Arms and the Man
Shaw Festival - Festival Stage Theater

G.B. Shaw's beloved comedy is so engagingly light-hearted that it no longer plunges us into any serious thought. That's partly because its satire against war, "heroism," and social pretense was never especially unconventional anyway. To try to make a philosophical tract of this almost-farce would be deadly, and misguided. Arms and the Man deserved to be made into a musical called "The Chocolate Soldier." And it was. (I saw a Chocolate Soldier with banal choreography by George Balanchine.) 

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Art
Royal Alexandra Theatre

For any play with only a few characters, success relies not only on brilliance of text but also the star magnetism of its actors -- and personal touch of its director. It's not enough to have "talented" actors. In 1996, London audiences embraced Albert Finney, Tom Courtney and the lesser-known Ken Stott. Superstar Sean Connery is co-producer of the still-running West End production, which garnered critical accolades and walked off with all of London's 1998 theatre awards.

Alan Raeburn
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Art
Wyndham's Theatre

This work, which received the best-play Moliere Award in Paris, has, in its English version, gone on to win Evening Standard and Olivier Awards for best comedy. "Art" [sic] is indeed full of laughs but betrays an increasingly serious underpinning as it proceeds through its 85 intermissionless minutes. For 15 years three men have been good friends: Marc, an aeronautical engineer; Serge, a dermatologist; and Yvan, a sales agent for stationery, who is about to be married.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 1997
Assassins
Augustine's

We would have loved to attend the literally hundreds of Fringe Festival plays and one-person shows, both serious and comic, in venues all over Edinburgh, but time and energy prevented that. However, we luckily came across an extra-added performance at 11:30 in the morning of this Stephen Sondheim musical we had never seen.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Auntie and Me
Wyndham's Theatre

After strains of "After You've Gone," curtain opens on a bedroom with fading flowered, green wallpaper, lighter where pictures have been removed. There's one door that Kemp first entered three days earlier, rushing because of a wire that his auntie, his sole living relative whom he hasn't seen in 30 years, is dying and wants to see him. There's one window through which he sees and often talks to or about the outside world. There's one chair for him to sit between the fringed-shaded lamp and bed where the old lady is propped up on pillows.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Beauty and the Beast
Palace Theater

[Reviewed at the Palace Theater]  If it's "a tale as old as time," why does it need amplification loud enough to stop a clock? That's an exaggeration, but the first act of Beauty and the Beast, a stage adaptation of the Disney film musical, barrels out at us in waves of tinny sound, the performers fighting the overmiked orchestra just to be heard. Perhaps sound designer T. Richard Fitzgerald and director Robert Jess Roth want to create a wall of aural packaging to drown out an audience with more than a few youngsters in it.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1996
Bells Are Ringing
Plymouth Theater

The introduction of Julie Taymor to big-time Broadway has inspired other experimental directors to go for a similar route. More and more restagings are headed up by people whose initial strength doesn't lie in musical theater.  After Matthew Warchus' slapdash take on Follies, his first foray into such territory on Broadway, we now have Tina Landau's similarly lumpy Bells Are Ringing. Landau's background isn't unlike Taymor's, having worked with people such as Jose Rivera, Charles Mee and Ricky Ian Gordon, all downtown artists and proud of it.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bells Are Ringing
Plymouth Theater

The obvious question is "why was this show revived?" But, once past this, and this production's slow start (a black-and-white montage of TV clips sporting the trends of the time, hula hoops et al), Bells Are Ringing makes an endearing, cheerful, optimistic, feel-good evening of old fashioned musical theater, with a sparkling Broadway score (orchestrated by Don Sebesky) which includes "Just In Time," "The Party's Over," the touching "Long Before I Met You" and the rousing "Its A Simple Little System." The Comden and Green/Jule Styne 1956 opus, made into a movie in l960, both starring

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Best Man, The
Virginia Theater

Seemingly designed only to coincide with this year's presidential race, this untouched revival of Gore Vidal's ahead-of-its time 1960 ode to political backbiting and scandal hasn't dated necessarily but still has the feel of being warmed-over. To be fair, the play has its share of acute exchanges and some very sharp performances. However, watching it, you get the feeling that even if you existed in 1960 (I didn't), the play would still feel stilted and vaguely forgettable. Vidal's structure holds up, but this production has a serious lack of actual urgency.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Best Man, The
Virginia Theater

