Dance of Death
Broadhurst Theater

Think of Edgar and Alice as the Swedish Al and Peg Bundy, trading barbs and dirty tricks up until the very last moment when they realize that despite everything, they can't live without each other. By treating August Strindberg's play more as wickedly dark comedy than viciously Bergmanesque drama, director Sean Mathias gives the estimable Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren much to play with, even if they can't quite make the underplotted, repetitious first act and occasionally off-the-wall second act turn into some kind of powerful statement about codependency.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Dance of the Vampires
Minskoff Theater

 New York audiences and press have been unkind to gothic rock and roll spoofs, from goofy sleepers like Zombie Prom and Zombies from the Beyond to the truly zany Bat Boy. That's not likely to change with Dance of the Vampires, a gigantic cauldron of puns, kitsch, heavy satire and shameless Mel Brooksian mugging that would be a lot more fun were it not so long and so aggravatingly LOUD (even non-musical dialogue is miked at teeth-rattling levels).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Dance of the Vampires
Minskoff Theater

 Dance of the Vampires is a cheery cartoon with happy dancing and trivial songs. It's an unsophisticated, entertaining, harmless fairy tale, all tongue-in-cheek, with a cast of fine voices and real dancers and acrobats -- sort of a humorous tale by Grimm, for the whole family. The music by Jim Steinman seems like lesser Lloyd Webber, with a little Gilbert and Sullivan on occasion. But when Michael Crawford opens up his pipes, there's a show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
American Airlines Theater

The world must have been a more gracious place thirty years ago. How else to explain the cause celebre Peter Nichols' dark comedy, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, became, all because a tired middle-class couple made jokes about raising a severely retarded and paraplegic daughter. Maybe Joe Egg opened the way for Timmy in "South Park," but there's little else to recommend the piece now - especially judging from the long, tedious, low-voltage revival now at the American Airlines Theater.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
American Airlines Theater

 Some subjects are timeless, and Peter Nichols' 1967 play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, about the complexities of being a parent to a severely handicapped child, will never seem dated. But don't expect a profound, heart-wrenching play about the tragedy of Joe Egg, the ten-year-old Josephine, nicknamed by her doting parents who, long ago, decided against institutionalizing or euthanasia.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
American Airlines Theater

It's not easy to impersonate a terminally handicapped child, but Madeleine Martin does very well with this role. Eddie Izzard and Victoria Hamilton also excel in the roles of Bri & Sheila, her despairing parents, who devise endless games to conceal their heartbreak. Dana Ivey is outrageous as Bri's interfering mother. Michael Gaston & Margaret Colin are amusing as clueless do-gooders. Laurence Boswell staged.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
American Airlines Theater

 Eddie Izzard gives a star turn in Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, bringing a gentleness to the very stylized character of the husband in a couple who have a totally disabled daughter whom they care for. It's an odd play which unconventionally breaks the convention of the "fourth wall," and each character addresses the audience directly. Izzard gives great Fuddy Duddy as he shows us various doctors or a vicar and keeps his performance underplayed in what is actually full-out broad comedy, making this very heavy play humorous.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

The first thing I knew I had to do before I went to Def Poetry Jam was to try and put out of my head whatever pre-conceived notions and prejudices I have about the current street culture, how it does nothing for me and why it doesn't speak to me, including hip-hop music and rap. (I do remember when rap used to be called patter and Gilbert and Sullivan had the market.) So I was completely unprepared for the exhilarating experience I ended up having courtesy of hip-hop mogul/entrepreneur Russell Simmons and his collaborator and director, Stan Lathan.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

Def Poetry Jam on Broadway is a poetic outpouring of ethnic frustration and rage -- the pain of the poor. The darker people (black, Latin, Asian, Arabic and various mixtures) and their working-class neighbor express their inner turbulence and anger -- for people in high-priced Broadway seats. It's made up of very inventive poems of protest, life, love, all parallel to or tangential from the main stream, performed by their creators, including a teeny Puerto Rican woman (Mayda Del Valle) who is very heavy and a big heavy guy (Poetri) who is the lightness in the show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

Harvesting the creme de la crème of the burgeoning poetry slam circuit, producer Russell Simmons and director Stan Lathan have honed a new theatrical format that uses rap and performance art as its twin launching pads. The result is nothing like a musical.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Defending the Caveman
Helen Hayes Theater

