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Theater Review: & JULIET (National Tour in Los Angeles)
SHAKESPEARE, INTERRUPTED About five minutes into & Juliet, Juliet belts “…Baby One More Time” with such raw confusion you half-believe Britney’s lyrics might hold the secrets of the universe. It should collapse under its own absurdity, yet it lands. That is the show in miniature: ridiculous on purpose and, against the odds, brilliant. Rachel Simone…
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Theater Review: NO CHILD… (Gloucester Stage Company)
THE LEFT BEHIND Frankly, I was in theater hell this Saturday afternoon. Two women on one side of me were whispering to one another throughout the first 10 minutes of the show; a man on the other side was eating something out of a crinkly bag and repeatedly clearing his throat. People in front of…
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Theater Review: THE WIZ (North American Tour at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre)
A BEWITCHING WIZ Director Schele Williams’s touring adaptation of The Wiz touches down in Boston like a technicolor cyclone and lifts its audience up with a storm of funk, gospel, and unapologetic Black joy. Amber Ruffin’s updated book recasts Dorothy (Dana Cimone) as a recently orphaned girl from an urban background who has come to…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour at San Diego Civic)
CORN-FED HUMOR LEAVES A SWEET TASTE I entered the Civic Theatre braced for a two-hour version of Hee Haw (not a compliment) and wondered if I’d be checking my watch by halfway through Act I as puns about corn wore thin. Instead, in little time, I was thoroughly absorbed in the goofy, tiny-town farm world…
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Theater Review: MONA LISA MISSING! (Eastwood Stage)
A MASTERPIECE OF MUSICAL MISCHIEF In 1911, the Louvre was the largest building in the world, containing more than a thousand rooms, spread out over 45 acres and housing over a quarter million works of art. As it had a security force of just over a hundred guards, it is not surprising that someone was…
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Theater Review: THE MOTHERF**KER WITH THE HAT (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble)
MOTHERFUCKER! WHAT A COLOSSAL MISSED OPPORTUNITY With heightened and relentless dialog, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat follows Jackie, a recently paroled ex-con and recovering addict whose fragile new life teeters when he finds an unfamiliar hat in his girlfriend Veronica’s apartment. The discovery ignites suspicions of betrayal that ripple through his relationships—with…
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Theater Review: THE HEIDI CHRONICLES (Group Rep)
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME A friend warned me that The Heidi Chronicles might feel dated—after all, Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play ends in 1987. Nothing could be further from the truth. Group Rep’s production, directed with a sure hand by Brent Beerman, proves Heidi’s journey from the late…
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Theater Review: HEAD OVER HEELS (Coronado Playhouse)
GO-GO SEE THIS SHOW-SHOW The jukebox musical Head Over Heels is a mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s long 1590s poem Arcadia and the songs of the iconic 1980s’ female rock band The Go-Go’s, the all-female American rock band which may be the best women’s group ever assembled. Avenue Q’s Jeff Whitty conceived the show and original…
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Theater Review: THE TIME MACHINE (Broadwater)
TIME IS OUR FRIEND A Victorian inventor travels thousands of years into the future, only to discover that humanity has evolved—and devolved—into two radically different species. The 14/48 Hollywood Company’s production of The Time Machine gleams with ingenuity, its low-budget aesthetic burnished by a fiercely imaginative ensemble and a clear reverence for the source material….
