Judging from the bios on the website, this cast is going to be first rate. Members have danced with Ailey II, appeared in Broadway shows, as well as in the Broadway “Memphis” cast, and have performed at Carnegie Hall and with Cirque du Soleil.

Story by Joe DiPietro (I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change), Tony Award-winning original score by David Bryan (Bon Jovi) and Joe DiPietro, direction by Christopher Ashley (Xanadu) and choreography by Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys).

“Memphis” runs Jan. 31-Feb. 5 at The Fox Theatre.

Jasmine Guy, Geoffrey Darnell Williams, and Keith Randolph Smith. Photo: Greg Moody

The Alliance Theatre is bustin loose and banging heads in “God of Carnage.” A rip, roarin’ drag-out fight ensues between couples who try to act civilly after the Raleigh’s son knocks out two teeth and disfigures the son of the Novaks.

Within this 90-minute play, writer Yasmina Reza takes the Novaks and the Raleighs on a roller coaster wave of emotions, and the cast’s fine actors bring the audience right along with them.

Keith Randolph Smith is hilarious as Michael Novak, who goes from sedate, adoring, obedient husband and son to cynical, unruly lout.

This production has so much going for it–a great script and wonderful acting–but the vomit scene is too much like a Linda Blair cartoon with volcano-erupting vomit. Nonetheless, the cast and script are great. This is a definite go-see-it.

Winner of the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play, “God of Carnage” runs through Feb. 4 at the Alliance Theatre.

Directed by Kent Gash, “God of Carnage” features Jasmine Guy, Crystal Fox, and Geoffrey Darnell Williams.

Think “Stomp” with martial arts, gymnastics and halftime show-like marching bands.

“Blast!” features 35 brass and percussion players performing classical, blues, jazz, rock ‘n roll, and techno-pop music.

Tickets for evening and matinee shows are available at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.

Murphey, Benzinger, French, Levison; Photo: Offhand

Anything else, good?

A few jolts of humor, some basic humanitarian points: we should all be equal no matter our creed, sexual orientation, religion or color.

Sorry to say, nothing else here folks.

On stage, there is rarely a true connection between Luke and Adam. Their candle-maker boss, Holly (Jennifer Levison),says lines but fails to connect with anyone.

Whether it’s the fault of the play or the director, something does not gel. Although the play is no masterpiece, by itself it probably isn’t bad. But when you watch it with actors who fail to connect to one another and actually come to life on stage rather than just say lines, it’s hard to tell whether the play could be good.

When Luke (Joe Sykes) winds up in the hospital after a traffic accident, his parents (Arlene and Butch), friends and live-in lover, Adam (Mitchell Anderson), and former lover Brandon (John Benzinger) meet up in the hospital. Scenes flash forward and back from the couple’s first encounter to Luke’s final demise.

I’ve seen staged readings with more life than this production.

“Next Fall” by Geoffrey Nauffts, directed by Kate Warner, runs through Feb. 11 at Actor’s Express.

In March Actor’s Express presents the Atlanta premiere of “The Motherf**ker With the Hat, named “Top Ten of 2011” by the New York Times.

In “Feet First in the Water with a Baby in My Teeth,” Gogerty paints a clear picture of her life as a new mom. Her arm becomes a baby, her baby a butterball turkey, and a step stool becomes a whining toddler who refuses to put on his pants. I see it before my very eyes.

Her writing rings true to life, and she has worked out the moments of the script so that she hits the mark each time. The problem is the mark is off base.

Gogerty tends to emote and push her acting. It’s over the top and not true to life. It appears as if she has mapped out each moment in her script to be carefully acted. She knows how she wants her acting to appear. She pretends to be excited. She pretends to be angry. She pretends to be scared. She asks a question to the audience and pretends not to hear the one person who answers quite loudly.

Gogerty may have lived the script in real life. She doesn’t live it on stage. She acts it on stage. If she could actually scold her child rather than pretend to get mad him, she’d have us with her. You want to be with her, in her world, because her script is novel, funny and interesting.

From the name of her play to the moniker of her son “Turk”—the butterball turkey baby who weighed 10 pounds at birth—Gogerty is a writer through and through.

Naysayers will no doubt write me and defend Gogerty. They’ll say it’s hard to capture an audience in a one-woman show and that her acting is meant to be lively. But truth is truth. That is what makes her script so good. She writes with the kind of deep truth we experience that people pretend not to see–the truth about the pains of raising a baby and not going as far as we would have liked to in our careers.

