By Dale King The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a send-up of those silly, nerve-wracking, angst-producing, word competitions that caused us no end of anxiety in our youth. The production now playing at the newly opened PGA Arts Center in Palm Beach Gardens provides an entertaining evening of fun, songs and smartly written parody. The 2005 musical that went on … [Read more...]
Happily ever after? FAU’s ‘Into the Woods’ takes on the question
In the often lightweight genre of musicals, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim has tended towards the grim, in shows about a homicidal barber, presidential assassins and America’s opening and despoiling of Japan. Then there is his Grimm musical, Into the Woods, written with his Sunday in the Park with George collaborator James Lapine. Its first act, which interweaves several … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Michael Hall, South Florida theater pioneer
One of the true pioneers of South Florida professional theater has died. Michael Hall, 77, co-founder and artistic director of Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre company, died June 15 of complications from pancreatic cancer. With seed money from James R. Caldwell, founder of the Rubbermaid kitchen utensils company, Hall was encouraged to create a not-for-profit playhouse in … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ delightful treat for summer
As managing executive producer Marilynn Wick readily concedes in her pre-show speech, she has purposely aimed her summer show, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, at youngsters and at developing an audience of tots. Then she has chosen well, with one of the Mouse Factory’s most popular animated features, transformed into the company’s first Broadway venture in 1994, a … [Read more...]
At 12, Gardens’s Ben Krieger already a stage veteran
What had you accomplished by the age of 12? Worked a paper route? Opened and run a lemonade stand? Ben Krieger of Palm Beach Gardens, 12, is already a veteran stage performer, having appeared in three national tours of Broadway shows. This Tuesday night, when he opens in Finding Neverland at the Broward Center, he will have notched some 250 performances in the past two … [Read more...]
Entertaining ‘Georgia McBride’ anything but a drag
Measured by the usual hard-hitting fare at GableStage, Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride isn’t much of a play, but it does have the makings of one hell of a drag show. Sure, you could argue that the 90-minute evening is a celebration of the tawdry lower depths of show business and a look at how one unlikely cross-dresser gets in touch with his feminine side, but … [Read more...]
Tony predictions: ‘Evan Hansen,’ ‘Dolly!’ likely to win big
Without a blockbuster hit like Hamilton to sweep the Tony Awards (broadcast this Sunday evening on CBS-TV, beginning at 8 p.m.), predicting this season’s winners is substantially more difficult. It was a year of many new musicals, but look for the awards to be split largely between Dear Evan Hansen and the hot-ticket revival of Hello, Dolly! In plays, the season was stronger … [Read more...]
Four years on, Marilynn Wick proud of theater she’s built
Having just completed her fourth season producing live theater at the playhouse that bears her name, Marilynn Wick takes a brief pause in her typical 10-to-14-hour workday to survey what she has built in Boca Raton, on the site of the defunct Caldwell Theatre. An entrepreneur her whole life, she knows the odds of The Wick Theatre and Costume Museum succeeding were high. … [Read more...]
On Broadway, Part 3: Plays and Off-Broadway
All productions of Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, since the original 1979 version set inside a vast industrial warehouse have been downscaled compromises. Still, there are advantages to intimacy and proximity, particularly when the audience is nose-to-nose with that iconic vengeful serial killer born of the old British penny … [Read more...]
On Broadway, Part 2: More musicals
Just because there were a lot of musicals this season on Broadway does not mean they were all on sufficient quality. Consider the following, a star-driven disappointment, a couple of anemic film adaptations and an impressive revival: War Paint – Stardom is a double-edged commodity. It can drive ticket sales as theatergoers clamor to see such bona fide divas as Patti LuPone … [Read more...]