Archive

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

March 21, 2017

And what of the play which had its world premiere at the Public Theater in 2005? Parsons’ uneven production cannot keep this long play from seeming unwieldy. In fact, using so many actors is almost distracting as some of them are simply walk-ons, and disappear almost immediately. The new production seems less trenchant and more like a vaudeville with its set pieces than Philip Seymour Hoffman’s original staging. Nevertheless, the play still retains a cumulative effect and is ultimately compelling. [more]

C.S. Lewis On Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert

March 21, 2017

As he impersonates the British writer C.S. Lewis, Max McLean relies on little more than a pipe, a brown suit and tie, and a rather mellifluous voice to become the Anglican philosopher and noted atheist, who famously converted to Christianity in the mid-Twentieth Century. The script was cobbled together by McLean from Lewis’ memoir, letters and books, including other biographies of Lewis, a man who was “intoxicated” by words, which is primarily what this play is about--the mesmerizing effect that words can have, when uttered in an effective sequence. [more]

Anything Goes

March 20, 2017

The score which has been drawn from the four previous New York productions of Anything Goes plays like a Cole Porter greatest hits parade and almost all of the songs are among his most popular masterpieces. Played by a three piece combo expertly led by Christopher Stephens, the show has just the right syncopated thirties sound, while the perfect diction on the part of the large cast makes every lyric a gem. The dazzling production numbers which often evolve into precision tap dances with most of the 18 member cast trapping in unison are as dazzling as Jack Maisenbach’s brightly colored, coordinated costumes. This excellently cast production has dancers, singers, comedians and character actors all work at the top of their game. [more]

Otello (LoftOpera)

March 20, 2017

LoftOpera is a feisty little company that operates around Brooklyn, especially Bushwick. They are giving" Otello" in LightSpace Studios, a disco on Flushing Avenue about the size of a high school gymnasium. There’s a small orchestra (27, about half the size Rossini wrote for), kept under tight but lyrical control by the company’s maestro, Sean Kelly. The singers do not appear to be looking at him for cues while they are enthusiastically playing out the story, but they only got lost once at Saturday night’s performance. [more]

When It’s You

March 20, 2017

Speaking in an engaging Texas twang, the blonde Reeder recounts Ginnifer’s somber story with emotional straightforwardness and humor. Employing her expressive facial features, striking eyes and serene physicality, she delivers a performance of tremendous focus that hauntingly holds attention. [more]

Sam & Dede, or My Dinner with Andre the Giant

March 19, 2017

Beckett lived in rural France, and his nearby neighbor, Boris Roussimoff, helped him build a cottage on his property in 1953. Beckett grew close to the family, and offered to drive Andre to school, as the boy was reluctant to take the bus. This was because he suffered from gigantism and was self-conscious about his appearance and his difficulty in fitting into the bus. By the age of 12, he was 6’ 3” tall and weighed 208 lb. [more]

White Guy on the Bus

March 18, 2017

Musical star Robert Cuccioli has to call upon his experience playing both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to become Ray in "White Guy on the Bus," a first-rate, new play by Bruce Graham, that has more than a stunning surprise or two, as it spreads out the story like a wild brush-fire burning out of control. His complicated and duplicitous “numbers man” character wants, from the beginning, to quit his high-paying job, and, like the French painter Gauguin, escape from the workaday world of banking and finance. “I don’t want to sell the house,” he tells his wife Roz in the opening scene. “I want to sell everything.” [more]

The Moors

March 18, 2017

Although the play demonstrates a surface knowledge of the genre and the period, it wants to have it both ways: it takes place in 1840 in a desolate mansion on the Yorkshire Moors but the characters talk and behave as though it is the present. It appears to be making a feminist statement by making all the members of the household female but has nothing new to say on the subject other than as a variation on these famous novels. And it attempts to be funny but isn’t clever or surprising enough to trigger much laughter. [more]