I believe the stories Gogerty tells no matter how far out they seem. I believe her story about her great-grandmother who worked in the kitchen of a steamboat on the Mississippi River. When a fire struck the boat, even though she was a 16-year-old mother who couldn’t swim, she grabbed her baby, jumped feet first into the water, and dog-paddled a half mile to shore, clutching her baby in her teeth by the diaper. Whether Gogerty’s stories are true, I believe in them because her writing is so descriptive and lively.

Great scripts for one-woman shows are hard to find. And when a great, comedic actress finds this one, it’s going to be one hell of a show.

Synchronicity Theatre presents “Feet First in the Water with a Baby in My Teeth,” written and performed by Megan Gogerty and directed by Alexis Chamow, through Dec. 18 at the Balzer Theater at Herren’s.

Like the wacky comic magicians Penn & Teller, the Amazing Jonathan is like no other and has been dubbed one of the funniest comic performers in Las Vegas.

With more than 25 years as a grotesque and gruesome comic magician, Jonathan has performed on “Late Night With David Letterman,” “The Wayne Brady Show,” “The World’s Wildest Magicians” and dozens of other TV shows.

A Las Vegas headliner, the Amazing Jonathan describes himself as the Freddy Krueger of comedy. I couldn’t have said it any better.

The Amazing Jonathan plays The Punchline in Sandy Springs Thursday-Sunday. Tickets are $20 Thursday and $30 Friday-Sunday.

Forget Santa Claus. “Billy Elliot” is coming to town!

Tickets go on sale Sunday for the Tony Award-winning musical that knocked me to my feet and toes dancing when the cast performed at The Tony Awards.

The show won not two, not three, no not even six Tony Awards. It took home ten Tony Awards!

Billy Elliot the Musical is the celebration of one boy’s journey to make his dreams come true. Set in a small town, the story follows Billy as he stumbles out of the boxing ring and into ballet class, discovering a surprising talent that inspires his family and his whole community, and changes his life forever.

The music is by Sir Elton John and book and lyrics are by Lee Hall. The production features original direction by Stephen Daldry, choreography by Peter Darling, scenic design by Ian MacNeil, associate direction by Julian Webber, costume design by Nicky Gillibrand, lighting design by Rick Fisher and sound design by Paul Arditti. Musical supervision and orchestrations are by Martin Koch.  Touring production direction by Justin Martin and choreography Kathryn Dunn. The show was originally produced by Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Working Title Films and Old Vic Productions.

The production has been awarded 81 national and international awards including ten Tony Awards, Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle.

The performance schedule for Billy Elliot the Musical at The Fox Theatre is:

Tuesday, March 13                       8 p.m.

Wednesday, March 14                  8 p.m.

Thursday, March 15                      8 p.m.

Friday, March 16                          8 p.m.

Saturday, March 17                      2 p.m., 8 p.m.

Sunday, March 18                        1 pm., 6:30 p.m.

The production has been awarded 81 national and international awards including ten Tony Awards, Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle.

Prices start at $28. Tickets can be purchased through authorized ticket sellers at the Fox Theatre Box Office, Ticketmaster outlets, online atwww.broadwayinatlanta.com or by phone at 1-800-982-2787.  Orders for groups of 15 or more may be placed by calling 404-881-2000.

Additional information about Billy Elliot the Musical is available at www.BillyElliotTour.com.

Tiffany Morgan and Kate Donadio; Photo: Synchronicity Theatre

Prudes and prigs beware. ”In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)” may make you blush.

In this production, Synchronicity Theatre certainly lives up to its moniker “smart, gutsy, bold, theatre.”

To all those people who think theater is boring or for stuffed shirts, watch this.

The time is the Victorian era and the location is upstate New York. Electricity is rare in any home, and the Givings are thrilled they have a new electric lamp. But there is one more electrical device, stolen away in the doctor’s office where he sees patients, which is giving quite a few thrills: an electric vibrator.

Inside the home of Dr. and Mrs. Givings, just off the living room in the next room, patients diagnosed with “hysteria” are treated with the newest medical device, the electric vibrator.  Long before Stepford wives, married women in the Victorian age were brought to see a doctor by their husbands for displaying either too little or too much emotion for being hysterical. Forbidden to walk outside alone without a man, married women were to stay home all day while their husbands worked or socialized at a private club.

Mrs. Givings (Kate Donadio), who has no idea what is going on in the next room, is subject to overhearing the shrieks, sighs and moans through the living room door.  She sneaks in one day while her husband is out and examines the vibrator, which looks similar to a small blow drier with a tip that whirls around, kind of like the nose of a small plane missing its propeller. When patient Mrs. Sabrina Daldry (Tiffany Morgan) arrives while the doctor is away, Mrs. Givings beseeches her to show her how the vibrator is used.  The vibrator experience marks the first time either women have felt such sensations.

