Northern Arizona University
2008-2009 Catalogue

The Fantastics
by Tom Jones aned Harvey Schmidt

"This romantic charmer is still the longest-running musical in the world. Filled with breathtaking poetry, it is pure and simple and transcends all cultural barriers."
http://www.artsopolis.com/event/detail/35971

"This slower, mellower, gentler world where young people had time to dream but also had a way of life to which they could return is at the heart of The Fantasticks' enduring charm. In a delightful twist on an even longer-lasting tale, Romeo and Juliet, bookwriter and lyricist Jones created a spoof (two fathers who invent Montague-Capulet style feud as a ruse to get their children, Matt and Luisa, married) that lent itself perfectly to a spectrum of story telling techniques -- verse with heavy doses of rhyme and nature metaphors (again inspired by Shakespeare), the presentational style in which a narrator moves the story forward, the commedia del arte platform and its play-within-a- play actors."
http://www.curtainup.com/fantasticks.html


Twelfth Night
by William Shakespeare

"Like his early comedies, The Comedy of Errors or The Taming of the Shrew for instance, Twelfth Night is essentially a celebration of romantic love and can be viewed as a traditional romantic comedy. The play has many of the elements common to Elizabethan romantic comedy, including the devices of mistaken identity, separated twins, and gender-crossing disguise, and its plot revolves around overcoming obstacles to "true" love."
http://www.enotes.com/twelfth/

"Twelfth Night is a comedic classic by William Shakespeare that centers upon the misadventures of the Countess Olivia who is in love with Cesario, the servant of Orsino, the Duke of Illyria. This Elizabethan soap opera is further complicated by the fact that Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia, and Cesario is really a woman named Viola, who disguised herself as a man after being shipwrecked on the shore of Illyria."
http://www.largeprintreviews.com/12night.html

The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde

"The Importance of Being Earnest is a tour de force of comedy, misidentifications, and farce. Algernon and Jack are friends, and each has invented an imaginary person as an excuse of getting out of engagements. Jack's person is Ernest, a brother with a wild past. The two conspire to woo the ladies that they love, and through a series of happenstances, must gently deceive to get want they want. The end result is a play of uncomperable quality, chock full of witticisms that are highly quotable out of context. In fact, I dare suggest the entire play is quotable, such its brilliance. "
http://www.amazon.com/Importance-Being-Earnest-Oscar-Wilde/dp/158049580X

"Set in England during the late Victorian era, the play's humour derives in part from characters maintaining fictitious identities to escape unwelcome social obligations. It is replete with witty dialogue and satirizes some of the foibles and hypocrisy of late Victorian society. It has proved Wilde's most enduringly popular play."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest

The Little Dog Laughed
Douglas Carter Beane

"The play pulls no punches and hits the hypocrisy of Hollywood square on the head."
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/12/02/103902.php


"The Little Dog Takes Its Laughs to BroadwayThe Broadway opening of this Off-Broadway hit of last season is perched in time roughly halfway between the official confirmation that Neil Patrick Harris is gay (one of show business's worst kept secrets) and the impending wedding of Tom Cruise (surely its most enduring source of sexual orientation gossip). What we don't see, of course, is the relentless "handling" that goes on behind the scenes of these "stories," to keep our inexplicable curiosity at bay."
http://www.curtainup.com/littledoglaughed.html

The Bald Soprano and The Lesson
by Eugene Ionesco

"Eugène Ionesco intended The Lesson as a brutal criticism on Nazi fascism invading the peaceful hearts and minds of the people in his homeland, Romania. We twist the text to show how the world goes wrong today: A sense of tradition, honour, and respect is being replaced by capitalist greed and consumer righteousness… An elegantly subtle touch to a brutal script."
http://www.reviewsgate.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3591

Drama in 11 scenes by Eugene Ionesco, who called it an "antiplay." It was first produced in 1950 and published in 1954 as La Cantatrice chauve; the title is also translated The Bald Prima Donna. The play, an important example of the Theater of the Absurd, consists mainly of a series of meaningless conversations between two couples that eventually deteriorate into babbling.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Plays-Soprano-Lesson-Submission/dp/0802130798

University of Missouri at Kansas City
2008-2009 Season


The Heidi Chronicles
by Wendy Wasserstein

"Wasserstein has made the cultural territory of the American experience since the 1960s her own. She is its most articulate theatrical chronicler. This collection of her recent work, Uncommon Women and Others, Isn't It Romantic, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, traces that experience through three decades of changing styles, mores, life objectives, and intellectual challenges. She examines her characters and their times with great good humor, complexity, depth of feeling, and a firm refusal to accept trite and easy images. She writes the truth about people and their lives without blinking. She teaches us all what it was like to live through a period of great turmoil and confusion."
http://www.amazon.com/Heidi-Chronicles-Uncommon-Others-Romantic/dp/0679734996

