Tuesdays with Morrie
St. Christopher's Church

Acacia Theater, Milwaukee’s faith-based theater company, reaches a new level of professionalism with its production of Tuesdays with Morrie, a play based on the New York Times’s best-selling memoir by Mitch Albom.

Tuesdays with Morrie opened in 2002 Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater. The play’s co-author is Minneapolis-based playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Readers may also be familiar with the TV movie starring Jack Lemmon.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Department of Dreams
City Garage

City Garage has gone all out to introduce the work of the Kosovo-based playwright Jeton Neziraj to Los Angeles.

The avant-garde company headed by Frederique Michel and Charles A. Dumcombe  honored Neziraj with a champagne reception, a book signing, and a guest panel discussion on the weekend of Nov. 8-10, 2019.  And of course City Garage also mounted the world premiere of Neziraj’s latest play, Department of Dreams, which will run locally until December 8.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Thanksgiving Play, The
Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

Like all good satire, The Thanksgiving Family destroys all its targets:  the holiday of Thanksgiving itself, children’s theater, American history, veganism, spirituality, racism, and progressive education. The play by Larissa Fasthorse gleefully stays on the comic attack for 90 swift minutes, demolishing everything in its path, leaving bodies on the ground and blood on the walls.

Logan (Samantha Sloyan) is a much-harried elementary school teacher who, because of her theater background—six weeks in L.A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Bright Star
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

With double authors and protagonists, Bright Star also manages to portray two different eras (1923 and 1940s) in bluegrass country and in the big city. As a musical and melodrama loosely based on a true story, it’s winning applause for its sentimental, romantic treatment of people and times that appeal to typical FST audiences.  Banjos, guitars, fiddle, upright bass, and piano music become a melding force.

As middle-aged Alice Murphy,  Meredith Jones strongly enlists listeners to be interested in her (“If You Knew My Story*).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Playwrights Horizons - Mainstage

Will Arbery’s latest play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, having been extended three times by popular demand, is now running Off-Broadway through Sunday, November 17 at Playwrights Horizons. With more religious, personal, and political exposition (read talk) than many a mind can absorb at one sitting, Heroes of the Fourth Turning is essentially a snapshot of the current divisive state of affairs in this country.

It is a play that not only digs deep but demands one’s fullest attention.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Stranger in the Attic
Off the Wall Theater

Just in time for Halloween, Off the Wall Theatre presents the Milwaukee premiere of a new thriller, Stranger in the Attic, by John Kaasik. Clues abound throughout this chilling, suspenseful narrative – right down to the very last second, when a major plot twist is revealed. According to director and company founder Dale Gutzman, Stranger reminds him of the psychological movie thrillers of yesteryear, including “Vertigo” (1958), “Rear Window” (1954) and “Dial ‘M’ for Murder” (1954). He’s right on the money about that.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Bakersfield Mist
Plymouth Church

Among the highlights of the current theater season is a concert presentation of Bakersfield Mist, by Los Angeles-based playwright Stephen Sachs. The play brings up issues of class, education and aesthetic training – all key to the notion of “what is art?”

The show is the fall opener of 35-year-old Boulevard Theatre, which has persevered largely on the dedication of founder and artistic director Mark Bucher.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Sound Inside, The
Studio 54

Although David Cromer is listed as director of Adam Rapp’s mesmerizing The Sound Inside, he might just as well be credited with co-authorship. His staging is so incisive, so provocative that the drama, which stars a radiant Mary-Louise Parker, benefits mightily from his work.

This is a mysterious play, not in the sense of a crime story, but because it probes the deep, unknowable insides of mind and heart that don’t cohere with what’s outside. “Listen to the sound inside” says Bella (Parker) over and over as she puzzles out thoughts and feelings she’s repressed.

David Rosenberg
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Antigone
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

This Antigone is not a standard translation from the Greek but rather one by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, originally published as what is here named the play’s subtitle.  The text comes from two writers, eras, and places.  This makes all the difference in the production, especially by relatively young FSU Conservatory students.

