In a busy Broadway season, particularly for musicals, here are some of the best new works vying for attention in a crowded field: Dear Evan Hansen – Evan Hansen, the eponymous teen of a fresh and startlingly original new musical, is an awkward misfit, all but invisible to his fellow high school students. So he would seem an unlikely subject on which to base a musical, a … [Read more...]
Solid cast gives ‘Vanya and Sonia’ sparkle at Delray Playhouse
By Dale King Christopher Durang's comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike – the season finale playing two more weekends at the Delray Beach Playhouse – covers a lot of outlandish and humorous territory in a 2½-hour block of time. The show actually taxes the audience’s mental capabilities more than it does their capacity to follow a plot. Author Durang – whose … [Read more...]
MNM makes something tasty out of slender ‘Spamalot’
It’s a backhanded compliment, but one sign of a theater company’s strength is when it can succeed with lackluster material. Consider how far MNM Productions has come in its three years of existence – it now manages to almost hide the deficiencies in the flimsy comic romp, Monty Python’s Spamalot, now playing at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse through June 4. Yes, the … [Read more...]
Powerful acting brings quirky souls of ‘Inishmaan’ to vivid life
On the tiny, isolated island of Inishmaan, off the western coast of Ireland, either there is something peculiar in the water or the residents are genetically predisposed to quirkiness. Either way, few ever escape from their homeland. But at least Billy Claven, the so-called Cripple of Inishmaan, a 17-year-old orphan with a body mangled since birth, can dream of leaving his … [Read more...]
‘Cripple of Inishmaan’ leavens bleakness with dark humor
Palm Beach Dramaworks’ audiences can relax a little after the cerebral workout of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. The West Palm Beach stage company ends its 17th season with the less heady, but perhaps more emotionally involving, dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan by acclaimed Irish playwright – and occasional screenwriter – Martin McDonagh. “This is a narrative story in the Irish … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘Nine’ is one of its finest productions
By Dale King The task of nearly every theatrical protagonist, it seems, is to struggle. And so it is with famed Italian movie producer Guido Contini, the lead character in the Tony Award-winning musical, Nine, now playing at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Margate. With Guido, though, struggles come in multiples. Internally, he wrangles with his own mind. Externally, … [Read more...]
Touring ‘Sound of Music’ returns winningly to pre-movie style
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were known for the many innovations they brought to the musical theater, but also for a signature streak of sentimentality. Both are evident in 1959’s The Sound of Music, which would prove to be their final collaboration. Director Jack O’Brien has done what he can to scrape off the layers of sugar encrusted on the show in his buoyant … [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...]
Beloved ‘Sound of Music’ comes to Kravis in touring revival
The Sound of Music is the most produced show of the prolific Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein II canon. The reasons why should be evident when the touring revival opens at the Kravis Center on Tuesday, but its popularity is also tied to the 1965 five-time Oscar-winning movie. As to other reasons it is so frequently performed, the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization’s … [Read more...]
‘No Way to Treat a Lady’ gets smart production at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Incongruity isn’t always a shortcoming. The darkly comedic production No Way to Treat a Lady combines the usually incompatible elements of serial killing and music in a single entity. The adaptation of the book-turned-movie-turned-play now being performed at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Margate is downright entertaining, particularly its finale, which could … [Read more...]