Criticopia

The 28th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY, generated a number of fine offerings. The most buzz surrounded After Ashley, a searing black comedy by Gina Gionfriddo.

A special congratulations to book writers Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan and song scribes David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger for maintaining John Waters' raunchiness in the musical, Cry-Baby. Add to that Rob Ashford's highly suggestive choreography and Mark Brokaw's blatant direction. Baltimore, the year is 1954. Black and white TV, Bill Haley and the Comets, Eisenhower, "I Love Lucy", B-47s, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Eddie Fisher, The Chords and The Cordettes were all a part of the scene. It was a time when the kids got their first polio vaccine.

Having seen the original Broadway production, I must admit that Agnes of God lacked, on this viewing, the impact it once had. I'd like to think that's because the suspense wasn't there for me, whereas the play's mystery is gripping as a first experience. Many in the audience with me obviously had just that. I wish I'd been able to share it, but the answers to the mystery seemed just too obvious this time. I refer to how, in a contemplative order of nuns, young, unworldly Sister Agnes became pregnant -- and is she guilty of killing her baby?

When you consider that the opera, Aida, was written-to-order for the Cairo Opera House, the narrative liberties taken by Elton John, Tim Rice etc. seem less heinous. Flag-crossed lovers make good, hankie-wringing drama anytime, with extra resonance for American audiences added by the interracial aspect. (Radames is Egyptian, Aida is Nubian -- tribes that would appear virtually identical to us, were the former not played by an Anglo-European actor and the latter by an African-American actress). But the political situation in the Red Sea district circa 1400 B.C.

The theme of romance in a time of war is hardly new, but this sparkling production of Aida nonetheless captures our interest with its soulful tale of an enslaved African princess and her Egyptian lover. As the show opens, the two neighboring territories, Egypt and Nubia, are at war. This brings together the victorious Egyptian captain, Radames, and one of the captured Nubians, Aida. Her outspoken manner piques Radames' curiosity, and soon this interest turns to forbidden passion.

Dallas Theater Center opened the Fats Waller Musical Show, Ain't Misbehavin', on April 13, 2004, following five days of previews. There's no plot line, just two hours of rousing music associated with Waller. The most recognizable songs include: "Two Sleepy People," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "It's a Sin To Tell a Lie," "Honeysuckle Rose," and the title song. The performers are first-rate, especially Dallas regular, Liz Mikel, who commands attention just by walking onto a stage. Her interpretation of "Squeeze Me" was interrupted several times by applause.

When you are fortunate enough to be a member of the audience (49 people) at the 6th @ Penn Theater, you usually become a part of the production. This is true, in part, because many entrances are made from, and some of the action takes place in, the audience area. This happens in Ajax, under the direction of Forrest Aylsworth.

/>

Although playwright Arthur Miller is known for his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, it is curious to note why his earlier work, All My Sons, isn't revived more often. To this reviewer's mind, it has all the elements that elevate Salesman to a higher artistic level. In its own way, it seems like a more difficult play to do well. However, one needn't have worried about the production that recently opened at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. From start to finish, the show is mesmerizing. That's to the credit of the talented cast and director Paul Barnes.

The stage is bare, save for a nine-by-twelve-foot white screen. The house lights dim. We hear an ancient film projector grinding away. We see the film leader: five, four, three, two, and then the film title, "all wear bowlers," staring Earnest Matters (Geoff Sobelle) and Wyatt R. Levine (Trey Lyford). The two are dressed in black, wearing bowlers. They are in a bleak landscape walking and walking and walking, finally getting closer to us. The scratchy film, with occasional subtitles, grinds on.

Seeking to apply his fight choreography skills to a female combat drama, Tony Wright quickly discovered there were no existing scripts to suit his needs. So the actor/playwright, who directed last year's slumber party version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, cooked up his own futuristic sci-fi potboiler, Alpha, now playing at the SouthEnd Performing Arts Center.

The Downtown Cabaret bring a variety of shows to their stage, many of which are the tried and true musical comedy standards, others are distinctly off-beat. Always...Patsy Cline is certainly a departure, for instead of a cast of many, this true story of a famous country singer uses only two women, albeit backed by a six-piece orchestra.

Thanks to tour de force performances by David Suchet and Michael Sheen and to a smooth, glowing production by Hall and designer William Dudley, Shaffer's take on the Salieri/Mozart conflict comes across with considerable power twenty years after first written and performed. It doesn't hurt that the production has come to L.A. after a long run in London, where performances were well honed and the script rewritten.

Although this fictionalized drama of 18th-Century Viennese court composer Salieri bringing down young genius Mozart seems a jealousy-inspired revenge tragedy, director Michael Edwards emphasizes its theme of a struggle with God. Music, as Salieri confesses, is "God's art," and He bestowed the most sublime gift of producing it on His darling Amadeus (whose name signifies "Beloved of God"). This, despite Salieri's prayers and difficulties in leading a virtuous life. This, despite the young Mozart's profane grossness and sexy silliness.

Interestingly, this production of American Buffalo is Geva Theatre Center's first staging of a Mamet play, although Geva has been performing American plays, particularly new ones, for several decades, and Buffalo is now a familiar modern classic. An almost perfect, tightly contained, three-character drama, the play is constantly amusing in Mamet's poetic simulation of working-class male speech and behavior while moving the three through deep-felt, basic aspirations into awful betrayal and defeat.

When American journalist Bill Buford set out to explore the roots of the violent behavior exhibited by British soccer fans, he never thought his report would contradict all the common theories regarding working-class hostility and economic disenfranchisement.

David Hare's Amy's View contains much more than her statement, "You have to give love without any conditions at all. Just give it. And one day you will be rewarded. One day you will get it back." The play is about conflict. Resolutions are rare, as are harmonies.

The always adventurous BNTC took on a difficult challenge with this play, if only because its theme -- the impossibility of faithfulness in male/female relationships -- cuts against the American party line, which treats infidelity as a cardinal sin. Arthur Schnitzler, an assimilated Austrian Jew writing in the 1920s about the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, rejects such a notion. In his view, infidelity is the norm, monogamy an illusion, which means men and women can't help but betray each other.

When playwright James Still read Eva Geiringer Schloss' book, "Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale," about her experiences during the Holocaust, he was moved to construct a play from its contents.