 So much of what's on Broadway is opulent to the point of being over-produced, it's invariably nice to come across a down-dressed, lower-key evening of intelligent comedy. Rob Becker's Defending The Caveman fits the bill in many ways; Becker's monologue offers a lot of amusing material about the basic differences between men and women, and he has a malleable face that can go from couch potato to Cro-magnon in seconds flat.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 1995
Democracy
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 Okay, maybe I saw a different show. Ben Brantley of the New York Times feels that Michael Frayn's Democracy is one of the greatest dramas of our time. I found it a colossal bore. In this view of German leader Willy Brandt and his rise to power, of the intricacies of the spy system between East and West Germany, and of interlocking loyalties, the political machinations are interesting, but the endless exposition gets dull. Director Michael Blakemore keeps the actors moving physically; there much motion on the creatively-designed, two-level set by Peter J.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Democracy
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 Michael Frayn's theater accomplishments are truly amazing. With his two previous signature works, Noises Off and Copenhagen, the playwright ranged from backstage farce to nuclear fission and uncertainty theory. Now with Democracy, he has veered off into high-stakes Cold War politics, spiced with the machinations of party infighting and the deviousness of embedded spies. Yet there isn't a full act of honest-to-God stage dialogue in the three works put together!

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Design For Living
American Airlines Theater

 This attractive, nicely appointed revival of Noel Coward's 1933 gemstone seems designed not for living, but for loathing of critics who will sneer at its embellishments. Director Joe Mantello (The Vagina Monologues) heightens the homosexual current that was already run through it (including a more-than-friendly smooch between leads Alan Cumming and Dominic West) and Robert Brill's seductive, massive sets suggest a tour of Europe via Larger-Than-Life Land.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Design For Living
American Airlines Theater

 Joe Mantello's revival of Noel Coward's most envelope-pushing work starts as strong drama, meanders into mildy amusing comedy and ends as sour farce. Alan Cumming's adorable until he turns into a hammy transvestite freak; Jennifer Ehle's Gilda would be more at home in a Lillian Hellman potboiler than here. By the time Gilda ditches upright Ernest for her desperate friends, we're ready to take out the menage a trash.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Deuce
Music Box Theater

 In Terrence McNally's Deuce, we have two old Acting Monuments, Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes, playing two old Tennis Monuments watching a tennis match. Early in the play, when these two are on, it doesn't matter what they say; it's interesting as these wonderful antiques watch the game. When we cut to the booth where the commentators are, it goes banal. Direction of the commentators by Michael Blakemore is poor, without a believable word from them. Also, a strange, odd-looking autograph hunter is introduced, I can't figure out for what.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Dinner at Eight
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

After a first scene that's as dull and expository as only openers of American comedies from yesteryear can be, Dinner at Eight quickly reaffirms its status as a classic by layering character quirks and tangled relationships into a story both funny and still satirically stinging. As soon as preening Carlotta Vance (the ever-treasurable Marian Seldes) arrives at her old beau's office seeking financial advice, the machinations click into high gear and stay there till the slightly deflated ending.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Imperial Theater

 A failure to recall details of the movie enhanced my enjoyment of this musical about con men enjoying the Riviera courtesy of rich women. Lawrence (smooth John Lithgow), aided by local official Andre (cosmopolitan, handsome Gregory Jbara), fleece the bored rich, like romance-starved Muriel (smart-talking Joanna Gleason). On a train where small-time hustler Freddy (dizzying, quick-quipping Norbert Leo Butz) meets Lawrence, they make a huge bet that whoever clips the next rich pigeon also gets the territory.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Imperial Theater

 The musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek, is not the movie of the same name, so don't expect to root for the older, more suave con man, played by John Lithgow, as we did for Michael Caine. This show tilts the other way - we root for the intruder Freddy, performed brilliantly by Norbert Leo Butz. Lithgow's Jameson is a smarmy wise-ass of a roue; Butz is the comic everyman, and his absurd portrayal of Lithgow's demented brother is so hilarious, it will probably win him the Tony.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Dracula
Belasco Theater

