All stories by Harvey Perr on BroadwayStars

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Theater Review: HOME (On Tour at The Broad Stage) by Harvey Perr

A HOME RUN What do you think of when you think of home? Is it the place where you were born? Is it where you are living now? Is it where you followed your growth by measuring yourself agains…

SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:59PM
Saturday, February 29, 2020

Theater Review: GLORIA (A.C.T.’s Strand Theater) by Harvey Perr

GLORY GLORY GLORIA I don’t know if Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has ever worked in a Manhattan publishing house but he sure knows his way about the workplace. In Gloria, he paints an extraordina…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:48PM
Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Theater Review: BORN IN EAST BERLIN (SF Playhouse) by Harvey Perr

REBIRTH Which walls are worse? Those that keep people out or those that keep people in? Playwright Rogelio Martinez seemed to have this question in mind when he wrote Born in East Berlin, wh…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:57PM
Saturday, February 15, 2020

Theater Review: GATZ (Berkeley Rep) by Harvey Perr

GREAT F. SCOTT! If you love literature, have fond memories of being read to or of reading to others, and feel, as so many do, that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is in the Pantheon…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:07AM
Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Theater Preview: JITNEY (Mark Taper Forum) by Harvey Perr

JUMP FOR JITNEY It is an incontestable fact that every play August Wilson wrote justifies being looked at again and again. It has been fascinating to see how the moral, political and emotion…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:21AM
Saturday, July 13, 2019

Theater Review: PASSION (Custom Made Theatre Company in San Francisco) by Harvey Perr

A PASSIONATE PASSION Stephen Sondheim’s Passion is less a work of art than it is an art piece and the Custom Made Theatre Co., in its lovely and elegant chamber version, treats it as such.…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:59PM
Friday, July 12, 2019

San Francisco Theater Review: CABARET (SF Playhouse) by Harvey Perr

GO TELL MAMA: CABARET‘S A HIT Cabaret was and remains one of the boldest and most innovative experiments in the history of musical theater, a ravishing work that has neither lost its power…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:18PM
Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (Bay Area Musicals) by Harvey Perr

EVEN WHEN HAIRSPRAY CAN’T HOLD UP… THE EXPERIENCE CAN There are some shows that are beyond criticism or, rather, shows that render criticism totally unnecessary, and the Bay Area Musical…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:18PM
Saturday, June 29, 2019

Theater Review: THE PRODUCERS (Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles) by Harvey Perr

I WANNA SEE THE PRODUCERS Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. The Celebration production of The Producers is as far away from the Borscht Belt as a New York musical comedy — who…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:00PM
Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Theater Review: OEDIPUS EL REY (Magic Theatre in San Francisco) by Harvey Perr

GREEK TRAGEDY IN THE ‘HOOD Having read Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey, one can see that is a true original, that it possesses power, anger, frustration, political and social outrage, that …

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:26AM

Theater Review: DANA H (Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre) by Harvey Perr

A ROLLER COASTER RIDE TO THE HEART OF DARKNESS I will always love good theater but, even so, every so often there comes along a play that actually restores one’s faith in the possibilities…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:38AM
Sunday, June 9, 2019

Theater Review: THE BALD SOPRANO (Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco) by Harvey Perr

ACTOR DOUGLAS NOLAN: TOTALLY HUMAN AND TOTALLY ABSURD If you’ve ever seen a production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano that had you in stitches from practically the very first momen…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:18PM
Saturday, June 8, 2019

Bay Area Theater Review: KISS MY AZTEC! (Berkeley Repertory Theatre) by Harvey Perr

I ALWAYS LIKE TO BE KISSED WHEN I’M BEING… Inspired lunacy? Or strained silliness? Irreverent? Or just plain vulgar? A broad range of Latin musical genres? Or music that’s just plain d…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:36PM
Thursday, June 6, 2019

Theater Review: RHINOCEROS (A.C.T. in San Francisco) by Harvey Perr

WHAT AN ABSURD WORLD The first scene in the A.C.T. revival of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist masterpiece Rhinoceros, directed by Frank Galati with razor-sharp clarity and breakneck swiftness a…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:02PM
Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Broadway Review: TOOTSIE (Marquis Theater) by Harvey Perr

TOOT-TOOT-TOOTSIE, HELLO! I’m here to sing the praises of all those musical comedy freaks who have been jonesing for a contemporary musical that will bring back, in some new form, the gold…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:49AM

Off-Broadway Review: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH (Stage 42) by Harvey Perr

SO WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE? As Shakespeare said, “Good wine needs no bush.” Thus, there is no need to add to what New Yorkers have already discovered, that no matter how many productions of…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:49AM
Saturday, April 27, 2019

