REVIEWS

n Sunset Boulevard, there are few actual songs mixed with all the recitative, three true songs actually and they are terrific. Christine Sherrill, a fabulous Norma, sings two of the fine numbers: her self-designing song: “With One Look” in which we see both her delusion and her past film style plus her triumph return visit to the Paramount studio – “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” Christine Sherrill not only belts these tunes with deep emotions but she “sells’ Norma’s angst. Experiencing Sherrill delivering these two anthems is worth the trip to Oakbrook. This is a complete tour de force performance by Christine Sherrill.

The staging of a full-blown Broadway musical on the intimate thrust stage at Writers’ Theatre is a major accomplishment allowing terrific dance and movement to give the illusion of a larger production. The five member orchestra, using Doug Peck’s orchestrations, sounded fine giving the jazz-infused Coleman score a worthy sound. This entertaining show is worth seeing.

Lucinda Coxson’s Happy Now? will not contribute to giving you a couple hours of bliss but it will only leave you says “Hah.” This contrived drama is the story of a group of married folks going through midlife married crises. Add a guy confident and a quirky mother and you have a mind-numbing play.

The time is April 14, 1865, the Civil War has just ended and Caleb (Derek Gaspar) is staggering into his bombed out house in Richmond (terrific set design by Jack Magaw). The place is in ruins and everyone has abandoned it but for two former slaves. Simon (Tim Edward Rhoze) is the older, very loyal ex-slave who stays in the house as he waits for his wife and daughter to return from their exile from war-the war-torn city.

Naomi Lizuka’s play, Concerning Strange Devices From The Distant West, is a puzzle of a play designed as a triptych that unfolds as a three-panel structure as if being seen form a camera’s lens. This drama is a provocative examination of the American fascination with the exotic and distant Far East (here Japan)