David Bengali

Joy: A New True Musical

July 26, 2025

Under Lorin Latarro’s direction, there is little or no character development in Davenport’s book, with all of the characters remaining the same throughout, and the only thing that propels the show are the surprising events that happen. Joy’s family remains negative and dismissive about her inventing career (while eventually helping out in the marketing) until almost the very end. Davenport fudges the last scene by not telling us how the biased Texas judge ends up ruling in Joy’s favor so that the ending leaves us hanging. When the judge demeans Joy as a one-time inventor, we know that she has one of her clever inventions in her pocket (a reflective dog flea collar) but she never takes it out in her own defense. The songs are more like window dressing than adding much to the show and Milazzo’s generic lyrics tend to be very repetitious and give away their message in their titles. The show might have been more powerful as a straight play without the musical score. [more]

Good Night, and Good Luck.

April 7, 2025

If only film star George Clooney and his co-script writer Grant Heslov had hired an actual playwright to adapt their acclaimed screenplay for the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck." for the Broadway stage. What worked in close up in the film does not have the same effect on the huge stage of the Winter Garden Theatre. And while David Strathairn as Edward R Murrow in the film, the role now played by Clooney on Broadway, also seemed wooden and unemotional, his every flicker of emotion on his face was telegraphed through the extreme close ups of every frame. With its cast of 22 on a huge CBS studio set, most of the characters are undefined or unidentified. At times it is difficult to know who is talking or where their voices are coming from on the multileveled setting. [more]

Water for Elephants

April 8, 2024

Playwright/bookwriter Rick Elice has written the greatest jukebox musical (so far) in his 2005 Jersey Boys. In his adaptation of Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel Water for Elephants, he may just have written the best stage musical about circuses by making the animals as real as the human characters. The indie folk band Pigpen Theatre Co. has written a varied collection of songs, ingeniously orchestrated, that are always exciting as they both forward the story and reveal the emotions of the people who sing them. However, it is director Jessica Stone assisted with circus design by Shana Carroll who has done the most inventive and original work. [more]

Scene Partners

November 19, 2023

It takes an artist of the stature and extraordinary talent of Wiest to keep Caswell’s fragmented play from flying off in all directions as it veers from reality to fantasy and from flashback to the present. Or, is the entire plot, which takes an embittered 75-year-old widow from the depths of the Mid-west to the depths of Hollywood, just a figment of her yearning imagination? The tale of Meryl Kowalski (both names exuding meaning) is of the oft-told a-star-is-born genre: an unknown hopeful, through lucky breaks and gumption, manages to become a movie star. Sounds simple, right? Not here. Caswell ("Wet Brain' and "Man Cave") will not allow her story to be told in a linear fashion. [more]

The Thanksgiving Play

May 1, 2023

Larissa Fasthorse’s "The Thanksgiving Play" gives a good tweaking to those who are so hung up on political correctness that they dare not make a decision. On the other hand, the play reminds us how difficult it is to be fair to all sides of the historical spectrum. The erasure of the Native American point of view is made clear by their very absence from the play, while the problem of educators knowing how to walk the fine line between inclusion and suitability is given a rare airing in this delightful parody. The use of in jokes, theatrical, historical and educational notwithstanding, "The Thanksgiving Play" is a satire that entertains while it makes some very real and needed points about political correctness when dealing with unpleasant American history. [more]

Without You

January 26, 2023

And that's the agonizing tension in "Without You;" in his lyrical responses to Larson, Rapp is well aware that it's not a back-and-forth, that Larson can't say anything more than he has already. But, just as with "Rent," there is still solace, because I'm sure Rapp, the show's impressive five-member band cozily tucked into Southern's set, and the production crew could hear what I did in the audience: lots of crying. It came with a palpable feeling of not being alone in your thoughts for the dearly departed, especially those taken much too soon. A generation or two removed from having attended "Rent," it was an unspoken bond not only worth revisiting but, if I'm being honest with myself, desperately needed. [more]

Circle Jerk

June 22, 2022

In 'Circle Jerk," this cocky duo confidently preen, bray and cavort while donning various wigs and flamboyant costumes as multiple fey stock characters for over two numbing hours of their self-congratulatory twaddle. Their grating characterizations are achieved by intently staring into the camera, making faces, raising eyebrows and doing voices. It’s not "Your Show of Shows," but a niche audience of friends, relatives and trustafarians who could be amused by their antics. Cat Rodríguez appears in several female roles with campy flair. [more]

The Visitor

November 20, 2021

David Hyde Pierce taking off his suit trousers to practice on a drum in his boxer shorts is one of many hilarious bits that are meshed with drama in "The Visitor." It’s a faithful, resonant and well-done musical adaptation of the acclaimed 2007 independent film of the same title. Book writers Kwame Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey stick closely to director/screenwriter Thomas McCarthy’s original vision while skillfully translating it for the stage. [more]

Einstein’s Dreams

November 22, 2019

Alan Lightman’s 1992 internationally best-selling novel "Einstein’s Dreams" would seem like an unlikely choice for stage adaptation as the original book is made up of 30 variations on theories of time but includes no plot. However, as adapted by Joanne Sydney Lessner (book and lyrics) and Joshua Rosenblum (music and lyrics) it is a charming period musical that makes Einstein’s theories (at least the ten dramatized) quite accessible to audiences not made up of physicists. Its lovely score and excellent production directed by Prospect Theater Company’s Cara Reichel led by Zal Owen and Alexandra Silber are both entertaining and mind-expanding. Its deficiencies are ones that were also true of the novel. [more]

Because I Could Not Stop: An Encounter with Emily Dickinson

September 28, 2018

Stranger still is the choice of Angelica Page to play Dickinson who looks rather too healthy to be the famously thin and sallow-faced writer known from the one famous photograph. She makes Dickinson sarcastic, arrogant, cynical, self-important and haughty which goes against the voice of the woman in the poems. At times she has been given arty stage directions like posing by a mantelpiece or sleeping on the ground next to what we assume is alongside of her father’s grave. [more]

Van Gogh’s Ear

August 21, 2017

Projected titles indicate place and year—beginning with Arles, 1888 and progressing until van Gogh’s suicide—which we hear as an offstage gunshot—in July of 1890. The audience is treated to Vincent’s thoughts on his painting technique, his poverty, his mental health, his fellow artists, stars, sunflowers, all interrupted by chamber music by Debussy, Fauré, Chausson and Franck played—in various combinations—by Henry Wang (violin), Yuval Herz (violin), Chich-Fan Yiu (viola), Timotheos Petrin (cello), Max Barros (piano) and Renana Gutman (piano). [more]

Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon

April 9, 2015

ERC’s unusual evening includes music by Ernest Chausson, Cécile Chaminade and Jacques Offenbach, video taken from George Méliès’ silent film A Trip to the Moon and the Apollo rocket launch and moon landing, and choral singing of songs by Stephen Foster. Co-artistic director Eve Wolf’s text which makes up the theatrical parts of the evening is based on letters, interviews and memoirs and presents Jonathan Hadary as Jules Verne, Jayne Atkinson as his wife Honorine, and Samantha Hill as intrepid American reporter Nellie Bly. A heady evening of fascinating treasures. [more]