Broadway Review: GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS (Booth Theatre) by Harvey Perr

SEND IN THE CLOWNS A bloody war is ended. The bodies pile up. Who will clean up the mess? What to do? What to do? Oh, yes. Send in the clowns. On this note, Taylor Mac, the certified genius …

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:42PM

Theater Review: TIME NO LINE (John Kelly) by Harvey Perr

TEMPUS FUGIT There are great performance artists and, rarer still, there are great artists who perform. John Kelly is both. His Time No Line is a quietly breathtaking meditation on his life …

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:19AM
Tuesday, March 19, 2019

San Francisco Theater Review: THE GREAT LEAP (A.C.T.) by Harvey Perr

A SMALL STEP There is a stillness in B.D. Wong that is the embodiment of grace. In his exquisitely calibrated portrayal of Wen Chang, a Chinese party loyalist, Wong walks a delicate line bet…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:21PM
Thursday, March 14, 2019

S.F. Theater Review: FIORELLO (42nd Street Moon) by Harvey Perr

MAYOR DREAMS COME TRUE SOME OTHER TIME The 42nd Street Moon production of Fiorello is just fine, if you allow for the looseness of staging, the clumsy choreography, and the overall sensation…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:07PM
Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Theater Review: STEVE (New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco) by Harvey Perr

THE BOYS IN THE BLAND “Every day a little death/In the parlor, in the bed.” Thus spake Stephen Sondheim in his waltz time operetta A Little Night Music. And it is not totally frivolous t…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:08AM
Wednesday, March 6, 2019

San Francisco Theater Review: HER PORTMANTEAU (A.C.T.’s Strand Theater) by Harvey Perr

CARRYING BAGGAGE Although it is written with an almost childlike simplicity, Mfoniso Udofia’s Her Portmanteau tells a wrenching tale of the profound effect that separation creates when a w…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:46PM
Saturday, February 23, 2019

Theater Review: WHAT IF THEY WENT TO MOSCOW? (Christiane Jatahy at REDCAT) by Harvey Perr

YOU MOSCOW, YOU MOSCOW The avant-garde seems more interested in re-invention these days than in invention, but from the point of view of someone who had thought that there was nothing new un…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:01PM
Sunday, February 3, 2019

Theater Review: THE B-SIDE: “NEGRO FOLKLORE FROM TEXAS STATE PRISONS” A RECORD ALBUM INTERPRETATION (Wooster Group at REDCAT) by Harvey Perr

B-SIDE MYSELF Breathes there a soul who hasn’t sung along with a favorite album? And, ah, if the songs we sing were rare and challenging and related to one’s life, we might have …

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:13AM
Thursday, January 24, 2019

Theater Review: AN INSPECTOR CALLS (The Wallis) by Harvey Perr

MAKE A CALL ON THIS INSPECTOR In Stephen Daldry’s architectually inspired revival of J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, an astute mixture of comedy of manners/tragedy of class/…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:19PM
Thursday, March 21, 2013

Los Angeles Theater Review: END OF THE RAINBOW (Ahmanson Theater) by Harvey Perr

A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you’ve never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly rev…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:06AM
Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Off Broadway Theater Review: WILD WITH HAPPY (The Public Theatre) by Harvey Perr

FORGET YOUR TROUBLES.  COME ON, GET HAPPY. When the lights go up on Wild With Happy, we see Colman Domingo, in cool shades and wearing his best Paris-Is-Burning attitude, speak his opening …

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:27PM

Off Broadway Theater Review: NEUTRAL HERO (The Kitchen) by Harvey Perr

MAXWELL COUNTRY: WHERE HEROES ROAM There is only one Richard Maxwell and, in his extraordinarily textured Neutral Hero, he has gone back to his roots.  For those of us who have longed for t…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:03PM
Thursday, October 25, 2012

Off Broadway Theater Review: MODERN TERRORISM (2econd Stage Theatre) by Harvey Perr

WHERE IS DR. STRANGELOVE WHEN YOU NEED HIM? The best thing about Joe Kern’s Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want To Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them is its title.  And if it bears a cl…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:06PM

Off Broadway Theater Review: HOUSE FOR SALE (The Duke on 42nd Street) by Harvey Perr

SOLD: ONE HOUSE.  AT A DISAPPOINTING RATE. Since Daniel Fish has been certified a new genius by New York’s avant-garde elite, I am loath to label him a hoax on the basis of having seen ju…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:38PM
Saturday, October 20, 2012

New York Cabaret Review: ANDREA MARCOVICCI: SMILE (Café Carlyle) by Harvey Perr

SMILE, THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING Andrea Marcovicci, who reinvented the torch song for a new generation, has looked our depression/recession straight in the face and decided that what she…

SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:09AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards