Chriselle Tidrick’s ABOVE AND BEYOND DANCE is literally that, as well as figuratively. The strength of the company is in its mixture of Modern Dance and acrobatic circus skills. Their new show RAW starts with an innovative Modern adagio by Tidrick and Fernando Francisco about affection/rejection that shows the supple strength and flexibility of their bodies through creative lifts and moves. Tidrickl’s dance on a dangling red cloth is a graceful gymnastic episode-- the excitement of the drops, the beauty of her moves. Her superbly trained strong flexible body is a new dimension in Modern Dance. Tomomo Imai performs a lovely solo about yearning, and then Tidrick’s Tango on a trapeze-- she’s magnificent in her gymnastic and dance positions and movements-- a Wonder Woman. Tidrick, Imai and Lisa Natoli’s gymno-dance on three rope loops also takes Modern Dance to an exciting unfamiliar place as they hang, dance, pose, and are twirled by Francisco. Lighting by David Ojala perfectly illuminates the action, and although some of the mournful dissonant music, which probably was right for the abstraction in the movement, was not my cup of accompaniment, the spectacular physical display kept me fascinated— and moved.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts com

PINS AND NEEDLES, Harold Rome’s 1937 musical review pushing for unions, the rights of the poor, satirizing the reactionary right, is a lot of fun for an old “Lefty” like me. Rome has written some of the cleverest lyrics in town, with tunes that bounce as they sing about being shackle-free, about love (Union for Two), depression problems, stirring up the workers. A rich woman sings “It’s Not Cricket to Pickett,” there’s Don’t sit on the “Status Quo,” and the old hit “Sing Me a Song of Social Significance.” The very inventive director/choreographer Eleanor Reissa has put delightful life, action and movement into the numbers performed by the seven-member cast in this light satire of conditions long ago that we see reflected today. Mimi Stern-Wolfe’s piano accompaniment is clear, crisp, lifting and supporting the whole show, which I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts com

THE MOUNTAINTOP by Katori Hall gives us two super performers, the rather real Samuel L. Jackson and the effervescent, delightful, beautiful Angela Basset in a fanciful mixture of politics of the time and the life-like inner turmoil of Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he is assassinated. Bassett plays the room service person who brings him a cup of coffee. It segues into an imaginative fun fantasy-- a comedy framework for political ideas at a critical time and the upcoming tragedy. Kenny Leon has directed with flair, and as there is a shift in mood and mode, he creates a terrific feat of stagecraft. Set and projections by David Gallo and Brian MacDevitt’s lighting enhance everything. The slightly saccharine ending could be trimmed, but not the final “geschrei” of history. This is a powerful, entertaining, well-written, well-performed play with two top-level actor/personalities who will stay with you after the curtain falls. My bet is that the flamboyant Bassett will win the Tony. Check it out.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts com

In MAN AND BOY, a revival of Terrence Rattigan’s 1961 play about a flamboyant financial trickster, Frank Langella, surrounded by a mostly excellent cast, gives a tour-de-force performance as he encounters his estranged son, played by Adam Driver in a rushed, overacted performance, singing many of his lines, partly in soprano, contrasting with the solid Zach Grenier, Michael Siberry, Virginia Kull and the rest of the cast. The play is fascinating in this time of financial crisis, and Langella’s powerhouse performance, filled with subtleties, emotional shifts, nuances, is a sure Tony nomination, and probably the winner. Set by Derek McLane gives clear definition and dimension, and Kevin Adams’ lighting enhances all. Costumes by Martin Pakledinaz are appropriate for the time (30’s) and just right. Maria Aitken has directed the play with strength, subtlety and vigor (although a bit too much vigor for Driver). The totally engaging play plumbs the depths of lack of conscience as a man in the grip of the lowest material forces commits an ultimate betrayal. Do you go to the theatre hoping to see great acting? It’s here— catch Langella.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts com

