Heaven
Yale Repertory Theater

 Heaven, as perceived by a very angry Canadian playwright George F. Walker, in his play of the same name, is hell on earth and visa versa. Or so it seems in his newest work, directed by Evan Yionoulis. The advertisements for this production come with a parental caution advisory; they should come with an adult caution advisory. It is ironic that while all the production qualities, from casting to technical elements, are first rate, Walker's writing veers from brilliant excitement to lazy to just simply self-indulgent, most noticeable in the rambling monologue at the end of the play.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
Hedda Gabler
Seiner Pavilion at New College of Florida

 In the mise en scene, Hedda surveys her living room, dominated by a portrait of her father, General Gabler, which she embraces before darkness overtakes the Tesman villa in 1890 Norway. When morning light shines coldly, her husband George's Aunt Julie, talking cozily (!), with her former servant, marvels at the expensive furnishings, what with the Tesmans just returned from an extended honeymoon abroad. So much exposition then follows so soon, we had better listen carefully.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Henry Fonda Theater

 Thanks to a spellbinding performance by Michael Cerveris in the title role and to its equally dynamic music and lyrics, this rock-opera about the trials and tribulations of a transvestite diva from East Berlin lives up to the rave reviews it got back in New York. By turns satirical, campy, outrageous, bawdy, tender and moving, the show has a freshness and originality to match its in-your-face challenge to puritanical notions of sexuality and love.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Stage III

 There was a time when many of us talked about a generation gap, but I never really experienced one until seeing and hearing Hedwig, a transgendered German expat and self-described "almost famous" rocker. Oh, I could appreciate the musicianship of his/her Angry Inch combo, the way s/he knocked about and still had breath control enough to elucidate sad autobiographical facts. But I found much of them boring.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Zachary Scott Theater

 Zachary Scott Theater Center's arena stage has mounted a rollicking rock and roll hit, John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch, in its Texas premiere. Hedwig relates the story of the "internationally ignored" rock singer and 'her' search for love and stardom.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Kitchen Dog Theater

 When seeing a play at two different venues, it is difficult not to make comparisons, so bear with me if I compare the production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Austin's Zachary Scott Theater and Kitchen Dog Theater's mounting in Dallas and find that the latter does not measure up.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 Perhaps I'm going out on a limb, but here goes: of all the venues that will ever stage the outrageous rock musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Milwaukee's Cabot Theater is the most unlikely. To give you an idea of the theater's environment, consider that it was lovingly crafted to recreate a 19th-Century European jewel box. It is a gilt-edged, Baroque masterpiece. One can expect to see Shaw, Shakespeare and operas performed on its stage (indeed, that's the typical fare).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Actors Theater of Louisville

 For its take-no-prisoners presentation of the rock cult classic, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Actors Theater of Louisville has transformed its intimate Victory Jory Theater into the tacky Liki Liki Tiki Room, a Hawaiian-themed lounge where "paradise is just a mai tai away." Hedwig, an East German-born transsexual whose botched operation resulted in an "angry inch," the name she's given her band, is powerfully sung and acted by fabulous David Hanbury, resembling a masculine-looking Sarah Jessica Parker.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Heidi Chronicles, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

 The Heidi Chronicles comes from the prolific pen of playwright/screenwriter Wendy Wasserstein, who also brought us Uncommon Women and Others, Isn't it Romantic, The Sisters Rosensweig, and An American Daughter, as well as teleplays and screenplays. Though it garnered a Tony, the Dramatists Guild Award, and a Pulitzer in the 1988-89 Broadway season, The Heidi Chronicles is Ms. Wasserstein's most static and talky play. Director David Kelso opens it up as much as possible without using implausible artificial movements.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Heiress, The
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

 So what if it's 19th-Century melodramatic; The Heiress is plain old-fashioned good, like its heroine Catherine -- until she comes to realize how her father and her suitor, each in his own way, withholds love out of selfishness. Then no one -- not even Aunt Lavinia who has more than once conspired to help her elope with Morris Townsend -- can trick Catherine into being anything but her father's heiress: one who's loved very powerfully once but never will again.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Hellcab
Tamarind Theater