 The Dracula story is already a satire because of its familiarity, and in Dracula, The Musical, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Frank Wildhorn, they do start off with familiar references and jokes like, "She is of good blood," which get laughs. But that's about it. The rest of the show is stiff and clunky, with derivative songs that mostly hold up the action. However, the design team gives us amazing visuals that never quit.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Drowning Crow
Biltmore Theater

 Regina Taylor's Drowning Crow is a mess based on Chekhov's The Seagull. Set on South Carolina's Gullah Islands, with a black cast, it's a good idea gone blooey. Two things are necessary in theater: communicate and entertain. Poor direction by Marion McClinton undercuts the simple communication of the content -- jumping around while talking breaks our empathy with the characters, especially in the case of the very handsome Anthony Mackie playing a troubled writer, whose histrionic antics distance us from the story.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

 (see Criticopia listing under "How The Grinch Stole Christmas")

Dangerous Corner
Garrick Theatre

 With An Inspector Calls so successful as refurbished with astonishing scene design and attention to social message, no wonder similar treatment is being lavished on J. B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner. Though neither the play nor the staging is as good, Priestley's experiment (for his day) with realism and time affords isn't bad to look at or listen to.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
Dark Night Just Before The Woods, The

(see Criticopia International listing under "La Nuit Juste Avant Les Forets")

Desideri mortali
Teatro Mercadante

 The life of Giuseppe Tommasi, Prince of Lampedusa (1896-1959) and the semi-fictional characters from his most famous novel, "Il Gattopardo" (source for Visconti's "The Leopard") were the subject of Ruggero Cappuccio's evocative Desideri mortali. Among the more interesting creative talents currently on the Neapolitan scene, Mr. Cappuccio has set his "profane oratorio" in the shadowy world of Cappucine convent crypt in Palermo. Ghosts from Lampedusa's life and novels appear in Garibaldi-era garb and circulate in tightly-choreographed movement.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
January 1997
Dining Room, The
Cour Florent

 Why the packed, hard-step seating in the stuffy black box? Maybe it's the urge to see what students of France's well-publicized, prestigious, private drama school are up to. (What they're actually down to is overdoing an annoying misinterpretation of a play in a language they don't understand.) Maybe this production of The Dining Room draws English-speaking residents or tourists who want to see, in between Paris' many language-neutral stage shows, a real play. Maybe its appeal is to students and teachers of the English language or of American lit.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Dinner Game, The
Sudden Theater

 Le Diner de Cons, boffo on the French stage since its Parisian opening in 1993 and still playing throughout Europe and in Argentina, repeated its success internationally as a movie. It took English expat Barbara Bray to translate and adapt it, and, with her plucky little troupe from Paris' English-language stage community, to finally produce Francis Veber's Theatre des Varietes hit in English. What the cast and presentation lack in expensive production elements they more than make up for in talent and enthusiasm.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Disgrace
Maidment Theater

 In the end - in the true end - there is only acceptance. One may resist the various inevitabilities of human existence, but time, death and historical change are indifferent to stubbornness.

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Disposing Of The Body
Swiss Cottage Centre

 Best known for Pack of Lies (1983) and Breaking the Code (1986), Hugh Whitemore has followed up last year's A Letter of Resignation with the engrossing Disposing of the Body, having its premiere at the intimate, 174-seat Hampstead Theatre. It is a sort of companion to Pack of Lies, since both deal with the relationships of neighbors and with personal betrayal. Henry Preece, forced into early retirement, moves from London with his wife Angela to a country home in Gloucestershire, where his sister Kate lives.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Don Carlos
RSC at Royal Shakespeare Theatre

 Here is the ultimate drama of courtly intrigue and kingly caprice, kissed with idealistic rhetoric and romantic political fervor. Best of all, it's played out down the block from the Royal Theatre at The Other Place, where you sit so close to the swift action you can see the spittle forming on the King's and Queen's lips as they deliver their impassioned speeches. At the center of this pressure cooker, set in the spring of 1568 at the palaces of Aranjuez and Madrid, is the crown prince Don Carlos, played by boyishly handsome Rupert Penry-Jones.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Dr. Knock

 (see Criticopia International listing(s) under "Knock")

Dracula
Stratford Festival - Avon Theatre

 Dracula's seven cast members have terrific singing voices and make the rather mundane dialogue -- maintained from Bram Stoker's 19th century, melodramatic classic -- sound impressive. This, despite most playgoers over 40 being so familiar with Count Dracula's now-cliched lines, and with the campy bleatings of the other characters. It's made clear that the sexual fiend welcomes erotic feedings from either gender.

