By Dale King Student actors at Florida Atlantic University have brought the Frankenstein story to life in a frightening retelling of the novel written exactly 200 years ago by Mary Shelley, wife of English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and daughter of pioneering feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. This show differs markedly from versions popularized since the … [Read more...]
‘Steel Magnolias’: Definitely not a pity party
Maltz Jupiter Theatre audiences have usually seen director Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s innovative work on musicals (The King and I, Fiddler on the Roof), but she jumped at the opportunity to stage Robert Harling’s tragicomic Steel Magnolias, about a handful of Southern women who gather each Saturday at a makeshift beauty salon. While fueled by comedy, their mettle is tested when the … [Read more...]
Boca’s own Rachel Bay Jones enjoying a career on the rise
Boca Raton-raised Rachel Bay Jones, a 2017 Tony and Grammy Award winner for her featured role as Heidi Hansen, mother of a teenage son whose social media lie goes viral, in the smash hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, had long been ambivalent about forging a theater career in New York. “I’m a Florida girl. I love nature, I love being out in the sunshine. Living in a gray city … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Pirates of Penzance’ comes together in winning topsy-turvy style
The year was 1980, when director Wilfred Leach and choreographer Graciela Daniele took the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance and gave it a comic, anything-for-a-laugh spin, captivating audiences in Central Park and later on Broadway. Surely the Wick Theatre’s Norb Joerder was taking notes, for he has recreated that Hellzapoppin’-style production, right … [Read more...]
Entr’acte does well by newer take on ‘Addams Family’
By Dale King The Addams Family has been around for just over 80 years, whether featured in single-panel cartoons by New Yorker artist Charles Addams, on television, in film, animated or on Broadway. Even folks not born when the TV series with John Astin and Carolyn Jones was broadcast from 1964-66 are likely to recognize the iconic theme – da-da-da-dum, snap, snap. Even … [Read more...]
‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ sparkles at Stage Door
By Dale King Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the 2004 comedy musical based on the 1988 film of the same name that featured Michael Caine and Steve Martin as a couple of swindlers trolling the Riviera looking to fleece rich women, has a wonderful musical score. But for the sake of the pun, the creators of the show should have included one more tune – one called “Send in the … [Read more...]
Actor Colombel preps cabaret show, ‘Pardon My French!’, for LW Playhouse
Remember Tangi Colombel, the puckish, bald French performer whose American debut at Palm Beach Dramaworks 14 years ago in the Carbonell Award-winning musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, that also earned him a Curtain Up Award as Outstanding New Performer? It turns out he is alive and well and living in Palm Beach Gardens, having forged a … [Read more...]
‘Indecent’ opens Dramaworks season in powerful style
“Indecent” is both the title of Paula Vogel’s impressionistic chronicle of a 1907 melodrama by novice playwright Sholem Asch, as well as the critical and legal opinion of the work once it arrived on Broadway in the early 1920s. While Vogel’s play serves as a production history of Asch’s God of Vengeance, it is also much more – a portrait of survival of a piece of … [Read more...]
Community theater: DB Playhouse opens with sharp Christie whodunit
By Dale King Soon after summer departed South Florida, a strange sensation of mystery enveloped the area of Delray Beach at the far end of Lake Ida, in the vicinity of the Delray Beach Playhouse. It doesn’t take a Miss Marple, a Hercule Poirot or even a Sherlock Holmes to realize this sensation must be emanating from the showplace itself, where the 2018-2019 season opened … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Community theater
By Dale King Autumn has officially arrived in South Florida, a sure sign that community theaters throughout Palm Beach County are readying their performance schedules for a new slate of programs. Most open this month. Delray Beach Playhouse has launched its 72nd season, said executive director Kevin Barrett, who’s entering his second year at the helm of the showplace … [Read more...]