Barbara Cook, one of the true great performers of the musical theater and the concert stage, has died of respiratory failure at 89. In a career that spanned six decades, she originated roles in such shows of Broadway’s Golden Age as The Music Man, Candide and She Loves Me before reinventing herself as a solo interpreter of the Graet American Songbook. In between those … [Read more...]
Michael McKeever: South Florida’s own prolific playwright
It is rare that the name Michael McKeever comes up without the adjective “prolific” attached to it. In the 21 years since the Davie playwright’s work was first produced in South Florida, he has written 27 full-length plays and countless short plays, probably between 20 and 24, by his offhanded estimate. Because he enjoys performing, McKeever often appears in his own plays … [Read more...]
A chilling, first-rate ‘1984’ at Pompano Cultural Center
By Dale King George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a frightening piece of prose, a literary admonition warning of a perverse future world in which an omniscient state machine, Big Brother, exerts total control over society. To deviate in thought, word or deed could lead to torture or, more likely, death by hanging in a location where audiences gather to watch gleefully. Or, Big … [Read more...]
MNM mounts respectable ‘Company’ at Rinker
That sound you hear is the third shoe dropping in a surprisingly Stephen Sondheim-rich summer in South Florida. Following FAU Festival Rep’s Into the Woods and Palm Beach Dramawork’s current steampunk Sweeney Todd comes MNM Productions with the master of ambivalence’s take on marriage, 1970’s Company. In addition to launching an extremely fertile decade for composer-lyricist … [Read more...]
‘Finding Mona Lisa’ a wry look at the power of art
The point is made several times: The portrait that has captivated the world for 500 years, arguably the most famous painting in history, is merely “oil on wood.” But when Leonardo da Vinci applied the wood with 30 layers of oil paint, he created an image of La Gioconda, the silk merchant’s wife with the inscrutable smile, that continues to fascinate us. The alchemy of art … [Read more...]
A brilliant ‘Sweeney’ for a Dramaworks summer
Since the start of his long, illustrious career as a composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim has been intent on pushing the boundaries of the form and the content of the Broadway musical. Nowhere is that more evident than in his bloody brilliant 1979 masterwork, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. True, there are two parallel love stories at the center of the show, … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘Minnie’s Boys’ supplies plenty of love and laughter
By Dale King A wise, frequently used phrase in the English lexicon observes: "Behind every great man is a great woman.” The woman in question is usually a wife or a mother, underscoring the assumption that no man gets to be “great” without a feminine guiding hand. Some woman, somewhere, had to provide that regulatory element for the man to achieve success. Minnie’s Boys, … [Read more...]
‘Swing, Swing, Swing’ still sharp in Broward Stage Door encore
By Dale King The musical revue Swing, Swing, Swing, is back for an encore at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Margate. This year’s version packs virtually the same tunes, dance steps and energetic moves seen and heard in 2016, when so many people filled the seats the show had to be held over again and again. Eventually, it ran from June to September. This year’s … [Read more...]
MNM readies Sondheim’s ‘Company’ for Rinker
By Dale King MNM Productions is a small but driven contemporary theater company that’s latched on to the black-box-style, 300-seat Rinker Playhouse at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, and intends to stay a while. Its two producing partners, Michael Lifshitz and Marcie Gorman-Althof, have given wing to risk by announcing plans to present one of the best-loved and … [Read more...]
At the theater: A whimsical ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’; ‘Old Broads’ mines creaky jokes
Having gone through the Bard’s more popular plays in its first 26 years, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival opts for less familiar territory this summer with an early comedy by its namesake playwright, Love’s Labour’s Lost. In it, the King of Navarre decrees that he and his three close pals will have no contact with women for three years, devoting themselves instead to their … [Read more...]