Quick, name a pioneering comic actress from the early days of television. Chances are you mentioned Lucille Ball, but before we loved Lucy there was Gertrude Berg, who not only starred in The Goldbergs — the first exposure to Jewish family life for many Americans — but she wrote, directed and produced the entire series, as she had previously done on radio for two decades. … [Read more...]
World premiere play revives ‘Goldbergs’ pioneer and the blacklist
Gertrude Berg, the pioneering writer-director-producer-star of radio and television’s The Goldbergs, a domestic comedy of a Jewish family in the Bronx, is all but forgotten today. In part that is why area stage actress Elizabeth Dimon wanted to commission a play about Berg and her show’s untimely demise in the dark days of the anti-Communist blacklist. In addition, the … [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 brings ‘Spitfire Grill’ to life in first-rate fashion
There is a breed of theatergoers who are prejudiced against – and will eager tell you they cannot abide – musicals. Understandably, they gravitate to stage companies like Palm Beach Dramaworks, which built its considerable reputation on the production of classic American plays. But through some calculation that summertime is more fitting for lighter fare, the West … [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...]
With quirky ‘Be Here Now,’ FAU Theatre Lab has a major play
What causes some of us to see joy in the world and others to see pure gloom? And if the difference between the two perspectives were caused by a brain tumor, would you accept a potentially fatal condition for a temporarily rosy outlook? That is the dilemma facing Bari, a former professor of nihilism and avowed cynic, in Deborah Zoe Laufer’s quirky and ultimately … [Read more...]
Sagal’s ‘Most Wanted’ a triumph at FAU Theatre Lab
Welcome back, Peter Sagal. True, the host of National Public Radio’s current events quiz show, Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, has hardly been out of the public eye lately. Wait, wait, make that “out of the public ear.” But when he began the show 20 years ago, he stopped writing plays, and if you want to measure the size of that loss, head to Florida Atlantic University … [Read more...]
Radio’s Sagal returns to playwriting career with ‘Most Wanted’ at FAU
Longtime followers of Florida Stage may recall Peter Sagal, whose plays Denial and What to Say were produced in the 1990s by the now-defunct theater company that specialized in new American works. These days, however, Sagal is more widely known as the host of the popular National Public Radio current events quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. For the past 20 years, Sagal … [Read more...]
‘The Humans’ stuns at GableStage
Yes, the Blake family of Stephen Karam’s The Humans is dysfunctional, but what onstage clan is not? Still, most of them are so wrapped up in their own troubles, they are oblivious to their collective difficulties. In a work that is alternately dramatic, comic and more than a little creepy, it would be the rare audience member who does not identity with this clan on some … [Read more...]
‘Informed Consent’ nimbly explores intersection of science and ethics
Science has come under fire of late, most notably in the political arena. The rise of science deniers makes Informed Consent, the latest densely packed, morally ambiguous drama by Deborah Zoe Laufer particularly timely, while its core conflict between scientific truth and cultural belief systems give the play a timeless quality. Laufer, whose work has been championed by … [Read more...]