User:TheatrePlaysBuff/The Mint Juleps Trilogy Nick Zagone (play)

The Mint Juleps Trilogy Nick Zagone is a play by .DIETRICH &amp; CHAVALIER, THE MUSICAL Jerry Mayer&rsquo;s love story about Marlene and Maurice. THE DYING GAUL Screenwriting, homosexuality and chat rooms collide in Craig Lucas&rsquo; drama. THE ENTERTAINER John Osborne&rsquo;s vaudeville metaphor for the decline of the British Empire. FAFALO Comic fantasy with Balinese masks and ``huge, spectacular puppets,'' by Stephen Legawiec. THE FULL MONTY Steelworkers go Chippendale, book by Terrence McNally, music and lyrics by David Yazbek. SECRETS OF THE TRADE Ambitious young actor finds a Broadway mentor, in Jonathan Tolins&rsquo; play. THE VIOLET HOUR Publisher ponders printing, circa World War I, by Richard Greenberg. Larger Theaters Reviews by Paul Birchall, Lovell Estell III, Mayank Keshaviah, Deborah Klugman, Steven Mikulan, Steven Leigh Morris, Amy Nicholson, Tom Provenzano and Neal Weaver. CINDERELLA New take on the classic tale, music and lyrics by Lloyd J. Schwartz. THE CONSTANT WIFE Marital comedy by W. Somerset Maugham. JEKYLL &amp; HYDE Robert Louis Stevenson&rsquo;s story of good and evil, book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, music by Frank Wildhorn. These conflicting impulses create a balancing act that Rivers, under Bart DeLorenzo&rsquo;s soft-touch direction, navigates with ease and intimacy. Douglas Bernstein and Denis Markell also co-wrote the show. GO L&rsquo;EFFLEUR DES SENS Choreographer-director Cati Jean has MC Gregg guide us through this French-style cabaret that consists of nine fleshy, erotic dances performed by the host and a bevy of seven beauties with jaw-dropping precision. The girlie-magazine fantasies that the dances conjure border on the fetishistic, with jail-stripe thigh-highs and lingerie, legs that go all the way up, torsos that sway while the doll-faced women bear expressions of calculated disinterest, or come-hither stares. Gregg&rsquo;s improvised humor borders on the puerile, but the dancers&rsquo; dexterity and skill are beyond reproach. RED HERRING Michael Hollinger&rsquo;s Red Scare comedy. THE SEVEN Will Power&rsquo;s hip-hop take on the Greek tragedy Seven Against Thebes. SOME GIRL(S) Writer-director Neil LaBute&rsquo;s play nudges us to believe that he&rsquo;s re-examining gender relations through the perspectives of one solipsistic Lothario named Guy (Mark Feurenstein) and four ex-girlfriends, whom he somehow persuades to meet him (one at a time) at various motel rooms around the country in order to set things right, before he plunges into marriage with an offstage fianc&eacute;e. LaBute&rsquo;s main point is storytelling, but his treatment of that idea is as distracted and frivolous as his central character. SWEENEY TODD Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler&rsquo;s musical tale of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. GO WICKED In this musical riff on the witches of Oz (by Stephen Schwarz and Winnie Hollzman), Joe Mantello directs a marvelous spectacle that looks like a diversion but is actually quite the opposite. Eden Espinoza as the green-skinned, bespectacled girl-witch Elphaba has a contagiously smart appeal. After recognizing that Elphabas not going to power-play along with the Wizard&rsquo;s (John Rubinstein) Stalinist shenanigans, Mrs. Morrible (the delightful Carol Kane), starts a witch hunt for the girl, and the whole thing starts to resemble some of the tawdrier chapters in American history. Smaller Theaters Hollywood, West Hollywood, Downtown ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST Dario Fo&rsquo;s farce, based on a true story from Italian politics. AFTER THE FALL Arthur Miller&rsquo;s fictionalized take on his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. ALADDIN Nine O&rsquo;Clock Players present Carol Weiss&rsquo; musical for kids, based on the Arabian fable. Most are decent Walkens, and the best have mastered the piranha stare and elastic enunciation that snaps the ends of syllables like rubber bands. This ``reality show'' lampoon follows the contest show format, with a lanky, trailer-trash drag queen hostess, Trina Sugg (Drew Droege), and several contestants who must participate in talent