Radio Golf
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Radio Golf, with which August Wilson ended his 10-play cycle about life among blacks in 20th century America, is rife with beautiful and metaphoric prose and riddled with the warring tugs of history, known and unknown. This was Wilson's last play. He died Oct. 2, 2005, just after its second pre-Broadway production that summer and during the rewriting process. So the play isn't Wilson at his best, but it's very good and gets a fine staging as the eighth-season opener at Mosaic Theater, which is assaying Wilson for the first time.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Rooms
Geva Theater - Mainstage

 This small musical show seems primarily created to showcase the talents of Paul Scott Goodman, an obviously gifted composer/lyricist. There have been earlier developmental productions, but this co-production with MetroStage of Alexandria, Virginia, is listed by Geva Theater Center as its world premiere.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Paper Mill Playhouse

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was evidently a good Sunday-school listener. Back in 1967, when he was only 19 years old, he and then-23-year-old Tim Rice collaborated on a 15-minute "pop cantata" for St. Paul's Junior School in London. Over the years, the work that became known as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has grown in length and breadth and become a true theatrical staple.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Milwaukee kicks off its fall theater season with a brand-new national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Although much of the staging is new, the leading man, Patrick Cassidy, is not. He has quite a few performances of Joseph under his belt, since he also headlined the 1999 Joseph tour as well.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Joy of Gay Sex, The
Bayfront Theater at Fort Mason Center

In The Joy Of Gay Sex, the same Berkeley/San Francisco troupe who created the riotous Medea conjure up a pithy, sparkling comedy about swinging singles in the Bay Area. One performer, Jane (Jane Paik) typifies what's funny about the production: her character is a caricature of the Hollywood brat who indulged in too much cocaine, yet her smart-mouthed, nasty, cool quality copes with the 90's. Eventually Jane bonds with the pretentious, stuffed-shirt Berkeley professor, who turns out to be Jeff's (Jeff Fierson) dissertation advisor.

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Judy Garland, Live!
Theater Works

 What is a cabaret or club concert doing in a place like Theater Works? Stage draped in black, decked out with potted plants? Tommy Femia's non dramatic imitation of a middle-aged Judy Garland seems somehow out of place, as do her satirical remarks. Though he mimics her phrasing and often sounds like her, he's mostly in a different register, missing that famous catch in her voice.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Julius Caesar
Parkman Bandstand

In its fourth outdoor summer Shakespeare season, the enterprising Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presented Julius Caesar. Eric Levenson's set neatly co-opted the classical architecture of Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common and provided enough scaffolding for Kate Clarke to entwine herself about while overseeing the worth of her predictions as Soothsayer.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Julius Caesar
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Adams Shakespearean Theater

 Julius Caesar is one of the most disappointing productions to appear at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in recent years. The problems begin with the casting; both Jeff Swarthout (Cassius) and Donald Sage Mackay (Brutus) are poor matches for their roles physically, and Mackay compounds the problem by fashioning such a cold, cerebral Brutus that it's difficult to become involved with him at all. Even his relationship with Portia (Carrie Baker) is so distant and passionless, it's hard to believe they are husband and wife.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Julius Caesar
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - Mainstage Theater

 It has been almost two years since this critic checked in on Milwaukee Shakespeare, a relatively young troupe that stages several plays a year within the local university's mainstage theater. What a difference time has made! The company, under a new artistic director and with a slate of more experienced directors, designers and cast members, has surged forward with the speed of Shakespeare's Ariel. Currently, they have tackled Julius Caesar, a not-uncommon choice in an election year (no matter that the presidential election was in 2004).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Keely And Du
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Jane Martin is believed to be a pseudonym for a team of writers. Others believe that the real identity is former artistic director of the Actors Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, Jon Jory. Other plays attributed to Martin are Vital Signs and Talking With. Keely And Du, the most controversial, explores the ongoing battle over the rights of a woman and the rights of the unborn. Keely, excellently interpreted by Christine Bain, has been raped by her violent, alcoholic ex-husband.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Kentucky Cycle, The - Part 2
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 If Kentucky Cycle II hadn't opened with another song by full cast staring out in epic manner, the second half of the story of the fates of the land and the Rowans, Talberts, and Biggeses would be, well, epically better than Part I. There's still a lot of trying to do others in, but in general the descendants are an improvement on their ancestors. One really feels sorry for those who get screwed by the coal companies that in turn screw the entire environment. Not that the folks weren't warned by smoothie J. T.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kentucky Cycle, The - Part 1
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 "Going Over Jordan" the cast sings, against an abstract background of soon-to-be-varying colored sky over barren trees and earth. So opens a tale of intertwining families, beginning with the ruthless Michael Rowen (Patrick J. Clarke, in his fittest Asolo performance to date). He kills an Indian trader and, after trickery, the Indians themselves, sparing only Morning Star, whom he rapes and cripples into subjugation so he'll have a son. (Tessie Hogan gives great intensity to both her hatred of Rowen and her ever-doting love of his child.)