Because Antigone is a straightforward play, it goes right into the dramatic situation.  Creon has taken over Thebes after civil war.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
American Utopia
Hudson Theater

David Byrne’s American Utopia is another celebratory theater event unusual for Broadway. The former front man for the Talking Heads and a genius-level solo artist, Byrne presents an intoxicating hybrid of rock concert, dance program, and howlingly fun party. Audience members at the performance attended had no hesitation to stand and dance in the aisles to “The Road to Nowhere,” “Once in a Lifetime,” and the ultimate shake-your-booty inducer “Burning Down the House.” 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Christmas Carol, A
Lyceum Theater

The holiday cheer begins at the Lyceum Theater before the latest incarnation of Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol even commences. The holiday outing arrives on Broadway after a hit run in London. Lighting designer Hugh Vanstone has created a warm 19th century glow aided by lit candles throughout the theater. Patrons are greeted by cheerful staffers dressed in period costumes offering free cookies and clementine oranges. Cast members and musicians stroll onstage and play traditional yuletide favorites.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
November 2019
Wrong Man, The
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space

A basic plot synopsis of Ross Golan’s musical The Wrong Man—no relation to the 1956 Hitchcock classic with Henry Fonda—might lead you think it deals with racial tensions in contemporary America. In Reno, Nevada, an African-American young man with a troubled past named Duran (dynamic Joshua Henry) is framed for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Marianna (passionate Ciara Renee), also a victim of unfortunate choices. The crime was actually committed by the woman’s psycho ex who quickly disappears in Mexico.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Scotland, PA
Steinberg Center - Laura Pels Theater

In Scotland, PA, Roundabout’s jaunty, festive, but bifurcated new off-Broadway musical, signs inform us that there’s no gas at the gas station and the Points of Interest location is closed. Based on the 2002 cult film which was, in turn, based loosely on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the show strains to unite what starts as comic parody with what turns into grisly tragedy. Unlike, say, Little Shop of Horrors, it doesn’t maintain an engaging tone nor involve us with the characters.

David A. Rosenberg
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Mamma Mia!
Venice Theater

To celebrate the opening of its 70th season, Venice Theater creates a lavish  370th MainStage area premiere production. Though geared to the tastes of VT’s predominantly senior fans, its Mamma Mia! uses plenty of young performers to perform energetically, especially in abundant dances and mimes to 23 ageless ABBA songs.

The plot of Mamma Mia! is an extended but simple device to hang music on.  Sophie, about to marry Sky, finds her mother Donna’s 21-year-old diary, proving her father must be one of three men.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Between Riverside and Crazy
Fountain Theater

Somewhere early in the second act of Between Riverside and Crazy, the Stephen Adly Guirgis play now running at the Fountain, I realized what a bad play it was.  Until then I had gone along with its over-cooked, banal dialogue and melodramatic story, thinking the playwright would somehow overcome the play’s weaknesses and redeem what had gone before.  Instead, with the appearance of a Church Lady (Liza Fernandez), a cross between a Catholic lay worker (pun intended), a Santeria witch, and a hooker, the piece collapsed completely.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Height of the Storm, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Jonathan Pryce gives a titanic, King Lear-level performance in Florian Zeller’s  soulful The Height of the Storm, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton. Co-starring another great British actor, Eileen Atkins, this is an enigmatic mystery wrapped in an eternal love story.

We first see Pryce immobile in a chair, his face ghostly, staring into some unknown abyss. He’s André, recently widowed. Or is he? Soon, Madeleine, his supposedly deceased wife, enters. Is it he who has died?

David Rosenberg
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Gravity & Other Myths: Backbone
The Broad Stage

In Gravity & Other Myths: Backbone, eleven amazing acrobats not only toss each other around but walk on each other’s heads, fly through the air, build and climb human towers, prance, dance, do flips and flops---all to Elliott Zoerner and Shenton Gregory’s wild, pulsating musical score.  And that’s just for starters!