The doctor’s first male patient to be treated with the vibrator, Leo Irving (Tony Larkin), a romantic artist arrives to seek treatment for depression to overcome heartache. He becomes enamored with the Givings’s black nursemaid, Elizabeth (Xiomara Yanique), who is the only one of the ladies to understand what all the moaning and sighing could mean. In high society, women were constantly under social constrains, even during sex between a married couple.

This  is a well-acted show and features a standout performance by Kate Donadio, who channels  Katherine Hepburn’s flirtatious ways in a cheeky scene with Mr. Daldry (Doyle Reynolds).

“In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play” by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Rachel May, produced by Synchronicity Theatre, runs through Nov. 19 at Horizon Theatre. Tickets are available at Synchronicity Theatre.

Cast:

Dr. Givings-Brian Kurlander

Annie-Daryl Lisa Fazio

Travis Smith and Bethany Anne Lind; Photo: Bill DeLoach

Georgia Shakespeare keeps getting better and better. Not that it wasn’t good, but the past two shows I’ve seen there have been outstanding, and “The Glass Menagerie “ is no exception. Thanks, greatly, to two outstanding actors Mary Lynn Ownen, who plays Amanda Wingfield, and Joe Knezevich, who plays her son, Tom.

Knezevich, is fast becoming my factor actor in this town. I’ve seen him in a number of shows in the past couple of years, and he is always a standout. He’s different from one show to the next. He steps out of his own shoes and becomes someone totally different. And while you might think that’s what acting is—you’d be totally right—far too many actors in this town don’t do it. Not only does he change from role to role, he changes within the role he’s playing. One moment he’s a lout, the next moment he’s charming, the next, a raving maniac. Not at all unlike Owen. While I don’t remember seeing her in other shows, she is a consummate actress. She does the unexpected—charming her son one moment and raging at him the next. In one standout screaming match between the two of them, it was so real I wanted to stop it.

Now I’m going to be picky here and tell you about a few of the flaws.

Laura Wingfiled (Bethany Anne Lind), Tom’s “crippled” sister, holds the story together as the poor, lost, sweet soul who can’t do anything all day but play the gramophone and play with her miniature glass animals. Lind’s acting is believable as Laura but predictable and one dimensional. Laura has worn  a leg brace since she was a child. Although Laura is more crippled in mind than body, Lind forgets that she is supposed to have some difficulty walking. Lind misses the mark sometimes. For example, when her “gentleman caller” Jim O’Connor (Travis Smith), accidentally breaks the unicorn she adores most in her collection of horses, she is barely saddened.

There is one flaw that I hope Georgia Shakespeare fixes: On opening night when Jim picked up a newspaper, there were only large sheets of flimsy paper with no print on it. The rest of the scene was so real that the surprise of seeing no print took me and my companion right out of the scene and put us inside a theater wondering why there was no print on the newspaper.

Here is why you have to see this show: Mary Lynn Owen and Joe Knezevich. Every time I see Knezevich in anything he is outstanding. I’ve seen Jessica Tandy play Amanda on Broadway. Ms. Owen, your performance was no less than hers.

Kat Conley has created a simple set that reeks of shattered dreams against a backdrop of shattered shards of glass.

“The Glass Menagerie” runs through Oct. 30 at Georgia Shakespeare.

Sunday Brunch at the Ritz in Buckhead

From the moment you drive up to The Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead, on a Sunday morning you’re treated like royalty, even if you’re driving a six-year old Scion among the Mercedes Benzes and Audis. The valets open the car door, the hotel doors, and everyone smiles making me forget the troubled car I came in and feel like I’m Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” In the lobby lounge outside the dining room, people sit in oversized chairs drinking juices and nibbling on snacks while a piano player plays standards and sweet melodies.

The Ritz-Carlton Sunday Brunch includes 50 items, including crab claws, crab cakes, grilled vegetables, salads, fresh fruits, pastries, sushi, smoked fish, a meat carving station, and the traditional Eggs Benedict, Belgian Waffles, salads, an assortment of cheese and bread, and desserts. Oh, yes, and sparkling white wine.

Executive Chef Peter “Peter Z” Zampaglione oversees Sunday Brunch, while Chef Todd Richards, chef of The Café, supplies one or two of his dinner menu items. Sommelier Linda Torres organizes the sparkling wines.

Before joining The Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead, Peter Z led culinary teams at luxury hotels and resorts in Spain and Ireland and served on The Ritz-Carlton Culinary Advisory Board with responsibilities for the company’s hotels in Santiago, Moscow, Berlin, Wolfsburg and Powerscourt.

Brunch is available from 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. on Sundays and cost $59 per person.