DATE OF A LIFETIME, book and lyrics by Carl Kissin, music by Robert Baumgartner, Jr., is a witty musical on dating, courtship and marriage performed by two terrific singer/actors with strong lyrical voices- Farah Alvin and Jamie LaVerdiere. It is his, then her vision of what a life together might be, cleanly directed by Jeremy Dobrish, with lively choreography by Wendy Seyb. The lyrics are clever, the catchy tunes bounce. In its contrasting relationship outlines it hits many universalities-- lots familiar, but smartly written and nicely communicated, as we get involved the hopes of one then the other. With a simple set and props by Susan Barras and excellent lighting by Jeff Croiter, It’s all energetic, utterly charming, first rate entertainment. It is part of The New York Musical Theatre Festival, and deserves a long run.
212/664-0979.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

NOAH AND THE TOWERFLOWER by Sean McLoughlin, part of the 1st Irish Festival, gives us two top-level actors in a touching drama about bottom-level solo people, Darren Healy and Mary Murray, whose bleak lives have a crying need to connect with a possible romantic liaison. They are both extraordinary in their conviction and total immersion into their roles, and his performance is enhanced by his physicality and impressions as they play a fragile former junkie and a man just released from prison. The play about these two lost people and their interactions is beautifully directed by Jim Culleton, with good lighting by Mark Galione and simple set by Sinead O’Hanlon. It’s a pleasure to be in the presence of such fine work in all departments.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

THE COMPLETE & CONDENSED STAGE DIRECTIONS OF EUGENE O’NEILL is a brilliant conception by its director Christopher Lear, beautifully carried out by a great ensemble cast, all members of the long-running The New York Neo-Futurists. O’Neill did not trust actors, and was notorious for his detailed stage directions such as He throws himself into a chair, and She covers her face with her hands. Here, a narrator reads the directions, and the agile, super cast of three men and three women literally carry them out. The don’t try to be funny-- just to fulfill the words, and are hilarious. Since no words of the play are spoken, we have no idea what each play is about, which makes the actions and a few sounds the actors make into a Mime-filled performance at the highest level of physical expression and humor. It’s totally tasteful, without any slapstick (which might have been a temptation), and the troupe clearly is trained, experienced (and attractive). The plays are from O’Neill’s early years—1913 to 1917, and the group hopes to do his later plays in the future. Through October 8th at The Kraine Theatre—866/811-4111.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

CIRQUE DE LEGUME (Circus of Vegetable) is a great clown show performed hilariously by Jamie Carswell and Nancy Trotter Landry as part of the annual Imagine Ireland Festival. They are classic red-nosed clowns, with a novel idea (vegetables), creatively directed by Pablo Ibarluzea. A head of lettuce is an animal who follows orders, does tricks and barks. Jamie becomes a horse: expressions, trots, movements that are real and satirical at the same time. Nancy beats it with a leek stalk, and feeds it carrots, which it eats and spits-- vegetables fly. The grownups laughed, the kids in the audience sat there amazed, not quite believing what they were seeing. Then red peppers used as if they were knives. A potato, zucchinis as musical instruments, a beet as a hypnosis pendulum-- which puts her into a trance where she is transformed into a chicken, a goat and a squirrel. She transforms into a great seal who does seal tricks, and there is a chair entanglement with tumbling, and the topper is onion peeling and biting as a striptease. These two superb clowns dance and cavort beautifully in a boldly ridiculous performance. Unfortunately it closes Sunday October 2nd at 59E59.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

HARRY & EDDIE by Mark Weston gives us the friendship between Harry Truman and the Jewish Eddie Jacobson who served together in World War I, became partners in a men’s clothing shop in Missouri after the war, and remained lifelong friends— even after Truman became President of The United States.

