By Dale King Next to Normal – the musical now being staged at the Lake Worth Playhouse – pulls no punches in its powerful portrayal of a woman haunted and dismayed by mental illness and the misery it inflicts on her loved ones. The show is frank and overt, focusing not only on the woman’s unpredictable behavior, but also on the plenitude of pills she consumes, the … [Read more...]
Dramaworks returns, virtually, with Dickinson show ‘Belle of Amherst’
There are two plays that feature Emily Dickinson and by early April Margery Lowe will have played the reclusive poet in both. Three years ago, the area actor appeared at Palm Beach Dramaworks in the world premiere of Edgar and Emily, Joseph McDonough’s fanciful and improbable meeting of Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Lowe returns to the character April 2- 6 in the better … [Read more...]
Sharp Delray Playhouse cast sizzles in ‘Stage Struck’
By Dale King The Delray Beach Playhouse has historically done a very good job producing mystery thrillers. Wait Until Dark comes to mind immediately. So does Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, which opened the 2018-2019 season. And folks with a longer theatrical memory may recall Blackout, an original work that premiered at the DBP in 1988 and encored just a few … [Read more...]
Kravis books 2021-22 Broadway season, certain it will be back
Dark for nearly a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center has announced firm dates for its seven-show 2021-22 Broadway series, beginning this November. The schedule includes two previously announced shows that had to be postponed when the performing arts center shut last March, Come From Away (now booked for Nov. 16-21) and Summer: The … [Read more...]
Sharp cast shines in ‘Deathtrap’ at LW Playhouse
By Dale King Deathtrap, the wryly comic mystery by author/playwright Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives), is at once easy and hard for a reviewer to critique. The 1978 production won a Tony for Best Play, and begat a 1982 movie about the selfsame playwriting duo from the stage production that longs to create a ragingly successful Broadway thriller, even if blood … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Jan McArt, the act who can’t be followed
To paraphrase a famous quote by Jerome Kern about Irving Berlin: “Jan McArt has no place in South Florida theater. She is South Florida theater.” Certainly she was producing and appearing in stage shows from Key West to Boca Raton when there was no other theater in the region to speak of. Most particularly, she built and ran the Royal Palm Dinner Theatre in Boca for 24 … [Read more...]
Remembrance: My ‘date’ with Cloris Leachman
It is a given that Cloris Leachman was a superb actress, as her Oscar for 1971’s The Last Picture Show, her eight Emmys for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis and other television roles attest. And then there are her silly and sublime collaborations with Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety. But Leachman, who died Wednesday of natural causes at … [Read more...]
LW Playhouse’s ‘Patsy Cline’ a memorable, tuneful two-hander
By Dale King Not all of us remember Patsy Cline, the country vocalist whose powerful voice, often measured in tearful tones, vocalized poignant stories in song. But we know her music, even 58 years after she died in a plane crash while returning to her home in Nashville the same year John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Her legacy of tunes is still golden, even in the 21st … [Read more...]
Good performances highlight DBP’s ‘Lost in Yonkers’
By Dale King Performers, sets, lights and activity have returned to the long-empty stage of Delray Beach Playhouse. And while coronavirus continues to stymie lifestyles, the DBP staff has “taken this shutdown to work behind the scenes, planning, cleaning, installing state-of-the-art air purification systems and many other items to cope with the new normal,” said … [Read more...]
‘Closer Than Ever’ compelling despite virtual limitations
For those who are yearning for the return of live theater – and that means most of us, doesn’t it? – MNM Theatre Company is jumping in to fill that void with a simple, but artfully affecting streamed production of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire’s Closer Than Ever. This introspective and heartfelt revue has been produced many times in South Florida since its premiere … [Read more...]