The real question is not why "Gore Vidal's The Best Man" has a pretentious new moniker (it used to be simply The Best Man), but whether it is as topical, timely, and titillating as it likely appeared on Broadway forty years ago.  The answer is not quite.  But it is still a good show.  What had been proclaimed politically provocative in its time is now a little old-hat.  What was considered substantial and revelatory is now indelibly lightweight.  Vidal's plot, pitting an ethical and erudite senator William Russell against a no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty Senator Joseph Cantwe

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Betrayal
American Airlines Theater

I'm not the world's biggest Harold Pinter fan, which is something I should share straight off.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Blast!
Broadway Theater

Stomp. Tap Dogs. Rudi Stern's Theater of Light. Thwak.

What do these past and present shows have in common? They are or were very popular off-Broadway attractions that never moved to Broadway houses.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Blast!
Broadway Theater

I usually avoid public places that have masses of teenagers clumped outside them, but, true to my calling, since Blast! is at a Broadway theater, I felt I had no choice but to bite the bullet, take the earplugs and go. Well it is theater - smooth, slick, entertaining, energetic, serious and humorous, and I must confess I had a great time!

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Blast!
Broadway Theater

Blast! is the best half-time show ever. A huge brass band, dancers, twirlers, lights, spectacle. I laughed, I was moved, I was thrilled. I walked out grinning.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bombay Dreams
Broadway Theater

Bombay Dreams is a sort of "Cinderfella" --  a totally predictable, rather amusing, corny melodrama about a poor boy and his rise to Movie Star, with big splashes of color (set and costumes by Mark Thompson).  It has the feel of Las Vegas as seen thru the eyes of a bad dinner- theater choreographer with dance movements all synchronized and all right on the beat. In fact, choreographers this artless, without counterpoint or counter rhythm, should have their dance shoes removed and be drummed out of the movement business. The offenders are Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Boy From Oz, The
Imperial Theater

Hugh Jackman is a phenomenon: the very rare "Matinee Idol." He's a rocket, a flare, a slinky -- joy fills the theater. The women kvell, and the men grin broadly at everything he does. His voice is thrilling, with almost a Willie Nelson resonance and nasality; his lean, springy body flashes and bounces around the stage; he even twists like Jim Carrey. And he does standup interaction with the audience between his episodes in the life of cabaret performer/songwriter, Peter Allen, who knew Judy Garland and married her daughter, Liza.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Boys From Syracuse, The
American Airlines Theater

If your main reason for enjoying musical theater is the performance of the music, then The Boys From Syracuse is a must-see. The 1938 Rodgers & Hart score is attractively sung and played in this new Roundabout production. David Loud conducts a tasteful orchestration by Don Sebesky that keeps the flavor of the original. Jonathan Dokuchitz, Tom Hewitt and Erin Dilly are particularly good vocally, while Lauren Mitchell sings her big number, "Falling in Love With Love," in a lower key than we're used to, making it more conversational but less thrilling.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Boys From Syracuse, The
American Airlines Theater

Encouraged by the success of the appropriately-lauded Encores! 1997 concert version of Rogers & Hart's 1938 musical comedy, The Boys From Syracuse, the Roundabout understandably chose to re-mount it. But the concert version scrapped the book and concentrated on the music, which is, as has been once again proven, indestructible.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Bridge & Tunnel
Helen Hayes Theater

Bridge & Tunnel is a stunning achievement. I saw it off Broadway, and wrote a glowing review. Now on Broadway, enhanced by David Korins' set and Howell Binkley's lighting, it's even better.  It is an extraordinary one woman show written and performed by Sarah Jones. She gives us a succession of immigrant characters, mostly living in Queens, whose lives and personae are explored with amazing sensitivity and skill as she, with minimal costume changes, switches from male to female, old to young, and to accents from all over the world.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Brooklyn
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Brooklyn, by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson, a kind of Cinderella story about a singer and the street performers who live under the Brooklyn Bridge, has a cast of great singers: Cleavant Derricks, Eden Espinosa, Karen Olivo, Ramona Keller and Kevin Anderson. And that, basically, is the reason to see this show. It's a cute, simplistic fairy tale about an orphan singer, set in the best urban decay (by Ray Klausen) since Rent, with imaginative, award-caliber costumes (by Tobin Ost) that coined a new word for me: trashtumes.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Ballad of Little Jo, The
Bridewell Theatre

