Alliance Theatre, Atlanta
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The names involved certainly raise expectations, said Frank Rizzo in Variety. This new musical marries a script by Stephen King to a score by John Mellencamp, with musical direction by T Burnett Bone. King has spun a Gothic yarn about two Mississippi brothers, Jack and Andy, locked in a deadly rivalry over a local girl. And that story is told via the flashbacks of their brother Joe, who, having become a father, wants his two squabbling sons to avoid the same tragic end. But King hasn’t written a play before, and it shows. Jake and Andy “are ill-defined beyond a few broad strokes, and the dialogue is clunky.” Mellencamp’s score helps, but his bluesy songs “rarely lift the proceedings emotionally.” Unfortunately, “it takes more than a groove and gore” to engage an audience.
Yet it would be a shame to undervalue the efforts of those lower on the marquee, said Bert Osborne in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The names of projection designer Adam Larsen and set designer Todd Rosenthal certainly won’t “sell a lot of tickets.” Yet the way they represent the parallel universes in King’s story provides a “spectacularly spooky” experience. The actors, too, make the most of what they’re given, particularly Shuler Hensley, who’s an intense Joe, and Jake La Botz, who’s “unforgettable” as The Shape, a figure who guides the characters’ actions from the beyond. Though the show “spirals wildly out of control in its final 15 minutes,” it’s still “a pretty awesome spectacle.”
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.