News & Reviews from New York
       

December 28th, 2006
   
The Actors Company Theatre, the finest play-reading group in NY, has just finished a fully-stage rendition of HOME by David Storey. In Act One, it is fascinating how the consummate actors, Larry Keith and Simon Jones, make trivial conversation riveting as the two men, with upper-level English accents, start conversational gambits and veer away from the subjects mid-subject, and then revert back. It's quite Beckettesque. In Act Two we have Cynthia Harris and Cynthia Darlow, with working class accents, and, once again it's a mystery to me how such uninteresting conversation can be so engaging. The play branches in Act Two, and mysteries are revealed. The play is all
a delicate interweaving of characters who have a thin hold on reality whose lives are fading. Played in a perfectly designed garden by Mimi Lien, and masterfully directed by Scott Alan Evans, I was wonderfully transported by the work. Sorry you missed it.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 23rd, 2006
   
The revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's THE APPLE TREE on Broadway gives us the pleasure of being in the presence of two of Broadway's most talented, charismatic, entertaining performers: Kristin Chenowith and Mark Kudisch. She is the definition of adorable, and in the first (and strongest) playlet,
based on Mark Twain's story, "The Diary of Adam & Eve," her beauty, personal charm and exquisite timing will melt you. In the second, "The Lady or the Tiger," she is a Lucille Ball filling the stage with comic antics. In the third piece, "Passionella" by
Jules Feiffer, she becomes a ballsy Madalyn Kahn. Yes, the first segment, in the Garden of Eden, is the strongest, but anything Chenowith does is captivating, and for me she can do no wrong. Kudisch gives the best snake in the world as he morphs into the
wriggliest, slitheriest reptile in the garden. His strength, charm, continuing communicating persona and powerful singing voice holds the rest of the show together. Co-star Brian d'Arcy James shines as the English rocker in "Passionella," his most expansive
role in the show. The entire cast, including Walter Charles, is first rate Broadway. Except for putting Eve in a white tight-fitting unflattering dress, Jess Goldstein's costumes are imaginative and eye-catching; sets by John Lee Beatty more than fulfill the script,
and Donald Holder's lighting is just right. Gary Griffin has directed with timing that lifts the material beyond whatever weakness the script has. Personally, I'd go see Chenowith if she were reading
the phone book. (A great cast of characters, but not much plot.)

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 23rd, 2006
   
SPRING AWAKENING is now on Broadway, book and lyrics by Steven Sater, music by Duncan Sheik, based on an 1890's play by Franz Wedekind It's a Rock musical with throwback music sections that gives us teenagers trying to find out about sex in a repressive society as their hormones rage. It's a youthful view of
sexuality, with awkward young men (except for charismatic leading man Jonathan Groff) and pretty little nubile teenage girls. Directed with lots of energy by Michael Mayer, and filled with very odd, angular, eccentric choreography by Bill T. Jones, it is interesting in movement and action. There is a strong message about both the conformity and cruelty in the German soul, but for me there is no real power-- just a lot of angst and mournful songs, with some cute charming sexuality, especially between two boys, some contemporary profanity (my favorite and
most memorable song is "Totally Fucked.") The predictable dramatic event at the end gets a bit annoying as the play gets serious, but it's capped with a nice anthem, "The Song of Purple Summer," sort of a "Let the Sunshine In" from "Hair," well sung by
the cast, all of whom have good voices. It is well designed by Christine Jones (set), Susan Hilferty (costumes) and Kevin Adams (lighting). The show should do very well with young audiences like those for "Rent" who will be intrigued and a bit startled by some of the sexual events on the stage.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 21st, 2006
   
'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE, at The Flea Theater, is a holiday pastische. "Not a Creature Was Stirring" by Christopher Durang takes absurdity into madness with a lot of ridiculous running around and a good performance b Elizabeth Hoyt. "Away in the Manger" by Roger Rosenblatt gives us a special nativity scene
featuring the always captivating Leslie Meisel as the V M. Mac Wellman's "Before the Before and Before That" is an abstract piece with good visual images. We don't know what's happening, but it's interesting. "Christmas Song" by Len Jenkin is, for me, the
strongest piece, with a first rate cast including a star turn by Tanya Fischer. It closes with "Holiday Movies" by Elizabeth Swados, a silly, amateurish sketch, but they all sing well. Have a good time. Why not?

