Theatre
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Annie Baker's The Flick
Miami Theater Center
By: - May 30th, 2016The Flick by Annie Baker is being staged all over America. Given the scale of the movie theater with a theater the length of the individual productions varies greatly depending upon how long it takes for the trio of actors to sweep up all the popcorn between screenings. This is a review of a Miami production where it weighed in at about three hours.
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Presto Change-O at Barrington Stage
A Magical Three-Card Monte Musical
By: - May 29th, 2016Barrington Stage Company is launching its Pittsfield season with a commissioned musical Presto Change-O which is having its world premiere on the intimate St. Germain Stage. On many levels this perky production is zesty and magical and that's not just an illusion.
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John Douglas Thompson and Maggie Lacey
NY's TFNA Presents Ibsen and Strindberg
By: - May 25th, 2016Can men and women find themselves and satisfaction at the same time? This question has been asked since the beginning to time. Theatre for a New Audience, in their remarkable home, the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, features John Douglas Thompson and Maggie Lacey in Ibsen's A Doll's House and Strindberg's The Father, running in repertory.
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Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer
Lindsay Ann Crouse Launches Gloucester Stage Season
By: - May 24th, 2016Veteran actor Lindsay Ann Crouse left LA several years ago to relocate to Annisquam the summer home of her theatrical family. In a now annual production she has been offered great roles by the local Gloucester Stage now launching its 37th season. She is stunning in the meaty role of an eccentric docent of a seedy British mansion. While entertaining she doesn't stick to the script. The play was written as a vehicle for Dame Maggie Smith by Peter Shaffer who wrote Equus and Amadeus. This play, as you will learn, is the cat's meow.
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Sondheim on Sondheim as Putting It Together
Stage Door Theatre in South Florida
By: - May 24th, 2016Unlike in another Sondheim revue, “Side by Side by Sondheim,” has no narrator to link the songs. Rather, a dramatic framework exists in which two couples are attending a cocktail party at an upscale residence. This allows the characters to sing nearly 30 Sondheim songs outside the context for which he composed/or wrote the lyrics.
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World Premiere Noir Musical Thriller Hollywood
By Tony Winners Joe Di Pietro and Christopher Ashley at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - May 23rd, 2016La Jolla Playhouse has the best track record of any West Coast theatre when it comes to sending their original theatrical productions to Broadway (over 30 of them to date). Their 2008 musical production “Memphis”, written by Joe Di Pietro and directed by Christopher Ashley went on to Broadway winning a 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical. “Hollywood”, again written by Di Pietro, and helmed by Ashley, is looking to pull off a Tony Award-winning ‘Daily Double’ coup.
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Michael Bernardi Discusses Fiddler on the Roof
Filling His Father Herschel's Boots an Original Tevye on Broadway
By: - May 19th, 2016Michael Bernardi lost his father, Herschel, when he was not yet two. Still, for much of his life, he has sensed his father’s presence. His father played Tevye on Broadway over three years and 702 performances, beginning in 1965. The younger Bernardi is currently playing Mordcha in the Tony nominated Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
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The Tin Woman by Sean Grennan
Actor’s Playhouse The Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables
By: - May 19th, 2016Anyone who’s required an organ transplant knows the horrible ordeals of blood tests and waiting lists. But what happens after a successful transplant is complete? Does life revert to normal for the recipient, the donor and their families?
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The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord
Scott Carter at Northlight Theatre in Chicago
By: - May 19th, 2016Scott Carter is executive producer for HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” and previously produced the first 1100 episodes of Maher’s “Politically Incorrect.” He has written two full-length monologues. Discord premiered in 2014 in Los Angeles at the Geffen Playhouse and the NoHo Arts Center.
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Lend Me a Tenor in Charleston
Ken Ludwig Tony Winning Play by The Footlight Players
By: - May 17th, 2016The Tony winning comedy Lend Me a Tenor by Ken Ludwig is being given a lively revival by The Footlight Players in Charleston. The first act takes a lot of exposition with long monologues. Having established the characters and plot lines the second act proved to be a fun packed roller coaster trip.
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The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
Lorraine Hansberry's Last Play at Chicago's Goodman
By: - May 12th, 2016The play, first produced in 1964 with a three-month Broadway run, is a time-warp visit to 1960s Greenwich Village. Lorraine Hansberry was concerned with the political issues and activism of the day, issues that still resonate: Political corruption, racism, homophobia, poverty and privilege.
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Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Road Company at Florida's Broward Center for the Performing Arts
By: - May 12th, 2016If the audience at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Au-Rene Theater was any indication, people pull for King not just because of her music. They want to see her succeed in this bio-musical. She comes across as an ambitious, yet humble, talented, yet insecure underdog.
