Palm Beach Dramaworks, the area’s most literary stage company, usually traffics in classic American plays. This season, however, it has developed and premiered a couple of new works, both centered on unexpected match-ups – and mash-ups – between iconic writers. In December, Dramaworks unveiled Terry Teachout’s Billy and Me, an exploration of professional jealousy … [Read more...]
With ‘Be Here Now,’ playwright Laufer looks for meaning in chance
For 15 years, Deborah Zoe Laufer has been writing plays on such diverse subjects as family dysfunction, the end of the world and medical ethics. More often than not, her scripts stem from something she heard on National Public Radio. Certainly that is the case with Be Here Now, Laufer’s latest thought-provoking comedy, opening at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab … [Read more...]
In this play, Poe and Dickinson meet on the field of art
There is no evidence that reclusive Emily Dickinson and master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe ever met. But that did not stop Joseph McDonough from introducing them to each other in his two-character play, aptly titled Edgar & Emily, receiving its world premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks beginning Saturday, March 31. “I mean, I did my research and I think everything I talk … [Read more...]
Expert Maltz cast delivers a strong ‘South Pacific’
Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II have mistakenly acquired a reputation for sentimental musicals, yet this is the team that gave up shows about domestic abuse (Carousel), cross-cultural conflict (The King and I), the rise of Nazism (The Sound of Music) and racial prejudice (South Pacific). Perhaps their misguided reputation stems from the … [Read more...]
Score, singing rescue Wick’s ‘Brigadoon’ from missteps
Long before lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe cemented their places as musical theater icons with My Fair Lady and Camelot, the scored their first Broadway hit with an original romantic fable, Brigadoon. Although it ran a respectable 581 performances in the 1947-48 season, it has since been overshadowed by the songwriting team’s other shows and is … [Read more...]
‘The Illusionists’: The sound of 2,000 jaws dropping
I am a sucker for magic, for the jaw-dropping, “How did they do that?” tricks and illusions that seem to defy the laws of nature and logic. There is a profusion of such stunts in The Illusionists: Live from Broadway, an Australian-born, Great White Way-branded show that is flummoxing audiences at the Kravis Center through Sunday. Yes, there are a few sub-par sequences in … [Read more...]
Directors seek fresh angles for two 1940s chestnuts
The Maltz Jupiter Theatre and the Wick Theatre are both grappling with a dilemma. Each has selected a classic musical – 1949’s South Pacific and 1947’s Brigadoon, respectively – because of its intrinsic dramatic and musical quality. But how do you approach such a show, knowing that your audience has probably already seen it, often many times over? To director Gordon … [Read more...]
The Oscars: Who and what will win, and why
This year, the Academy Awards turn 90, and the race for the best picture of 2017 is pretty wide open. This is certainly no runaway Titanic or Lord of the Rings year, and by the same token, as long as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are kept far away from the envelopes, it seems unlikely that there will be audible gasps in the wee hours of the morning after Sunday. … [Read more...]
Powerful ‘If I Forget’ stuns at GableStage
These days, we cling to our memories, worried that without them we will drift into dementia. But in his latest controversial book, fictional professor of Jewish studies Michael Fischer argues that American Jews need to forget – forget the Holocaust and stop obsessing over it for the sake of their mental health and general well-being. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he … [Read more...]
Sharp FAU cast does well by Gunderson’s ‘The Revolutionists’
There are several things you can count on in a play by Lauren Gunderson. It will center on women with a feminist bent, it will have crisp, witty dialogue yet make plenty of serious points and it will self-reflectively keep reminding us that we are watching a play, what theater folks call “meta.” Certainly that is the case with The Revolutionists, a tongue-in-cheek … [Read more...]