 To know a society, Dostoyevsky wrote, one must look inside its prisons and hospitals. Modern addendum: and drive a cab. Playwright Will Kern has done just that; his eight-month stint hacking it in Chicago gave fruition to a short, pungent, bittersweet play whose title, Hellcab, sums up its point-of-view. A series of blackout vignettes, Hellcab depends on raw, earthy dialogue and deft acting to show the truth of life on the mean streets of a big American city today.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
Hellcab
Ivanhoe Studio

 The Hellcab, with its original cast and director, is revving its ignition in Los Angeles on December 1st, but the meter is still running in Chicago, as it has been, continuously, since 1992. Richard Cotovsky, the sixth and most recent of the title vehicle's pilots through the Boschian labyrinth of Christmas Eve in the Big Windy, has the face of a Veronica's Veil and the voice of a field medic in the Hundred Years' War, both of which convey the subtlest of rages and the greatest of compassions.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Hellcab
Ivanhoe Studio

 What makes this cab run? Since Hellcab's opening in 1992, no less than eleven actors (whose faces appear on the line of posters featured on the theater's marquee) have put their personal stamp on the role of the humble hackie piloting his yellow ferry through the stygian wilderness of Christmas Eve in the city. The alumni roster of ensemble members whose interpretations comprise the urban bestiary he meets on his pilgrimage reads like a storefront-circuit Who's Who (with several names -- notably Paul Dillon, Andrew Hawkes and Marc Grapey -- now making Coastal waves).

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Hellcab
Ivanhoe Theater Studio

 Each of the thirteen actors who have piloted the Hellcab since the premiere of Will Kern's play in 1992 has brought his own interpretation to the role. But Scott Cummins also brings directorial savvy to his stint in the driver's seat, reflected in the current production's fresh topicality ù with references to escalating varieties of occupational hazards, racial discrimination on the part of both drivers and customers, and the social and geographical distinction between the South and Southeast sections of this balkanized city.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Hello Again
City Theater

 City Theater has been utilizing a tiny space in a neighborhood of warehouses and earning respect -- even while the size of its audiences has been small compared to older Wilmington venues. But this company should get a lot more recognition as it moves into a new home on the same downtown block as Wilmington's prestigious Grand Opera House. Led by the youthful Jon Cooper, Michael Gray and Tom Shade, the company makes a great impression with its final production before the move.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Hello, Dolly!
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 What would the holiday season be without its traditions? Milwaukee is luckier than most this holiday season, since it's being honored with a rousing production of Hello, Dolly! Though Dolly's script won't overtax anyone's brain cells, it is a pure delight in the capable hands of Skylight Opera Theater. Chicago-based director Marc Robin chooses to honor tradition, not to tweak it, as one might be tempted to do almost 40 years after the play first opened.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2001
Hemingway's Rose
6th at Penn Theater

 Matt Thompson's Hemingway's Rose, just the right length at slightly under one hour, is hilarious. Combining Angela D. Miller's directing talent with the comedic timing of actors Ted Reis, Jonathan Sachs, and Julie Sachs makes for a delightful, albeit short, evening.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Henry IV, Part Two
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival begins its 1999 production of Henry IV, Part Two, by re-creating the curtain call scene of last year's Henry IV, Part One. The play ends with a speech from Henry V, scheduled for the 2000 season. The theme of the production is transition; from the past, from decay and disease of a nation and people, toward a new future of purpose, victory and renewal -- for some.

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Henry The Horse
Actor's Asylum

 Henry the Horse has all of the right ingredients. Director Pam Benjamin amusingly interprets playwright Tom Hyatt's script and has brought to it a cast of enthusiastic, talented performers.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Heroes, Inc. / The Road to Hades
Fault Line Theater

 Fault Line's storefront theater is often the starting point for aspiring actors, a place to learn to memorize short scripts, take direction on a very small stage, and have some fun. It is also a theater with two-week runs -- a short rehearsal schedule. Both of which mean that experienced actors between gigs can hone their skills while making a very short commitment. The current offering includes a continuing series, "Heroes, Incorporated 3," subtitled "John System vs. The Global Crime League."

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Hidden Sky, The
Prince Music Theater

 The opening scene of this world premiere musical features an Arabic-sounding wail that perfectly sets the tone. This is a fable about the rediscovery of Arabic numerals and the development of logic and science that are based on the Arabic arithmetical system.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
High Spirits
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Dubbed a "revisical" by author-adapter Timothy Gray, High Spirits originally had a large cast that included ghosts who frequently flew about a large stage. In Sarasota, for the first time, the characters are down to earth and pretty much in the number and drawing-room proximity that Noel Coward originally created. With his clever lyrics and stylistic closeness to Coward, Gray has turned out an entertaining musical of manners.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Hinton Battle
Apollo Theater

 Hinton Battle - Largely Alive isn't a bad show, it's just unnecessary, a deficiently constructed solo for an excellent performer. Battle has been a leading musical comedy performer on Broadway and on the road for decades. He has just completed a run as a featured performer in the Chicago production of Ragtime. Battle's new one-man show at the Apollo Theater traces his life, from his childhood in Washington, DC through his education as a ballet dancer to his success on the Broadway musical stage.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Hobson's Choice
Milwaukee Repertory Theater

 Hobson's Choice brings the welcome return of Nagle Jackson, former artistic director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater (1971-77). His talents are evident in this well-oiled production, an early example of women's liberation that manages to puncture many of the cultural taboos of English life in the 1880s. The play makes a heroine out of its main character, Maggie, who certainly puts Gloria Steinem to shame in her zeal to move beyond the domestic chains that shackled women in the Victorian era.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Hold Please
Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater - Studio

 After producing two tough dramas -- Carolyn Gage's The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women and Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets - the three-year-old Women's Theater Project in South Florida went looking for a comedy and came up with Annie Weisman's Hold Please. Weisman has said she was moved to write the four-woman play by the Clinton-Lewinsky episode, which, to her, illustrates that the person with ostensible power may not hold all the cards.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Holiday
Victory Gardens Theater

 In 1927, no one knew that the stock market would soon crash, plunging citizens secure in their affluence into poverty -- not even Philip Barry, whose explorations in the Land of Plenty contrast those who earn their own money with those who inherit it, and those who use it to enjoy themselves with those who allow themselves to be imprisoned by it.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Holiday Memories
La Jolla Stage

 The joy of word pictures! Truman Capote reflects on his childhood in Holiday Memories. Placed in the depression dirt poor-south, "The Thanksgiving Visitor" and "A Christmas Memory" bring the audience the meaning of the holidays, of family, and of values.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Hollow Lands, The
South Coast Repertory

 Howard Korder's epic historical drama is that rare theatrical bird, a socially-conscious work that looks deep into the American soul and exposes the cancers eating away at it (lust for empire and power, naivete, violence, racism, religious fanaticism). Featuring a 17-person cast, produced at a cost of $750,000, The Hollow Lands is an immensely ambitious project for a mid-sized theater like South Coast Rep to mount, especially in light of the play's harsh, uncompromising point of view.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Hollow, The
Coronado Playhouse

 Agatha Christie delights in planting extremely funny dialogue within the investigation of a murder. We find that, while everybody loves everybody else, there are those who consider many of the others with absolutely no regard. The Hollow is set in the fall of 1951, at the Angkatell estate, a mere 18 miles south of London.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Hollow, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 This veddy British mystery gives Asolo's repertory of actors roles that match their talents, looks and ages. In the great green-brown-gold room, with garden porch, of a Tudor country manse, its lord, Henry Angkatell (comfy David S. Howard), is surrounded by textured furnishings holding artifacts from his old post in India. The Hollow, though, lacks the grandeur of Ayneswyck, Lady Lucy's childhood home pictured above their mantel. How much does she envy her cousin Edward (V Craig Heidenreich, correctly starchy), a self-deprecating man who inherited the estate?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
Hollow, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 As a spine tingling who-dun-it, Agatha Christie's The Hollow doesn't quite rate up there with her masterpiece, The Mousetrap. However, The Hollow will have no trouble pleasing Christie's legions of fans which, by now, extend around the globe.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Betrayed
Biltmore Hotel