competitions including belching, diva impersonation, and arm-wrestling. The humor is mostly anatomical, with references to Boy Butter and lines like, ``I started out as a tight end and then switched over to wide receiver.'' The show was created by Michael Matthews, Jason Moyer, Efrain Schunior and the cast. All the guests have arrived, but bar mitzvah boy Harry (Greg Mikurak) and his father, Aaron (Barry Papick), have gotten lost on their way to the temple. The wait for Harry allows the audience to mix freely with the actors in writer-director Amy Lord&rsquo;s hilarious interactive comedy. As the performance progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell audience members from cast members, much to Lord&rsquo;s credit as writer and director. Three actors portray multiple roles, condensing Dostoyevsky&rsquo;s theology, philosophy and pscho-drama into a kind of dream, with riveting performances by Ben Hunter, Suzanne Friedline and Paul Witten. The main drawback is that Ken Sawyer&rsquo;s sculpted staging has movie music played against entire scenes. Rumors of the pair&rsquo;s homosexual affections follow them all the way to the Chicago courthouse, where they stand charged with murdering a child. Some moments cry out for deletion, but the actors carve out two distinct personalities and carry out Henning&rsquo;s attempt to present the pair as both villains and victims of their own fantasies. Jemal McNeil&rsquo;s sharp direction and Drew D&rsquo;Andrea&rsquo;s sassy choreography expand the words into relationships and movement that&rsquo;s both ritualized and saucy &mdash; largely played out around a stage-center shrine that embodies the city&rsquo;s detritus. The performances, by dancers Brixey Blankenship, Victoria Brown, Aaron Davis and Kalen Salima and actors Justin Alston, Phillip C. Curry, David Ibrahim, Jo D. Jonz, Lynn Odell, Marja-Lewis Ryan and Wendi West, are first-rate. (Steven Leigh Morris) THE FLU SEASON In Will Eno&rsquo;s promising play, a Man (Tim Wright) and a Woman (Jamey Hood) meet in a psychiatric institution and fall in love. Two characters named Prologue and Epilogue (Michael McColl and Christopher Goodson, respectively), narrate the scenes we are about to watch. More narrators (David Fruechting and Christina Mastin) also take a hand at editorializing. There is some funny, provocative repartee here, but our interest sags beneath the weight of Eno&rsquo;s self-referential irony. In the first half-hour, we learn of a girl&rsquo;s abduction somewhere in the north of England through a series of interweaving monologues told by the child&rsquo;s mother (Jenette Goldstein) and the pedophile (Hugh Mason) who led the girl to his van. Add to the mix a visiting American clinical psychiatrist (Deanne Dawson) out to prove that serial killers&rsquo; absence of compassion stems from a brain dysfunction rather than inherent evil. With this, the play probes how we come to be humane, and Billy Hayes&rsquo; detailed staging brings renders the play with awesome beauty. GO GROUNDLINGS SWIMSUIT EDITION Drawing on a variety of current themes and issues, the Groundlings shine in their newest show that, following a Groundlings tradition, has nothing to do with the title. Featuring strong comedic writing, the sketches also incorporate music, including ``Womanisms,'' a song about (f)e-mails women forward to each other. Director Karen Maruyama keeps the evening moving at a brisk pace, never letting the audience settle into apathy. HARM&rsquo;S WAY Shem Bitterman&rsquo;s play is a thoughtful, stateside view of America&rsquo;s actions in Iraq, centered on an Army atrocity that is investigated by a military father (Jack Stehlin) whose daughter (Katie Lowes) falls in love with the case&rsquo;s chief suspect (Ben Bowen). While it doesn&rsquo;t completely fulfill its dramatic potential, the two-hour show, directed by Steve Zuckerman, mostly avoids editorializing, preferring instead to question how good people do terrible things. (In rep with Man.gov.) A Circus Theatricals Studio Theater production. ICELAND Roger Guenveur Smith&rsquo;s globetrotting saga of a painter and a dancer. GO JAMES JOYCE&rsquo;S THE DEAD Under Charles Otte&rsquo;s tender staging, Richard Nelson&rsquo;s adaptation of James