Significant Other

March 17, 2017

It’s well constructed, the dialogue is snappy and filled with some funny one-liners. The milieu is that of upper middle class Manhattan white-collar workers. Moderately entertaining, it attempts to explore a prevalent societal issue, but is undermined by its off-putting main character and its rarified sensibility. There is minimal sex talk and that is mostly cute, rather then revelatory. Jordan rhapsodizes about a male co-worker’s body, but doesn’t extoll anything much below the waist. [more]

Come From Away

March 16, 2017

The songs push the plot along, ranging from numbers about the locals’ dealing with valuable resources (“Blankets and Bedding”) to the quiet awe the visitors express at the local scenery (“Darkness and Trees”). “Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere” and “Something’s Missing,” eloquently deal with the short-term emotional turbulence that eventually steadied to mutual admiration and many long-term friendships. [more]

The Light Years

March 16, 2017

Playwrights Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen with developer Oliver Butler, creatively evoke the tragic, nostalgic spirit of Booth Tarkington’s "The Magnificent Ambersons" and the wonderment of the works of humorist Jean Shepherd. The scenario is engaging and the characters are lovingly rendered. [more]

If I Forget

March 15, 2017

Steven Levenson’s "If I Forget" is the kind of family drama that doesn’t get written much anymore: one that has something to say other than just depicting a dysfunctional situation. Not only are we pulled into the family wrangling, the issues under debate are major ones and their outcome is serious business. Director Daniel Sullivan and a splendid cast of seven make this one of the most compelling plays of the season. This is a play you won’t soon forget and its provocative nature should trigger much discussion. [more]

Wakey, Wakey

March 14, 2017

"Wakey, Wakey" is Will Eno at his surreal, troubling, beautiful best, a play both challenging and easily absorbed. He truly approaches the unapproachable: the meaning of life. [more]

The Glass Menagerie

March 14, 2017

Sam Gold’s revival of "The Glass Menagerie," the fifth major production of the play in New York since 2005, is such a one. He has decided to remove all of the historical relevance as well as the scenery from this classic Tennessee Williams’ memory play. What he has also done is remove all of the poetry and all of the emotion in a play that on the surface would seem director proof. Ultimately, the production is more a director’s exercise in seeing how much he can cut from a play that tells a realistic story in a lyrical manner. A pity as his cast has two-time Academy Award winner Sally Field returning to Broadway after an absence of 15 years, two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, Finn Wittrock (Theatre World Award and Clarence Derwent Award for "Death of a Salesman"), and debuting actress Madison Ferris. [more]

The New York Pops: “Life is a Cabaret: The Songs of Kander and Ebb”

March 14, 2017

“It looks like when you got your Kennedy Center Honor!” exclaimed Mr. Reineke, as a spotlight shone on John Kander, who was attending the concert from a first tier box at Carnegie Hall. He grinned to a thunderous reaction. Sitting with him, was Susan Stroman, who has directed several Kander and Ebb productions. Near the end of the show, at Reineke’s instigation, the house lights went up, and the orchestra and the audience joined in for “Happy Birthday” to Kander. [more]

Deconstruction

March 14, 2017

The acting isn’t detailed or expansive enough to make Leaf’s words come alive or give the slightest notion of the intelligence of these three. Ms. Dobbins’ McCarthy is far too girlish. Yes, the playwright’s point is to show how even an intellectual can be seduced by a good-looking person, but she never boils over. The closest to anger she achieves is petulance. [more]

Linda

March 13, 2017

A revolving stage permits set designer Walt Spangler to depict, with dead-on realism and dispatch, not only Linda’s home--including an upstairs bedroom, which her daughters share--but also various offices at Swan Corporation, among numerous other sites. After a certain point, the dizzying, rotating stage becomes akin to a swirling merry-go-round, as director Lynne Meadow has it turning and turning, with different characters walking on and off, and through different doors, without any dialogue whatsoever, in subdued but effective lighting by Jason Lyons. It all becomes part of the accelerating gallop of the play itself, which ultimately spins out of control, as Linda learns that she’s lost her--well, let’s just say, in the end, everything. [more]

