Actors Alliance Festival 2007 - Special Program
Lyceum Space

Let the plays begin. Actors Alliance of San Diego have begun their run of short plays, and what a festive beginning this year. The Space at the Lyceum is the location of this grand event. Over thirty plays and over 100 actors and directors in five programs play the Special Program and Youthfest. Each program runs two nights. You are sure to find many plays you like with a host of excellent actors and actresses.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Actors Alliance Festival 2007 - Program 3
Lyceum Space

Program Three of the Actors Festival is a truly mixed bag; a wee bit of something for just about every taste. So let's get started.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Actors Alliance Festival 2007 - Program 4
Lyceum Space

Program Four of the Actors Alliance Festival is an interesting mix of local writers and the likes of Harold Pinter and Stephen Sondheim. Let's take a quick look at the five pieces.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Actors Alliance Festival 2007 - Program 5
Lyceum Space

All good things, I fear, do come to an end. Actors Alliance of San Diego's Actors Festival 2007 has but a very few more events.

Tall Tale , produced and directed by George Soete, begins Program Five. Steve Koppman penned this tale of two princes from Queens who discover the truth. One, played by Dave Rich, is overly impressed with his prowess with the opposite sex, while the other, Rob Conway, tries to cut through the thick layer of obfuscation. Amusing study of young men in action -- or is that inaction?

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Adding Machine, The
La Jolla Playhouse - Potiker Theater

Elmer Rice was not only a prolific writer; he was extremely versatile and covered a myriad of genres including drama, comedy, musical, romance, mystery, documentary and fantasy. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his controversial Street Scene. He may have been the first American playwright to embrace expressionism with The Adding Machine, currently playing at the Potiker Theater at La Jolla Playhouse.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
After the Quake
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

After the Quake, currently at the Mandell Weiss Forum of the La Jolla Playhouse theaters, is a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theater. Director Frank Galati has adapted two of the stories from Haruki Murakami's six-story collection of the same title. The two stories, "Super-frog Saves Tokyo" and "Honey Pie," intertwined in this telling.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Agnes of God
Poway Performing Arts Company

I'm sometimes asked who is my favorite actor. My standard answer is that if, at the end of the performance (stage or film), I say, "Oh my God, I didn't realize that was so and so!" then realize it was an actor totally immersed into their role. Yes, it's the actor so good, you forget who they are. In our small arena of community theater, that is almost impossible. But last night, at PowPAC, I watched three actresses, two of whom I've seen many times and one I've never seen. They were directed by an actress/director whose work I've seen many times.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Altar Boyz
Civic Theater

Broadway San Diego has brought Altar Boyz to San Diego for a short run. From the audience reactions opening night, it could play to sold-out houses. The show debuted over two years ago at the New York Music Theatre Festival, opened Off Broadway March 1, 2005, and has several road productions running. Talk about striking while the iron is hot! Altar Boyz, a struggling Christian boy band, is trying to ride the current religion wave.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Anything to Declare
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

No wonder Veber and Hennequin's stage farces were so popular they were turned into early films, now considered classics of their time and place. In Greg Leaming's new adaptation, Anything to Declare takes place in Paris in 1912 rather than six years earlier. There's little reason for the change: This is a farce that thrives mostly on sex, and there was plenty to go around in Paris and on its boulevard stages from the fin de siecle onward. And go around it sure does in the hilarious performances by Asolo actors.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
A un passo dall'alba
Teatro Verdi

Milan's most congenial experimental theater, the Teatro Verdi, hosted a production by sister site Teatro del Buratto that combined black-light puppetry with the customary avant-garde, mixed media presentation.  Inspired by the works of George Perec and Italo Calvino, the text concerns three travelers on a voyage of self-discovery.  A rather obnoxious sophisticate (Evelina Primo as Camilla) finds herself with the most unlikely and detestable companions: a mute woman (Ornella Vancheri as Io) and a next-to-useless guy (Gennaro Ponticelli as Moro). 

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 1999
Apple Tree, The
Goodspeed Opera House

In this revival of The Apple Tree, supervised by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, Joanna Glushak's dazzling transformation in a twitch of her dusty broom from Ella, the grimy bedraggled chimney sweep to Passionella, the blond Hollywood movie star with a voluminous bosom, makes the journey to East Haddam a priority.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Arcadia
Cygnet Theater

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, spanning 180 years, encompasses drama, romance, poetry, and science. The two time periods, 1809 and 1989, occupy an English country house in Sidley Park.