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kid-Simple
Actors Theater of Louisville

 What on earth (or any other planet) could Actors Theater of Louisville have been thinking to lead off its prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays this year with Jordan Harrison's Kid-Simple, a radio play in the flesh? Someone must have thought its derivative pop- culture plot would qualify as a cutting-edge attraction for an MTV-type crowd. But its blade, alas, is decidedly dull and encrusted with juvenile pretension. This frenetic, much-ado-about-nada play is pastiche without panache, a feverish adolescent concoction that one longs to flee after the first 20 minutes.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Killer And The Comic, The
Angel Island

 Paul Zegler as the comic and Andrew Rothenberg as the killer turn in very fine performances in this late-nite show that accompanies the mainstage Mary-Arrchie production of Petrified Forest.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Killer Joe
Second Stage at the Adrienne

 Other journalists describe Killer Joe as a story of stupid trailer trash, violence and sex . That does this interesting play a disservice. Rather, the drama shows a dysfunctional and uneducated family -- something we all can relate to -- and the story is 99 percent about plotting a crime, rather than showing violence. There is full frontal nudity, male and female, but it is not erotic.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Killing of Sister George, The
Diversionary Theater

 Unpleasant is, perhaps, the kindest comment about June Buckridge (Priscilla Allen), who plays Sister George on a BBC radio drama. She drinks excessively, speaks in angry tones and hasn't a kind word for anyone, including her lover Alice "Childie" McNaught (Laura Bozanich). The domineering, combative and arrogant June is, nonetheless, worried about her job on the sitcom, worried about her relationship, and worried about her life. She's a not-nice person surrounded by much nicer people.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Killjoy
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

 Killjoy is about the potential joy of killing a miserable scoundrel of a spouse. Thus, a comedy is born and guaranteed to keep you laughing at Scripps Ranch Theater. Jill Drexler is Carol, the former wife of Victor, played by Allan Salkin. She has direct ethereal communication with a priest advisor. She's a Jew but seeks counseling wherever she can find it. After 24 years, her totally rotten husband dropped her for a trophy-wife in her mid-twenties.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Kilt
Visual Studies Workshop Auditorium

 A Canadian play that should have been a hit Off-Broadway, Jonathan Wilson's Kilt moves from a Scottish unit in Tobruk in 1942 to a gay bar in Toronto in the 1990s, and finally Glascow for a funeral. The title item ties this unlikely progression together as we observe a young soldier on duty in North Africa and clad in a traditional kilt into his lookalike grandson dancing on a tabletop in the same kilt to entice male customers.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Kindertransport
Bath House Cultural Center

 Echo Theater's production of Kindertransport by Diane Samuels opened at the Bath House Cultural Center November 6, 2003. Six talented actors did a fine job with a convoluted, obtuse script that leaves much to be desired.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
King And I, The
New Jersey Performing Arts Center - Prudential Hall

 When the curtain goes up on this touring production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I to reveal the teeming port of Bangkok against a twinkling backdrop of stars, one is simultaneously transported back almost fifty years to its legendary Broadway opening and to the l850s when a young English school teacher, Anna Leonowens, arrived to teach the 67 children of the King of Siam.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
King And I, The
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 Few American musicals retain their ability to enchant over the years, and even fewer of these "classics" actually improve with age. Since I wasn't born in 1951, when The King and I first took Broadway by storm, I cannot compare the original's impact to the current production now touring the United States. I can only marvel at how well The King and I has survived over the years.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
King Hedley II
Mark Taper Forum