"In a series of interrelated scenes, The Heidi Chronicles traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland, a successful art historian, who comes to learn that liberation can be achieved only if one is true to oneself. Wendy Wasserstein's play was the winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play."
http://www.goldstar.com/events/washington-dc/the-heidi-chronicles-1.html

Tartuffe
by Moliere

"Molière’s comedy is founded on the gloss of human appearances, on the slippery gaps between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. In his own time, his relentless satirical attacks on the hypocrisies and vulgarities of the elite made his plays immensely popular, and also caused them to be banned for offending against religion."
http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2008/02/review-tartuffe.html


Orgon has welcomed the scoundrel into his home and then encouraged him in his subversion of his family and its values. For Orgon, Tartuffe can do no wrong, and all proof of his misconduct is considered blasphemy, until the husband is faced foursquare with the truth and his own imminent cuckoldry. As Mr. Bamman plays him, Orgon is not simply an old fool but the sincerest of acolytes totally overcome by guru worship.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9E0CE5D9103FF935A25753C1A964958260

Five by Tenn
by Tennessee Williams

"SpeakEasy’s FIVE BY TENN showcases five (six, really) of Tennessee Williams’ little-known one-act plays, some never published nor performed in his lifetime, arranged and directed by Scott Edmiston as a biography of the poet-playwright from youth to old age, focusing on Mr. Williams’s Chekhovian side rather than the hothouse world that “Tennessee Williams” evokes."
http://www.theatermirror.com/CR5x10speakeasy.htm

Not all of Tennessee Williams’s unpublished or forgotten playlets deserve staging. Five by Tenn comprises four of the former and one of the latter. The melodramatic opener, Summer at the Lake (1937), about an exasperating mother and miserable son, and the maudlin closer, I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow (1970), could well be jettisoned.
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7069998630795694134&postID=3624841421885571190

Our Town
by Thorton Wilder

Our Town is all about life and people living in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Throughout the three-part play, we learn details about the town, the families and individuals who live there, love and marriage, and life and death.
http://www.viloria.com/viloria/angel/20010307-ourtown.html

"Wilder wasn't bashful about revealing his own high opinion of ''Our Town.'' Late in Act I, the play's narrator, the ubiquitous Stage Manager, tells the audience that he will leave the script in the cornerstone of a new bank, so that people ''a thousand years from now'' can see ''the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=940DE5DF1138F936A35751C1A96E948260

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

"In perhaps Dickens's greatest novel, an orphan named Pip grows up in harsh conditions, does a good turn for an escaped convict (as much out of fear as charity), then finds himself steadily climbing the socioeconomic ladder -- enjoying "great expectations" -- with the help of an unknown benefactor."
http://www.allreaders.com/Topics/Info_1937.asp

"A boy called Pip, who has a chance encounter with an escaped convict, is given into service of the ancient Miss Havisham, and comes into some great expectations which change his life for ever."
http://www.clareswindlehurst.com/bookreviews/2008/09/30/book-review-great-expectations-by-charles-dickens/

The Arizona Reperatory
Theatre 2008-2009 Season


Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams

“Cat on a hot tin roof" is a play about the human experience in a society, which tries to dictate to people how they should live, and at a time where lack of human communication leads to the unavoidable loneliness of man."
http://bookreviews.nabou.com/reviews/catonahottinroof.html

"In Williams's tense family drama, where every relationship and bond is suspect, the underlying recognition that these people are trapped by their blood is vital."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/CatTinRoof.html

Love's Labour Lost
by William Shakespeare

"Love's Labour's Lost is about 1/3 Shakespeare, 1/3 song-and-dance, and 1/3 ribald slapstick."
http://www.reelviews.net/movies/l/loves_labours.html

"For this early Shakespearean romantic comedy, known more for its linguistic virtuosity than for its narrative strengths, the playing is the thing."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117930601.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Company
by George Furth and Steven Sondheim

"Originally a series of one-act plays about marriage, the musical adds a linking character, Robert, who is the only one without a spouse. In visiting each of a half dozen couples who are his friends, Robert seeks to learn "what do you get" from being married."
http://www.amazon.com/Company-Stephen-Sondheim/dp/1559361085

