By Dale King Broward Stage Door Theater has plucked a gem from the Neil Simon vault – the playwright’s paean to vaudeville, The Sunshine Boys – and presents it like a shiny, late-summer gift to welcoming audiences at the Margate performance venue. Director Michael Leeds, who has helmed an arm’s length list of shows at the theater on Sample Road, taps a couple of veteran … [Read more...]
Tales from a campy life: Charles Busch offers an evening at Dramaworks
For almost 40 years, Charles Busch has been performing in his own plays, usually campy comedies based on vintage movies, with such provocative titles as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die. More often than not, he writes himself in as the central female character, playing in drag with winking homage to Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Kate Hepburn and … [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...]
‘Kosher Cheerleader’ a tender look at one woman’s life and faith
By Dale King The Kosher Cheerleader, a humorous, often heart-warming production about a woman seeking true fulfillment in life, told by the person who lived it, is playing through late August at the PGA Arts Center in Palm Beach Gardens. Billed as a one-woman show, the performance stars Sandy (Wolshin) Gelfound, a former National Football League cheerleader who once … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Barbara Cook, queen of the Broadway songbook
Barbara Cook, one of the true great performers of the musical theater and the concert stage, has died of respiratory failure at 89. In a career that spanned six decades, she originated roles in such shows of Broadway’s Golden Age as The Music Man, Candide and She Loves Me before reinventing herself as a solo interpreter of the Graet American Songbook. In between those … [Read more...]
Michael McKeever: South Florida’s own prolific playwright
It is rare that the name Michael McKeever comes up without the adjective “prolific” attached to it. In the 21 years since the Davie playwright’s work was first produced in South Florida, he has written 27 full-length plays and countless short plays, probably between 20 and 24, by his offhanded estimate. Because he enjoys performing, McKeever often appears in his own plays … [Read more...]
A chilling, first-rate ‘1984’ at Pompano Cultural Center
By Dale King George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a frightening piece of prose, a literary admonition warning of a perverse future world in which an omniscient state machine, Big Brother, exerts total control over society. To deviate in thought, word or deed could lead to torture or, more likely, death by hanging in a location where audiences gather to watch gleefully. Or, Big … [Read more...]
MNM mounts respectable ‘Company’ at Rinker
That sound you hear is the third shoe dropping in a surprisingly Stephen Sondheim-rich summer in South Florida. Following FAU Festival Rep’s Into the Woods and Palm Beach Dramawork’s current steampunk Sweeney Todd comes MNM Productions with the master of ambivalence’s take on marriage, 1970’s Company. In addition to launching an extremely fertile decade for composer-lyricist … [Read more...]
‘Finding Mona Lisa’ a wry look at the power of art
The point is made several times: The portrait that has captivated the world for 500 years, arguably the most famous painting in history, is merely “oil on wood.” But when Leonardo da Vinci applied the wood with 30 layers of oil paint, he created an image of La Gioconda, the silk merchant’s wife with the inscrutable smile, that continues to fascinate us. The alchemy of art … [Read more...]
A brilliant ‘Sweeney’ for a Dramaworks summer
Since the start of his long, illustrious career as a composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim has been intent on pushing the boundaries of the form and the content of the Broadway musical. Nowhere is that more evident than in his bloody brilliant 1979 masterwork, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. True, there are two parallel love stories at the center of the show, … [Read more...]