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


STRIKING 12 at the Daryl Roth Theatre is a lovely, sensitive satirical musical with songs and stories by a talented trio with a high charm count, all of whom are first rate singers, called "Groovelily." The songs, by Valerie Vigoda, Brendan Milburn and Rachel Sheinkin, have clever lyrics, a holiday feeling. The
woman in the show, Vigoda, a hot violinist, has elegance, and is dressed accordingly. The young man, Milburn, a super keyboardist, is dressed neutrally. And the terrific drummer, Gene Lewin, for some strange reason, is costumed by designer Jennifer Caprio like a deteriorated biker in a white T shirt and black vest.
It really doesn't fit his mild demeanor. But that's the only flaw in this well-directed (by Ted Sperling) show. As they tell and sing and embellish the story of "The Little Match Girl," they take wings and totally engage us in their creativity and artistry. The flavor?-- one song is "Screwed Up People Make Great Art." They have fun. We have fun.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 19th, 2006
   
The musical HIGH FIDELITY, based on Nick Hornby's novel, has closed. I liked it. Even though the problems and concerns of the record store owner, played by a charismatic, charming leading man, Will Chase, are naïve and simplistic, the show, a mixture
of '70's and contemporary sensibility, was a lot of fun. Amanda Green has the gift, and I found her lyrics to be clever, full of humor. The design by Anna Louizos has a major flaw: a shelf (piano?) downstage right which blocks the view of almost half
the stage from audience left. The rest of her design is quite good. With zippy direction by Walter Bobbie, the whole cast was excellent, especially Christian Anderson and Rachel Stern. There's a rap fantasy, a Springsteen moment, retro concert number. Yeah! I think HIGH FIDELITY was what it tried to be, and the
audience I saw it with loved it. Perhaps if it had played in a smaller theatre it might have had time to catch on.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 10th, 2006
   
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's COMPANY, now on
Broadway, is another brilliant conception by John Doyle who takes a great old ground-breaking musical to another dimension (as he did with "Sweeney Todd" last season). The actor/singers are the orchestra, and we can see and hear them as they play. It is
fascinating, crazy, delightful as performed on David Gallo's simple (perfect for the conceit of this production) set and Thomas C. Hase's great lighting design. The cast is remarkable-- they are all good musicians, Broadway-level singers, and fine actors who
well fulfill the intricacies of their roles. Heather Lawn knocked me out as Amy, but all of the women are beautiful, and I found their playing of the instruments very sexy. I am a visually orientated
person and I sat there smiling at the innovation and the degree of invention that Doyle has brought to us by staging it as he did. One of my closest long-term theatre friends hated the approach. We did agree on one thing though (disputed by other reviewers):
leading man Raul Esparza as Bobby, whose married friends think he should get married, is bland and charmless for most of the show, and when he opens up his pipes for his "11: o'clock number," "Being Alive," it is too late for him to endear himself to us. This COMPANY is not as it was, but as it was is not playing
across the street-- I had a good time with Sondheim's songs, Furth's jokes and Doyle's staging. So there!


Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


MARY POPPINS:
An old fashioned musical where the action stops for a number.
Some memorable songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman-especially "Supercali............- you know." Echo-ey muddy sound.
Great three-level set and fantastic visual images by best-in-the-world designer Bob Crowley. Awful, shrieking, often incomprehensible kids. Little dramatic tension. Ashley Brown charming as Mary-- as close to Julie Andrews as you can get.
Agile Gavin Lee fine as Bert. A good kite-flying number.
Good magic. Mary flying- terrific. That's the story, Morning Glory.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


Jack O'Brien's lively creation, Dr. Seuss' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, now on Broadway, is a bundle of familiar family fun with a great singing-dancing cast of grownups and kids, including a couple of stars: John Cullum as the Old Dog who tells the story,
and the gruff, lovable Patrick Page as The Grinch. Directed by Matt August, it has an "Alice in Wonderland" feeling with stylized moves and bouncy choreography by John DeLuca and whimsical cartoonish costumes by Robert Morgan played on John Lee Beatty's fanciful set. This is a great holiday pageant with
captivating visual images, old fashioned song and dance with lyrics and book by Timothy Mason utilizing Dr. Seuss' charming, surprising rhymes, and lively music by Mel Marvin. A good time was had by all the children from five to a hundred.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 04th, 2006
   
Sarah Ruhl's play THE CLEAN HOUSE, now at Lincoln Center, is a bit of a mish mash- it has elements of farce, and it's also about dying of cancer. Early on, it seems to be an inane attempt to be amusing, with the maid (Vanessa Aspillaga) as psychotherapist. Jill Clayburgh gives a terrific performance as a quirky, insecure, repressed housewife who is obsessed with cleaning, and Blair Brown is fine as the odd MD. In Act 2 there is some nice stylized movement and dance, and it seems a totally different play, about falling in love with someone who has breast cancer, with other
actors, John Dossett and a wonderful Marilyn Dodds Frank, as an older couple in scenes that have a poetic undertone and is much more interesting and entertaining, with some touching moments, all nicely directed by Bill Rauch. Then it turns silly again, with an occasional laugh, and there is some apple throwing, stage cluttering, and it reaches annoying. There is also too much Portuguese spoken, and some of the supertitles are hard to read. The play is stylishly designed by Christopher Acebo and lighted by
James F. Ingalls. All in all, it's not a bad visit to a basically loony world performed by very good actors.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 04th, 2006
   
David Greig's play THE AMERICAN PILOT, now at Manhattan Theatre Club, pits a bunch of really stupid people, villagers in an Eastern country where English is not spoken, against an equally stupid American pilot whom they have discovered with a broken leg and brought to a hut in their village. Would people who don't speak each other's language keep screaming insistently at each other as if the noise alone would communicate the idea? It's not rational, not a survival tactic for villagers or soldier. Somehow
they all do not understand simple physical gestures either. There is little compassion, and the petty chieftain is cruel, then equivocates, and the soldier only shouts and provokes. The play is a pale shadow of Brendan Behan's "The Hostage," which explored a similar subject: what do you do with an enemy
combatant? Costumes by Ilona Somogyi, set by Derek McLane and lighting by Ryan McMahon are all just fine. Perhaps director Lynne Meadow could have found some moments for empathetic sensitivity, but she staged the play quite well, especially the exciting, dramatic punch line, an unforgettable image, which adds up to "Don't fuck around with Hoppalong Cassidy!"

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


David Hare is a smart cookie, a true intellectual, and his play THE VERTICLE HOUR starring Juianne Moore and Bill Nighy, now on Broadway, is basically his anti-war comment on Iraq. There is a lot of political instruction on terror and victims by an idealistic
Moore, and a very mannered, twitchy Nighy gives us Britain contrasted to the U.S. politically. The question is: does one intervene where things are terrible? So she justifies the start of the Iraq war; Nighy is anti. The third major character is Moore's
fiancé, played by an ineffective Andrew Scott whose whining tenor flips into falsetto when excited, and is no match for Nighy playing his father, so that the sexual tension between Moore and Nighy is foreshadowed early on. Nighy performing rather than acting, great with a sarcastic quip, and sometimes directly
addressing the audience, is sometimes more engaging than the arguments. He looks a bit like Clint Eastwood, and costumer Ann Roth even puts him in a serape in one scene. It made me chuckle. We get Hare's take on doctors and psychotherapists too. The
intellectual fol-de-rol is fun as Nighy crosses minds with Moore, who is quite effective as a formidable woman, a killer intellectual who is beautiful and sensuous. There are some good jokes in the play, many insights, some of them humorous, and some
academic arguments. Aside from the (for me) casting flaw, it is nicely directed by Sam Mendes, and has some gorgeous images by set designer Scott Pask and lighting designer Brian McDevitt. And Hare accomplishes a kind of theatrical miracle- the big
emotional grabber that I cannot forget, that gets me now, days later when I think of it, is the very last word of the play.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

