With very few exceptions, the composers of the Broadway theater during the 20th century were of Jewish heritage, some of them immigrants from Eastern Europe. That cultural anomaly was examined in song a year ago in a revue dubbed To Life, named for a number in Fiddler on the Roof. Since it proved popular with the audience at Boca Raton’s Willow Theatre, that show has now … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Evita’ recycles Hal Prince, comes up with a dud
The Wick Theatre uses director Norb Joerder so frequently because he has staged most of its musicals already, often many times over. He could, as the expression goes, direct them in his sleep. And with the current production of Evita, that is exactly what it looks like he has done. The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice biographical musical about Argentina’s power-hungry Eva … [Read more...]
‘Chicago’: The 1920s have something to say to the 2020s
By Hap Erstein Although based on a play from 1926, that was adapted into a musical in 1975, Chicago “just feels like it was written five minutes ago, the way that it examines our culture and the cult of celebrity in our country.” So says Denis Jones, a veteran of the concert-like revival that continues in New York after 23 years, the longest-running American … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Jerry Herman, proudly old-fashioned man of the theater
In describing Broadway composer-lyricist Jerry Herman, who died Dec. 26 in Miami of pulmonary complications at the age of 88, most use the terms “optimist” and “old-fashioned.” And throughout his long, illustrious, lucrative career, he embraced both labels. As he commented to me back in 1985, as his final mega-hit show, La Cage aux Folles, was beginning its victory lap … [Read more...]
‘Bronx Tale’ derivative, but strong performances compel
Whether or not actor-writer Chazz Palminteri is concerned about ecology, he owes much of his career to recycling. Consider A Bronx Tale, which he first wrote and performed in the late 1980s, a semi-autobiographical one-man show about his coming of age in the New York borough. In the show, a young Palminteri surrogate named Calogero is caught in a tug-of-war between … [Read more...]
2019’s Top 10 in theater: ‘Streetcar’ stands out
It was an odd year at the theater in South Florida. Try as I might to include them in the year’s best, two of the region’s most reliable companies – Maltz Jupiter Theatre and GableStage – failed to make the cut of the top 10. Nor did Broward Stage Door, but that is less surprising, since the organization folded in March, after 25 years of operation and eight months after … [Read more...]
‘Villainous Company’ improbable, but actresses make it compelling
Are you in the mood for an old-fashioned parlor game of “who’s conning whom?” None of the three female characters in Victor L. Cahn’s Villainous Company are to be trusted, you see, and unless they are not what they claim to be, a lot of their dialogue rings false. Or perhaps it is playwright Cahn who is doing the conning and we in the audience are the conned. … [Read more...]
‘Christmas Story’ a family-friendly, charming departure for edgy Slow Burn
The songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will probably long be associated with the angst-riddled Tony Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. But five years before it arrived on Broadway, they wrote a whimsical adaptation of Jean Shepherd’s look back on his youth at holiday time, A Christmas Story. True, little Ralphie Parker obsesses over getting a Red Ryder … [Read more...]
Community theater: Delray Playhouse offers fun night of farce
By Dale King If your fancy runs to lively, energetic stage productions, See How They Run is likely your cup of tea. As with most British farces, the operative word in the title is “run.” And that’s what the characters do in this raucous, whimsical story at the Delray Beach Playhouse. For its second show of the season, the Playhouse taps an interesting cadre of performers … [Read more...]
FAU Theatre Lab handles promising ‘Super Great’ deftly
The first thing you need to know about Stephen Brown’s new play, Everything is Super Great, is that the title is facetious. In fact, nearly everything is pretty awful for the four disconnected characters that populate this “comedy about what’s missing.” For each of them has a void in his life, a missing person or a stunted relationship that keeps his or her existence … [Read more...]