The repeatedly enterprising Bridewell Theatre is offering, as part of the City of London Festival, the European premiere of The Ballad of Little Jo, which was first presented by Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe in 2000. The musical is based on Maggie Greenwald's 1993 film of the same name -- and both treat actual historical characters from the 19th century with some artistic license.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Billy Elliot
Victoria Palace

Big house, SRO audience, big musical score and story about real people in the North of England at the start of the `80s era of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Big-Business conservatives: Still (unfortunately) relevant!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Birthday Party, The
Piccadilly Theatre

When The Birthday Party had its first London staging in 1957, it was so savaged by the daily press, it closed after a week. Since then, the play has rightly been recognized as a masterpiece, but one would not realize this on the basis of the carelessly directed and pallidly acted revival now on the boards. In this mounting, the three acts are played without intermission -- which has the virtue of letting us go home as soon as possible.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead, The
Stratford Festival - Studio Theater

Director Geordie Johnson, a veteran actor at Stratford, saw The Blonde, The Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead while visiting Australia, immediately thought of Stratford actress Lucy Peacock, and was so impressed with the piece that he insisted on getting the rights to direct it in Canada. No wonder.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Blood Brothers
Phoenix Theatre

This long-running hit has a great story at the core: two brothers separated at birth who die at the instant they learn of their kinship.  But there's no memorable music to go along with this intriguing yarn.  That doesn't stop Russell from trying to pound one of his ephemeral creations into our brains.  Over and over, the boys' mom -- played perkily by Petula Clark clone Lyn Paul -- sings new riffs on the opening number, "Marilyn Monroe." They're just as tangential to the twins' story as the title implies. 

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Bodybuilding / Poof!
Shar Theater - Cafe and Chaharsoo Hall

This doublebill marks Hooshang Hessami's return to directing after a hiatus of twenty years.  As a well-respected translator he has introduced many Western classics and contemporary plays to Iranian audiences.  Although Wendy Wasserstein's monologue, Bodybuilding, might seem an unusual choice, the audience at this performance seemed to appreciate the pragmatic feminism the character advocated.  Hessami's choice of Sima Tirandaz, with her big eyes and expressive face, was an inspired one.  She seemed to ideally embody the quintessential urban woman creating an exercise tape in betwe

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Boeing Boeing
Theatre Michel

Having avoided any of Marc Camoletti's 15,800 worldwide productions of his biggest hit for more than four decades, the time seemed right to see what the fuss was about.  We braved a horrid squall, no air conditioning in an old but lovely theatre, and crowds from children to seniors for the last two, side seats at a late night performance.  Found: a simple farce about a roue (really a pretty nice guy, as played by David Marchal) who spreads his affections among three "fiancis."  They're airline stewards from America (Marie Leburge), Germany (Brigitte Margerin), and France (Emmanuelle Galabru

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 1998
Boston Marriage
New Ambassadors Theatre

In 19th century New England, "boston marriage" referred, according to sociological scribe Lillian Faderman, to "a long-term monogamous relationship between two otherwise unmarried women." Independent, often feminists, whether or not lesbians, they shared values and related primarily to women.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
Boulevard du boulevard du boulevard
Miroir et Metaphore

The Theatre du Rond-Point is said to be enjoying a renaissance, with renovations and a variety of presentations, plus a going restaurant and bar. I couldn't tell, though, from its latest featured production much about its success. True, the theater was almost full on a Sunday afternoon. But then, so it was a few years ago when I saw The Three Musketeers -- done, of course, in Dumas' French -- as the last offering of a departing traditional director.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Brand
Theatre Royal, Haymarket

