It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Without a traditional kind of book, It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues nonetheless speaks eloquently to blues history and tradition. Vocalists act out their lyrics, mime emotions, dance, instrumentalize as historical projections back their tales and wails. Progress from African tribal music through slave singing all the way to country western and Chicago-style blues shows how strongly the roots of blues were planted, its seedlings transplanted and cross-fertilized.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
It Runs in the Family
Patio Playhouse

 Farce: A light, humorous play in which the plot depends on a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
Ray Cooney: British playwright and foremost farceur (practitioner of farce).
Sherrie Colbourn: A director accomplished in the direction of humor.
Patio Playhouse: An Escondido community theater currently staging It Runs in the Family.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
It's All True
Adrienne Theater

 In 1930s movies Mickey Rooney said "C'mon kids, let's put on a show." And in real life, in 1937, Orson Welles did virtually the same thing, cobbling together a musical in a disconcertingly haphazard manner. Jason Sherman's new play, It's All True, recreates the tumultuous birth of that musical, The Cradle Will Rock, but he gives us so much more.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder
Pegasus Theater

 Unlike the opera, where nearly everyone dies at the end, Pegasus Theater's trademark "Black & White" murder mysteries have many people getting bumped off early on but leaving enough suspects behind. And in true whodunit fashion, everyone has a motive.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol
Third Avenue Playhouse

 It's easy to give another Christmas Carol a "bah, humbug." Dickens' heartfelt exploration of the nature of the human heart is often reduced to flashy stage effects at the countless holiday presentations of the work. Tom Mula's one-man show - adapted from his own book of the same name - is something else entirely. Presented on a spartan stage (a couple of chairs, a desk and a beautiful image of space as a backdrop), Mula explores Marley's own road to redemption. Mula takes on a host of characters with plenty of style and wit.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
Jacques Brel: A Parisian Cabaret
FST Cabaret Club

 Jacques Brel is no longer alive and well and living in Paris, as he was when he became world famous. Is that why a "Parisian Cabaret" revue of his songs mostly features death? Oh, love too. But it's fated. The art-deco leaded glass framing the stage arch and backing the piano cordons off the performers. Clad in black leather, crepe, velveteen, rayon, they begin a "Marathon" like robots, miked to the teeth. From then on, they proceed as if "The Desperate Ones" they sing about.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
James Joyce's The Dead
Ahmanson Theater

 Winner of the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical, James Joyce's The Dead comes to L.A. not long after its New York closing, with most of its cast intact. And what a splendid cast it is, starting with Stephen Bogardus serving as narrator/participant Gabriel Conroy (played by Christopher Walken in New York). Bogardus is poised and articulate as he guides the audience through the annual Christmas party at the home of his aunts Julia and Kate (Sally Ann Howes and Marni Nixon), in 1903 Dublin.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
James Joyce's The Dead
Arden Theater

 This intimate drama with music has an off-putting title. It's awkward, Joyce's name isn't going to sell many tickets, and I heard some patrons didn't want to see a show about death. There's nothing Arden artistic director Terry Nolen can do about that, of course. What he has done is mount a quiet, sensitive production of this lovely little play. He's staged it so we feel that we're eavesdropping in the home of Dublin's Morkan sisters on the occasion of their annual Christmas-time dinner party. The actors play to each other, often turning their backs to most of the audience.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Jammer, The
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

 A wacky, improbable tribute to the roller derby crazy of the 1950s, The Jammer: A Roller Derby Love Story becomes a hilarious, fast-paced comedy in the hands of Bialystock & Bloom Company. The troupe rightfully earns its place as the "bad boys of Milwaukee theater" with a show that features plenty of foul language and a few risque scenes tossed in for good measure. To get pre-show audiences in the mood, bags of popcorn are handed out along with the theater programs.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Jane: Abortion And The Underground
Chopin Theater

 Sometimes things aren't deja vu. The last time playwright Paula Kamen and director Janel Winter teamed up, the production of Seven Dates With Seven Writers was one of the funniest and most poignant plays of the season. Unfortunately, with their new, ambitious production of Jane: Abortion And The Underground, this isn't the case. There are still some fine moments and scenes in the play, but things don't move at a fast clip the way Seven Dates did.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Jar The Floor
International City Theater

 The finest play I saw in Southern California in 1994 was Jar The Floor at South Coast Repertory, and the heck with the critics who didn't agree. Now, International City Theatre in Long Beach has mounted another production of Cheryl West's wonderful comedy-drama, with a cast the equal of that in Costa Mesa.

