Simon SEEZ: May 2014

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging (at the Davenport Theatre 354 W. 45th Street www.forbiddenbroadway.com (212) 239-6200)

Mia Gentile (left) Carter Calvert (Center) and Scott Richard Foster (right)

After taking a ten month hiatus, the satiric musical revue that tops and betters all of them is back. As created, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, the revue built on a sequence of skits and original songs that lampoon the most vulnerable current musical shows is more blissfully funny and blisteringly on-target than it has ever been. To read the complete review please go to http://curtainup.com/forbiddenbroadway14.html

"17 Orchard Point" at the Beckett Theater (Opened May 4, 2014; Ends May 25th)

After an eight-year sojourn in Las Vegas, fifty-two year old, good-times-seeker Lydia (Michele Pawk) pays an unnerving, life-changing visit to Vera (Stephanie DiMaggio) her unloved, distraught thirty-year old single daughter in Cleveland. That about sums up the basic set-up for this implausibly pathetic reunion between a mother from Hell and her religion-intoxicated daughter as co-written by Anton Dudley and DiMaggio, who is also the play's co-star. To read the complete review please go to http://curtainup.com/17orchardpoint14.html

About Simon

Born, raised, and educated in New Jersey, Simon has remained true to his home state. Recently a widower, he continues to live there where he contributes theater reviews and features to CurtainUp, the print publication US 1 Newspaper, Princeton and his blog SimonSeez. He was married for fifty years to LucyAnn Saltzman, Professor of Speech and Public Speaking in the Theater Department of Drew University.

With a short bow to practicality, Simon studied accounting and business law at Pace College, his heart always belonged to the theater. Even as he attempted to master the laws of debits and credits, he also studied acting and performed at the famed The New York Dramatic Workshop. During a stint of working for producer Saint Subber and passing the SEC/NASD exam he saw his name on a marquee for the first time, as associate producer of Gore Vidal's Weekend at the Broadhurst Theater in 1968. A year later he produced an Off-Broadway show under his own aegis — Frank Gagliano's City Scene starring Raul Julia, Michael Douglas and Lenny Baker. Finding his talents better suited to journalism than producing, Simon began writing theater criticism and features for numerous publications, a calling he pursues expertly and enthusiastically to this day.

Simon is the former President of the Outer Critics Circle. The theater bug has also bitten one of the Saltzman's two married children. Daughter Alice is the Associate Head of Acting Program for NYU students at the Stella Adler Studio. Alice's teenage son Ben has caught the acting/dancing bug with his eye on a theater career. Son James is Manager of Digital Media Service, University of N. Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill.