Michael Dale - Page 8

Audience members sensing a bit of déjà vu watching Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins superbly applying their craft in Christopher Hampton's English translation of French playwright Florian Zeller's The Height of the Storm at Manhattan Theatre Club's Friedman Theatre might smack their foreheads at the realization that this is where they witnessed Hampton's adaptation of Zeller's THE FATHER three years ago.

There are times, perhaps if you know someone studying theatre at a liberal arts college, when one may be invited to attend a student-written play about how hip it is to be culturally-aware twentysomething intellectuals struggling to make it in the big city. The kind of play where introverted women clash with men who give the appearance of being sensitive in order to get laid. They all drink lots of vodka while quoting books and plays and films that show off the playwright's varied points of reference more than offer any insights into character.

'This is a work in progress,' co-author Alix Sobler advised the Minetta Lane Theatre audience before a press performance of the autobiographical solo play, MARGARET TRUDEAU: CERTAIN WOMAN OF AN AGE.

The king is dead, and the women who were rivals for his affection suddenly realize he wasn't anything worth fighting over. Okay, then... dance break!

'Please don't mention specifically anything that happens in the show,' the star of Derren Brown: Secret requests of his audience about twenty minutes into his performance.

A bit over 400 years ago, a white Englishman named William Shakespeare scripted a play based on a story by a white Italian known as Cinthio about a Moorish general serving in the Venetian army, who is regarded as an outsider by his white colleagues because of his skin color.

When the lights go up on Lois Robbins' solo piece, L.O.V.E.R., the playwright/performer is demonstrating how, at age three, she would give herself orgasms by straddling her legs around the corner of her family's washing machine.

The elegant economy of language with which a trio of romantically entangled souls express themselves in Harold Pinter's 1978 infidelity drama, Betrayal, allowing for unspoken emotions to subtly work their way to the surface, is beautifully enhanced by the production elements of director Jamie Lloyd's riveting London production; transferring to Broadway with its three exceptional stars, Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox.

Sure, it's a bit early in the game, but what might turn out to be the funniest scene to hit New York stages in this young theatre season occurs at the end of the first act in Jonathan Spector's sharp and empathetic social commentary, EUREKA DAY.

While the name Walt Disney will certainly be familiar to all those arriving at the Delacorte for Public Works' stage adaptation of the 1997 animated musical feature Hercules, hopefully a good deal of them will leave Central Park remembering the name Lear deBessonet.

One of the tightest ensembles of actors you're apt to see applying their craft on a New York stage these days is the quartet of youngsters portraying siblings aged 5-12 in Bess Wohl's engrossing drama of childhood memories, Make Believe.

'They're out of control,' an exasperated Bradley Dean cries out in a plea of victimization. 'Can you believe they tried to destroy my new housing project?' And from there you can pretty much predict where the plot of Jim Steinman's wildly oddball and frequently hilarious Bat Out of Hell is going.

a?oeAs 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.

It was forty years ago when Shakespeare in the Park's Delacorte Theater was last invaded by The Bard's CORIOLANUS, but perhaps The Public's politically-minded artistic director Oskar Eustis thought this would be a good time to present a drama about an inexperienced politician who initially gains favor on a wave of populism, only to suffer downfall when his disdain for those outside of his privileged class is exposed.

Perhaps if, like most first attempts at playwrighting penned by a young unknown who is also cast in the leading role, Domenica Feraud's RINSE, REPEAT had a modestly-produced premiere production in a small black box theatre, this reviewer would be more enthused to recommend an interesting work in progress by a new and underrepresented voice.

It's doubtful one will find a more romantic, nor a sexier theatergoing experience within the five boroughs this summer than seated close to someone special in one of Theatre XIV's cozy champagne couches when nearly directly above you, aerialists Marcy Richardson and Nolan McKew are performing a sensuous display of glistening muscles and elegant eroticism while maneuvering their nearly nude bodies in a variety of tableaus while hanging from a crown-shaped chandelier.

Like Aaron Posner's UNCLE VANYA-inspired LIFE SUCKS, still packing in the disillusioned masses at Theatre Row, the new offering by MCC is more of a freestyle riff on its sullen source material, lifting subtext to the surface in contemporary vernacular and shaving the whole thing down to a quick-paced 90 minutes.

When he passed on at age 60 in 1933, Addison Mizner was best known as the architect whose Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean style helped define the emerging visual culture of South Florida. When his younger brother Wilson Mizner died two months later, he was best known as a raconteur whose name could occasionally be found among the writing credits of a Broadway play or Hollywood feature.

From his hit Off-Broadway debut with A VERY MERRY UNAUTHORIZED CHILDREN'S SCIENTOLOGY PAGEANT to his Broadway bow with BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON to his current mounting of BEETLEJUICE, that crazily imaginative Alex Timbers has spent the past 15 years or so establishing himself as New York's top director for turning weird ideas into terrific times at the theatre.

In the second act of Chris Urch's excellent drama about a particularly ugly era of Uganda's intolerance of homosexuals, The Rolling Stone, James Udom is granted what might be considered the most challenging acting assignment to be currently witnessed on a New York stage.