There are many ways to respond to grief. Take Emma Portman, the central character in a new musical having its world premiere this month at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse. When her daughter dies, Emma works through the pain of her loss by writing a musical that projects what the girl’s life might have been had she lived. But Emma’s healing soon halts as the realms … [Read more...]
Letter from London: Trump tale makes for canny look at America’s past, future
In the 50 years that I have been going to London, the city has gone through major changes. The skyline is drastically different. The culinary choices have become far more sophisticated. What once was a bargain for tourists has since become one of the world’s most expensive cities. But one thing has remained constant – London was and still is one of the greatest places … [Read more...]
‘Summer’ revives disco queen’s energy, but lazy book is anything but hot stuff
In the same way that Andy Warhol predicted we will each have 15 minutes of fame, it is starting to look like every pop singer-songwriter and vocal group will have a biographical jukebox musical. And while some fared poorly on Broadway – Summer: The Donna Summer Musical lasted a mere eight months in New York – there is such a demand for product at performing arts centers across … [Read more...]
Actress Lowe brings revelatory Dickinson to ‘Belle of Amherst’
For the past 46 years, the theatrical image that many of us have had of poet Emily Dickinson has come from William Luce’s one-woman play, The Belle of Amherst, and from Julie Harris’s Tony Award-winning, definitive performance in the role. But now, aided by new information about Dickinson uncovered in the intervening years, Palm Beach Dramaworks and actress Margery Lowe are … [Read more...]
Schlocky ‘Boca’ unworthy of GableStage’s standards
As GableStage audiences continue to assess what its new artistic director Bari Newport has in mind for the troupe, they are receiving mixed signals. Its recent production of the challenging, racially themed The White Card suggested it will be business as usual for the company that built its reputation on tough-minded, cutting-edge drama. But now it drastically switches gears … [Read more...]
After scoring virtual COVID hit, Dramaworks brings ‘Belle of Amherst’ back to stage
You could call the production of William Luce’s 1976 one-woman play, The Belle of Amherst, which will open Friday at West Palm Beach’s Palm Beach Dramaworks a revival for the company, because it streamed a filmed version last summer during the COVID-19 shutdown of live theater. But Margery Lowe, who plays poet Emily Dickinson both then and now, would disagree. “I feel … [Read more...]
Where ‘Officer and a Gentleman, The Musical’ belongs: Not on stage
Opting for pre-sold familiarity, so many musicals these days are based on popular movies. But not all of them justify the insertion of songs into the story line, serving more as filler than increased emotional impact. Take An Officer and a Gentleman, The Musical, or rather, don’t bother to take it. Based on the 1982 Richard Gere-Debra Winger flick about the Naval Officer … [Read more...]
Maltz gets underway in new house; companies announce 22-23 season
After two postponed productions and a third delayed by a week, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre opened in late March with critical acclaim for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and for its renovated and expanded playhouse. With much of the stress of construction deadlines over, producing artistic director Andrew Kato paused long enough to discuss the new, improved theater and the upcoming first … [Read more...]
Words matter, and are the matter, in Boca Stage two-hander ‘The Sound Inside’
It is no accident that Bella Baird, the central figure in Adam Rapp’s compelling, though arch, play The Sound Inside, is a professor of creative writing at Yale University. For Rapp, himself a former novelist, needed a character obsessed with literature, meticulous with words, someone whose self-conscious dialogue sounds carefully composed, as if written down before it is … [Read more...]
Accomplished cast lifts slight Sedaka musical at Wick
Neil Sedaka was a prolific singer/songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s, but few of his catchy hit tunes could be described as theater music. Yet for the past 15 years, thanks to that frequently popular subgenre known as the jukebox musical, he has enjoyed a new revenue stream from a show of his collected songs called Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. The title also happens to be the … [Read more...]