Michael Dale - Page 24

In his indispensable history of Broadway's less-successful musical ventures, 'Not Since Carrie,' Ken Mandelbaum famously wrote that bookwriter/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer John Barry's effort to bring Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel 'Lolita' to the stage 'has the singular distinction of being both a complete mistake and a superb adaptation.'

Pulitzer finalist Madeleine George describes the title character of her decidedly weird little comedy about the threat of global warming, Hurricane Diane, as 'a butch charm factory.' Becca Blackwell sure fits that bill perfectly, delivering the 90-minute play's exposition monologue with the engaging flair of an ace stand-up comic nailing the punch lines in a tight three minute set.

'You keep talking about these false allegations,' a woman survivor firmly explains. 'Let me make this clear. For rape, which is what we're talking about, that percentage is super small.' 'And in that percentage, however small, are innocent men,' answers her firefighter boyfriend, whose dreams of an NFL career were quashed with one accusation.'

The word 'meshugge' seemed to really pop out for the audience, receiving a big laugh when uttered by Tevye the night this reviewer thoroughly enjoyed the beautifully acted and sung National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's production of Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein's classic 1964 musical based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof.

Having recently completed 700+ performances at the Lyceum, Britain's Mischief Theatre's The Play That Goes Wrong, the 2015 Olivier Award winner for Best New Comedy, follows a trail blazed less than ten years ago by AVENUE Q, to become the sixth production to follow a hit Broadway run with a move to Off-Broadway's new World Stages.

It was only eight years ago when two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage's terrific show-biz social satire, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was first seen Off-Broadway, but director Kamilah Forbes' crackling good new mounting for Signature Theatre is a welcome return.

'As terrifying as anything I've seen,' is how a young fellow describes the natural phenomenon that gives playwright Simon Stephens' solo piece Sea Wall its title.

Opening in November of 1945 and closing up shop less than four months later, the sophomore Broadway effort of the team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, THE DAY BEFORE SPRING, would be the last musical by the composer of sumptuous melodies and the scribe of urbane wit that would lapse into obscurity.

The only part of FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME that doesn't bounce off an audience response comes at the very beginning when four voices announce a 'mic check' and standard phrases like 'mic one check' and 'this is microphone two' get extended into a frenetic off-the-cuff mixture of words, rhythms and beats.

You can pass laws, spread the wealth and educate the masses all you want, but perhaps the quickest way to dissolve the barriers between established classes is simply through giving in to raw passion.

'You take a mackerel, grill it, drizzle a little lemon on it, serve it up with a huge glass of white zinfandel, and one doesn't feel quite like blowing one's brains out anymore, does one?' observes a husband when considering the prospect of another evening's dinner with his wife of nearly twenty-five years.

The brevity of political satire's shelf life tends to rival that of a tray of supermarket eggs, but it seems one of the quips penned by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse for the book of their smash hit 1950 musical Call Me Madam is breathing in new life in the 21st Century.

With a proliferation of pimps, drug dealers and muggers saturating Times Square, business on Broadway was struggling during much of the 1970s, with theatres frequently left empty for long stretches and shows that didn't receive enthusiastic praise from the critics usually shutting down quickly.

'We can't talk about him, there's not enough time.' That's the quick explanation given to the audience as to why there's nobody portraying Michael Anthony, described 'as a bassist with a golden voice and a mullet that will last twenty years' in Amy Staats' fun and frisky comedy about some of the controversies surrounding big-haired metal rockers Van Halen, Eddie and Dave.

"In this business we make movies.  American movies.  Leave the films to the French."

Flying in the face of the dreadful 21st Century practice of making extreme cuts and revisions to classic musicals by deceased authors in the belief that they would offend contemporary sensibilities if presented as originally written, director Bartlett Sher has spent a good part of the last two decades mounting elegant and thoughtful revivals that smooth over potential trouble spots by, believe it or not, doing what directors are assigned to do... interpret and direct.

'Free speech is an acoustic art. It wasn't meant to go electric,' Colin Quinn explains in his very funny riff on contemporary American discourse, RED STATE BLUE STATE.

To those who knew her, Alice Trillin was highly regarded as an educator, author and film producer. But to millions more who never met her, she was the women that her husband, humorist Calvin Trillin, so obviously adored and admired with all of his heart.

'Before I walk in the room, I remember who I am,' explains rising hotshot negotiator Sarah in Helen Banner's new drama. 'I'm American. And I'm a woman, an attractive woman, divorced, successful, ambitious, sometimes on the news, going somewhere, from nowhere...'

During the first year of his presidency, after violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia during a protest involving white supremacists, many of whom were displaying Nazi symbols and slogans, Donald Trump infamously noted that there were 'very fine people' on both sides of the conflict. One could imagine the president regarding the character created by Neil LaBute for his solo one-act 'The Fourth Reich' to be one of those very fine people.