December 03rd, 2006
   
Martha Clarke's Performance Art piece KAOS, an adaptation of four stories by Luigi Pirandello, now at NY Theatre Workshop on East 4th St., has stark figures full of fervent emotions, interesting movement patterns, some of them a passionate swirling dance, a
bit of choral singing, but it's mostly the spoken word, all in Italian, with a high anguish count, and unless you are fluent in that language, it's basically incomprehensible because the supertitles are probably the worst I have ever seen: the letters and the words projected on the upstage wall are uneven in intensity,
and most of it is washed out by the lighting (designed by Christopher Akerlind, and which is excellent in highlighting the figures and the action). Most of the eighty minutes is emotionally dreary even though the performers were obviously talented, well-trained professionals, and there were some actual folk dances
by the graceful performers that gave a much-needed lift to the proceedings. The few occasions when the stage was rather dark and the titles could be read helped, but they were brief. It's good to know what's going on beyond the outlines defined by
physical movement or kissing. To me, content is as important as form, and basically all KAOS was is form due to the lack of readable supertitles, which made the rather interesting stage pictures tedious as time passed. As I sat there thinking about the Indian dinner I would eat on East 6th St., a snore erupted
behind me. (I did love the sensitive incidental music played by Irving Grossman on trumpet, John T. La Barbera on mandolin/guitar and Richard Sosinsky on bass.)

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 20th, 2006
   
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Jay Presson Allen is a lovely play, full of ideas of freedom and individuality, pursuit of Art and Beauty, and as directed by Scott Elliott it's brought to vivid life
by a super sensuous Cynthia Nixon in the title role. She gives a multidimensional performance, and brings a physical grace and style to the role that reminded me of the old time movie actress Susan Hayward. What a pleasure to visit with Miss Jean and her
girls/students/sycophants, all of whom are played by excellent and very individual actresses. Richie Coster is extra slimy and repulsive as the artist/seducer, John Pankow is a sturdy nerd, and Lisa Emery is a firm, upright headmistress. The complex ideas and emotions segue into an unclear POV as the free-thinking Miss Brodie begins to embrace Fascist ideology, and that sets a disaster into motion. Is the message that the rebel is wrong? Is it that free thinking can destroy you? Or is it that blindly following a charismatic leader can do so. This angle didn't compute for me, but the totality, especially Ms. Nixon's riveting performance, is a wonderful theatre experience. There is a fine set by Derek
McLane, perfect costumes by Eric Becker and masterly lighting by Jason Lyons.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


The Australian mime/comedy duo The Umbilical Brothers amaze and delight us in their show SPEEDMOUSE now at the New Victory on West 42nd St. Their brilliant use of sound effects augmenting the innovative physical action in a well-developed, complex, and very funny show, is further enhanced in parts with the beat of
contemporary music. Although David Collins and Shane Dundas are both skilled mimes, it's Dundas who vocally creates the range of sounds into a mike- from a shriek to a tic. It's the most contemporary use of mime I've seen-- without political statements, just new-fangled clowning-- clowning brought to a high level because of their physical and vocal skills that go far beyond the ordinary. SPEEDMOUSE is a terrific entertainment.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


