Dogfight

A coming of age story (that's what we used to call bullying) of both boys and girls.  Tough.  Brutal.  Honest.  Powerful.

Joe Mantello and Christopher Gattelli bring Peter Duchan's Book and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's music and lyrics to a brilliant life at Second Stage.   Lindsay Mendez, Josh Segarra, and Nick Blaemire and a large supporting cast bring a youthful innocence and believability factor to the characters all the while exercising their acting chops on some very fine material.

A summer treat.  Sets and Costumes by David Zinn were as good as they could be - every inch of vertical space was cleverly used given the 4 close walls of the theatre.

Look for this one in years to come on a bigger stage.  There's more potential just waiting to be exploited.

Lysistrata Jones

What's that sound?  I think it's Walter Kerr turning over in his grave.  I've been disappointed on Broadway before and I'm sure I will again.

Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn have crafted a mediocre yet clever book and score that seems vaguely Xanadu-like yet wildly inferior to it's predecessor.  The show is not lacking talented performers, but the young and talented performers are lacking a Broadway-quality product to perform in.   I'd gladly pay $20 or $30 to see this show off-Broadway where it belongs, but when a gaggle of greedy producers gets together and thinks that this crap can sell and be profitable on Broadway at $120 a ticket I wonder what on earth they were smoking!

No stars above the title, not even Lysistrata herself. None of the rest really deserving of the privilege either - not that there weren't incredibly sexy kids on stage - but it takes more than a hot, sexy jock (Josh Segarra) and his occasionally shirtless basketball teammates and a dumb-acting high school girl (Patti Murin) and her geek sidekick (Lindsay Nicole Chambers) to ignite a Broadway barn-burner.  Jason Tam, adorable and cute, gets my award for the character most likely to be seen on the next episode of Glee.   Sets were colorful (read, bright collegiate orange and blue) but how creative can you really get with the inside of a school gymnasium?)  Lighting was colorful and bright but seemed to serve as a mask, not an enhancement to the empty performances.  Occasionally when i looked up at the band (up above the performers on a catwalk - kinda cool - they seemed to be having a lot of fun with the airhead pop-laced tunes.  I wished I was too.

Truth be told I walked out at the intermission.  I can't give this one a legitimate or thorough review.  What I can tell you is not to waste your money in the first place.  The show is off-Broadway quality at best.  And that's not a BAD thing - except when you try to charge $120 a ticket on a Broadway stage.  That's the real sin here.  I hope the producers and creatives behind Bring It On learn a lesson from this one and bring us more than Ms Jones has.