First we meet an almost 14-year-old daughter, Thomasina Coverly (Rachael VanWormer), and her tutor, Septimus Hodge (Matt Biedel), in the year 1809. We soon learn that the young lady's talents include complex mathematics that neither she nor her tutor totally comprehend. During the tutoring session we meet the rather snoopy servant, Jellaby (Jim Chovick), who always has a tale to tell.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2007
Armando Diaz Experience, The
ImprovOlympic

Improv, by its very nature, is risky. Even strong performers have good nights and bad ones.  The night I saw The Armando Diaz Experience, Theatrical Movement & Hootenanny was an off-night for what seems to be a good improv cast. Uninspired, the troupe fell back on subjects that bring easy laughs: B-movies and an audience's titillation with adolescent sex fixations.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
September 1995
Arms and the Man
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

War certainly isn't what it's been trumped up to be in 1885-86 Bulgaria. Not in general, either. So learns romantic Raina when Swiss mercenary Bluntschli, a Serb captain seeking safety from would-be captors, hides in her bedroom. Though Raina's father is a Bulgarian army leader, and she is engaged to up-coming officer Sergius, she helps Bluntschli by giving him food (notably chocolates), shelter, and a needed rest. Before he rejoins his regiment, he tries to disabuse her of her idealism about war, especially as espoused and practiced by Sergius.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Around The World in Eighty Days
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

If ever there were a perfect match between a production and its audience, it's FST's whirl Around the World in 80 Days. Against a backdrop mapping out the globe's two spheres, marvelously stiff-upper-lipped Phileas Fogg (Dan Matisa) races to win his bet with fellow 1872 Reform Club members to accomplish the play's titular feat. What complicates the journey further is a bank robbery that Detective Fix (Eric Hissom, a combined pseudo-Sherlock and bumbling Clouseau) aims to pin on Fogg.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Arsenic and Old Lace
Derby Dinner Playhouse

One of the funniest and most beloved American comedies of all time,Arsenic And Old Lace is getting a splendid production at Derby Dinner Playhouse.  In lesser hands the 1941 play -- about two dear old ladies who with the best of intentions murder elderly single men -- could come off as creaky, dated, and somewhat offensive.  But Derby's fabulous cast breezes through the evening with a sure-fire knack for mining comic gold.  Sisters Abby (Rita Thomas) and Martha Brewster (Debra Babich) reside in a big old Brooklyn house where their grandfather once concocted patent medicines. 

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Arsenic and Old Lace
Theater Three

'Tis the season for candy canes, popcorn balls and chestnuts. But the tastiest chestnut of the season is Theater Three's production of Joseph Kesselring's 1941 classic, Arsenic and Old Lace. Originally produced at the Fulton Theater in New York on August 18, 1941 by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (Life With Father) and starring Josephine Hull as Abby Brewster and Boris Karloff as her evil nephew, Jonathon, Arsenic and Old Lace is a comic murder mystery and a delightful send-up of theater critics.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Arsenic and Old Lace
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Randall L. Jones Theater

Arsenic and Old Lace is kind of an old chestnut, but J. R. Sullivan's farcically savvy direction and the cast's inspired comic performances fill it with exuberant fun. Mortimer (Brian Vaughn) seems the only normal note in a zany family. One of his brothers thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt (Kieran Connolly), and the other is a criminal whose latest face-lift makes him resemble Boris Karloff (David Ivers). His maiden aunts, Abby (Laurie Birmingham) and Martha (Leslie Brott), have developed a unique way of practicing Christian charity.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Arsenic and Old Lace
Milwaukee Repertory - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater in Baker Theater Complex

The holidays are a great time for chestnuts, roasted and otherwise, as evidenced in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of Arsenic and Old Lace. As the name so aptly implies, this subversive comedy of the 1940s can still offer plenty of crackle and pop for modern audiences. Director James Pickering has chosen to set the play firmly in its original 1941 time period. There's an early conversation about the war, of course, as well as some of the hardships it has brought to the lives of those who reside in an idyllically peaceful Brooklyn neighborhood.

