By Janis Fontaine It’s no easier to talk about race today than it was in 1960 when Harper Lee’s acclaimed novel To Kill a Mockingbird was published, or in rural Alabama in 1936, when the novel takes place. But conversations must be had. To jump-start those dialogues, a group of young professionals at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre are producing the play based on Lee’s … [Read more...]
Broward Stage Door ends Margate residency with sparkling Sedaka
By Dale King Breaking up is hard to do, opined pop music legend Neil Sedaka in a hit tune he released in 1962, then re-issued in slower ballad style in 1975. The Broward Stage Door Theatre is not breaking up, but it is breaking away from the cement-walled, bunker-style, two-stage, former movie house behind a shopping plaza on West Sample Road in Margate that it has … [Read more...]
‘I Love You, You’re Perfect …,’ no better in update, but MNM performers make it work
A lot has changed in the past 22 years, and much has remained the same. Take, for instance, a modest musical revue about relationships, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which opened off-Broadway in 1996 and ran 5,003 performances. Along the way, the show became an international hit too, translated into at least 17 languages and entertaining audiences in dozens … [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...]
PB Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ entertains, falls shy of tragic depths
For 28 years, The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival has operated on the theory that its namesake playwright needed some assistance to entertain a contemporary audience. So, in addition to drastic editing of each script, the company frequently relocates the action to a different time and/or place. In the case of PBSF’s current show, Antony and Cleopatra, it also adds a … [Read more...]
FAU summer rep’s ‘Cabaret’ proves masterful
By Dale King The musical Cabaret is dark and forbidding, much like its setting, Berlin in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler and his minions began their horrific mission of turning Germany into a gutter of hate. Grad students from Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance wrap up their two-play Festival Rep series this summer with a masterful retelling and … [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...]
‘Mr. Parker’ a superb tale of love, loss and moving on
JeffandTerry. Acclaimed photographer Jeffrey McCabe and so-so novelist Terry Parker were inseparable companions for 30 years – and married for six of them. They were so close they were like one word, and fully expected to grow old together. But Jeff died seven months ago in a car crash, and 54-year-old Terry is still grieving over his loss. He relates this to … [Read more...]
Stage Door offers touching ‘From Door to Door’
By Dale King It’s no secret that Broward Stage Door Theatre will vacate its current premises on West Sample Road in Margate and move to newer, more modern and technologically advanced digs at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center this fall. So, it’s a bit touching that the next-to-the-last production at Broward Stage – James Sherman’s From Door to Door – is very much a … [Read more...]
Turnbull carries off a tour de force in ‘Pink Unicorn’
What’s a mother to do? Big-haired, small-town Texas mom Trisha Lee is taken aback when her teenage daughter Jolene announces to her that from now on she should no longer be considered a girl but gender-neutral, so please call her “Jo(e)” and refer to her by the pronoun “they.” The semantics of gender politics is the least of Trisha’s problems, once her unconditional-love, … [Read more...]