Michael Dale - Page 16

Do not expect a rousing 'Rainy Day Woman'/'Blowin' In The Wind'/'Mr. Tambourine Man' dance mega-mix.at the end of Girl from the North Country, playwright/director Conor McPherson's lovely, introspective drama that incorporates twenty selections from the extraordinary songbook of American folk legend Bob Dylan.

British playwright Richard Bean made a riotous Broadway debut six years ago with the knockabout farce ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, but his newest hit to cross the Atlantic, The Nap, while full of good-natured fun, partakes in subtler eccentricities.

'All that privilege and he can't figure out how to do anything?,' ponders one of the world's greatest actors as she attempts to delve into the psyche of one of the world's greatest theatrical characters.

The press script provided to critics reviewing Craig Lucas' somber and overstuffed drama, I WAS MOST ALIVE WITH YOU, specifies that the play 'was created to be performed by Deaf and hearing actors for Deaf and hearing audiences' and that all productions 'must provide full access for hearing and Deaf audiences at all performances.'

Don't be surprised to immediately sense a bit of familiarity in the dynamic between the two main characters as director Austin Pendleton's very fine La Femme Theatre production of the lesser-known Tennessee Williams drama A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur commences.

Dorothea 'Polly' Noonan, the real-life central character of Sharr White's new political drama, THE TRUE, was the grandmother of current United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.  If times were different, she might have been in the Senate herself, keeping the seat warm for her.

While the exact location of composer Ben Green, lyricist Greg Edwards and bookwriter Allan Rice's funny and frothy new musical dating adventure, Neurosis, is never revealed, it's a safe bet that New Yorkers, who have glamorized and romanticized neurotic tendencies into a beloved badge of honor, will mightily relate to its wacky antics in the name of love.

For the better part of the present decade, playwright/director Richard Nelson has been going seriously Chekhovian, first with a quartet of plays set during the Obama years in the Rhinebeck, New York home of a family named Apple and then with a trio of visits during the 2016 presidential campaign with the nearby Gabriel family.

Eat your heart out, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE.  Paul Weiss' 1963 historical drama, better known as MARAT/SADE, now hands over the crown for play with the longest title to mount a major New York production to Jen Silverman's delightful bit of heartfelt absurdism, COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES; IN ESSENCE, A QUEER AND OCCASIONALLY HAZARDOUS EXPLORATION; DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND YOU READ ABOUT SHACKLETON AND HOW HE EXPLORED THE ANTARTIC? IMAGINE THE ANTARCTIC AS A PUSSY AND IT'S SORT OF LIKE THAT.

There are times in musical theatre when a talented cast performing their hearts out can make questionable material not only endurable, but even somewhat enjoyable. Sadly, this is not the case with R.R.R.E.D., which, while given a game try by a quartet of enthusiastic belters displaying ample showbiz pizzazz, begins with a potentially interesting idea and never goes anywhere with it.

Perhaps if Clifford Odets' landmark pro-union drama, WAITING FOR LEFTY, hadn't opened the year before, Lillian Hellman's 1936 labor drama, DAYS TO COME, the sophomore Broadway effort of the playwright who made a huge name for herself two years earlier with THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, might have been better received.

With an innocuous book more focused on moving to plot points than creating interesting leading characters and a platitude-heavy score that tends to linger on moments instead of expanding on them, PRETTY WOMAN, based on the hit 1990 film, is the blandest musical to hit Broadway in recent memory.

The past several Broadway seasons have seen extraordinary developments in musical theatre, with a steady stream of new shows, usually transferring from non-profit Off-Broadway, offering smart writing, inventive storytelling and expanded notions of the subject matter and musical styles that can be welcomed into the art form.

The stage is quite empty, save for a makeshift throne in a corner and a couple of rows of ordinary looking chairs in the back, where actors not involved with scenes sit. The costumes are contemporary clothes, mostly black, with the occasional embellishment to suggest the 15th Century setting. When a character is in need of a dagger, he'll grab one of the two hanging from ropes on either side of the stage.

It may not have the romantic sweep of 'Some Enchanted Evening' or the driving intensity of 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' but so far, the best new theatre song of this young season is a finely-crafted emotional shut-down carrying the unlikely title 'Michael In The Bathroom.'

Back in the days, really not very long ago, when self-effacing gags about failed diets were one of the few topics of discussion deemed acceptable for women in comedy, the punchline Renee Taylor uses after telling about the time when she ate nothing but meatballs every day because it was the diet that helped Lou Costello shed twenty pounds before filming 'Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy,' would have been regarded as gold.

The last time an actor appeared in a Broadway musical playing a role he had previously essayed on film, it was 1983, when Anthony Quinn opened in the revival of ZORBA. Sharing that unusual distinction with him now is Israeli actor Sasson Gabay who has taken over as leading man of this past season's 10-time Tony winning musical, THE BAND'S VISIT.

One of the most exciting and important voices to emerge from the 1980s-90s American performance art movement, Karen Finley might be regarded as one of the country's most noted censored artists.

The late afternoon and early evening rain that had been steadily falling last Friday didn't stop the faithful from arriving at Central Park's Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare In The Park's return of the Public Works' 2016 musical version of TWELFTH NIGHT.

'I sound like Borat and I look like Seinfeld,' jokes the Russian-accented illusionist Vitaly Beckman, who indeed sports a resemblance to 9th Avenue's most famous diner patron.