Annie Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2001
Art
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

For a substantial sum, Serge buys a white-on-white painting; his two best friends' reactions and assessments nearly blow them apart. On the surface that's what Art is about. What it is, however, is itself art.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Art
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Yasmina Reza uses relatively few theatrical brushstrokes in Art to illustrate the changeable qualities of art and friendship. In this full-length one-act, the two emerge as almost mirror images of each other. An appreciation of a painting may be strengthened by scrutiny of lines and shadings; friendships, in contrast, can be jeopardized by dwelling too much on specifics. There's a magic in each that deserves respect.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Art
Royal George Theater

It's a medium-sized, white-on-white, abstract painting, and it costs two hundred thousand francs.  It's also nearly the annihilation of a friendship among three comrades -- one of whom derides its enigmatic iconography, the other of whom defends it, and the third of whom tries to make peace and winds up getting the worst of the quarrel.  This is a story that goes back to the "I Tre Zanni" farces of twelfth-century commedia, and maybe even further to Aesop.  The propensity of human beings to stubbornly risk what they hold dear on a conflict of trivial proportions is universal, which probably

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 1998
Art
Walnut Street Theater

Art, the play, is like the piece of art at the heart of the plot. Each beholderÆs reaction will be different, and you can see in it whatever you want to. Some theatergoers will find a serious examination of male friendship, others will find a well-calculated piece of entertainment. Three 40-something men have been close friends for years. When one of them, Serge, brings home an expensive white-on-white abstract painting, one of his pals is horrified and even personally offended that his friend would waste money on something so vacuous.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
Art
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Patty & Jay Baker Theater Complex

When it comes to fashion, food trends or theater, Milwaukeeans have learned to be patient.  It can take months - even years - before the latest hit migrates to the Midwest. In the case of Art, which has gone `round the world since its Berlin opening in 1994, the wait has definitely been worth it.  A sleek, sassy and highly polished production currently graces the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's main stage.  At first glance, the play has a relatively simple plot: three men, all close friends for 15 years, learn that one of them has purchased a painting.  Not just any painting, however.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
Apple Tree, The
Studio 54

The Broadway revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's The Apple Tree gives us the pleasure of being in the presence of two of Broadway's most talented, charismatic, entertaining performers: Kristin Chenowith and Mark Kudisch. She is the definition of adorable, and in the first (and strongest) playlet, based on Mark Twain's story, "The Diary of Adam & Eve," her beauty, personal charm and exquisite timing will melt you. In the second, "The Lady or the Tiger," she is a Lucille Ball filling the stage with comic antics.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Apple Tree, The
Studio 54

After ascending to bankability in Wicked, Kristin Chenoweth isn't reinventing Broadway musicals so much as reinventing the Broadway musical star. The triptych of short tuneful comedies by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick will interrupt its limited run this week (Jan. 19-20) as Chenoweth makes a concert appearance, "Live at the Met," this Friday. A little further down the road -- would you believe 2010? -- Chenoweth is slated to make her Metropolitan Opera stage debut in John Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Artificial Jungle, The
Bath House Cultural Center

On October 2, 2003, Our Endeavors Theater Collective opened a near-perfect production of Charles Ludlam's mid-1980s comedic suspense thriller, The Artificial Jungle. It is set in a family owned-and-operated pet shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the kind where the owners live behind the shop, a hodge-podge of paraphernalia featuring a prominent screen which doubles as an aquarium when it is backlit.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
As Bees in Honey Drown
Pilsen Theater

You can't cheat an honest citizen, and whether to remind audiences of that fact shapes productions of Douglas Carter Beane's cautionary tale about a con artist on the loose in fashionable boho circles. Most theaters play it safe, making the prey a calf-eyed innocent, the predator a giddy young gamine on a fling and their encounter something that could only happen in the never-never-land of New York City. Cenacle Theater director David Hart Waggoner, unafraid to put an edge on the satire, has instructed his actors accordingly.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
As If Body Loop, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Strange title. Strange play. Strange experience being trapped in a full-length sitcom that strains credulity and make dismal stabs at profundity.