Joyce&rsquo;s literary gem is nothing short of superb. Nelson&rsquo;s book stirs and then sweetens all of the poignant subtleties of Joyce&rsquo;s prose, and it&rsquo;s all neatly complemented by Nelson and Shaun Davey&rsquo;s music and lyrics, under Dean Mora&rsquo;s splendid musical direction, in which the oft-singing characters are accompanied by piano, cello, violin and some Celtic percussion. During a Christmas holiday party, food, song, dance, revelry and music are richly displayed; but inexorably, some portent of change looms. GO THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT Though frayed at the edges in both the writing and the production, Stephen Adly Guirgis&rsquo; contemporary NYC trial of Judas (Robert Mollohan, still in biblical garb) &mdash; set in the ``Hope Street purgatorial subway station, with the stairwells of Danny Cistone&rsquo;s set clearly marked ``Uptown and ``Downtown'' &mdash; offers an invigorating meditation on the paradoxical essences of forgiveness and revenge built into the core of our cultural mythology. Even with its comic approach, Guirgis&rsquo; play isn&rsquo;t as glib as the works of Christopher Durang &mdash; another Catholic comedic playwright confounded by his theology. Yet Guirgis&rsquo; argumentation doesn&rsquo;t come close to that of the literary masters in that realm of debate &mdash; Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov. This play falls somewhere between a historical pageant, a trial and a farce (Don Rickles is called in for questioning, just for the joke). There are really nice lead performances by Danny Nucci&rsquo;s ingratiating prosecuting attorney, Katy Jacoby&rsquo;s defense attorney with personal crises, and Max Middleton&rsquo;s impatient judge. Some supporting performers are difficult to hear, and when the play turns ``meaningful,'' via earnest speeches near the end, it completely unravels, at least in this production. Still, it&rsquo;s smart and funny enough to deserve its audience. (Steven Leigh Morris) GO THE LAST SCHWARTZ In her witty, thoughtful play, Deborah Zoe Laufer questions the role of family and religious traditions. As the Schwartz children gather in their now empty childhood Catskills home to honor their father&rsquo;s Yarzheit (the one-year anniversary of his death), an outsider stirs up issues the family prefers left undisturbed. Lee Sankowich&rsquo;s direction is first-rate and designer Giulllio Perrone&rsquo;s set suggests an atmosphere of barrenness, an apt metaphor considering the clan&rsquo;s regretful past and uncertain future. LOVE STRUCK Marie Barrientos and Odals Nanin&rsquo;s romantic comedy about two Latinas in love and lust. MAN OF LA MANCHA The Veterans Center for the Performing Arts ``celebrates military veterans by developing and producing their original works, as well as examining existing works from a military perspective.'' In keeping with that philosophy, the first scene of this Dale Wasserman musical is set in the mental ward of a veterans&rsquo; hospital, where author Miguel Cervantes is a patient. The play becomes grand improvisation involving only Cervantes/Quixote (Eric Tucker) and another patient, the Sergeant Major (Stephan Wolfert), known collectively as Deux Bites. Limiting the cast to two actor-singers (plus guitarist/musical director Ali Nikou) tends initially to make the piece seem like a stunt, with each of them juggling multiple roles and donning a wild array of hats, skirts, tatty wigs and accents. Costumes and props are improvised, and the Don&rsquo;s armor consists of hockey shin guards, a plastic tablecloth cape, and a gilded bedpan for a helmet. Both actors are versatile and capable, and, once we get used to their approach, they deliver an engaging and sometimes hilarious version of the play. (Neal Weaver) MAN.GOV Shem Bitterman&rsquo;s drama, set during the buildup to the second U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, studies the predicament of a senior-level government arms inspector, who finds himself in the precarious and demoralizing position of having to report on the possibility that Saddam Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction, though there&rsquo;s no evidence to support that conclusion. (SLM) A Circus Theatricals