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The Realistic Jonses by Will Eno
Ft. Lauderdale’s Thinking Cap Theatre
By: - May 10th, 2016Part of the appeal of Will Eno’s play is the variety of emotions it elicits and how sympathetically he’s written “The Realistic Joneses". Eno also doesn’t offer any easy answers. But in the end, you’ll leave the theater feeling you’re not alone in harboring questions about your existence and fears about the fragility of life and the uncertainty surrounding it. Thinking Cap Theatre is “committed to presenting high-quality, thought-provoking theatre to South Florida theatre audiences.”
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Guare's The House of Blue Leaves
Chicago's Raven Theatre
By: - May 07th, 2016The House of Blue Leaves has sweet, poignant and tragic moments, but it’s mostly two-and-a-quarter hours of retro nonsense, reminding us or showing us what the world was like 50 years ago.
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Dayporch at Threshold Repertory Theatre
The Actors' Theatre of South Carolina
By: - May 06th, 2016The Actors' Theatre of South Carolina presented The Dayporch at Threshold Repertory Theatre in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. This delightful Southern-style dark comedy could only have been written by a Southern belle who lived among Southerners.
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Hamilton Tops Tony Nominations
Boffo Season on Broadway
By: - May 03rd, 2016As anticipated Hamilton threatens to run the table in 2016 Tony Awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom both of Hamilon are running head to head for top honor as leading man in a musical. In the Best Play Revival category it's a coin toss between two Arthur Miller plays both directed by Ivo Van Hove who is nominated once for both plays. But a production of Eugene O'Neill's epic Long Day's Journey Into Night is in the running. There will be lot of politicking for the honors between now and June.
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The Hammer Trinity a Marathon Production in Miami
Epic by Nathan Allen and Chris Mathews
By: - May 03rd, 2016August: Osage County was long at three and a half hours. But Nathan Allen in partnership with Chris Matthews test the endurance of audiences with The Hammer Trinity in a single day with two meal breaks. It takes endurance to hang in for nine and a half hours but proves to be worth the time and patience for a production that is evocative and richly inventive. Those who hang in to the finish are proud to sport stickers that proclaim "I Got Hammered."
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Bridges of Madison County in Palm Beach
Touring Equity Production
By: - May 01st, 2016In a musical adaptation, especially of a story as popular as “Bridges,” one desires to judge immediately whether the music and lyrics enhance the romantic tale. In this case it mostly does, deepening mood and enhancing characters’ feelings and emotions. This musical premiered at Williamstown Theatre Festival before a Broadway run. This touring production was reviewed at Raymond F. Kravis Center For the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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Richard Bean's Toast Delightful Theater
Celebrating Brits Off Broadway 2016
By: - May 01st, 2016Toast comes with its most recent British cast. Set in a bread factory around 1972, this is a guy world and a factory world. In the US both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are reminding us of the value of this kind of work.
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4000 Miles at CV Repertory Theatre
Nation's Most Produced Play in 2014
By: - Apr 29th, 2016CV Repertory Theatre founding artistic director Ron Celona was taken with playwright Amy Herzog’s dramedy “4000 Miles” the minute he read it. “… it offered humor, heart, and thought-provoking topics that most of us can relate to in life.” he says. Celona felt it would be a good fit for his Rancho Mirage audiences and a great way to end CV REP’s 2015/2016 season. He was right on all accounts.
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The Outgoing Tide by Bruce Graham
Dezart Performs in Palm Springs
By: - Apr 28th, 2016“The Outgoing Tide”, insightfully written by Bruce Graham and intelligently directed by Dezart Performs co-founder Michael Shaw, is blessed with a cast of three seasoned professional actors who have graced your movie and television screens over the years and who know their way around a poignant, relevant, and deeply emotional play when they find themselves in one.
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The Submission by Jeff Talbot
South Florida's Island City Stage
By: - Apr 25th, 2016Jeff Talbott explores the race issue from an angle not often explored in the theater: infighting among minority groups as to which has been subject to more discrimination, hate and suffering. Forget about racial harmony between white and black people for a moment; if members of minority groups can’t get along and stand with each other in solidarity against hate and bias, how will the race issue ever go away, Talbott challenges us to consider.
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Votes the Musical Re-visited
New Production Suggests the Clinton Dynamic
By: - Apr 23rd, 2016Lisa Wright-Matthews and Wayne Miller as ersatz Clintons give us the first couple past and future?
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Elektra is Galvanic
Murder and Revenge without Intermission at the MET
By: - Apr 23rd, 2016A remarkable non-stop performance by Nina Stemme – who never leaves the stage in this 110-minute production – sets the tone for a magnificent interpretation of Strauss’ devastating opera.
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Agnes of God in Palm Springs
Coyote StageWorks at Annenberg Theatre
By: - Apr 23rd, 2016Whoever says one has to go to New York or LA to see great theatre obviously hasn’t seen, but should see, the current Coyote StageWorks production of “Agnes of God” currently on stage at the Annenberg Theatre in Palm Springs.
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