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Slave Play
Booth Theater

Race relations are examined at a much deeper and more complex level in Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, now on Broadway at the Golden. The play opens on Clint Ramos’ mirrored set, reflecting images of an antebellum Southern plantation. Three interracial couples, each a variation on the slave and master set-up and dressed by Dede Ayite in character-defining 19th century costumes, engage in power dynamics which quickly become sexual.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Great Society, The
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

 Robert Schenkkan provided a brilliant example of political theater with his Tony winning All the Way, which played Broadway in 2014 after premiering at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The epic drama’s trajectory concerned President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s efforts to push the Civil Rights Act through Congress and ended with his election in 1964.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Caesar and Cleopatra
Theater Row Theater

Julius Caesar’s best qualities—lauded, in the Shakespeare play that bears his name, by Marc Antony—apparently made an impression on a later playwright, too: George Bernard Shaw. The Caesar of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra proves patient, war weary, bemused (rather than enraged) by the the foolishness of mankind, and merciful insofar as it aligns with his stratagems. This is the world leader who, while on a stroll near the Sphinx, meets a capricious 16-year-old who just so happens to be the Queen of Egypt.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Playwrights Horizons

Will Arbery depicts yet another group of teary-eyed souls dealing with loss and doubt in Heroes of the Fourth Turning at Playwrights Horizons. This Chekhovian bunch has gathered together to mourn the absence of a cherished past but feel powerless to move forward, sorta like the folks in The Cherry Orchard. They are recent graduates of a conservative Catholic university in Wyoming attending a celebration of their former professor’s promotion to president.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
New Englanders, The
City Center - Stage II

The unhappy characters in Jeff Augustin’s The New Englanders, from Manhattan Theater Club at City Center Stage II, whine about their comfortable misery. Interracial gay couple Aaron (dignified but yearning Teagle F. Bougere) and Samuel (tender Patrick Breen) have lost the zip in their marriage, while their teenage daughter Eisa (fiery Kara Young) aspires to be the next Lauryn Hill and obsessively fears being ordinary.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Linda Vista
Hayes Theater

Like Serafina in The Rose Tattoo, Dick Wheeler, the misanthropic protagonist of Tracey Letts’s Linda Vista at Second Stage’s Hayes Theatre, is no picnic. He rails against Trump voters, all contemporary music and film (especially comic-book adaptations), and Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature as signs of cultural rot.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Rose Tattoo, The
American Airlines Theater

“My life is unhappy. I want to change it and I don’t know how.” That’s the subtext of a lot of American drama, and several productions currently on and Off-Broadway explore this trope of angst with insight and compassion. One is a neglected classic from Tennessee Williams, the poet of the frustrated and lonely. Yet, surprisingly, the Williams play is the most optimistic and life-affirming of the bunch.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Hamilton
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

It has been a long wait, but the people of southeast Wisconsin finally get to be in the room where it happens. Hamilton has arrived.

And what a reception it’s getting. The mostly sold-out performances in this three-week run offer a top-ranked professional tour, which is also visiting two other Wisconsin cities (Appleton, then Madison) during its time in America’s Dairyland. From the buzz heard among the pre-theater crowd on press night in Milwaukee, it’s clear that people have been waiting for this moment.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Linda Vista
Helen Hayes Theater

Dick Wheeler (a terrific Ian Barford) is discontented. Newly separated from wife and son, he moves into a San Diego apartment.

David A. Rosenberg
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Lightning Thief, The: The Percy Jackson Musical
Longacre Theater

The three previously reviewed musicals are Off-Broadway in intimate theaters and clubs. The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, based on Rick Riordan’s young-adult fantasy novel, began life Off-Broadway a few seasons back and, after a national tour, is now at the Longacre Theater. How does this tween-targeted family tuner settle into big, bad Broadway?

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation
The Triad

Forbidden Broadway is back after a hiatus of five years in a brand-new edition subtitled “The Next Generation.” Creator-writer-director Gerard Alessandrini’s beloved spoof of musicals both good and bad has been running in form or another for over 9,000 performances in cities all over the world. This new version has some misses, though. A Harry Potter bit is kind of obvious, and the parody of The Ferryman  repeated gags Alessandrini used when he skewered another Irish hit, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, 20 years ago.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Little Shop of Horrors
Westside Theater

The Roundabout’s Scotland, PA off-Broadway and Little Shop of Horrors in a commercial run at the Westside Theater translate weird, dark little movies into weird dark little musicals.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Scotland, PA
Steinberg Center - Laura Pels Theater

Scotland, PA at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater and Little Shop of Horrors in a commercial run at the Westside Theater translate weird, dark little movies into weird dark little musicals. Both shows feature frighteningly fun, gruesome murders and spoofy scores, ribbing the music of their respective eras. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Cinderella
Crighton Theater

