celebration. Celebrate Steve Martin's way with Sternheim's roccoco-style German farce! Not only are all the essentials intact, so is the spirit of the time (about 1911).

Marie J. Kilker
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
Come Blow Your Horn
OnStage Playhouse

 Neil Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, took three years to hone before it premiered on Broadway in 1961. Simon was already a successful writer, with his brother Danny, for radio and television shows. The play has aged well and certainly reflects some of the same values almost 50 years later (e.g., single men will be men, and their conquests will sooner or later change their ways). At OnStage Playhouse, the show makes for an enjoyable evening visiting a time past, a much simpler time than today.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Come Blow Your Horn
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Until the third act, both this first autobiographical play and the actors seem a bit long in the tooth. The sarcastic humor of Come Blow Your Horn, however, holds up better than most of the other what-would-become-famous one-liners. Stephen A. Gonya looks perpetually worried rather than a slick playboy, as if he knew his days in that role were numbered. J. Paul Wargo beguiles as his 2l-year-old brother who wants to fill his slick shoes and silken shirts, while gathering material to be a writer.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
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
Armadale
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Who says there aren't any good parts for women anymore? Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has created a brilliantly villainous femme fatale in Armadale, an elegant mystery based on a novel by Wilke Collins. The thriller had its world premiere at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Comedy of Errors, The
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

Everybody is right! No, everybody is wrong!

Confusion reigns in William Shakespeare's first comedy, A Comedy of Errors. The New York-based Aquila Theater Company's version, created by Peter Meineck and Robert Richmond, gives new meaning to this hilarious amusement. Producer Meineck also created the effective and moody lighting, with director Richmond designing the production.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Comedy of Errors, The
Hollywood Playhouse

The Hollywood Shakespeare Festival has had more success in rethinking other Shakespeare plays than it has this spring with the vaguely noirish The Comedy of Errors. The decision to costume the players in 1940s garb to a background of blues and jazz doesn't particularly add to or hurt the production, but the stark lighting too often only hides faces under broad-rimmed hats without adding atmosphere. This is bad because too many players seem incapable of projecting a voice or a physical presence.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Comet of St. Loomis, The
OnStage Playhouse

 Ed Simpson's The Comet of St. Loomis is set in a small Pennsylvania village. Throckmorton is barely surviving; the six-cabin Ridge Court is slowly disintegrating. The village is peopled by: Honorary Mayor, Martin Gray, driven to keep his village alive; Charlie Loomis, Ridge Court owner; Trudy Platko, a single mom, working three jobs and still not staying ahead of her bills; and Annie and Bobby Dunlap, teenagers mere moments away from becoming parents.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Communicating Doors
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 Weird, loud electronic music blends into thunder on the balcony from which Julian (stereotypically villainous Walter Rhodes) steps into the tasteful hotel suite parlor. He opens the door to another loud phenomenon, Phoebe, a.k.a. Poopay, a dominatrix he's hired as a "sexual consultant" to his old friend. "Old" also depicts dying Reece (convincingly aged and feeble, despite Erik R. Uppling's actual youth), who wants her to witness his sworn responsibility for the death of his two wives.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Communicating Doors
Peninsula Players Theater In A Park

 During intermission at Peninsula Players Theater's Communicating Doors, members of the Peninsula Players audience tried to puzzle out the play's twisted time frame. Was Phoebe, the not-so-young prostitute, being threatened in 2019 or 1999? Were Ruella and Jessica, the threatened wives of Reece, talking in 1999 or 1979? And what was up with the mad killer, Julian, following them through time? Communicating Doors isn't easy to sum up. The Alan Ayckbourn play is part thriller, part comedy and part time-travel epic.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Communicating Doors
Cygnet Theater

 Communicating doors are doors that are joined, often found in hotels between adjoining rooms. Both doors are locked in each room. Accessibility is available only when both doors are unlocked. Communicating Doors is a charming, amusing, excellent play from the pen of Alan Ayckbourn, brilliantly directed by Esther Emery, and the current hit at Cygnet Theater. The setting is an elegant hotel suite. The bedroom is off-stage, but an indication only of a wall to the bathroom reveals that it is well appointed, including a bidet.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
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
Corpus Christi
Diversionary Theater

Normally when the theater doors open, you see a curtain or a darkened stage. When Diversionary Theatrer doors open, the 13-member cast are busy setting the stage. Rachael VanWormer is behind a broom. The others, when not gossiping, are moving the risers (two 2 X 8 footers and two 4 X 8 footers), which are used to create various scenes in Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi.

Robert Hitchcox
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

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