Born Yesterday: a difficult birth but, finally, a healthy baby
Billie Dawn, the central character in Born Yesterday, may go down in history as the greatest bimbo of all time. I’ve watched the movie version of Born Yesterday over and over and there’s a small, sunlit temple in the inner reaches of my heart that’s dedicated to the...
Newsies: the news is it’s frickin’ fantastic
This show features some of the best musical-theatre choreography I’ve ever seen — and I’m gay and old, so I have seen a lot of musical theatre, my children. Newsies is based on an actual newsboys’ strike that took place in New York City in 1899. Publishers Joseph...
Mamma Mia!: a nest of earworms
Mamma Mia! Here were go again. Mostly, director Shel Piercy’s production of this ABBA jukebox musical is cluttered and loud, but it also contains some really good bits. In the story, 20-year-old Sophie, who lives on a Greek island with her ex-pat mom Donna, is about...
All’s Well That Ends Well: the pick of the season (so far) at Bard
Yes! This is the Bard on the Beach production I’ve been waiting for. This is the one to see. All's Well That Ends Well is rarely produced — and there are good reasons for that — but co-directors Johnna Wright and Rohit Chokhani have set the story in India in 1947, in...
Hello and Goodbye: Say hello to gifted performers (and goodbye to the script)
Athol Fugard’s 1965 scripts Hello and Goodbye largely fails as drama, but it contains two excellent roles for actors — and the performers who are taking on those parts in this production are really, really good. Set in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Hello and...
Shakespeare in Love: not even sustained infatuation
My experience of Shakespeare in Love at Bard on the Beach was kind of like an okay date that ended with some fantastic making out. The morning after, am I in love with this show? Nope, not by a long shot, although I’m grateful for the pleasures it offers. Lee...
The Taming of the Shrew refuses to be tamed
Director Lois Anderson has brought us the all-yelling version of The Taming of the Shrew. It offers virtually no emotional access. And it doesn’t make sense. In Shakespeare’s controversial script, Petruchio, who wants to marry a wealthy woman, sets his sites on Kate,...
Zastrozzi: the play is not the thing, the production is
Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline is like a dream of cool masculinity — as conjured by a deeply reactionary 14-year-old straight boy. Consider the hero of George F. Walker’s 1977 play, which draws heavily on the 1810 novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Having killed over...
Jerusalem: England’s green chaotic land
In 2011 in a forest glade somewhere in Wiltshire, England, lives Johnny “Rooster” Byron in a trailer surrounded by trash. A middle-aged waster, he hosts alcohol- and drug-laced parties for the local teenagers. There’s a new housing estate nearby and the town council...
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