I had a surreal experienced at the Sunday Jazz Brunch at Iridium on 51st and Broadway. Here's a fine singer, ADI BRAUN, with a wide and flexible range of voice and songs, doing a sophisticated performance for an audience of tourists and their kids having lunch. So this brave, talented singer had to stand up there
doing her thing, paying no attention to the conversational murmur (with an occasional high-pitched "Daddy- can I have some more?" drifting thru the room). She's a trouper-- did it with a smile and the vocal subtleties of a top notch jazz singer. With the very fine Barry Levitt ensemble, she went straight ahead and did her charming, beautifully sung, well-timed act. She didn't stick to jump tunes like "You Do Something to Me," which she cooked with, cutting right thru the static; she didn't shy away from quieter tunes like "I've Got It Bad...", but sang it as it should be sung, with tone and feeling. ADI BRAUN has a strong, very musical voice- rich and fully sustained wherever she takes it. I hope to catch her some night playing for a proper audience.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


In 1964 I was the MC of The Hootenanny at The Bitter End Café in Greenwich Village every Tuesday night. One night a young woman came in dragging a blind Puerto Rican kid with a guitar. She said to put him on the stage, that he was really good. I said,
"Sure," and put him on at two in the morning. When he sang his first song, I told the woman "Bring him in any time-- I'll put him on any time you say." It was Jose Feliciano. About ten years later, at a club in Huntington Beach, California, I was his opening act
doing my mime/comedy act, and he used to heckle me. I'd do a mime shtick, the audience would laugh, and he'd call out from the back, "That was really good, Richmond." What a joy to see him perform at Iridium last night. Jose's still got it, and better than
ever, with his masterful guitar playing and smooth, sweet melodious voice that has grown to a richness and fullness in his maturity. He is a gripping entertainer totally at one with his instrument- every thought comes out musically. He sprinkles a bit of humor thru his show, and his impressions of Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Walter Brennan and Iglesias father and son were right on and hilarious. Jose's star still shines brightly. He did an hour and a half, and we wanted more. It was a pleasure and a privilege to hear him, be moved by him, and be in his radiance.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 17th, 2006
   
Paul Rudnick's play REGRETS ONLY, nervously directed by Christopher Ashley, on a gorgeous set by Michael Yeargan, now at Manhattan Theatre Club, is really bad gay agitprop as it basically explores the question of gay marriage through farce and jokes, but the overacting, posturing, and trying hard to be funny
cuts into the real content. The maid enters every few minutes in a new absurd costume-- trying to be funny. The frantic, idiotic daughter is supposed to be a lawyer who earns over a million a year. Even Christine Baranski, in a scene with George Grizzard
especially, overacts when all she has to do is say the words. This approach trivializes a serious subject. Act Two is the daughter's wedding disaster, and gives us the premise: what would the world be like without gay people? Well, since gays run the world, when they drop out for a day, the world stops. Towards the end
Baranski has a good monologue as she grows balls, but the play goes beyond its end, and recites the Bill of Rights: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"-- it's so Gay! There are a few good jokes, and the idea that all gay people want is the freedom to love is fine and noble, but in all, this production makes a real issue into a not very entertaining, and at times annoying, throwaway.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 15th, 2006
   
LES MISERABLES by Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg, is arguably the greatest musical ever created, and the powerful, moving, new production brings much needed theatrical life back to Broadway. Strongly but sensitively directed (John Caird and
Trevor Nunn), brilliantly designed (John Napier) and lighted (David Hersey-- I've never seen better lighting in a theatre in my life) by the originals, it has breathtaking moments of theatrical grandeur mixed with the gripping plot of the story of the pursued Jean Valjean (the very strong, in a Brian Dennehy mold) Alexander Gemignani whose voice, high, low, huge, whispering, soars. There are unforgettable visual images, and a chorus of Broadway singers who inspired me, stirred my revolutionary soul. Except for one embarrassingly inept performer with a whispery, wavery voice, Daphne Rubin-Vega as Fantine (I cringed at her death scene), the cast is first rate- wonderful singers, fine actors, especially Celia Keenan-Bolger as Eponine, Aaron Lazar as the revolutionary leader, Adam Jacobs as the romantic lead, Gary Beach and Jenny Galloway as the comic relief, and Norm Lewis as Javert. Injustice, love, a revolution- all the parts, technical and performance-wise fit in this magnificent show which has everything one could hope for in a theatrical experience. Long may it wave!

