Last season I saw Lombardi, a play about legendary Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi. It was pretty great stuff but both Mrs. Wife and I couldn’t imagine who, other than myself, would be interested in both football and plays.

Well, Lombardi is an unexpected hit. The fact that the Packers won the Super Bowl was an unforeseen bit of good fortune. This might have encouraged the Producing Powers That Be because I just saw another drama that drips testosterone. This time, they’re mounting a production that doesn’t include any female characters! At least Lombardi’s wife was major role.

That Championship Season is still in previews and has not been reviewed yet, so I don’t know what I should think.

Just kidding. It was pretty great stuff. A championship-winning basketball team reunites and every one of them is living a deeply flawed life—especially the coach, who is supposed to be their moral compass and mentor. Anti-champions. There’s copious amounts of drinking—an amount that stretches credibility.

Keefer Sutherland plays against type as a milk toast junior high school principal. I’m not a huge Chris Noth fan—he tends to be kind of flat—but he showed some real fire. Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan embodies the soft victim. (Although, he couldn’t come up with real tears when the script called for it. I hate fake crying on stage. Amateur!) Brian Cox is a British national treasure. He’s never bad in anything. [He pulls off an authentic American accent. The next night, I saw him in the movie Red where he dons a convincing Russian accent. What a champ!]

Jason Patrick is also stellar. The added dimension is that this play was written by his father, Jason Miller. Imagine being on the big stage speaking dialogue that your father wrote. It’s a thrill that not many will experience. It’s a shame his dad isn’t alive to see it.

Trivia factoid: Sutherland and Patrick are reunited from the vampire film The Lost Boys, which my brother cleverly rechristened The Lost Boy Models.

I don’t attend many musicals. They’re not my thing. I quite enjoyed Avenue Q a few weeks ago but I went by invitation so that doesn’t really count. But I couldn’t resist the special offer of a $19.64 ticket to see Rain, the Beatles tribute show at the Brooks Atkinson.

They were celebrating the anniversary of The Beatles coming to America in 1964. Get it? I’d see pretty much anything for $19.64. I’d even see Spider-Man!

The producers, cleverly, assume that everyone knows the history of The Beatles and dispenses with any kind of plot. It’s purely a concert production and whether or not you enjoy it depends entirely on how much you like The Beatles. (A pretty obvious indictment but it needed to be said.) Well, I like The Beatles a lot so I had a fine time.

I don’t think the actors resembled The Beatles in the least, despite the wigs and copious amounts of make-up. Joey Curatolo, the Paul McCartney doppelganger, looked a bit like him. But if you close your eyes and listen, they sound just like The Beatles. There were a few moments of real brilliance and they were masters of their instruments. They worked hard to pull the audience in.

They ran through The Beatles catalog in chronological order cherry picking a few songs from each album. There were a few breaks for costume changes. They ran the gamut from skinny ties to collarless jackets all they way through the Sgt. Pepper outfits, which looked terrific.

Does anyone know where I got the title for this post? No cheating!

Avenue Q is the lively send-up of Sesame Street that includes doppelgangers of familiar characters. There’s an internet/porn-addicted Cookie Monster, a closeted Republican Bert, a slacker layabout Ernie and two adorable Bad Idea Bears who encourage you to drink to excess, have drunken, unprotected sex and sleep late enough to miss important meetings at work. By all means, go, but do NOT bring the kiddies.

I, along with a gaggle of other bloggers, was invited to see the Tony Award winning musical. Ask anyone who has see it here in New York, in Las Vegas, or any of the touring companies, it’s two solid hours of fun.

Initially I was concerned that the show might have gotten a little long in the tooth. It won the Tony for Best Musical way back in 2004. That’s a long time ago and sometimes, productions are allowed to go on a lot longer than they should. I remember seeing Cats well beyond its freshness date and it was tired, tired, tired.

I am relieved to report that the current production, which was relocated to Off-Broadway in 2009, still smells fresh as a flower. And that’s not just because they plied me with free drink coupons. I took CB with me. He hadn’t seen it before (I don’t know how he avoided it all these years) and he loved it.

