Driving Miss Daisy
Milwaukee Chamber Theater

It’s not easy to find a starring role for an actress in her 80s, but Chamber Theater has succeeded with its production of Driving Miss Daisy. Ruth Schudson, who co-founded Chamber Theatre in 1975 and has acted in more than 65 productions, stars as the feisty Daisy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Mountaintop, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop gives us two super performers, the rather real Samuel L. Jackson and the effervescent, delightful, beautiful Angela Basset. They're in a fanciful mixture of politics of the time and the life-like inner turmoil of Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he is assassinated. Bassett plays the room-service person who brings him a cup of coffee. This segues into an imaginative, fun fantasy-- a comedy framework for political ideas at a critical time and the upcoming tragedy.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Pins and Needles
Theater 80

Pins and Needles, Harold Rome’s 1937 musical revue pushing for unions, the rights of the poor, satirizing the reactionary right, is a lot of fun for an old “Lefty” like me. Rome has written some of the cleverest lyrics in town, with tunes that bounce as they sing about being shackle-free, about love ("Union for Two"), depression problems and stirring up the workers.

A rich woman sings “It’s Not Cricket to Picket,” there’s Don’t Sit on the “Status Quo,” and the old hit, “Sing Me a Song of Social Significance.”

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Yellowman
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Studio

It’s not often that theater audiences will come in contact with a world as bleak as the one portrayed in Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman. The two-actor play is set mostly in South Carolina, in a community where hierarchy among blacks is determined by the color of their skin. Alma, the female character, repeatedly tells the audience that she is “big, dark, and ugly.” Her mother first tells this phrase to her. She repeats it over and over until Alma begins reciting it in her own mind.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Disenchanted
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

The staged is framed with portraits of pretty heroines of Disney movies, TV and theme park attractions. In Disney’s kingdoms, the gals usually are distressed, helpless. They have the job of looking cute while sighing for their prince (or similar guy) to come save them. Typically, they get to wed the royals and live happily ever after.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
Hamlet Redux
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Hamlet Redux is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s lengthy, complex tragedy to perform mainly for middle-schooled kids to young adults. From all of the actors, or each in turn, rendering lines from the Speech-to-the-Players comes a one-act coming-of-age play centered on a young Hamlet. He reaches Court after a scene in which his mom Gertrude kisses his dad, and then as King Hamlet lies asleep, summons his brother Claudius to poison him.

I've Never Been So Happy
Kirk Douglas Theater

Rude Mechs, the Austin-based theater company, is credited with the creation of I’ve Never Been So Happy, a farcical look at the Wild West now fighting hard for laughs in L.A. Billed as a world premiere even though it ran last April in Austin, Happyhas the slapdash feel of a meal prepared by too many cooks. The story is beyond silly, the characters are loonytune caricatures, the songs are loud, many and mostly forgettable.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 9, 2011
Red Noses
Ivy Substation

Peter Barnes' Red Noses, which won a London Observer Best New Play Award back in 1985, has been revived in raucous, bawdy fashion by The Actors Gang, a company that specializes in physical theater with a social bent.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2011
After the Night and the Music
Biltmore

Elaine May's three one acts under the heading After the Night and the Music provides an evening of light entertainment with a strong, sparkling cast, headed by the incomparable Jeannie Berlin whose behavior nuances, quirks and comic timing are fascinating, funny and unique. The rest of the cast includes some of the best in town, including J.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The
Minskoff Theater

The latest grade school pageant masquerading as a Broadway show, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer starts with the germ of an enterprising family entertainment: a romantic musical adventure tale of young Tom and pal Huck Finn and their involvement in a shady town murder. The tuner then proceeds to turn the germ into a deadly virus; that is, shows that have no business in 1700+ capacity theaters foolishly trying to put one over on the unsuspecting audience.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
`Night Mother

(see review(s) under Night Mother (no apostrophe))

Aida
Palace Theater

One of the tunes in the latest Broadway production by Disney, Aida, sings that "we lead such elaborate lives" ("Elaborate Lives," by the way, was once this show's moniker). Well, looking at what's presented onstage, you would absolutely have to concur. Apparently no expense was spared for this baby, from Bob Crowley's positively jaw-dropping costume designs and sets to Natasha Katz's inventive, rich lighting to the three credited writers of the book (Linda Woolverton, director Robert Falls and Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang).

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Aida
Palace Theater

The very qualities which make this production of the Verdi classic objectionable to adults make it perfect for young people. Disney's traditional cartoonization of the classics has added a happy ending to the poignantly tragic opera about an Egyptian princess, Amneris, hopelessly in love with her country's military hero, Radames, who falls in love with his captured slave, the Nubian princess Aida, whom the jealous Amneris has condemned to death, only to discover that Radames has chosen to die with her (not to worry, they meet again at a museum)!

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
December 2001
Aida
Palace Theater

Nearly a year into its Broadway run, Aida remains an unqualified audience hit. Many critics have grumbled about this show, which had its Atlanta debut in 1998, but the musical is still packing `em in at the Palace Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
All Shook Up
Palace Theater

All Shook Up, the Broadway show constructed around the songs that Elvis Presley sang, is a feel-good musical from start to finish. It's a first-class entertainment with great singers and dancers, brilliant arrangements by Stephen Oremus, an active, spectacular, imaginative set (that should win awards) by David Rockwell, amazing costumes by David C. Woolard, marvelous innovative choreography by Ken Robertson for perhaps the best chorus in town, and a book by Joe DiPietro that perfectly integrates the songs in this imaginative concept, directed with pizazz by Christopher Ashley.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2005
Amour
Music Box
Amour reached Broadway in September 2002 and closed a month later. It was the first Broadway musical to come from Michel LeGrand, the tunesmith who gave us such terrific songs as "I Will Wait For You" and "What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," as well as the film scores to "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "Yentl." With a cast of nine and a four-piece orchestra, it was a slight, through-sung musical, running ninety minutes and drawing its flavor from the opera bouffe.
Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Amour
Music Box

Amour is closing, and too bad. It's a unique, original, entertaining romantic fantasy about a shy young man who can walk thru walls and the woman he loves from a distance, with some of the cleverest lyrics in town by Dieter van Cauwelaert, translated by Jeremy Sams, fine tunes by Michel Legrand and brilliant vocal arrangements by Todd Ellison. Some songs are Gilbert and Sullivanesque, some are Dr. Seuss. Direction by James Lapine is brisk, bright, imaginative. Design by Scott Pask is clever, lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer makes its own artistic statement.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Amy's View
Barrymore Theater
The Dame who played a Queen (and won the Academy Award for it), now reigns over Broadway. The incomparable Dame Judi Dench is recreating her London Award-winning performance in David Hare's Amy's View. There is nothing, even in her most recent and exceptional screen portrayals ("Mrs. Brown," "Shakespeare in Love," to say nothing of the BBC-TV comedy series "As Time Goes By"), this actor does on the screen to compare with the visceral life she brings with her on the stage.
Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Anna in the Tropics
Royale

Anna in The Tropics is about Cuban workers (most of them are also the owners, actually) in a Tampa cigar factory in 1929. A new lector is hired from Cuba, and his job is to read to the workers while they work. His choice of material: "Anna Karenina." Passages from the novel are woven into the play as he reads, and we study the book's effect on the other characters. Of course, life reflects art, and the lector takes up with one of the married women.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Anna in the Tropics
Royale

Anna in the Tropics won a Pulitzer Prize based on its script, before it ever was staged, and it comes to Broadway with high expectations. The play provides good entertainment but has flaws that keep it from being fully satisfying. The faults include a cheap and contrived denouement and gaps in plot. For example, the eldest member of the cast, owner of a cigar factory, is shown to be a gambler and a drinker who has no money. But in Act Two, he is suddenly sober and sensible and pulls out a wad of bills saying that he got a loan.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Annie Get Your Gun
Marquis
One of the songs in Irving Berlin's delightful score to Annie Get Your Gun states, "anything you can do, I can do better," and that adage has never been more pertinent to this show's surprising longevity on Broadway. The unflappable lead character, Annie Oakley, has been played by Ethel Merman, Debbie Reynolds, Bernadette Peters, and most recently to reportedly wondrous effect by C&W superstar Reba McEntire.
Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Assassins
Studio 54

Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, about famous killers and would-be killers (like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley, Squeaky Fromme) of famous people (like Lincoln, Kennedy, Sharon Tate), with songs by Sondheim and book by John Weidman, is a piece of expressionist theater that occasionally works as vibrant musical drama, but often sinks into inane verbiage.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Avenue Q
John Golden Theater

The message of TV's "Sesame Street," tucked in amid the array of alpha-numerical lesson plans, is that, despite the occasional obstacle, "everything's a-ok." While its multi-ethnic casts, resident grouch and human- monster interactions hint at a world of diversity and occasional miscommunication, the Children's Television Workshop nonetheless concocts an inviting urban landscape, full of "friendly neighbors" with their doors open wide to "happy people like you."

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Avenue Q
John Golden (moved to off-Broadway's New World Stages)

The Broadway lark, Avenue Q, is an adult kids' show -- a charming Sesame Street / Muppets singing, dancing delight. It's a clever concept performed with great charm by an outstanding cast of singing puppet characters mixed with non-puppet actors. The skill and range of Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia and Rick Lyon is amazing, and every cast member is Broadway level. Songs by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty give us a contemporary neighborhood saga full of great wit, romance and feeling, and the working-class- street set by Anna Louizos is just right.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Awake and Sing
Belasco

Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing, written in the depths of the depression in 1935, is full of stylized poetic phrases in the dialogue that are ripped from the gut and express the anguish of love, of poverty, of aspiration unfulfilled. The themes are as powerful (and sometimes funny) now as they were when Odets wrote them. However, this production, for me, is miscast and misdirected (by Bartlett Sher) with a lot of energy and lots of missteps including the wrong dog (what's a black poodle doing in the arms of these poor working-class people?