T.E. Foreman
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Jar The Floor
Booth Playhouse

 There's a fine true-to-life messiness about Charlotte Rep's latest comedy, Jar the Floor. Conversation among four generations of African American women careens unpredictably between trivialities and compelling issues. One minute on the day of Viola Dawkins' 90th birthday, we're caught up in the most difficult issues of parenting, relationships, career choices, and sexual identity. The next moment, we're watching Lola dancing around the living room -- or nonagenarian MaDear mowing down her granddaughter MayDee with her new electric wheelchair.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Jekyll And Hyde
Shubert Theater

 Is Jekyll And Hyde ready for Broadway? The building blocks are in place for a hit, but there's still work to be done. Based on Robert Louis Stevenson's famous 1886 short novel, the musical follows Dr. Henry Jekyll, a brilliant, honorable man who wants to separate man's evil nature from his good side. Jekyll experiments on himself -- with disastrous results. His evil nature appears as Edward Hyde and soon takes over Jekyll himself, leading to a tragic conclusion.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Jekyll And Hyde
Historic Orpheum Theater

 Frank Wildhorn is the current favorite whipping boy among critics of musical theater, having inherited that position from Andrew Lloyd Weber. And it is true, Wildhorn's score for Jekyll & Hyde does seem to use Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera as a model, with its soaring, Pucciniesque melodies seeming aimed to thrill a receptive audience. But Wildhorn's frequently beautiful soaring melodies are his own, and the audience is certainly receptive - and not only when the tunes are being used to accompany figure-skating exhibitions.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
May 1999
Jersey Boys
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Theater

 In 1954 the marque read "The Variatones" and included a 17-year-old billed as "Frankie Valley." The group had almost as many stage names as gigs, ending up as The Four Seasons (thank you Vivaldi) with a lead singer named Frankie Valli. They were headed by Tommy DeVito with Nick Massi soon adding another under-ager, Bob Gaudio, who composed most of their works thereafter. "jersey boys" (yes lower case), under the direction of Des McAnuff, is rockin' and rollin' at La Jolla Playhouse in its world premiere prior to its New York opening.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Jesus Christ Superstar
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Thirty years after it changed the course of rock musicals forever, it's still easy for most Baby Boomers to recall the opening lines of the show's title tune: "Jeeeeesus Christ! Suuuuuuperstar!" That says a lot about the staying power of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Jesus Hopped The A Train
Steppenwolf Theater - Garage

 When one prisoner is named Lucius, the other is named Angel, and Jesus is invoked in the play's title, we anticipate an allegory. But while Stephen Adly Guirgis' expertise as a Violence Prevention Specialist in the Riker's Island Correctional Center might exceed his experience as a playwright, he demonstrates a notable acumen for integrating widely disparate elements: on one level, the play provides a forum for the two killers to argue the morality and circumstances of their respective crimes.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Jitney
Goodman Theater

 In many cities, if you live in a neighborhood where Checker and Yellow rarely go, or if you need help transporting packages home, or if you desire any of a number of personal services that conventional taxicab companies don't provide, you can still hire yourself a jitney. And if you lived in Pittsburgh's Hill District in 1977 -- the setting for this latest chapter in August Wilson's history of the African-American experience -- your mobility would rely heavily on the independent chauffeurs whose dispatch station is about to be razed for a nebulous urban-renewal project.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Jitney
Actors Theater of Louisville

 August Wilson's latest play in his admirable series chronicling African-American life in each decade of the 20th Century actually came to embryonic life as his first play -- a short one-act -- in the late 1970s. Expanded to full length and considerably deepened, it now takes its place seamlessly and indelibly in Wilson's ambitious cycle, as Actors Theater of Louisville's current production, under ATL associate artistic director Timothy Douglas' percipient direction, demonstrates.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Jitney
Milwaukee Repertory Theater: Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Milwaukee is somewhat foreign to the concept of gypsy cabs. These unlicensed cabs, sometimes called "jitneys," transport residents in neighborhoods where more established cab companies refuse to go. Such cabs were found in Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1970s, and that is where we find the characters who populate Jitney, August Wilson's early masterpiece.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 The challenges of caring for a severely disabled child form the nucleus of Joe Egg, which is being staged by the Milwaukee Chamber Theater. While a damaged child may not sound like the funniest of topics, make no mistake; this is a comedy, albeit with dark undertones.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Joleta
4305 Village Theater

 Towne Street Theater, which moved this year into a brand-new, spiffy location in Leimert Park, is offering the world premiere of Harriet A. Dickey's Joleta. A fascinating study of a contemporary black family's struggle to come to grips with its complex and flawed history, the play looks at the way thwarted love, skin-color consciousness and power struggles have affected each member of the Lyles household.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Jolson
Ordway Music Theater

 This biography of a performer still beloved by those of a certain age was, inexplicably, a winner of London's Olivier Award as best musical. It must have been a really poor season for musicals, because Jolson is a shallow, grating formula show. It asks audiences to believe in a performer's greatness without providing evidence to back up its claims, and then tries to convince us that a character who has demonstrated nothing but bullying and manipulation all evening long is actually a benevolent softy underneath the tough exterior.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Downtown Cabaret Theater

 Having kept its dreams alive through hard work and amazing persistence, Downtown Cabaret is rightly celebrating its 25th anniversary at its present location (it began at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield several years before). The festivities get underway with a spectacular production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, whose theme is interpreting and believing in dreams.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 No matter how many times it's been staged, when Joseph is done with such verve as at the Golden Apple, it seems shiny, new. A fun version of the Biblical story, it has a lively woman(!) narrator, here winsome Angela Bond, of wonderful voice. Same praise applies to handsome Apple newcomer Steven Scarpetti, so right down center assuming "Joseph's Coat" as well as explaining dreams in song. Treats from his brothers include their moseying like cowboys to lie to their dad about Joseph being dead when they've sent him to be a slave.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Royal George Theater

 It's not as intimate as the Chicago Shakespeare studio, or even the in-the-round Marriott, but the move away from the stadium-sized Chicago Theater and into the Royal George mainstage was definitely a wise one for the troupe. This earliest of the Webber and Rice collaborations is steeped in the playfulness of youth -- and nothing stifles play faster than too much money and too much planning.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Historic State Theater

 Joseph started life as a show to be performed by kids for other kids, telling the Biblical tale of Joseph and his brothers in simple, tuneful, contemporary terms they could all understand. Through all the years of revision, expansion, and increasingly lavish productions, it remains what it always was: a simple, tuneful, contemporary retelling of a Biblical tale, and a true crowd-pleaser, impervious to critical assessment.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Paper Mill Playhouse

 There is a distinct bus-and-truck look to the final production of this season at the Paper Mill Playhouse. This Joseph, produced in association with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, is about to embark on a year on the road. The costumes and scenery already appear as though it's the end of the road. The cast is more than adequate, featuring such pop personalities as two Cassidys and four Osmonds.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
State of the Union
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 With the presidential election only weeks away, it's not difficult to guess why the Milwaukee Repertory Theater chose to stage State of the Union as its 2008-09 season opener. The play, written by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, takes place in 1946. The original production won a Pulitzer Prize and had a decent Broadway run. It also was made into a film with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. The Rep maintains the show's original time (1946), and also retains it in its original form – three acts with two intermissions.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Radio Golf
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Radio Golf, with which August Wilson ended his 10-play cycle about life among blacks in 20th century America, is rife with beautiful and metaphoric prose and riddled with the warring tugs of history, known and unknown. This was Wilson's last play. He died Oct. 2, 2005, just after its second pre-Broadway production that summer and during the rewriting process. So the play isn't Wilson at his best, but it's very good and gets a fine staging as the eighth-season opener at Mosaic Theater, which is assaying Wilson for the first time.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Rooms
Geva Theater - Mainstage