For his final production as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble courageously chose Ibsen's Brand, a work rarely mounted. Ibsen wrote this huge verse drama in 1865 to be read rather than staged, and it caused an immediate sensation. Its first production did not take place for two decades, when it ran six and a half hours. Noble has used the admirable 1959 translation by Michael Meyer, Ibsen's foremost biographer, who cut the work down to manageable size by eliminating several large, extraneous digressions unrelated to the main plot.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Breath of Life, The
Theatre Royal, Haymarket

No matter how extended the engagement, thanks to its two leads, David Hare's rather undistinguished two-hander could have played forever, judging by those crowded lines at the box office. (I got a day seat yet paid more for it than any play I'd ever attended in London.) Now The Breath of Life is headed for New York, minus Judi Dench. It figures: Maggie Smith has almost all the best lines. She plays art historian Madeleine, the seemingly self-sufficient owner of a "busy" art-and-book-filled home on the Isle of Wight.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Brighton Beach Scumbags
Sudden Theater

The author's intention was noble enough: portray British archetypes whose innocence "has been corroded by the deadening effects of a rotten subculture, cheap tabloids, easy racism and slobbering consumerism." Dear Conjunction probably thought it was presenting hard-headed realism. The result itself, however, smacks of cheap sensationalism. (I was told the company wanted to use Sudden Theatre for rehearsals of a revived hit it'd be taking out of town but had to rent the house long enough for a production; this was it.) What a strange choice to appeal to its bilingual audiences.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Baile, El

see Criticopia review under "El Baile"

Man Who Came To Dinner, The
Patio Playhouse

After almost 80 years, The Man Who Came to Dinner still has lots of life. That obnoxious man the Stanleys had to host has only gotten more obnoxious. I've dubbed the Patio Playhouse production, running through December 16, "T.T.O.T.T." - Totally Over the Top. And what fun it is!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Night of the Iguana, The
OnStage Playhouse

The Night of the Iguana is a depressing tale of defrocked Episcopal priest, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon (Rob Conway). Tennessee Williams' play, set in the steaming tropics of costal Mexico at the outbreak of WWII, began on Broadway in 1961, was made into films in 1964 and 2000, and this year, Joni Mitchell's title song on her album, "Shine," is a thematic and lyrical adaptation.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Shape of Things, The
First Unitarian Church of San Diego

In the '50s, the Detroit Institute of Arts was doing a clean-up on "The Wedding Dance" created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder around 1566. They discovered an overlay paint covering up the men's codpieces. Altering art, it seems, goes back decades as well as centuries.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Christmas Carol, A
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Pabst Theater

One would guess that, after more than three decades of producing A Christmas Carol as part of its regular season, the annual Milwaukee Repertory Theater production may be getting shabby around the edges. Nothing could be further from the truth. A sparkling opening night performance kicked off this annual yuletide treat.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Love's Labour's Lost

Following in the footsteps of actor, writer and director Woody Allen's 1997 film, "Everyone Says I Love You," writer and director Kenneth Branagh has fashioned a similar starring vehicle for himself with the 2000 film musicalization of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. You may recall that Allen's 1997 film featured dramatic actors, not known or remembered for their singing abilities, such as Edward Norton, Billy Crudup, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda (The Apple Tree Broadway 1967), Woody Allen and Julia Roberts.

Ezio Petersen
Date Reviewed:
2000
Gypsy

It is hard to believe that with four active Gypsy CD recordings on store shelves (Merman, Daly, Lansbury, Midler), the film soundtrack album is not among them. This oversight has now been temporarily addressed with the recent release of the complete 1962 film soundtrack score of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim's "Gypsy," in a limited CD pressing.

Ezio Petersen
Date Reviewed:
2001
Aida

t has been a unique recording trek for composer Sir Elton John's first original stage score, "Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida" now simply titled "Aida". The fun started with the star-studded promotional studio cast album released in 1999 and its advance promo, three-track CD with John and Leann Rimes performing two alternate versions of "Written In The Stars" (not released on the studio album). This was followed by an unofficial composers' demo CD culled from John's studio takes to illustrate his studio cast album.

Ezio Petersen
Date Reviewed:
2000

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