Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 Mack and Mabel is a legendary flop. It opened on Broadway in the fall of 1974 with the legendary Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters in the title roles. It has a score by the legendary Jerry Herman (composer of Hello, Dolly! and Mame), was directed and choreographed…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2002. Last night I got to experience in person the famous old story about the night that legendary playwright and director George S. Kaufman stood in the back of the theatre watching the Marx Brothers performing one of the many plays he wrote for…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2002. Dennis Krausnick, who has adapted two dozen of Edith Wharton’s prose works for the stage, has labored mightily and transformed her 1902 novel The Valley of Decision into two and a half hours of densely philosophical musings that may or may not be a play.…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 If you like the Lawrence Welk Show, then you will just love My Way, a lightweight entertainment billed as a “tribute to Frank Sinatra” currently running at the Theater Barn. Basically this is a ninety minute concert of 56 Sinatra standards, strung together by…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 If you take a close look at Mae West (1893-1980), you will see that she is nothing that you expect her to be. She wasn’t really blonde, she wasn’t really busty, and she wasn’t really curvy (heavy corset use there). She was kind…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2002 I think it takes real chutzpah to stage Assassins less than a year after 9/11. In a summer season where many area theatres are busily waving the flag, scheduling this daring, edgy musical which explores the lives and possible motives of nine people who attempted…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May, 2002 Nuns wearing wimplesAnd captains with whistlesBrave young MariaAnd Nazis who bristleEdelweiss, goatherds,And children who singThese are a few of my favorite things— with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II Although I entered the Mac-Haydn the other night with my curmudgeonly “I Hate Rodgers &…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2002. This is superb theatre. One fine actress, Annette Miller, one great playwright, William Gibson, one inspired director, Daniel Gidron, and an exciting, true story. The only technological help they receive is an excellent sound design by Mark Huang. Purchase one of the ninety-nine…