 Can a three-hour drama with no story be successful? Unfortunately not, not even if the playwright is August Wilson, a master of the black vernacular. King Hedley II abounds in inspired speeches (some of which will be used by actors in monologue auditions for decades to come) and bursts of pungent, heady dialogue, but they don't add up to anything like a narrative which will keep you at the edge of your seat, breathless to know what happens next.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
King Lear
Studio 102

 King Lear is one of the supreme challenges for any company, and the professional Actors' Shakespeare Project, in kicking off its second season, has courageously stepped up to the plate. Boston has not been lucky in its recent Lears: F. Murray Abraham played it with the American Repertory Theatre in 1991, and Austin Pendleton with the New Repertory Theatre in 2000. Both were failures. For impressive enactments, one would have to go back to Harold Scott in 1958 and Paul Scofield in 1964.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
King Lear
Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival

 Many critics call King Lear Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece, but the public has never ratified that judgment. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet have more mass appeal. Maybe the reason people don't love Lear as much as the others is because it has a major problem with plausibility.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
King Lear
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Staging a production of King Lear has sometimes been compared to scaling a mountain. The play is considered (by some) to be the playwright's finest work, and it is often treated with reverence and, perhaps, terror. The Milwaukee Repertory Company opened its fall season with this powerful work. What they have achieved is a production that is both riveting and accessible. While this won't be the Lear to suit everyone's taste, it certainly does an exemplary job of highlighting the themes of Shakespeare's work.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
King Of The Moon
Seven Angels Theater

 Conflict between two brothers, debate over the war in Vietnam, and a discussion of the rules of the Catholic Church, all set in the tumultuous 60s, could be an interesting play. Last year, a new autobiographical play by Tom Dudzick, Over the Tavern, set in the 50's, won us over with its tasty concoction of tartness and sweetness of spirit. It was all about the Pazinski family from the East Side of Buffalo.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Kinks, Shrinks And Red Inks!
MeX Theater

 Jefferson Ensemble, formed less than two years ago in Louisville, is currently presenting three one-act plays under the Kinks, Shrinks and Red Inks! title. With these three shows tailored to their particular talents, the group's fine actors can really strut their stuff. Local playwright Elaine T. Hackett's A Clash of Invitations is the lengthiest and most satisfying of the three.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Kiss At City Hall, The
Pasadena Playhouse

 Why doesn't romance last? asks Joe DiPietro in this "relationship" comedy, which comes off as a slightly-better-than-average TV sitcom in its West Coast premiere production. Inspired by French photographer Robert Doisneau's snapshot of a man and woman exchanging a passionate public kiss, Di Pietro gives us two New York couples grappling with issues of commitment, unwanted pregnancy, infidelity and neurotic behavior, against a backdrop of the idealized romance embodied in the controversial snapshot (which may or may not have been staged).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Kiss Me, Kate
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Hugs and kisses to the wonderful pair (Lillie played by Angela Bond and Fred by David Engel) who rediscover their love through sparring and starring in a musical version of Taming of the Shrew. There may be Sharon Scott's rousing "Another Opening, [but it's not just]Another Show" as director Will Mackenzie uses all his TV expertise fitting onto a relatively small stage the excitement of a Broadway extravaganza. Oh, yes, he uses the whole theater, too (so nicely for "We Open in Venice") and has more than the doublings called for by the script.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Kiss Me, Tony
Patio Playhouse

 Deborah Ann Zimmer's homage to 27 years of Tony-winning Broadway musicals, Kiss Me, Tony, is just plain fun. Starting with Kiss Me Kate and closing with The Producers, the selections make a virtual history of contemporary musicals.

She stages each number with just enough action to set the scene for the selection from the show. Musical Director Ann Savage, aided by April Haarz's vocal direction, brings panache to each song. Choreographer Dawn Marie Himlin adds to the evening's polished, theatrical style.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Ahmanson Theater

 [Reviewed at Orange County Performing Arts Center, Dec. 1996] To make a musical of Manuel Puig's novel, "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb simply put Puig's story on stage as a play, then superimposed on it 20-some musical numbers, most of which have nothing to do with the plot but feature a dazzling performance by Chita Rivera.

