By Dale King The Mystery of Irma Vep is a high-octane, mystery/thriller/satire that’s getting plenty of guffaws from summer audiences at Island City Stage in Wilton Manors. The show is peculiar in its uniqueness. Playwright Charles Ludlam, a pillar of the LGBTQ+ community for his contributions to literature and stage shows during his AIDS-shortened career as an actor and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 19-20, 2020
Film: Playwright August Wilson began his chronicle of the African-American experience throughout the 20th century, one decade at a time, with 1984’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a fictional look at the so-called “Mother of the Blues” in a tension-filled recording session at a Chicago race label in 1927. Now director George C. Wolfe has brought the tale to the screen, with a pair … [Read more...]
MNM’s ‘Man of La Mancha’ true to the mad knight’s idealism
Although based on a novel written in 1605, a musical drama about a fervent idealist facing a stubbornly vindictive government can seem surprisingly timely today. The musical in question is Man of La Mancha, based on Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which opened on Broadway in 1965, an era of Vietnam War protests. But such are the show’s sweeping themes of compassion, good … [Read more...]
Lead actors keep madness of ‘Blue Leaves’ in canny check at Dramaworks
By Dale King The House of Blue Leaves, the darkly seriocomic John Guare play, is appropriately apt as the finale for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 19th season. The show that packed the West Palm Beach venue on opening weekend homes in on characters who desperately want their hopes and dreams to work. But a realistic assessment says they probably won’t happen. The Obie … [Read more...]
Dramaworks sees profundity in dark comedy of ‘Blue Leaves’
Palm Beach Dramaworks is closing out its 18th season uncharacteristically with a comedy – John Guare’s 1971 dark farce, The House of Blue Leaves. But director J. Barry Lewis insists it is not a departure for the company. “I believe that drama is comedy and comedy is drama. I think that they are one and the same,” he says prior to a recent rehearsal. “Comedy is an … [Read more...]
For Dramaworks, ‘Spitfire Grill’ is the little musical that could
A stage company like Palm Beach Dramaworks, known for “theater to think about,” could hardly make a lightweight choice for its first musical produced within a subscription season. So it selected The Spitfire Grill, a 2001 off-Broadway show based on an acclaimed – but also little seen – independent film about hope and redemption. “‘Spitfire Grill’ is probably one of the … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s new venue outshines uneven ‘La Cage’
You want the good news first? The 26-year-old Stage Door Theatre has moved from Margate, across Broward County, to a gorgeous new $11.6 million playhouse, the 1,100-seat Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. With ample wings and fly space, plus all the bells, whistles and amenities that its former home lacked, the complex should be the envy of every other resident company in South … [Read more...]
At Dramaworks, a sparkling tour of Woody Guthrie’s America
Oklahoma-born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, champion of the underclass and the union movement, was a genuine poet, though he was never comfortable with that label. He wrote simple, hummable songs that celebrated this nation, but as the Great Depression consumed the country and exposed economic inequities, his tunes took on a tone of angry protest and confrontation. That … [Read more...]
Dramaworks to celebrate timely troubadour
By Sandra Schulman Woody Guthrie was many things – a poet, songwriter, occasional hobo. The new summer musical at Dramaworks, Woody Guthrie’s American Song, follows Guthrie’s coast to coast life using his songs and quotes straight from his journals. The main character of Guthrie is never named; instead, the three stages of his life “are called The Searcher, the Folk … [Read more...]
‘Drowsy Chaperone’ sends up theater, and its audience
Most new musicals are based on material from another medium, these days largely from the movies. But 2006’s five-time Tony Award winner, The Drowsy Chaperone, is a genuine original, a show about an apartment-bound guy fixated on musicals, who loves to play his cast recordings of vintage shows and imagine what they must have looked like onstage. On this particular occasion, … [Read more...]