At a critical moment Jacobson was able to get Truman to meet Chaim Weizman, the acclaimed scientist and Jewish leader, which probably influenced Truman as he immediately recognized Israel when they declared themselves to be a state in 1948. It is a well-produced production with historical slides nicely illustrating the years that pass and good lighting and sets by Josh Iacovelli. Directed by Bob Spiotto, it is basically a one-man show with Jacobson played by Rick Grossman in an overblown performance in which he stops for laughs that aren’t there, but the simplistic historical material is mildly interesting. Harry Truman is played convincingly by Daniel Hicks who not only gives a first rate personification of Truman, but is emotionally totally present in the short scenes he does with Eddie.

Jacobson’s wife is played by Lydia Gladstone, a costume designer and chorus singer in musicals who seems to be a very nice lady. Would that they had hired a more convincing actress for this very tiny role. Grossman, a veteran of Yiddish Theatre, settles down as the play progresses, but all emotions are demonstrated (perhaps in Yiddish Theatre style from many years ago) and at the end, Grossman moved himself to tears. Although the Holocaust descriptions in the play give us nothing that we don’t already know, the story of the unlikely friendship between the two men is a story which should be told, and it holds our interest as it unfolds, especially as facets of Truman are revealed by Hicks. Two vital pieces of history are left out, however. 1. The British moved out, leaving Israel open to attack by five surrounding Arab countries, and 2. The five countries did attack. Truman’s recognition helped Israel survive.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

WOODY GUTHRIE DREAMS, written by and starring Michael Patrick Flanagan Smith, is a hodge-podge of style, emphasis, and capability of the performers. As Smith and others narrate Guthrie’s life, the show begins with a surreal, expressionistic representation of Capitalism with people in black, wearing derbies, smoking cigars. It soon veers away from this style. I knew Woody Guthrie-- met him when I studied dance with his wife Marjorie Mazzia. I introduced Ramblin’ Jack Elliot to him, and sat in Woody’s living room listening to the two of them play and sing “I Be Goody if You Will Buy Me a Rubber Dolly,” Jack on guitar, Woody on mandolin, over and over for 45 minutes. Woody had a tone, a quiet solidity without large physical gestures. Smith doesn’t have the tone or the gesture. But that’s ok, we don’t necessarily have to have perfect authenticity in a biographical play. But there are two major problems in this production: the “hodge” in the “podge” is the insertion of the extraneous-- like two sequences of Joseph Stalin spouting (because Woody was a Communist), Jesus appearing as Pete Seeger, and an imagined Will Rogers. And the main problem: too much expanded biography and not enough of why we came to see the show— Woody’s songs.

Caleb Stine sings well as Cisco Houston and so does Ben Curtis as Pete, but, although the songs in the show do stand, Smith, as Woody, sings flat, in a rough voice, with an unrestrained physicality. Actually, I’d like to see Stine try the part-- his singing tone most matched Woody’s. A trio of lovely dancers is inserted-- a high point of the show-- and that’s where Woody meets his second wife-- Jennifer Restivo is excellent as Marjorie. There is a boring courtship story about a rat. There is lots of “Acting”— showing emotion rather than feeling it-- simple statements with words that are moving are gratingly shouted out with throat-tearing intensity. The unrestrained male performances have a sense of Performing rather than Being, and that only works near the end when the madness of Huntington’s Disease take possession of Woody. The play has some charming domestic moments and some tragic ones, and, with some judicious trimming, like the sequences mentioned above and the philosophizing near the end, is basically better than most of the performances.

Lighting by Tim Cryan is quite good, except when he shines bright orange light right at our eyes a couple of times. Well-directed (staging) and misdirected (acting) by Isabel Milenski, Smith’s basic idea is fine. It needs refining, re-doing, and it could be quite a good entertainment. We came for the music, and didn’t get enough of it from these strummin’, pickin’ musicians, who were lifted up by a terrific, lively bass player: Stephanie Allen.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