The Gravedigger’s Lullaby

March 13, 2017

Playwright Jeff Talbott offers an overall well-written and plotted social drama that detours into a strident political battle over capitalism. The sympathetic characters are trapped by their circumstances, as well as by Mr. Talbott’s rudimentary scenario. [more]

Villa

March 13, 2017

Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón constructs a simple, engrossing and often funny scenario. Three women, all named Alejandra, have been selected as members of a deliberative, special committee from a larger body who could not reach a decision over a searing national issue. There’s suspense, shocking revelations and Survivor-like machinations. [more]

Composer Portraits Series: Misato Mochizuki

March 11, 2017

Neither a “Western composer” nor a “Japanese composer,” Mochizuki hasn’t sought to manufacture some sort of mix-and-match blend. She doesn’t borrow or build add-ons. Instead, seeking inspiration in nature on the one hand and in human projects as diverse as photography, genetics and cooking on the other, she produces music that is about both being and story. Embedded within every piece one beginning after another, her stories unfold from each; then she builds them into each other. Though she incorporates elements of theater in the use of lighting and musicians’ movements around the stage, her music is fundamentally unpretentious and unfussy; her writing is equally straight-forward and optimistically fresh. [more]

Book Review: “The Actor Uncovered: A Life in Acting” by Michael Howard

March 10, 2017

Mr. Howard is eminently qualified to hold forth on the subject, having been a prominent New York City acting teacher for over 60 years. Concurrently with an active theatrical career, he studied with Sanford Meisner at The Neighborhood Playhouse, and with Lee Strasberg as a member of the Actor’s Studio. In 1953, he founded The Michael Howard Studios. [more]

The Penitent

March 10, 2017

Perhaps because Mamet-regular Jordan Lage is so effective as Richard, the scenes between Charles and his own attorney prove the most effective. While Laura Bauer’s sensible costumes do all they can to make her seem real, Rebecca Pidgeon proves robotic as Kath, detracting from her character’s constant bewilderment. (Come to think of it, maybe it was a stylized choice for playing the part, because of Kath’s befuddlement and uncertainty, at every turn.) The last scene is set in a rehab room, where Kath has been confined, following a mental collapse or nervous breakdown. [more]

The Skin of Our Teeth

March 8, 2017

Thornton Wilder’s "The Skin of Our Teeth" with its benign belief in the resilience of the human condition is unlike any other American play you are likely to see. Both heavily influenced by earlier European experiments in theater, it is also influential in itself. While Arin Arbus’ production for Theatre for a New Audience at times seems as though it need tighting up, it is a play that must be experienced in the theater which is why it has never been turned into a Hollywood movie. Go and see for yourself what only the live theater can do to expand your imagination. [more]

Nibbler

March 6, 2017

Urban may have an admirable mission, in attempting to document the customary passage from youth to adulthood--or high-school to college, to be more precise--as he focuses on five graduating seniors in a middle-class suburb, in 1992, when one of them, Adam, remains behind, without any prospects for a glorious future. But the otherwise realistic play that unfolds quickly veers into surreal territory, as an alien from another planet enters their midst, and the eponymous “Nibbler” becomes ever more real a presence on stage, via a puppet, manipulated by several of the quite visible cast-members. [more]

Nihon Buyo Dance by Geimaruza

March 6, 2017

Three musical pieces displayed the instruments on which the music is made. “Nagare (Flow)” was played on two shamisen (stringed instruments) by Touon Minamidani Mai and Touon Sakata Maiko, completing in ever faster, improvised sounding, themes, all based on traditional melodies (kind of like a gentler version of “Dueling Banjos” from Deliverance). “Toki (Japanese Crested Ibis)” featured a long fue (flute) solo by Tosha Suiho, whose passionate musicianship was overwhelming. The third work, “Shishi (Lion)” combined all the different percussion instruments and the flute to great dramatic effect. [more]

