Reviews

‘Play it again, Sam’ is an infamous, and yet misquoted, quote from an equally infamous film, Casablanca. PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM is a comedic play written by Woody Allen. Lest the two not be any further confused, PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, in which the neurotic leading man models his behavior [...]

Tap dancing, a beautiful ingénue, an alcoholic chaperone, an aviatrix, an over-the-top Casanova, and singing gangsters.  What more could one ask for in musical theatre?  It’s rare that I attend a show these days where the audience is belly-aching with laughter and the kids are wide awake, laughing and paying [...]

FOOLS by Neil Simon, the final 65th season production now playing at The Village Players of Hatboro, features clever casting by directors Ron Green and Gina Lutz which improves on an otherwise silly script,. The leading players are no longer as contrived as the characters on the pages. The actors [...]

From the moment Tyne Daly appears on stage commanding the audience to focus on the troubled soul of Katharine Gerard, she shows her extensive theatre and television experience in Terrence McNally’s new play, MOTHERS AND SONS at Bucks County Playhouse. Often best remembered as Detective Mary Beth Lacey in the [...]

It’s been 50 years since Stephen Sondheim’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM won its first Tony Award, and 50 years since the Chapel Street Players held their very first FUNdraiser, an annual fundraising event and show to benefit the CSP. 1963 also marked the year [...]

Even though Jason Miller’s THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON won the Pulitizer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1973, you don’t see it performed too often. The 2011 Broadway revival, starring big names like Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, and Chris Noth, met with a so-so reception. It’s [...]

Odd-couple type relationships always make for an engaging show premise, especially when the two steadfast characters are portrayed with such chemistry and buoyancy.  The volley of wits between an unlikely pair: the Southern, white, Jewish Miss Daisy Werthan, (played by Susan Dewey), and her enthusiastic yet uneducated African American chauffeur, [...]

“BOOOOOOOOOOO!!! BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” So begins THE PHILLY FAN, the hilarious collaboration between Theatre Exile, playwright Bruce Graham, and actor Tom McCarthy. The solo show, a Philadelphia tradition since its inception by McCarthy in the 2004 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, is running for the first time at Studio X, Theatre Exile’s intimate space [...]

Seeing Shakespeare’s comedy MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING in the intimate open-air Frank Stephens Memorial Theater in Arden, Delaware, surrounded by a canopy of tall trees is a terrific treat, especially as this particular cast, directed by Mary Catherine Kelley, has a good grasp of the style and spirit of the [...]

What do a cow, a cape, hair and a slipper have in common? A Stephen Sondheim fairy-tale musical, of course! Now put together the familiar stories of “Cinderella”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Rapunzel” and “Jack and the Beanstalk”. Now what? You got it! We have one whimsically clever, yet sophisticated, [...]

It took a lot of people to create the present version of THE 39 STEPS, now at Haddonfield Plays and Players. It was adapted by Patrick Barlow from a mystery novel by John Buchan, a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and an original four-actor concept by Simon Corble and Nobby [...]

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (sponsored by Exelon Generation) opened this weekend and runs through Sunday, June 23rd, at the Steel River Playhouse (SRP) in Pottstown, PA, where the talented main cast exudes guts and glitter, while the supporting ensemble in high-heels trips through the dance numbers.  The opening night production [...]

“Why,” the legendary writer Noel Coward once asked, “am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say ‘Darling, how wonderful’?” The answer is quite simple: that is the cultivated, urbane and witty persona he established for himself…and the characters he created; through which [...]

GLASS: SHATTERED, The Renegade Company’s innovative, updated deconstruction of Tennessee Williams’ THE GLASS MENAGERIE, combines live theater with film and Freudian self-analysis in its study of a tortured protagonist damaged by a dysfunctional family. Unable to escape the past, Tom–here a filmmaker, not the aspiring poet of Williams’ thinly fictionalized [...]

Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden starred in the original production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, now being presented as the final show of Old Academy Players 2012-2013 season. This is quite a group of actors to compete against and fortunately director J.P. Parrella doesn’t attempt to. [...]

The Eagle Theatre of Hammonton’s new production of URINETOWN THE MUSICAL is an absolute smash hit! The spunky satire hits a home run right out of the ball park and straight into URINETOWN. Originally produced on Broadway in 2001, URINETOWN had 965 performances and received ten Tony nominations and three [...]

To pee or not to pee, that is the question. That’s enough potty humor. In fact, there is no more. I promise. My wife, daughter and I just attended the opening night of URINETOWN THE MUSICAL at The Eagle Theatre in Hammonton, NJ. Let me say this first: don’t let [...]

The title of Eric Pfeffinger’s SOME OTHER KIND OF PERSON, now in production by Interact Theatre Company, refers to a purposefully misquoted line of Aristotle, that if you act virtuously out of self-interest you cannot be called a virtuous person but “some other kind of person.” Pfeffinger’s characters are never [...]

Take a still-grieving widower, a divorcee who wants to start a new man-free life, and their nearest and dearest, who think they ought to be together, and you might think you have a typical Neil Simon comedy. But Simon’s CHAPTER TWO, in an amazing production by Sketch Club Players of [...]

DCP’s production of Edmond Rostand’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC, as directed by Jennifer Brozenske, proceeds like poetry on the stage; language dances with light and parleys (and parlays) with romance and danger. There is a delightful buoyancy to Brozenske’s staging of this ageless tale of Hercule Savinien De Cyrano de Bergerac [...]