Studio Theater production. GO MY THING OF LOVE The language of Alexandra Gersten&rsquo;s caustically funny and equally painful examination of a crumbling marriage navigates perfectly between heightened lyric fancy and earthy reality. We begin with an ordinary breakfast routine between spouses that soon begins to simmer, then quickly boils over into a full-blown war over infidelity that defines Gersten&rsquo;s fascinating play. Johanna McKay offers a virtuoso performance as Elly, a frumpy housewife who throws down the gauntlet over her husband&rsquo;s affair. As husband Jack, Josh Randall keeps pace with McKay, making their epic battle as exciting and moving as the best of Edward Albee&rsquo;s early work. Kelly (Heather Fox) &mdash; the gorgeous, simple yet unapologetic object of Jack&rsquo;s straying &mdash; is so comically brittle that the intensity of this production continues to grow. Only a bizarre set piece, in which a loony guidance counselor (played with caricatured frenzy by John Schumacher) comes to castigate Elly about her parenting, rings false. Fortunately, this scene fades from memory in Darin Anthony&rsquo;s otherwise exquisite staging. Sherry Linnell&rsquo;s witty costume design is best exemplified by Elly&rsquo;s ugly, slobby sweats. Tom Buderwitz&rsquo;s naturalistic home interiors are set against a too-slick set of walls that detract from the &uuml;ber-reality of much of the play&rsquo;s action. (Tom Provenzano) OLD TIMES Harold Pinter&rsquo;s enigmatic study of memory and relationships. The rhythms of conflict and reconciliation play themselves out in a redundant cycle of crescendo and decrescendo, under Ron Klier&rsquo;s carefully wrought direction, and both actors are terrific. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO&rsquo;S NEST Adaptation of Ken Kesey&rsquo;s novel, by Dale Wasserman. ORANGE FLOWER WATER Craig Wright&rsquo;s story of small-town adultery. Handsome, professional magician Great (Brett Schneider) dazzles crowds with his amazing card tricks, but in his private life, he&rsquo;s a faithless manipulator with a history of breaking the hearts of his various stage assistants, who happen to be his lovers as well. Schneider is a charismatic and appealing performer, impressive as both an actor and a magician. The city&rsquo;s banks are being hit by a gang of robbers known as the Ex Presidents, surfers who always wear the masks of former chief executives while making their withdrawals (in this version Ms. Condi Rice makes an appearance). Utah gets his man, but not before a Grand Guignol scene of blood and guts that&rsquo;s so hideously over the top you can&rsquo;t stop laughing. GO POOR BEAST IN THE RAIN It sometimes seems that Irish writers are the only ones who can still write a traditional, realistic genre drama with conviction, and without deconstructing, satirizing or saturating it in irony. Billy Roche&rsquo;s play is set in a betting shop in the town of Wexford, during the All-Ireland Hurling Finals. It&rsquo;s a skillfully written piece, beautifully acted and finely articulated by director Wilson Milam. The production&rsquo;s only serious defect is that the Irish dialect is occasionally almost impenetrable. PROVE IT ON ME Lindsay (Aynsley Bubbico), a wealthy white flapper, argues that you can&rsquo;t see skin color in the dark. Lesbian blues singer Georgia Brooks (Sweet Baby J&rsquo;ai) knows better. And so Dee Jae Cox&rsquo;s expository, repetitive play, set during the Harlem Renaissance, bats around the same old dichotomies of white-versus-black and rich-versus-poor as though mentioning hot buttons is the same thing as exploring them. This is only the most bizarre of Rothenberg&rsquo;s neuroses which he let spill in his earlier, one-man show. Two years later his equally psychologically damaged wife, Colleen Crabtree, joins him to create this touching and hilarious two-hander that follows their courtship. Richard Kuhlman&rsquo;s light director&rsquo;s touch switches directions whenever the play begins to move toward either bathos or goofiness. SCOTTASTROPHE True stories of personal catastrophe by Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall. SEASCAPE WITH SHARKS &amp; DANCER Don Nigro&rsquo;s beachside love story. SERIAL KILLERS Late-night