 This small musical show seems primarily created to showcase the talents of Paul Scott Goodman, an obviously gifted composer/lyricist. There have been earlier developmental productions, but this co-production with MetroStage of Alexandria, Virginia, is listed by Geva Theater Center as its world premiere.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Paper Mill Playhouse

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was evidently a good Sunday-school listener. Back in 1967, when he was only 19 years old, he and then-23-year-old Tim Rice collaborated on a 15-minute "pop cantata" for St. Paul's Junior School in London. Over the years, the work that became known as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has grown in length and breadth and become a true theatrical staple.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Milwaukee kicks off its fall theater season with a brand-new national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Although much of the staging is new, the leading man, Patrick Cassidy, is not. He has quite a few performances of Joseph under his belt, since he also headlined the 1999 Joseph tour as well.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Joy of Gay Sex, The
Bayfront Theater at Fort Mason Center

In The Joy Of Gay Sex, the same Berkeley/San Francisco troupe who created the riotous Medea conjure up a pithy, sparkling comedy about swinging singles in the Bay Area. One performer, Jane (Jane Paik) typifies what's funny about the production: her character is a caricature of the Hollywood brat who indulged in too much cocaine, yet her smart-mouthed, nasty, cool quality copes with the 90's. Eventually Jane bonds with the pretentious, stuffed-shirt Berkeley professor, who turns out to be Jeff's (Jeff Fierson) dissertation advisor.

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Judy Garland, Live!
Theater Works

 What is a cabaret or club concert doing in a place like Theater Works? Stage draped in black, decked out with potted plants? Tommy Femia's non dramatic imitation of a middle-aged Judy Garland seems somehow out of place, as do her satirical remarks. Though he mimics her phrasing and often sounds like her, he's mostly in a different register, missing that famous catch in her voice.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Julius Caesar
Parkman Bandstand

In its fourth outdoor summer Shakespeare season, the enterprising Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presented Julius Caesar. Eric Levenson's set neatly co-opted the classical architecture of Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common and provided enough scaffolding for Kate Clarke to entwine herself about while overseeing the worth of her predictions as Soothsayer.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Julius Caesar
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Adams Shakespearean Theater

 Julius Caesar is one of the most disappointing productions to appear at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in recent years. The problems begin with the casting; both Jeff Swarthout (Cassius) and Donald Sage Mackay (Brutus) are poor matches for their roles physically, and Mackay compounds the problem by fashioning such a cold, cerebral Brutus that it's difficult to become involved with him at all. Even his relationship with Portia (Carrie Baker) is so distant and passionless, it's hard to believe they are husband and wife.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Julius Caesar
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - Mainstage Theater

 It has been almost two years since this critic checked in on Milwaukee Shakespeare, a relatively young troupe that stages several plays a year within the local university's mainstage theater. What a difference time has made! The company, under a new artistic director and with a slate of more experienced directors, designers and cast members, has surged forward with the speed of Shakespeare's Ariel. Currently, they have tackled Julius Caesar, a not-uncommon choice in an election year (no matter that the presidential election was in 2004).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Keely And Du
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Jane Martin is believed to be a pseudonym for a team of writers. Others believe that the real identity is former artistic director of the Actors Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, Jon Jory. Other plays attributed to Martin are Vital Signs and Talking With. Keely And Du, the most controversial, explores the ongoing battle over the rights of a woman and the rights of the unborn. Keely, excellently interpreted by Christine Bain, has been raped by her violent, alcoholic ex-husband.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Kentucky Cycle, The - Part 2
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 If Kentucky Cycle II hadn't opened with another song by full cast staring out in epic manner, the second half of the story of the fates of the land and the Rowans, Talberts, and Biggeses would be, well, epically better than Part I. There's still a lot of trying to do others in, but in general the descendants are an improvement on their ancestors. One really feels sorry for those who get screwed by the coal companies that in turn screw the entire environment. Not that the folks weren't warned by smoothie J. T.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999

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