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Theater Review: JESUS HOPPED THE ‘A’ TRAIN (City Lit)
RIDE THIS TRAIN TO THE END OF THE LINE One of Chicago’s oldest store-front theaters, City Lit, opens its 45th season with a production of Pulitzer winner, Stephen Adly Gurgis’ Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train. The play debuted almost twenty-five years ago to mostly strong reviews and has been revived frequently; its minimal set and…
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Theater Review: LUIGI: THE MUSICAL (The Independent Theatre in San Francisco and the Edinburgh Fringe)
SHANKS FOR THE MEMORIES Currently packing in audiences—and now extended—at The Independent Theater, Luigi: The Musical is a sharp, clever, and gloriously irreverent parody of pop culture and current events. Directed by Nova Bradford, it’s equal parts timely and absurd, lampooning some of today’s most notorious criminals while delivering a steady stream of laughs. Before…
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Theater Review: BEAUTIFUL — THE CAROL KING MUSICAL (Transcendence Theatre Company at Field of Dreams in Sonoma)
TRANSCENDENCE DOES BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFULLY Sonoma County’s home-grown musical revue troupe Transcendence Theatre Company has launched a wonderful production of Douglas McGrath’s theatrical biography Beautiful – the Carole King Musical. Britta Rae, David R. Gordon, Anne Terze-Schwarz, Billy Cohen The amazingly popular show has enjoyed many productions nationwide. TTC’s production has an inexplicably short ten-day run,…
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Off-Broadway Review: TA-DA! (Josh Sharp at Greenwich House)
TA-DA! AND OTHER QUEER MAGIC TRICKS For Josh Sharp, “ta-da!” is code for gay. As a twelve-year-old magician, it was his entrance line: “ta-da!” Yeah, totally gay. But growing up in the South, Sharp knew an even bigger magic trick—keeping that part of himself hidden until much later. Now, in his solo show ta-da!, he…
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Theater Review: AMÉLIE (Kokandy Productions at The Chopin)
FROM TWEE TO TRÈS MAGNIFIQUE It’s fascinating how some stories lend themselves better to one medium than the other. In 2001, the French romantic comedy, Amélie was an unexpected worldwide hit and briefly made an international star of its beguiling lead, Audrey Tatou. I’d watched it on release (in the theatre, natch) and thought it…
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Theater Review: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (The Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre)
TWINS, TWISTS, AND A TENDER TOUCH The Old Globe Theatre closes out its summer Shakespeare Festival at the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in Balboa Park with a zippy 90-minute one-act production of the Bard’s early farce The Comedy of Errors. Grounded in the farcical confusions and mistaken identities that have made this play such…
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Theater Review: PARADE (National Tour, CIBC Theatre Chicago)
DON’T LET THIS PARADE PASS YOU BY In 1913, in Atlanta, Georgia, the body of Mary Phagan, a thirteen-year-old factory laborer, was found in the basement of a pencil factory. On the flimsiest of cases, a Brooklyn transplant, Leo Frank was arrested and charged with the crime. His ensuing trial, conviction, commutation, and grisly lynching…
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Off-Off-Broadway Review: LILI / DARWIN (The Tank)
DARWIN DEL FABRO STUNS IN A PERFORMANCE OF BECOMING One reason the queer community has found broader acceptance in America — generally speaking — is that most people today know someone who identifies as lesbian, gay, or bisexual: a family member, friend, or colleague. They’ve heard stories and recognize the humanity of the community. Sadly,…
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Theater Review: ONE UP: THE MUSICAL (Actors Company)
ONE UP PLAYS TO WIN– WITH A CHEAT CODE FOR CHARM One Up: The Musical, which premiered at this year’s Hollywood Fringe and returns for encore performances, is a charming, if uneven, 80s-inspired tuner about an underdog game developer trying to make her mark. Set in 1987, the book by creator Mary Bonney and Weslie Lechner takes…
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Theater Review: IT’S A BIRD… IT’S A PLANE… IT’S SUPERMAN! (Foster Cat Productions at The Broadwater)
WHY CAN’T A SUPERHERO CATCH A BREAK? (OR A BROADWAY RUN) Foster Cat Productions is taking a gleeful leap off the tall building that is It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman!, the 1966 Broadway musical that dared to blend comic book heroism with musical theatre razzmatazz. The result? A full-out, knowingly ridiculous, intriguingly…
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Theater Review: AWAKENING THE SHOW (Wynn Las Vegas)
CRYSTAL PALACE: AWAKENING PERFECTS THE IMPERSONAL ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ It opens with darkness. Then light fractures across a sixty-foot glass stage that shouldn’t exist but does, spinning and splitting into impossible geometries while Anthony Hopkins‘ taped voice rolls through the theater like distant thunder. Awakening The Show arrives…
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