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
1966

see review(s) under "Nineteen Sixty Six" in Criticopia

(W)hole
Flea Theater

see review(s) under "Whole" in Criticopia

Abarcas del Tiempo, Las

see review(s) under "Las Barcas del Tiempo" in Criticopia.

Woman In Black, The
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Theatergoers "on the other side of the pond" (that's us) may not be as familiar with The Woman in Black as their London counterparts. The reason? London audiences have kept one of their theaters filled with this hit show since 1987. Thankfully, one needn't book airline tickets abroad to see the play. Renaissance Theaterworks has taken on the challenge of mounting Woman in Black in Milwaukee's intimate Studio Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
My Fair Lady
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

If music makes the musical, then who can argue with those who call the legendary My Fair Lady, "the greatest musical of all time?" Over the years, many of the show's lovely songs have become "standards." Who cannot hum a few lines from, "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Get Me to the Church on Time," or "On the Street Where You Live?"

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Mauritius
Biltmore Theater

Impressions of Manhattan Theater Club's Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck, directed by Doug Hughes, in which two half-sisters (the excellent Alison Pill and Katie Finneran) vie for the possession of a stamp collection:

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Like Love
TBG Theater

Like Love, a chamber musical with book and lyrics by Barry Jay Kaplan and music by Lewis Flinn, gives us a wonderful singer/actress/beauty, Emily Swallow; Jon Patrick Walker, a fine singer with the worst haircut on the NY stage, and the lively Danielle Ferland as the narrator/symbol of "The Spirit of Love."

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Will Durst
New World Stages

In Will Durst: The All-American Sport of Bi-Partisan Bashing, Durst, an engaging political comedian, takes big hits at Bush and little taps at Hilary. It's all observational humor, and he evokes chuckles, smiles, and laughs as he skewers political figures. As the show goes on, Durst reveals himself to also be a terrific physical comedian and impressionist with broad, complete expressions of body and face that take the show into a higher dimension of comedy as he covers a wide range of contemporary topics.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Visit, The
Signature Theater - Max Theater

 Signature Theater's ambitious recreation of Kander and Ebb's final work, The Visit, was proof of the 18 year-old D.C. metropolitan-area theater's deserved national reputation as creator of new versions of musicals and new plays. Stretching their intimate black-box space to its limits, it utilized a topnotch small orchestra, a cast of 23 including world-class stars, and a constantly changing, elaborate production, brilliantly acted, sung and danced.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2008
Dividing the Estate
59E59 Theaters

I love Horton Foote, and his Dividing the Estate confirms my romance with his work.  As impeccably cast and deftly directed by Michael Wilson, the show puts us in the midst of the family interactions on the stage in the drama of a Southern family, its foibles and mistakes, and the death of a matriarch. There is not a false note in the interaction of these relatives and their economic problems which partly grew out of hopes and unrealistic dreams.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Seven Crimes
Tenth Avenue Theater

It's that time of the year again. Blood runs like two–buck-chuck Merlot. Screams start their crescendo, climaxing on the 31st, Halloween. Sledgehammer Theater will get you into the mood with Seven Crimes: A Celebration of Murder, Mayhem and Mutilation at the Tenth Avenue Theater. Presumptuously billed as the First Annual, I expect many annuals if they maintain the bloody humor of their first production.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
North Park Playwright Festival (2007)
North Park Vaudeville

The North Park Playwright Festival is unique in many ways. It is open to first-time playwrights, directors and actors in a time that has become exceedingly difficult for tyro theater folks to learn their art. The mission of North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shop is to provide a platform. The festival attracts scripts from around the world and local talent, both brand new and well experienced.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Lamplighters One-Act Play Festival, The
Lamplighter Community Theater

Lamplighters Community Theater's One-Act Play Festival features two of the top playwrights in San Diego: David Wiener and Jim Caputo. Three of the plays are directed by actor Mark Loveless and one by actor Les Payne. Here's a quick look at what you can see.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Compleat Female Stage Beauty
Palomar Performing Arts - Howard Brubeck Theater

Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher researched extensively prior to writing Compleat Female Stage Beauty, bringing truth to his bawdy restoration comedy. The play debuted at the beginning of the 21st century and depicted a momentous change in English theater. It was in 1661 when Charles II, at the insistence of his charming mistress Nell Gwynn (Rachel Robinson), decreed that women be allowed to play women's roles. Formerly, women were not allowed on the stage. Charles II also decreed that men could not play women's roles.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007
Caliban's Island
Westminster Theater

What happens when you mix Shakespeare's The Tempest with that wild group from "Gilligan's Island" and just a touch of Robert Browning's "Caliban Upon Setebos?" Well, of course, you get Talent to aMuse Theatrt Company's Caliban's Island, currently running at Westminster Theater in Point Loma.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2007

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