Michael Dale - Page 54

Five years ago, playwright/composer/lyricist/performer Ethan Lipton stood on the stage of Joe's Pub as the central character of his solo musical NO PLACE TO GO, explaining the choices he had to make when the company he worked for announced it was relocating to Mars.

Straight cisgender teenage boys looking to lose their virginity are generally accepted as a staple of coming-of-age comedies that make movie theatre box offices hum. But when it comes to the matter of young girls being eager to have their first sexual encounter, audiences tend to prefer a bit more delicacy.

When Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's classic musical thriller Sweeney Todd: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET opened on Broadway in 1979, Harold Prince's production was of grand operatic proportions. Opera houses frequently produce the show in that manner, but New York's stage revivals seem to be getting increasingly smaller.

It's not exactly a spoiler to note that the closing scene of Penelope Skinner's wonderfully absorbing and issue-oriented dramatic comedy, LINDA, has the title character, a successful marketing executive, addressing a group of colleagues in the year 2007, excited about how the anti-aging cream she promotes has been putting out the message that the beauty in all women of all ages is a cause for celebration.

'I'm almost twenty-nine years old and no one has ever told me they love me,' says the sweet, funny and open-hearted Jordan during a monologue that opens the second act of Joshua Harmon's giddy and enrapturing romantic comedy, Significant Other.

A night out at David Mamet's tense and terse new play, The Penitent, now getting a hard-edged premiere by director Neil Pepe via Atlantic Theatre Company, isn't so much an observance of human behavior as it is a debate of moral issues.

Listening to the original Broadway cast album of Jerry Herman's 1969 entry, DEAR WORLD, it's almost unimaginable to think you're hearing the score of a show that shuttered on Broadway after less than four months worth of performances.

You can't say that playwright/director Will Eno doesn't go out big with his new piece, WAKEY, WAKEY. Just before curtain calls, an extra-bright video montage, set to The Olivia Tremor Control's “Love Athena,” wreaks havoc with audience members' pupils. Once eyes are able to adjust, they'll notice bubbles floating through the house, followed by balloons. There's even a large disco ball reflecting lights all over the place.

Inspired by Georges Seurat's pointillism masterwork 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,' the authors explore how 'the art of making art' can be less about applying paint to a canvas as it is about applying a signature to a check.

Though the brilliant musicals that composer John Kander created with his late lyricist partner Fred Ebb frequently tackled dark and violent issues (CABARET, CHICAGO, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS among them), they did so with a shiny, often cynical veneer of show-biz. Snazzy melodies and joyful lyrics barely hid horrific subtext.

'We're dealing with some fairly old and ancient material, so maybe let's trust it to be really wise and meaningful, okay?' asks a character acting as a kind of host at the beginning of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' fun and breezy new play, Everybody.

When tragedy strikes a community, after the initial shock and the effort to neutralize the situation, there's always a strong desire to return to normalcy.

It would be nice to be able take in The Wooster Group's intriguing docu-theatre piece, THE TOWN HALL AFFAIR, as a look at the grotesquely blatant brand sexism of nearly 50 years ago that we have since outgrown. Sadly, this glimpse at a carnival-like event disguised as a serious debate on the subject of, as it was known at the time, women's lib, is likely to remind audience members of current headlines.

Those who have yet to have their fill of half-price post-Valentine's Day candy will be happy to discover that what looks like crudites when you step into Derek McLane's environmental set for Wallace Shawn's fascinating Evening at the Talk House are actually sugary treats such as marshmallows, Swedish fish and gummy worms.

Deceptively, little seems to happen in the first several scenes of Tracy Letts' riveting 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Man from Nebraska, now receiving a superb New York premiere at Second Stage.

When Nazis began publicly burning copies of his latest musical theatre piece, composer Kurt Weill took it as a hint that he might be better off sailing to America and writing for Broadway.

One would assume that Mark Twain would have been amused that his 1884 novel condemning America's history of enslavement of Africans, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' has occasionally been condemned itself as racist literature for its realistic use of a certain slur.

With all due respect to the world class singers and dancers who trod Broadway's boards every season, watching Glenn Close completely enthrall and mesmerize an audience with her two dramatic solos in the new concert revival of Sunset Boulevard is a reminder that musical theatre is at its most thrilling when musical moments are enhanced by incisive acting.

After establishing himself as resident doorman, stage manager and sex slave at the Caffe Cino, the historic Cornelia Street birthplace of Off-Off Broadway and America's gay theatre movement, Robert Patrick summoned up the courage to join the ranks of the venue's resident staff of playwrights (Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen and William Hoffman among them) to begin submitting his own creations to owner Joe Cino. Eventually, the Broadway production of KENNEDY'S CHILDREN would help Patrick gain recognition as one of the significant dramatic voices emerging from New York's downtown scene.

The legendary Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe, who died of AIDS in 1993 at age 46, has been long gone when Paola Lazaro's humorous drama, Tell Hector I Miss Him, takes place, but his absence has the same symbolic meaning as when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel asked, 'Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?'