photo: Scott Suchman

The Signature's austere, superbly realized production of a newly revised version of The Visit is extraordinary music theatre of high quality: Terrence McNally's adaptation of the grim morality tale has great dramatic impact, and the cohesive Kander & Ebb score rates consideration with some of their best work. After a flawless first act, the storytelling missteps - once we know the dark reason why the world's richest woman has descended on the desperately poor town where she grew up, we have limited patience for the romanticized remembrances of her first love (even if it is George Hearn taking the trip down memory lane about Chita Rivera.) The two stage vets are riveting, often using stillness to great effect, and Hearn - who has a challenging job as the emotional center of the cold-eyed story - has a subtle and profoundly sad moment in the second act that moved many in the audience to instant tears. Rivera's character walks around with a cane thanks to a wooden leg, but the show nonetheless contrives a way for her to have an Ann Reinking-choreographed dance number. Is there anyone with blood in their veins who is fool enough to complain about that?

The Mystery Of Irma Vep

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Vincent River

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Even one of the actors in Vincent River says it: "The penny's dropped." Of course it does: Philip Ridley has rigged the show to make his words drop like bombshells, carefully controlling the show to keep it suspenseful. But he doesn't need to: he has deep characters and, at least in this production, excellent actors for this haunted two-hander (Deborah Findlay and Mark Field). Ultimately, by rigging the flow of information, he bottles all the humanity in the show, and makes the plot the least interesting thing of all. And with his focus more on a detached procedural than a compelling drama, Vincent River comes across more as lazy river than whitewater thrill.

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The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist

Don't let the flimflam, vaudeville, exaggeration, or absurd plot shifts of The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist fool you. Dan Trujillo's an incredibly sharp playwright, conflating the cures of the Church with those of a Viagra huckster ("It'll put the stone/in your bone). The play is well-served by director Isaac Butler's familiarity with both the playwright and actors, for the writing requires flawless shifts between the presentational and the intimate. Not only do all three actors (Daryl Lathon, Abe Goldfarb, and Jennifer Gordon Thomas) have the range necessary to switch from mock-selves ("slapstick realism," if you will, concerning a pissed off Jen and her arsenal of gag weapons) to colorful characters (watch Abe's head explode as he yells "stupid fools"), but they look as if they've doing this show for years. The purpose of comedy is to lift the weight of the world off one's shoulders; religion aims to carry a similar burden. How appropriate, then, to find a show willing to take on both at once: that's a medicine worth taking.

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Hamlet

photo: Michal Daniel

Michael Stuhlbarg's indulgent, often bizarre performance as Hamlet is mostly of the foot-stomping tantrum variety, the Danish prince as neurotic Oedipal child. He grandstands and gesticulates but he has no more weight than a pest: this is a Hamlet where you couldn't care less about the main character. The production, directed by Oskar Eustis, offers a surprise or two - memorably, the play within the play is performed here with puppets, and Ophelia distributes stones rather than flowers when she goes mad - but in the absence of dramatic momentum it quickly becomes boring.

Single Black Female

photo: Gerry Goodstein

Ok, so it's essentially less a play than a stand-up comedy routine for two, and granted, it feels overextended over two acts. But damn did I laugh and have a good time at this consistently lively, enormously entertaining show in which two single black gals bring the usually hilarious low-down about dating and some thoughtful realness about racial identity; if the hmm-mmm's and the Amen's all around me were any indication, so did the audience I saw it with. Much of the show's often politically incorect and hard R-rated humor is just plain fun for anyone who can identify with the search for a good man, but there's also a healthy dose of specific cultural observation and relevance in Lisa B. Thompson's script, which calls upon the show's two performers (Riddick Marie and Soara-Joy Ross, both funny and endearing) to play a variety of characters. The show has been snappily directed to move swiftly by Colman Domingo, who can currently be seen on stage in Passing Strange. The two shows have something else in common: each brings middle-class black characters to the stage where they are woefully under-represented.