Jonathan Bank and his Mint Theatre Company now give us another superior production in TEMPORAL POWERS, the 1932 play by Teresa Deevy about working class Irish in 1927. This complex tale of money/poverty, right/wrong, working the land/working at a job, and, basically, surviving in a broken down economy, has a flawless cast topped by the radiant Rosie Benton who taps the deep wells of emotion and her stoic husband played by Aidan Redmond. The marvelous set by Vicki R. Davis gives us an amazingly detailed crumbling solidity, and as lighted by Jeff Nellis, it seems to have changing dimension. Banks directs with clarity and total believability. I wish the dialect coach, Amy Stoller, had opted for more communication and less authenticity, but the fine acting, the action and interaction in the play is clear and the superb cast, each in an unforgettable characterization, held me for the three acts of TEMPORAL POWERS. The Mint Theatre is unique—bringing back forgotten theatre gems and beautifully mounting them. www.minttheater.org, 212/315-0231.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

A NIGHT WITH GEORGE by Brenda Murphy and Donna O’Connor is now being performed by O’Connor at the Times Square Arts Center. She brings home a cardboard cutout of George Clooney and talks to it about her life, her dreams, her angers and frustrations. O’Connor is an exciting, powerful, totally convincing actress in a play filled with humor. If you are familiar with the West Belfast accent you’ll understand all of what she’s saying; if not, it’s tough. It’s very frustrating to not understand more than half of what this dynamic actress says. It’s all well staged by director Tony Devlin and designed by Vaughn Preston. The play is part of the Irish Play Festival, and Irish people, who made up most of the audience, had a great time. I felt left out, and walked out at the interval.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

The new edition of FOLLIES-- book by James Goldman, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Here’s my view: I’ll start with the strength— Great, beautifully performed solo numbers sung with depth and passion by some of the very best Musical Theatre performers in the world: Jan Maxwell, who blows the roof off the theatre, the lovely, lyrical Bernadette Peters, Danny Burstein whose comic turn surprises and delights (in the leading roles as part of the two older Showbusiness couples, each of whom may have married the wrong person), and another three women who basically each get to do a show-stopping number and then disappear from the show: Terry White doing “Who’s That Woman?”, the fabulous, hilarious Jayne Houdyshell doing “Broadway Baby” and the magnificent Elaine Paige singing a killer “I’m Still Here,” So FOLLIES is a terrific musical revue.

The show starts with figures from memory, costumed chorus girls, floating around as the older veterans of this theatre get together for a reunion. We meet the four principals and some of their former co-performers. Lots of exposition. Nothing happens. It’s a pretty slow start for this two hour and forty minute show. When the two couples interact, the play comes alive. Oh yes— the other man in the quartet is Ron Raines, who sings very well. Ultimately, FOLLIES is not “Memories of Showbusiness.” It’s domestic controversy and betrayal. It has flashbacks to the earlier days seeded with expectations, with the present day a kind of “After the Fairy Tale”- like “Into the Woods.” With fabulous costumes, especially a pink and white fantasy, by Gregg Barnes, great visuals (set by Derek McLane, lighting by Natasha Katz), super choreography by Warren Carlyle and direction by Eric Schaeffer which keeps songs focused and the action moving, FOLLIES is an entertaining musical with wonderful performances of powerful songs by the brilliant Stephen Sondheim by the very very best.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com

DALLY WITH THE DEVIL by Victor L. Cahn: Politics, machinations, to smear or not to smear. The power of a Blogger who is approached by the aid/advocates of two opposing Senate candidates. I usually hate political arguments: no one budges, no one can convince anyone— we all have our own opinions or candidates carved in cement. But the three actresses in this play, Elizabeth A. Davis, Elizabeth Norment and Erika Rolfsrud in this play are totally convincing, the writing bites, and the counterpoints are so interesting in their generalities, that I was engaged from start to finish. And it has a good theatrical twist near the end. Technically fine, with porch/beach set by Jisun Kim, fitting costumes by Michelle Eden Humphrey and lighting by Pamela Kupper, Eric Parness’s clear direction nicely keeps things building. How sleazy is the business of politics? See this enjoyable play and you’ll get a clue.

RICHMOND SHEPARD

Performing Arts INSIDER and lively-arts.com