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 13th, 2006
   
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED has moved to Broadway, and now
that it is $96 a seat, I have to re-evaluate my earlier review when it was Off-Broadway. (THEN)--I started with: Douglas Carter Bean is a smart writer with a sharp sense of humor- he's able to throw in jokes, quips, and references that ring so true or
familiar we can't help laughing. Some of this shows in THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED. It's about a killer female Hollywood agent, a confused guy who is a movie star, his new boyfriend who is a prostitute, and the prostitute's sort of girlfriend. Most of the funny lines about Hollywood, about gays, and about
relationships go to the agent, played brashly with zest, zip, energy and perfect timing by Julie White. (NOW)-- Ultimately the play is a well done sitcom, some of it only mildly amusing comments on life as we wait for the comic passages. This is not a show for people with a high intellect count, although there are
some very clever lines-- as a play on Broadway it's trivia. A lot of people like trivial comedy; others prefer wit. It's good low level comedy, and the audience thought they had fun. It's the kind of humor they're used to on TV, and you know "familiarity breeds." (laughs from some, contempt from a dry superintellectual writer I brought with me.) If sitcom with a gay sensibility is your cup of comedy, you'll have a great time. But this is no Joe Orton or
"History Boys." Director Scott Ellis has timed it quite well on Allen Moyer's slick set so that it doesn't quit trying to entertain.
Ms. White got cheers after her Act 2 monologue and a standing
ovation at the end.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 12th, 2006
   
Daisy Foote's play BHUTAN is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from past and present jumbled together until gradually the picture of a Massachusetts working class family and its dynamics, its conflicts with each other and with the world, becomes clear. It's a domestic drama with its realism underlined by the stylized
presentation. A woman, her widowed sister whose son is in jail and whose daughter is an intellectual flower in this desert of low ambition, deal with the frustrations in their lives, and we are drawn into their struggles. Each of the four members of the cast
brings total believability to the play, and the center is the powerful Tasha Lawrence as the mother. Sarah Lord, Amy Redford and Jedadiah Schultz clearly inhabit their characters, giving depth and passion to their portrayals, and Evan Yionoulis has directed with a fine sense of timing. Now at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


Cormac McCarthy's play THE SUNSET LIMITED has a great
naturalistic set by Scott Neale and perfect flat white lighting by Keith Parham- a tiny Harlem slum kitchen in which two vastly different men, a small old white suicidal professor, an intellectual who tried to jump in front of a train, and his rescuer, a large black
ex-con who may have been sent by God to do the rescue (at least that's what he thinks). As the men, two fine actors, Austin Pendelton and Freeman Coffey, banter and cross examine each other about the existence of God, the meaning of life and its
illusions, McCarthy, under the sure direction of Sheldon Patinkin, pulls us into his tale of intellectual vs faith-driven. Phrases, formulations of words like "Happy is not part of the human
condition," and "senseless articulation in a howling void," "We have only the hope of nothingness," and jokes like "Was he killed?" "I hope so-- we buried him," tickle my mind. Pendleton, full of physical quirks, times them perfectly to coincide with flat
instances in Coffey's monologues, keeping us fully engaged even with a bit much of "hanging onto Jesus's belt." THE SUNSET LIMITED is a verbal dance that is simple, profound, and beautifully performed.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

THE FANTASTICS, now playing at the Snapple Theater Center, is a sweet, old fashioned, silly, romantic comedy with terrific songs that stick in your mind. What a pleasure to walk out humming "Try to Remember" or "Soon It's Gonna Rain." With a fine cast including
the beautiful, clear-voiced Sara Jean Ford as the girl, Burke Moses as El Gallo and the extraordinary physical comedian Robert R. Oliver as Mortimer, and the book and lyrics writer (and director of this production) Tom Jones as the decrepit Henry, this
production, filled with whimsy and fun, confirms why it is the longest-running musical in theatre history.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       