"To wed or not to wed, that is the question Bobby, a bachelor, confronts in "Company." As he turns 35, he weighs the pros and cons of wedded life while, in a series of flashbacks, he recalls his friends, five married couples, facing the for-better or for-worse of their marital relationships. On the eve of a surprise birthday party, Bobby wonders about "Being Alive" after making up the third in the company of his partner friends."
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081018/LIFE/810180314/-1/ENTERTAIN18

Medea
by Uripides

"Medea, made unforgettable by Euripides as the killer of her own children, has been one of the most popular figures from the world of Greek drama in the last twenty years."
http://www.classics.und.ac.za/reviews/0333all.htm

"What keeps us entranced through this eternally shocking drama is that Medea is part of our world; the passage of 2,400 years has done nothing to distance her from us."
http://www.amazon.com/Medea-Euripides/dp/1416592237

Leading Ladies
by Ken Ludwig

"Ludwig’s newest comedy is so funny, it will make sophisticated and reasonable men and women of the 21st century cackle till their faces hurt." The Houston Press
http://www.kenludwig.com/leading_ladies/leading_ladies.php

"An exceptional performance can transform unexceptional material into a winning show — rarely better illustrated than with R. Christofer Sands' scintillating turn in playwright Ken Ludwig's farce. Sands plays Leo, a desperate down-and-out Shakespearean actor who — along with his reluctant partner, Jack (Tim Coultas) — dons women's clothes in order to masquerade as the female beneficiaries of a dying heiress."
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-01-17/stage/web-hed-required/


Kansas City Repertory Theatre
2008-2009 season


Clay
by Matt Sax and Eric Rosen

"A hip-hop musical about a white boy from Westchester? It sounds like a punch line from “The Daily Show.” But “Clay,” a new solo show written and performed by Matt Sax, is for real, and it has already been warmly received at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in Chicago and Los Angeles."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/theater/reviews/16clay.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

"It would be easy to cast a cynical glance at Matt Sax's solo piece Clay, the debut production from LCT3, Lincoln Center Theatre's new initiative. After all, the show features hip-hop music and an affordable bottom line, both of which make it attractive to producers. But if something cynical is afoot, no one has told the utterly sincere Sax, who is giving the not entirely successful work everything he's got."
http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/reviews/10-2008/clay_15496.html

Radio Golf
by August Wilson

"Like all of Wilson's plays, Radio Golf, now at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, is thoughtful and colorful, full of gentle moments of humor. Far from ending with a big bang, Wilson leaves us with hope and a question about what it means to be black."
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/15/032140.php

"The blight will come through," a real estate developer reassures his nervous partner several times in August Wilson's "Radio Golf."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/12/DDVR13D5SM.DTL

The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams

"Hepburn plays Amanda Wakefield, a faded Southern belle now living in a small urban apartment, where she suffocates her two children--her restless son Tom (a very young Sam Waterston) and her painfully shy daughter Laura (Joanna Miles)--with her incessant mixture of insistent cheer and guilt."
http://www.amazon.com/Tennessee-Williams-Menagerie-Broadway-Theatre/dp/B00007L4MV

"His words are a very fantastical banquet. " Shakespeare's line from Much Ado About Nothing sums up the enduring appeal of Tennessee Williams 1944 The Glass Menagerie. The narrator and key player's opening monologue is a just a foretaste to a "fantastical banquet" of richly lyrical language."
http://www.curtainup.com/b-glassm.html

The Arabian Nights
by Mary Zimmerman

"This latest spouse, you'll recall, has Shahryar bewitched. Scheherazade spins her tales hoping to delay the inevitable, and in Zimmerman's telling -- similar in its fluid episodic structure and frisky-somber tone to her Broadway hit "Metamorphoses" -- the fables delight and instruct while steaming toward an unsettling finish."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502178.html

"Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nightsis an adaptation of the ancient tale of Scheherezade, who each night cleverly distracted her murdering husband with stories in order to live another night."
http://www.curtainup.com/arabiannights.html

The Borderland
by Jim Grimsley

"In "The Borderland," neighboring families representing two very different social classes are brought together during a storm."
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Mr-Universe/Jim-Grimsley/e/9781565122116

"The play follows the events of a night in which Eleanor Rollins (Sarah McCord) comes to the Hammonds' home during a thunderstorm after being beaten by her drunken husband, Jake (David Van Pelt), who soon follows her there. The ensuing confrontations illuminate not only the contrasts but the unsettling correspondences between the couples."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?pagewanted=print&res=9F0DE4D81E3FF932A05753C1A962958260