 Early in Betrayed, we learn that a young Iraqi working as a translator for the U.S. military after the ousting of Saddam Hussein literally is afraid of his own shadow -- and for good reason.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
August 2008
Moon Over Buffalo
Pocket Sandwich Theater

Pocket Sandwich Theater has a sure-fire hit in their production of Ken Ludwig's backstage farce, Moon Over Buffalo, a hilarious send-up of the people who devote their lives to the theater. Premiering on Broadway in October 1995, it starred Philip Bosco and Carol Burnett.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Caesar and Cleopatra
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Festival Theater

Just as the disgruntled Canadian traditionalist critics were attacking Stratford's new artistic director, Des McAnuff, as a musical-comedy director unqualified in classical drama, he opened a splendid Caesar and Cleopatra for this season's final new production. It's not so often produced because Caesar and Cleopatra is long, elaborate, and expensive; and Shaw plays are fairly rare in this "Shakespeare Festival" repertory.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Moby Dick
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Studio Theater

 To be fair and honest, I should begin by noting that I am not an admirer of the much-acclaimed playwright and director Morris Panych, neither as a playwright nor as a director. I usually find his work to be arch, pretentious and clumsy. However, this work is so intertwined in its direction, movement and choreography, it is almost impossible to determine who created what; so I suppose I must credit Panych with this Moby Dick's overall inventiveness and fascinating movement and design as well as blaming him for its ultimate incoherence and tedium.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2008
Vanities
Pasadena Playhouse

 "Do no damage," Hippocrates advised his fellow doctors. The same could be said, in a theatrical context, for Vanities, the wildly popular 1976 comedy that ran for 1,785 performances Off-Broadway and has now been turned into a musical.

In development for the past two years, Vanities – A New Musical checked into the Pasadena Playhouse for a six-week pre-Broadway run. 

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Palmer Park
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Studio Theater

 Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass refers to Palmer Park as a "Lament for a Lost Ideal," and it is a very personal lament as well as one with universal significance. The title of her Tony-nominated play from the 1980s, Play Memory, comes to mind because this is a memory play about a group of idealistic young Detroit parents in the 1960s who tried to combat the artificial integration of bussed school attendance and create instead a genuinely integrated community reflected in the diversity of its integrated public schools.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2008
Home
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Cephus Miles, the sweet-natured, simple hero of Samm-Art Williams' Home, is an African-American farmer who loves his land of hot, sticky tobacco fields in Cross Roads, N.C. He just wants to marry his girlfriend Pattie Mae and stay there always. But fate propels him into prison when, as a Vietnam War draftee, he refuses to kill because he cannot go against his Biblical teachings to "love thy neighbor." His odyssey takes him to a big city where he finds work loading trucks at a shirt factory but is fired when his employer learns he is an ex-convict.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Homework
Crossroads Theater Company

 TV standout Kim Coles ("Living Single") opened the Crossroads season with a comedy she co-wrote with Charles Randolph-Wright about three childhood girlfriends (all played by Ms. Coles) from Brooklyn. There is the beautiful Jamaican immigrant Angela, the intelligent and sassy Shakronda, and the sweet and naive Kimme. Ms. Coles' play follows the young girls through grade school, high school, college and their respective careers. It is a heartwarming story in which one finds fame, another success and the third finds herself. Ms.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Honky Tonk Angels
North Coast Repertory Theater

 They say that every country song tells a story. A quick scan of the song titles in North Coast Rep's latest, Honky Tonk Angels, does tell the story. Ted Swindley, who also created Always...Patsy Cline, picked the right songs for his three singers. "Stand By Your Man" and "Don't Come Home a Drinkin'" fit Angela (Kelli Maguire) who lives in a double-wide in Texas.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007

Pages