November 06th, 2006
   
The Bob Dylan (songs) and Twyla Tharp (choreography and direction) musical THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN', now on Broadway, set in a circus, gives us an ensemble of acrobatic dancers whose bodies are like Slinkies, and three terrific singers: Michael Arden, Thom Sesma and Lisa Brescia who perform the Dylan repertoire. The timing of the songs may be altered from Dylan's originals, but the songs are there, and I like them.
Perhaps the visuals and the almost story that has been interjected don't necessarily correspond with the inner meaning of the lyrics, but I found myself well entertained by this energetic show in a rather surreal set by Santo Loquasto who also costumed it. The tunes stick in my head (I think Dylan channeled Woody Guthrie for "Don't Think Twice" and the title song), and the trampoline-propelled bodies flipping, twisting and bouncing, kept me visually entertained as well as auditorily tickled by the singing.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


MIMI le DUCK, book and lyrics by Diana Hansen-Young, music by Brian Feinstein, now playing off-Broadway, is a strange somewhat surreal musical about an Idaho housewife's odyssey to Paris where she meets the ghost of Hemmingway. It's not a very interesting show, even though the performers, including the strong Allen Fitzpatrick and the striking Candy Buckley who "take
stage" and hold it, are all Broadway performers-- except when the fabulous Eartha Kitt is on. The great diva arrives and growls and thrills the audience. Set by John Arnone does a good Paris
conjure, well-lighted by David Lander, but some of Ann Hould-Ward's costumes puzzled me-- they seemed arbitrary rather than appropriately inventive. Director Thomas Caruso keeps things moving quite well, but I'd say MIME le DUCK is a painting from a messy palette-- except for the vivid Kitt, who alone is worth the price of admission.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com


LITTLE DONKEY, at The New Victory on W. 42nd St., the very imaginative fairy tale by Theater Terra from Holland using large (and very large) puppets, tells a rural tale about a Donkey, his mother, a Goat, a Badger, a Pig, an immense Marabou, etc. The four cast members are adept, charming, accomplished puppet
manipulators, excellent singers, and the show is visually and aurally totally engaging. It's a fine show for all the family, and it held the attention of, and entertained, all-- young and old.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

A.R. Gurney's new play POST MORTEM, now at The Flea Theater in Tribeca, takes place in a morally deteriorated repressed "Big Brother" future. It's a smart comedy, full of satirical theatrical references, about a dead playwright named A.R. Gurney who might have been murdered because of his plays. Christopher
Kromer is appealing and convincing as a student who has discovered Gurney and his work, and Shannon Burkett is quite good as an interviewer. But for me, the real discovery is Tina Benko as a professor, an amazingly sexy actress who moves with great style- like a dancer- and reminded me (in Scene 1) of Anne
Hesche. Although I can see her doing rather than being, and she postures and uses affected speech with an air like the late Carrie Nye (who had an air like Tallulah), it works well for this charismatic persona. She's a great performer-- totally fascinating in anything she does on the stage, including Scene 2, which is an interview taking place seven years later and she uses a different, quieter physicality. Act 2 is basically a polemic on all of Gurney's pet peeves-- his views on cell phones, on Dick Cheney, on moral
values, and it got a bit long.... and then longer...... and lost dramatic movement. A joke or two was not enough as the play deteriorated into a lecture, and failed dramatically. Gurney has to know that to instruct people you have to show them, not tell them. So ultimately this interesting play fades out. I was disappointed that POST MORTEM, directed with style by Jim Simpson, didn't have more action in Scene 2, but was glad to discover an actress as captivating as Tina Benko.
Thru December 9th.

Richmond Shepard-- Performing Arts INSIDER and
lively-arts.com

       
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November/December 2002
September/October 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002