T.E. Foreman
Date Reviewed:
December 1996
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Rudyard Kipling

 In its various formats -- novel, play, film, musical -- Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman evokes powerful emotions as two male cellmates jailed in a totalitarian country (Argentina) lay bare the politics of seduction. Who could be more different than Molina (Michael Drury), a flamboyant homosexual window dresser charged with "gross indecency," and Valentin (Andrew Pyle), a dedicated humorless Marxist whose zeal for social revolution excludes pleasure from his life?

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Krapp's Last Tape & Not I
New World Stage

 "Ion Theater's new space, World Stage, on 9th, puts them almost back-to-back with 10th Avenue Theater. A new downtown theater district? World Stage is a very welcoming facility complete with a roomy lobby and a modest-sized theater space with tiered seating providing great sight lines. Their opening offerings are definitely for the serious theater patron. A Tuesday-through- Sunday performance schedule alternates between two Samuel Beckett plays and one Ionesco play. There are a variety of curtain times, varying from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Kwaidan
Albert Simons Center, College of Charleston

 Normally, I despise puppets, marionettes, and their wooden brethren. But the artistry of director/adapter Ping Chong, production designer Mitsuru Ishii, and the puppeteers from the Center of Puppetry Arts is so exquisitely hypnotic, I surrendered to Chong's charms. And the trio of Japanese ghost stories adapted from the 1904 work by Lafcadio Hearn glow with a quiet intensity that I found quite unique. "Jhininiki" was a weird, ghoulish beginning.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Desire Under the Elms
San Diego State University - Experimental Stage

 Eugene O'Neill gave birth to Desire Under the Elms in 1924, placing it in rural New England. The 1958 film version starred Sophia Loren, Anthony Perkins, and Burl Ives. Under director Randy Reinholz, the San Diego State University version, currently in the Experimental Theater, moves the action to rural Ozark Mountains and adds some excellent, story-telling guitar music.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Gathering, The
Cort Theater

 Playwright Arje Shaw tries to spice up this box of stale matzoh with some funny/insightful one-liners and the occasional gripping moment (a Holocaust survivor dancing on the grave of a Nazi soldier and later goading a young German guard), but he's undone by TV-level phoniness, overwrought melodrama and preposterous plotting. Director Rebecca Taylor makes matters worse by having everyone scream and overact. Hal Linden manages to stay engaging throughout, but the young kid is unwatchable.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Gem of the Ocean
Walter Kerr Theater

 August Wilson's remarkable play, Gem of the Ocean, part of his cycle of plays about the black experience in Pittsburgh, gives us a working-class family in 1904, not all that long after slavery was ended. Starting with flavorful ordinary conversation, like Horton Foote, the play grows and expands into real theater with unforgettable characters. There is lots of exposition, but it's grand, and the stories are vivid, with a sprinkling of folk humor.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Gem of the Ocean
Walter Kerr Theater

 August Wilson's mighty ambition, stretching across a decade-by-decade, ten-play cycle of compassionate, poetically engaged playwriting, doesn't really stop at showing us the black experience in the 20th Century. No, Wilson is concerned with the full cargo of the African Diaspora, the history of suffering, the heritage of achievement, and the demons hatched in steerage and slavery that bedevil the race from within.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
George Gershwin Alone
Helen Hayes Theater

 It's tricky putting someone's life on stage. Especially if they're quite famous, because growling watchdogs of accuracy will leap on your presentation of the facts, which almost always have to be fudged a little for the sake of drama. In the case of George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder's solo, 90-minute excursion through the life of the composer of the title, who died at a very young 38, you almost wish there were more created drama.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
George Gershwin Alone
Helen Hayes Theater

 Hershey Felder makes but two mistakes in his solo tribute to George Gershwin: 1) he tends to crash-bang the piano keys a little too hard and a little too often; 2) he sings. Now as the show's narration (and, one assumes, history) tells us, GG was no warbler, but when Felder bellows, the results are painful to the point of embarrassment. That's a shame, because the show is otherwise a touching, amusing bio, with some fast if sloppy work on the keyboard.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2001

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