Messenger #1, A New Ancient Greek Tragedy

March 6, 2017

In addition to the swiftness of the storytelling and the use of contemporary language, Jackson uses a sort of upstairs-downstairs approach. Aside from what is happening to the royals, we also see everything from the point of view of the three messengers. The messengers deliver their reports to us the populace, interact with each other, and interpret for us how the events of their world affect them. They also work as the chorus but each has something different to reveal rather than speaking in unison as in ancient Greek drama. Jackson has tweaked the legend somewhat which makes his version all the more surprising and absorbing. [more]

Kid Victory

March 6, 2017

It would be difficult to imagine anything darker than the content of the second musical collaboration by John Kander and Greg Pierce having its New York premiere at the Vineyard Theatre. Possibly Kander’s own"Cabaret" or "The Visit" - but both take place long ago and in faraway lands. Kid Victory relates the tale of a 17-year-old youth who was kidnapped for a year and has returned to his Kansas family. All the members of the community want to behave as though nothing has changed but for Luke Browst nothing is the same and things can’t go back to the way there were before. [more]

All the Fine Boys

March 5, 2017

Playwright Erica Schmidt has a minor aptitude for believably snappy dialogue, but not much else. Her tired scenario is astonishingly familiar and offers no fresh insights. That adolescence is tough is about all there is. That territory has been mined in John Hughes’ films and numerous television shows. There was also the 1985 movie "Smooth Talk," starring Laura Dern and Treat Williams that was based on a Joyce Carol Oates short story. [more]

Louisiana Purchase

March 4, 2017

Based on a story by lyricist/bookwriter/producer B.G. DeSylva (“Good News,” “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” “The Varsity Drag”), this musical satire sends unworldly, teetotaler Oliver P. Loganberry, “the Watchdog of the Senate,” to New Orleans to investigate the corrupt dealings of the Louisiana Purchasing Company run by Jimmy Taylor, Colonel Davis, Junior Davis, Dean Manning of the university, and Captain Whitfield of the city government. Jimmy, the president of the company, who was out of town when the others used his powers of attorney for their illegal scheme, is left to sort out the mess. [more]

Everybody

March 3, 2017

The original was aimed at an audience that most certainly was illiterate, so that the clever creators used cartoonish, unsubtle characters who spoke in popular jargon, even spouting profanity, which must have tickled the medieval audiences’ sensibilities and kept them following the actors in their juicy parts. Jacobs-Jenkins follows suit, but with his tongue firmly in his cheek, writing his characters, particularly Stuff (played with a no-nonsense, “from the block” insouciance by Lakisha Michelle May), as immediately recognizable twenty-first century caricatures. When cutie pie child Lilyana Tiare Cornell, playing the character Time, spouts the word “shitty,” the audience at the Diamond Stage giggles nervously. [more]

Dear World

March 1, 2017

Having played such indomitable women as Mama Rose and Maria Callas, Daly slips into the role of the Madwoman of Chaillot which fits her like a glove with her crisp, authoritative delivery. As a woman who refuses to see reality for what it is, she gives a powerful rendition of “I Don’t Want to Know,” the show’s only hit song. She does a lovely job with the new number, “A Sensible Woman,” as well as the haunting ballad, “And I Was Beautiful.” [more]

Interview: A New Musical

February 28, 2017

Composer Soo Hyun Huh’s original music is a fine and eclectic assortment of modern melodies. The English lyrics are written by Bryan Michaels. The combined results are stilted and pedestrian. The score is primarily sung dialogue with some actual if indifferent songs. Mr. Michaels has also translated Jung Hwa Choo’s book into English. [more]

Turning Page

February 28, 2017

Much is made of her numerous Oscar nominations, and this reaches a wonderfully presented climax. She finally wins the award for Best Actress on her eighth nomination for the 1985 screen adaptation of Horton Foote’s play, "The Trip to Bountiful." “Is that per week?” “No. That’s for the whole thing,” was Geraldine Page’s agent’s incredulous reaction to the low salary that was offered for it. [more]

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