Conroe’s wonderful Crighton Theater has, for many years, continued to send me personal invitations to the shows mounted by the much-loved Stage Right Productions Company. The group has as its longstanding motto: “A Community for the Entire Family.” That motto has perhaps never been more appropriate than for the very cute current offering of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical,  Cinderella, cheerfully directed by Stage Right veteran, Sara Preisler.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Sunset Boulevard
Ruth Page Center for the Arts

You've seen it on the big movie-palace screens, on small television screens, on big Broadway stages, and now you can see Billy Wilder's classic tragedy noir up close and intimate in the 218-seat Ruth Page. Ah, but in 2019, when the employability of Glenda Jackson, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren et al., are inarguable, can Porchlight Music Theater sell playgoers on the premise of an actress being all washed up and over the hill at the ripe old age of—FIFTY???

This noir-era Mrs.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Effect, The
Strawdog Theater Company

It doesn't take a mind-reader to note that the first flush of love often produces symptoms mimicking those of madness. Adherents of the James-Lang Theory of Emotions have even argued that what we call "love" is merely a label that we affix to the combination of such symptoms, while supporters of Thomas Szasz declare that the source of the eccentric behavior popularly dubbed "lovesickness" is more often spiritual than organic.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Invisible
Stage 773

It could be a scene out of a Beth Henley play: townswomen clustered around a kitchen table, intent on the progress of their club chapter's membership drive, the preparations for the upcoming rally and congratulating one another on their newly won right to vote (this is 1925). Gradually, however, we realize that the festival is a cross-burning pageant, the snowy linens being folded are hoods and cloaks, and the recruitment campaign under discussion is in support of the Women's Ku Klux Klan of Mounds, Mississippi.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 3019
Slave Play
Golden Theater

Think of the vulgar terms that substitute for having sex or making love. All carry the stench of subjugation. Now add not just men subjugating women but whites subjugating blacks. And you have Jeremy O. Harris’s raw, provocative, over-extended Slave Play about fear, desire, jealousy, and reconciliation.

Harris focuses on four couples: white man/black woman; white woman/black man; white man/black man; and a lesbian pair.

David A. Rosenberg
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Spring Awakening
Hobby Center

Let’s be clear right out of the box. The current offering from Houston’s Theater Under the Stars is not your grandma’s Broadway musical. For all of its theatrical dimensions and explorations of adolescent rebellion, Spring Awakening is clearly a teenage journey of self-discovery through the angst and perils of pubescent sexuality.

Based on the 19th century play of the same name by Frank Wedekind, this 2006 Broadway edition features the rock music of Duncan Sheik, and book by Steven Sater, whose lyrics often read like fine poetry.

David Dow Bentley III
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Vietgone
American Stage

As a new-coming view of Vietnamese Americans in but mainly after the fall of Saigon, Vietgone is a welcome change from stereotyped portrayals of Asian-Americans.  Its author has said he’s written a sex comedy but Brian Balcom, who directs it at American Stage, sees it as an epic journey of migration to a new world, themed with  bravery, resilience, and love. It hasn’t the overwhelming rap of a Hamilton, yet music and lyrics move the drama.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Miss Lilly Gets Boned
Electric Lodge

If you like your theatre wild and wacky, take yourself to the Electric Lodge where Rogue Machine is presenting the West Coast premiere of Miss Lilly Gets Boned, by Bekah Brunstetter.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2019
Betrayal
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

“I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.” – Harold Pinter, taken from his 2005 Nobel Prize Lecture.

When I first heard that Harold Pinter’s Betrayal was coming to Broadway, I was thrilled. I was long craving for something above and beyond the usual Broadway fare. Something challenging that would set my brain to thinking, and my heart to feeling.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
September 2019
Mother of the Maid
North Shore Center for the Performing Arts

Dead Celebrities have always been prime targets for exploitation by adherents eager to impose their own agendas on luminaries no longer capable of refuting spurious claims. Female icons are particularly susceptible to idolatry/iconoclasm based in academic speculation, and none more so than Joan of Arc, the legendary superstar of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), who was later executed by the Roman Catholic church for the crime of heresy, but ultimately exonerated, declared a martyr in 1456 and canonized as a saint in 1920.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2019

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