Ken Weitzman's The As If Body Loop, the fifth play in this year's 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is a curdling amalgam of football guy-talk and a Hebrew legend about 36 people called the Lamed Vuv who are chosen at birth by God to carry all the pain of the world.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
As You Like It
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

The joy of Shakespeare's comedies, such as As You Like It at La Jolla Stage Company, is just how much fun they can be. Here we have wedding and bedding of numerous lovely ladies, be they a Duke's daughter or a Shepardess. The stories can easily be related to, even with the passing of hundreds of years. James Dublino's direction allows the 16 cast members t to enjoy and broadly interpret their roles. They range from recent community college grads to seasoned pros.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
As You Like It
Navy Pier

It's obvious early on that director David H. Bell wants to draw out the differences between the court and the forest of Arden. Life is dark in civilization -- it always seems to be night, and the dress code includes lots of black. By the time the mismatched heroes make their way to Arden, they have  discovered the pastoral life, complete with earth tones and streams of natural sunlight. It is here, amid the delights of the forest, that loves enters its full blossom.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
As You Like It
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival opens with a winner with a fast-paced production of this beguiling comedy from the Bard. The real star of As You Like It is director Scott Wentworth, who shapes the performances and paces the production to the delight of the audience. Jennifer Van Dyck is marvelous as Rosalyn. Orlando is well-played by Ryan Artzberger. Amanda Ronconi makes for a lovely Celia. NJSF vet James Michael Riley scores again as Jacques, the melancholy and bitter fool, while Scott Whitehouse comes close to over the top as the jester Touchstone.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
As You Like It
Door Shakespeare

Shakespeare and the rural roads of Door County work well together.  And the green acres of the Bjorklunden Garden, located right on the Lake Michigan shoreline, is a perfect match for the Forest of Arden.  Shakespeare's paean to pastoralism and the power of love amid the trees, As You Like It, sits comfortably in the green  garden, with the only distraction the rustle of the wind in the trees, or the buzz of the insects that come out after dark.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
As You Like It
Coronado Playhouse

Coronado Playhouse's latest production, under the able direction of Keith A. Anderson, is As You Like It. My program flopped open to a dense page titled, "Why A Modern-Language Text Of Shakespeare?" I was aghast that another director with some crazy idea thought he could possibly be better at prose than The Bard, the very man who added over 1700 words to the English language. NEVER!

Director Keith A. Anderson garnered nary a moment of wrath from me as he gently changed but a few words. It was either that or a glossary defining some obscure word's meaning.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Aspects of Love
Blackfriars Theater

Once again a brave theater group is giving a surprisingly effective revival to a difficult cult musical which its admirers insist was never properly appreciated. And once again I've belatedly been introduced to a well-known old show and impressed by the performance. But again I've had to admit that I think the thing deserved to be a flop in the first place and still does.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Assassins
Yamawaki Art & Cultural Center

In a world seemingly forever given to violence, it is not surprising that the theater has repeatedly undertaken to explore this fact of life...and death. One result was the musical Assassins, first mounted on stage in a small off-Broadway venue late in 1990. The work focuses on U.S. Presidents. Of those who have to date held the office, fifteen have been the object of assassination attempts, four of which have proven successful. This musical deals with nine of the malefactors, extending from Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
At the Vanishing Point
Actors Theater of Louisville

Playwright Naomi Iizuka's At the Vanishing Point, the fourth entry in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is an imaginatively and lovingly crafted paean to one of Louisville's most historic and fascinating neighborhoods -- the aptly-named Butchertown. This is the area where the stockyards and meatpacking plants shared space with homes of butchers, distillery workers, and others in collateral jobs. At the Vanishing Point is not your typical commemorative pageant that recites names, places, and incidents in chronological order.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
At The Vanishing Point
Actors Theater of Louisville

Another highlight of the 28th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays was At the Vanishing Point, a commissioned piece by noted playwright Naomi Iizuka. The playwright is a frequent presence at the Humana Festival, having had a number of her works produced here. This time, she was asked to create a community portrait of a working-class, meatpacking district in Louisville called Butchertown. Not surprisingly, she tells the story through the eyes of those who have lived in this district, both past and present.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Avenue Q
Spreckels Theater

We left the restaurant for the theater.

First we were trapped in the Horton Plaza elevator with a guy in his bathrobe; then, upon exiting the elevator, there were other strange visions: sparsely dressed young ladies, weirdly costumed males, possible vampires, and other totally undescribable beings, possibly homo sapiens, assaulted our eyes. It is always a bit disconcerting to go downtown during Comic–Con.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Abigail's Party
New Ambassadors Theatre
It's all right up front: Yuppiedom, 1977, suburban English-style. Her Clairol-blonde hair in long pageboy and bangs, a silver collar on her neck, Elizabeth Berrington's just-right as smug Beverly.
Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2003

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