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...]
Current theater: Twisted ‘Broken Snow;’ bubbly ‘Beehive’
A dark, twisting and twisted tale called Broken Snow inaugurates the professional theater program of JCAT at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami Beach. With a decade of community and children’s theater under its belt, the company makes a polished debut into Carbonell Award-eligible productions, even if the subject matter of Ben Andron’s world premiere … [Read more...]
Strong leads, lively production make ‘Guys and Dolls’ sparkle at the Wick
The eccentric underworld characters of Damon Runyon fit comfortably in the realm of musical comedy. For while they are obsessed with gambling on everything from the ponies to craps to cheesecake consumption, they are also preoccupied with romance. At least they are in Guys and Dolls, a 1950 confection from Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows, considered one of a handful of perfect … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘West Side Story’ remarkably strong
West Side Story is not an Olympic sport, but if were, its degree of difficulty rating would be off the charts. The symphonic score by Leonard Bernstein requires singers of exceptional skill, the original choreography by Jerome Robbins calls for classically trained, inexhaustible dancers and the acting needs to be of, well, Shakespearean level. But Wick Theatre executive … [Read more...]
‘West Side Story’: 60-year-old classic comes to The Wick
Sixty years ago, a remarkable collaboration of composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, book writer Arthur Laurents and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, took William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet onto the gang-dominated streets of New York City. The result was an enduring work of the musical theater, West Side Story, which kicked off the new year at Boca … [Read more...]
Good performances kick Wick’s ‘Sister Act’ into high gear
Twenty-four years ago, Whoopi Goldberg had a sizeable movie hit with Sister Act, playing a nightclub singer hiding out from thugs in a Philadelphia convent. Like so many popular movies, it was turned into a stage musical, arriving on Broadway in 2011, running almost a year and a half. But — as with every other show that season — it was overshadowed by the monster success of … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Sister Act’ offers escapism with a heart
Ask Patrece Bloomfield, who is making her Wick Theatre debut in Sister Act as Delores Van Cartier – a/k/a the Whoopi Goldberg character in the 1992 movie – how she got the role and she will answer in two words, “Divine intervention.” How appropriate for a musical that takes place largely in a convent. Bloomfield was appearing in a theme park show at Universal Studios in … [Read more...]
McArdle, Clow winning in Wick’s charming ‘Playing Our Song’
As veteran director Norb Joerder readily concedes, The Wick Theatre was looking for a small musical to open its season, concerned about ticket sales before the snow bird audience arrives. In that sense, the company chose well with 1979’s They’re Playing Our Song, a two-character, on-and-off romantic comedy based on the quirky – and doomed – relationship between composer Marvin … [Read more...]
Andrea McArdle: The first ‘Annie,’ still in love with the theater
Forty years ago, a little 13-year-old girl with a big voice was plucked out of the chorus of moppets during rehearsals and given the title role of an optimistic orphan named Annie. Of course, that girl was Andrea McArdle, who hung onto that star-making part for almost three years, including Broadway and London. She has been back on Broadway, as a featured replacement in such … [Read more...]
2016-17 Season Preview: Theater
“You can’t keep a good man down,” goes the saying, and Lou Tyrrell is the proof. After championing new work at Florida Stage, he moved his operation to Delray Beach with Theatre at Arts Garage, a smaller version of the company he ran for almost 25 years. Last season, he moved a little further south to the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, still introducing … [Read more...]