Alan Raeburn
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Dreaming
Queen's Theatre

 Major stage works do not issue often from Peter Barnes' pen. He received acclaim for "The Ruling Class" (1968) and an Olivier Award for Red Noses (1985), but his last entry was Sunsets and Glories back in 1990. Now he has made up for lost time with Dreaming -- which, under his own direction, proves to be one of the most exciting, ebullient and enterprising endeavors in ages. That it has been drawing pitifully-tiny audiences is a scandal. The work is an epic that presents nearly three dozen characters, here played by a company of fifteen.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Duchess of Malfi, The
Stratford Festival - Tom Patterson Theater

 There is certainly some high drama (to put it mildly) in John Webster's notorious script of The Duchess of Malfi, as well as startlingly vicious language and horrific revelations among all the admittedly impressive poetry. But this quintessentially bloody, perverse, horror story is also so outrageously melodramatic that one has to be in the mood for what can come perilously close to silliness. Ugly silliness, but it verges on the laughable nonetheless. Or perhaps it just evokes nervous laughter.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Stepmother, The
Court House Theater

As part of its mandate to be devoted to George Bernard Shaw, the Shaw Festival has performed most of Shaw's plays, including some odd and obscure ones. It has also revived or unearthed a number of late nineteenth century or early twentieth century plays in affecting productions that amounted to discovery or rediscovery. Causally or not, several of those works have subsequently been produced by theaters in New York and London, which gained considerable favorable attention, even praise and awards for renewing interest in the lost treasures.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Big Bang, The
North Coast Repertory Theater

Entering the North Coast Repertory Theater, one is presented with a single yellow sheet of paper. On it is a list of songs such as "Free Food and Frontal Nudity, to be sung by Adam, Eve, God, and the Snake;"One Helluva Job" by Mary and Mrs. Gandhi; "The Dating Scene" by Pocahontas and Minnehaha, "Loving Him Is Where I Went Wrong" sung separately by both Eva Braun and Laura Bush, and "A Stain on My Character" vocalized by Monica Lewinsky.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Beyond Therapy
Williamstown Theater - Nikos Stage

Nicholas Martin has taken over the helm of the Williamstown Theater Festival, and the first show of his first season is as good as can be.

My previous encounter with Beyond Therapy was the workshop production at the Manhattan Theater Club, starring Sigourney Weaver as Prudence, in 1981. It wasn't very good, weighed down by the playwright's apparent anger at its satiric targets, and a leaden comic touch by all involved.

David L. Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Dial M For Murder
Poway Performing Arts Company

Alfred Hitchcock brought Frederick Knott's play, Dial M For Murder, to film, and it became an instant classic. The stage version, currently at Poway Performing Arts Center, under the direction Brent A. Stringfield, is even more fun. Designing the perfect murder has always been a mystery writer's greatest challenge, and developing the single fatal flaw his amusement. Tony Wendice (Christopher Armour), a retired tennis player, has developed the perfect plan to do away with his lovely and well-to-do wife. He enlists the aid of Captain Lesgate, a ne'er-do-well, to accomplish the task.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Dial M For Murder
Geva Theater Mainstage

I suppose that Dial M For Murder is an appealing show to open Geva's season, but it's an old warhorse and maybe sends the wrong signal for a theater company that has been specializing in reviving meaningful classics and developing new works. I do like Geva's version, which trims and clarifies the original stage-script, adapting it to include some of the excellent filmscript for Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 international hit movie. It's dramatically effective without being quite so stagy.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Diary Of Anne Frank, The
Patio Playhouse

Patio Playhouse's production of The Diary of Anne Frank, under Jay Mower's direction, is given an appropriately stark design by Judy Conlon. The plainly painted four rooms and hall are on several levels, with suggestions of some walls, allowing for a variety of playing areas. This, along with Kat Perhach and George Daye's lighting design, provide for the many intimate scenes. This is the prison for two years of the Franks, Mr. Frank's business partner's family, the Van Daams, and Mr. Dussel, a dentist and friend of the family.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006

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