The cast is enthusiastic and more than capable. The material is so strong that I think it’d be hard to drive this boat onto the rocks. After the show, the house lights went up and we were treated to a actor/puppet meet-and-greet. There was a lively and informative Q and A that I wish had gone on a lot longer than it did, but after two hours of simultaneously singing, delivering dialog, and playing multiple characters, all while hoisting puppets, the cast was, understandably, exhausted.

I did have time to meet with Rod who, despite claiming to have a girlfriend in Canada, likes to relax by reading his favorite book, Broadway Musicals of 1940.

I also met with one of the Bad Idea Bears. Don’t let the pink bow fool you. This show has my all-time favorite character name; a bossy, matronly kindergarten teacher named Mrs. Fizzletwat.

If you’re in town or live here and haven’t seen it yet, you should treat yourself. It’s a sure thing. If you order tickets at the box office or at boradwayoffers.com and use the code AQBLOG12, you can get discounted tickets as low as $55. (Valid through 5/26/11)

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore is the clunky-titled Tennessee Williams obscurity that’s in previews at the Roundabout. I think the Roundabout was looking to strike gold twice with old Tennessee. Last year, they mounted a landmark production of The Glass Menagerie with Judith Ivey that was, as far as I’m concerned, as good a night of theater as you can ever hope to get. Blue roses!~~~

Milk Train premiered in 1962 to generally poor reviews, which is probably why you don’t hear it mentioned in the same breath as Glass Menagerie, Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. A Broadway revival in 1964 starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter (!?!?!?!) also tanked.

I admire the Roundabout’s spirit and sense of daring but, I’m sorry, this train is off the tracks. (Ha. I said it first. I guarantee that some legitimate critic will steal that from me.)

I went with CB who liked it a lot, especially the first act. It’s all so subjective! We saw the exact same performance and the things that didn’t work for me (dialogue, some of the cast, the ludicrous plot) weren’t a problem for CB at all! CB has a masters degree from Columbia and has written full-blown plays, so it’s probably safer if you take his word for it. Don’t listen to me. I like Rush.

Olympia Dukakis plays Flora Goforth, the fatally ill, supremely wealthy matron who’s just looking for love, love, love, baby, in between morphine injections. All the Tennessee Williams women have the same desperate nature. She does a fine job but I don’t think the script does her any favors. Her hysterical geisha dance is almost worth the cost of the ticket alone.

Flora’s secretary, Francis “Blackie” Black (rolls his eyes), is her eventual rival for the hot young stud who climbs up the side of a mountain to meet them. (But not before being attacked and bloodied by the security dogs. Not kidding.) The actress playing Blackie seemed uncomfortable in the her character’s shoes.

Isn’t that a great poster, though?

I saw The New Group’s production of Blood From a Stone. It’s billed as a dark comedy/drama about a dysfunctional family but let me tell you, it’s about 10 parts comedy to 90 parts drama. And “dysfunctional” is too gentle, too clinical a term, to describe the goings on.

It’s in previews and the word on the street is that, at a bit over three hours, it runs too long and they’re trying to pare it down before opening night. I have no idea what people are complaining about. It was so well acted and so compelling that I didn’t look at my watch once. It’s down to about 2:45 and it makes me wonder what I missed.

Comparisons to the horrible family in Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County are inevitable but this sort of thing goes back to Tennessee Williams and even further than that. This family is vintage blue collar bankrupt, living in a house that is, quite literally, falling apart. It’s a different spin on an often-told story.

The entire cast is strong although as the insane ball of anger father, Gordon Clapp (of NYPD Blue) seemed like he was acting at times. Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent original cast) has exactly one scene but it’s so sexually charged that it impacts the rest of the story. As the scene opens, she’s sans clothes but the lights are so dim that you don’t see any of her goodies, which I’m a little upset about.

But that goddamn Ethan Hawke. That son-of-a-bitch is The Man. He was on stage for pretty much the entire 2:45 and he drove that bus just where it needed to go. He’s a master of dialog and reaction. During the intermission, I read the playbill and his credits include two Academy Award nominations, one of them as a writer. Also, he directed a play that was based on one of his two novels. Oh, and the ladies seem to like his look. (Edit: see first comment, for instance). Bastard. That guy makes me question my choices and feel like an underachiever.

This is the last play I’ll see this year. 12 months. 41 plays. It could be worse. It could be whiskey and whores.