serialized stories, voted on by the audience to determine which ones continue. Firebrand John Adams (Bruce Ladd), wise reprobate Ben Franklin (Larry Lederman) and Thomas Jefferson (Ben Hensely) are the centerpieces for the saga of frustrated efforts to persuade the colonists to stop being British. You&rsquo;d think that Jefferson was a reluctant slaveowner, while South Carolina&rsquo;s Edward Rutledge&rsquo;s (Stephen Van Dorn), a southern blowhard. In fact, it may have been the other way around, which would have been a more interesting musical. The ensemble is as grand as Richard Israel&rsquo;s staging. GO SEXY LAUNDRY In the American premiere of Michele Rimi&rsquo;s look at making love in middle age, Alice Lane (Frances Fisher) brings her reluctant husband, Henry (Paul Ben-Victor), along with a copy of Sex for Dummies, to a fabulously expensive hotel in hopes of rekindling their romance. Alice and Henry&rsquo;s conversation quickly degenerates into sparring that provides much hilarity, between the barbs are painful and touching moments of a couple scraping the dark corners of their marriage. Gary Blumsack&rsquo;s direction is equally nuanced and dynamic. SHAME Stephen Morey and Paul Rebillot&rsquo;s take on homosexuality from the Christian perspective. David J, formerly of the bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, attempts to sketch the terrible arc of Sedgwick&rsquo;s Icaran flight and fall without resorting to the narrative slogging that typifies pop hagiography. He mostly succeeds, by writing and directing what is essentially a one-woman show starring Monique Jenkinson, whose manic, writhing Sedgwick crystallizes moments from her tormented childhood and a later fashion-frenzied life fueled by drugs and vodka. Steven Oliver Price plays the show&rsquo;s other character, Norich &mdash; a horse-headed invalid who rolls across the stage in a wheelchair to somber effect, representing Sedgwick&rsquo;s dreamy adoration of horses. David J&rsquo;s vocals lead a tight band whose songs tell a story that is funny and affecting without begging for sympathy for their subject. Lloyd Reece&rsquo;s crepuscular lighting and Ego Plum&rsquo;s clear sound design are especially effective. Although the narrative imperfections and marginally impenetrable writing threaten to overburden the show, the creativity of co-directors Richard Werner and Karen Jean Martinson&rsquo;s production makes for jaw-droppingly weird fun. Still, the hilarious ensemble work boasts exciting turns, while the romance is unexpectedly tender. GO STUPID KIDS Playwright John C. Russell might have been a fly on the wall in the school cafeteria when he wrote this endearing and insightful teen drama about sex and power in a suburban American high school. Jim (Michael Grant Terry) and Judy (Tessa Thomson) are two blessedly beautiful people, attracted to each other and with enough quirkiness to keep them from running with the herd. They get tested when the ruling school clan demands that Jim and Judy cut their ties to their loyal, ``geeky''and gay friends. Directed by Michael Matthews, the four-person ensemble is spot-on from first moment to last. Director Nick DeGruccio, knowing the difference between thrill and shock, steers the evening away from Grand Guignol. THE TIME MACHINE It&rsquo;s a safe bet that writer-director Phil Abatecola and producer-performer Julian Bane are big fans of this H.G. Wells science-fiction classic and have always wanted to stage it. The story tells of a Time Traveler (Bane) propelled hundreds of thousands of years into the future; there he attempts to liberate a defenseless community of young people called the Eloi from their carnivorous oppressors, the Morlocks. This adaptation appropriates chunks of dialogue and even the prop time machine from the film on which it&rsquo;s based. The tech elements are proficient, the performances, less so. THE TOMORROW SHOW Late-night variety show created by Craig Anton, Ron Lynch and Brendon Small.

Characters
The play has thirteen characters:
 * Tom
 * Rose
 * Archive
 * Script Archive
 * Hamish
 * Rebecca
 * Becca
 * Caution
 * Roberta
 * Hammish
 * Brad
 * Rosetta
 * Characters

Online script links

 * 1) http://www.one-act-plays.com/comedies/

Category:Plays