Stage section: Metro Weekly

Double Serving

If you like your slapstick shameless and your gags spelled out, yelled and repeated, ''Servant of Two Masters'' is pants-wettingly funny

Published on May 24, 2012, 3:33am

At one point in the middle of the complicated hijinks of the Shakespeare Theatre Company's The Servant of Two Masters, Truffaldino, the servant in question, turns to the audience and asks: Surely, after a season of Shakespeare and a Eugene O'Neill festival, we can keep up? Silly, irreverent but keenly on point, it was a moment of commedia dell'arte as it was meant to be: theater playing to its audience like a mischievous child. Of course, by the time Carlo ...[more]

Maps and Mythology

Lonely Planet's message finds clear focus, while Metamorphoses is long on dazzle and short on substance

Published on May 24, 2012, 2:12am

The specter of AIDS haunts Steven Dietz's Lonely Planet – and yet the disease is never mentioned by name. But it is AIDS causing the play's lead character Jody to get so wrapped up in his safe world of maps, he has mostly shut out the vastly more complicated real world. What good are maps if not used as guides to a better land, or a better life? {Loneley Planet (Photo by Christopher Banks)} That's the central symbolic question of ...[more]

Gay Skate: Xanadu

Signature Theatre's ''Xanadu'' has more gay appeal than the Broadway original

Published on May 24, 2012, 1:35am

''It appeals to more than just the gay audience, but for some reason it appeals to our sensibility the most,'' says Matthew Gardiner. In fact, the incredibly campy musical Xanadu is self-aware of its gay appeal. ''This is like children's theater for 40-year-old gay people,'' goes a funny line from gay playwright Douglas Carter Beane's book, which sends up the same-named 1980 film. Starring Olivia Newton-John, the movie Xanadu has become something of a cult classic. Gardiner, who helmed Signature ...[more]

All Skate

As Signature's ''Xanadu'' becomes a delightful destination, glitches pale next to the dominant pleasures

Published on May 24, 2012, 1:33am

Leg warmers, roller disco, an Aussie pop star cavorting on the big screen as a muse from Greek mythology…. Gee, the '80s got off to such a strong start, how did the decade ever manage to go awry? Not that the cinematic mess that is Xanadu is a complete cultural stain. The soundtrack — brimming with Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra hits such as ''Magic,'' ''Suddenly,'' ''I'm Alive'' and the ecstatic title song — is nothing to be ashamed ...[more]

A Little Bloated

If you can't keep up with the overabundance of characters, Meal's message will get lost in the details

Published on May 18, 2012, 3:02pm

How does a family endure? Studio Theatre 2ndStage's The Big Meal is entirely preoccupied with that question, and curiously, its answer is found in an average-looking Ohio restaurant that tracks decades over hamburgers and spaghetti. Although in this joint, the worst thing to see is your food. Playwright Dan Franc turns the act of eating into a somber metaphor for death, meaning that when a character's ''order'' is up, the waitress (Sarah Taurchini) appears – a symbolic twist on the ...[more]

Golden Tribute

Though there are flaws in End of the Rainbow, there's nary a flaw in Tracie Bennett's portrayal of Judy Garland

Published on May 12, 2012, 6:13pm

Maybe you don't love Judy Garland. Maybe you don't understand or – gasp! – respect her ties to the gay community, or why she still has a hold on so many gay men of a certain age. There's even a name for their idol worship: Judyism. Myopia aside, if that's your deal, you're still not off the hook to see End of The Rainbow while it's on Broadway. To be sure, there are flaws in the story this British import ...[more]

Gershwin Jukebox

Despite a lackluster Matthew Broderick, the Tony-nominated ''Nice Work If You Can Get It'' is a sure-fire spectacle

Published on May 12, 2012, 6:11pm

They're no Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, but Kelli O'Hara and Matthew Broderick make quite the dancing pair in the new Broadway musical Nice Work If You Can Get It. In fact, the charming O'Hara, with her pristine soprano, sounds eerily like Doris Day. Even when playing a tomboyish bootlegger during Prohibition, O'Hara very well could be the new girl next door. There's very little that anyone could find objectionable in Nice Work – unless you object to a show ...[more]

Pool Party

Constellation takes a dip in the pool

Published on May 10, 2012, 5:33am

''Some of the front rows of the audience [get wet],'' says Constellation Theatre Company's managing director A.J. Guban. ''Just a little splash, just a little bit.'' Obviously, Constellation's new production of Metamorphoses isn't your typical night out at the theater – for the audience or the company. ''This is the most technically challenging production we've ever done,'' notes Constellation's founding artistic director Allison Arkell Stockman. {Metamorphoses: Katie Atkinson, Jefferson Farber, Jade Wheeler (Photo by Scott Suchman)} And the most challenging ...[more]

Westward, Shrew!

Folger's ''Shrew'' is an uneasy marriage between a tale told in Elizabethan verse and actors evoking Disney's Frontierland

Published on May 10, 2012, 5:27am

The West is more mild than wild in Folger Theatre's new production of The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare's so-called comedy that revels in male superiority and female submission. Director Aaron Posner has imposed a 19th century American West conceit for no discernibly compelling reason, creating an uneasy marriage between an Italian-set tale told in Elizabethan blank verse and actors twanging it up in an environment that evokes nothing so much as a Disney theme park Frontierland. Of course, ...[more]

Bad Faith

It takes a big leap of faith to buy into the fanciful Broadway musical ''Leap of Faith''

Published on May 9, 2012, 2:59pm

Every night right now at Broadway's St. James Theatre, officials are taking donations, passing around collection plates as if the audience were a congregation at church. Technically, most of the action in the musical Leap of Faith takes place at a pitched-tent church revival in a depressed, drought-stricken Kansas town. And a lot of the money collected is fake, distributed by ''ushers'' before the show, as the congregation files in to their seats. (Any real money donated goes to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights ...[more]

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