Michael Dale - Page 12

According to this reviewer's admittedly casual bit of Googling, the first Broadway production based on Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' was playwright Alice Gerstenberg's version, which opened at the Booth in 1915. But undoubtedly there were many other variations before then.

Buried amongst the over twenty names receiving the smallest-sized billing for their contributions to Roundabout Theatre Company's hot new revival of Cole Porter and Sam & Bella Spewack's masterpiece of kick-back musical comedy entertainment, Kiss Me, Kate, is the credit 'Additional Material' with the name of the accomplished Broadway lyricist Amanda Green written below.

It was three seasons ago that French playwright Florian Zeller's Moliere Award winning THE FATHER came to Broadway from London in an English translation by Christopher Hampton. Frank Langella earn a Tony playing an aging dementia-stricken man whose faltering memory causes his perceptions of his past and present to change in every scene.

When composer/lyricist Joe Iconis and bookwriter Joe Tracz's hard-rocking, super-charged and very well written science fiction musical comedy Be More Chill ended its month-long premiere engagement at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey less than four years ago, the thought of a Broadway production may have seemed as far-fetched and phantasmagoric as the plot of its source material, Ned Vizzini's same-named 2004 novel.

While this reviewer is always up for a tub of popcorn and a screening of 'Crossing Delancey' or 'Muriel's Wedding,' Suzy Conn's spirited CHICK FLICK, THE MUSICAL is more accurately aimed at connoisseurs of the genre; those whose everyday conversation is packed with quotes from Nora Ephron screenplays and who are experts at determining which chardonnays go with Barbra and which with Meryl.

The conflict between seeing multiple sides of an issue and the insistence that there is only one correct side is the power that fuels Bekah Brunstetter's sweet and provocative multi-layered comedy/drama The Cake, a fictional story that offers evenly sliced arguments regarding the news-making debates involving same-sex couples planning their wedding receptions and bakers who decline their cake-creating business.

With the exception of those specifically dedicated to making it their mission, there isn't a theatre company in New York whose output contains such a high percentage of productions by women playwrights as The Mint.

If a contemporary Hollywood screenwriter pitched the plot of Sean O'Casey's classic 1923 drama, The Shadow of a Gunman to a movie producer ('A struggling poet gets in over his head when he allows his neighbors to believe he's an IRA gunman in order to impress an attractive young woman.') it might get sold as a wacky romantic comedy.

Over 160 years after she first gained fame tending to wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War, the name Florence Nightingale is still recognized as a symbol of selfless caregiving and she is often regarded as the founder of modern nursing. But there was another woman who was just as beloved by soldiers for her bravery and leadership during that conflict. And though the name Mary Seacole has drifted into obscurity among Americans, she is still revered by the British as a pioneer in nursing.

The soft clanging of pots and pans gently hitting each other is the first indication that the title characters of South African playwright Athol Fugard's 1969 indictment of Apartheid segregation, Boesman and Lena have arrived.

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.