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Performance Reviews

Appreciations of performing arts--choreography, music, writing, acting, directing, composing, conducting, editing, and cinematography

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“A Chip and a Chair”: Review of the play “Chasing the River,” by Jean Dobie Giebel

Meet Kat (Christina Elise Perry). Her flashback memories dramatized in Chasing the River, by Jean Dobie Giebel, show that she played the hand she was dealt, which included a couple of bad cards — a drunken incestuous King, also known as her father, Nathaniel (David Wenzel), married to a weak Queen, her Mother, Margaret (Robyne Parrish), and a boyfriend, Sam (David Rey), who should be her knight in shining armor, a would-be “terminator,” but he’s ultimately not capable of, um, Jack. The other cha

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Review of “Ladyship” in the 2019 New York Musical Festival

Deportation. Lest you think the U.S. has the corner on the market for ugly stories, let me share a story of England’s shame of forced migrations during 1788–1868. Some 25,000 Englishwomen, convicted mostly of the crime of poverty, were forced onto ships and sent to Australia and Tasmania where they were sold off for bottles of rum to the 165,000 or so male convicts who had arrived there earlier to become the founding mothers of those nations — if they survived the voyage intact and preferably no

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Review: “The Rare Biosphere,” by Chris Cragin Day

One of the beautiful things a play can do so well is to make a concrete reality of an abstract problem. Many legitimate, competing points of view swirl around the issue of immigration, but the mundane realities of the lives of immigrants’ and their families may swim under the radar of those who make and listen to the arguments about how to handle the problems that have resulted. By focusing on the microcosm in her work, “The Rare Biosphere,” the highly awarded playwright, Chris Cragin Day, compe

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Review: The Genesis Plays by The In[heir]itance Project: “The Leah/Rachel Play”

The Leah/Rachel Play forms part of a group of Genesis Plays by the collaborative known as The IN[HEIR]ITANCE PROJECT TEAM, led by Founding Artists, Jon Adam Ross, Managing Director, and Chantal Pavageaux, Artistic Director. Pavageaux notes in the program that the project “is committed to constantly trying new things.” The Bible, composed of many written strands, offers delicious, exploitable opportunities for contemporary artists, and this multimedia play offers an insightful documentary of the

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Review of Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces Produced by Art of War Productions February 15-March…

Review of Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces Produced by Art of War Productions February 15-March 4, 2018 “[I]t’s imperative that we connect,” asserted Cindy Lou Johnson, in an interview with The New York Times when her compelling play, Brilliant Traces, was first produced in 1989 by The Cherry Lane Theatre. The message persists in this beautiful new production by Art of Warr Productions along with Ruddy Productions, Stonestreet Studios, George Gross, Derrick Moore and Gene Pope. I previewed

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“Maybe We’re Just People”: A Review of “No-No Boy,” a Play by Ken Narasaki

Beloved Japanese-American actors, Pat Morita and George Takei, have no doubt made many Americans aware of the internment of Japanese Americans in American concentration camps during World War II. Ken Narasaki, the playwright who brings us No-No Boy, has adapted John Okada’s 1957 novel of the same name, about a particular, but perhaps less well-known, consequence of this racist episode. John Okada himself was interrupted in his college studies by the internment, but he was allowed to leave the c

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Review: World Premier of Jericho: A Dark Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups from the play Liliom,by Ferenc…

Back to the Beginning: Liliom and Carousel Let me begin this review by telling you that I read Ferenc Molnar’s source play, Liliom (1909), many years ago. I did not love it. That play requires around 40 characters — too many to follow — and the dialogue seemed to be composed of serial arguments more than plot development. The play bombed in Molnar’s native Budapest; yet, in 1921, it was a Broadway smash hit. America embraced Molnar’s story, and, underneath all the controversy and the overload o

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Review of A Piece of My Heart, by Shirley Lauro

What we leave behind The forgotten nurses of the Vietnam War are the poignant subject of Shirley Lauro’s highly affecting and effective play, Piece of My Heart, based on Keith Walker’s compilation of their narratives. Faithful to its title and the era, taken from Janis Joplin’s song, the drama built to a feisty, hoarse wail that attacked and resuscitated the heart of the audience. A capable cast, tightly directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, animated the spirit of the nurses and the American 197

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Review of Exhibit This!: The Museum Comedies by Luigi Jannuzzi

This witty collage of monologues and short plays is a reminder of both familiar people and artwork. When least expected, though, the work suddenly elevates the audience from its warm, romantic frame to a profound philosophical thought. Playwright Luigi Jannuzzi’s comic sensibility is a delight, and some of the parts exceed the whole. Director Elizabeth Rothan ably assumes the task of creating continuity among the far-ranging works of art, including everything from a romantic interlude between t

Review of "Full Bloom," by Suzanne Bradbeer

“Everyone is looking for an answer,” muses teen-aged Phoebe late in Suzanne Bradbeer’s excellent, open-ended question of a play, Full Bloom. While the playwright channels numerous authors, beginning with Sophocles, to position the Harris family as the contemporary descendent of J.D. Salinger'’s Caulfields, the strength of this play was found in its focus on a real teenager, Phoebe, and her struggle to come to terms with her own developing body. Like Holden Caulfield, Phoebe is ignored by occasion

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Review of Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Good teaching has certainly fallen by the -- er -- wayside -- in this school, and the children have been left behind under the evil spell of one wicked Mrs. Gorp, played with relish by Rachel Soll in this captivating production directed by Laura Stevens in Manhattan Children’s Theatre’s terrific new home between Broadway and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan. In this comfortable new location, the theatre’s looonnnnng flight of stairs has been replaced by a delightful drama about a school that wa

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A Review of "The Nastiest Drink in the World," Book and Lyrics by Mark Lowenstern

You might think that a kingdom run by the uncorrectable, but often mistaken, King Fredipus (Dan Kolodny) would be a colorless, dismal, even frightening place. But you’d be wrong. The authors, director, and choreographer (Dax Valdes), and costume (Sylvie Marc Charles), lighting (Rie Ono), and set (Jess Hooks) designers deliciously conspired to provide a colorful, madcap hour of escapist fun in the aptly named Kingdom of Baloneya. Lights (Shuhei Sho) and a simple but clever set of drapes contribu

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Review of Richard III by Judith Shakespeare Company

This production of Richard III marked important milestones for the innovative Judith Shakespeare Company: The play completed Shakespeare's history cycle and, as the 19th production, it also marked the halfway point in the canon for this Company. JSC has also met its ambitious goal of gender-blind casting, featuring Gail Cronauer as the murderous, crook-backed Richard, and talented gender-bender performances by numerous members of the cast. Inversions were key as director Joanne Zipay reinvented

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What Was Lost: A Review of the 2017 film, “The Long Wet Grass,” produced by Nancy Manocherian, Anna…

If you are familiar with the history of the “Disappeared” during Ireland’s Troubles, then the ending of the beautiful short film The Long Wet Grass is not going to surprise you, but the journey of watching is a poignant, often metaphoric, labor of love and pathos. The story of two people, Victor and Woman, caught in the nets of history and choices, entered publication as a vivid flash fiction story by Seamus Scanlon, published online by The Galway Review. By persisting in revisiting the characte