Mart Crowley had only one hit play in his entire career, but, oh, what a hit it was. In 1968, he wrote The Boys in the Band, the first commercially successful stage work about gay men, who get together one evening for a birthday party and lash out at each other with acid-dripped quips. It ran off-Broadway for more than 1,000 performances, had a national tour and was … [Read more...]
In ‘Wendy,’ filmmaker finds another side of Peter Pan
When your feature film debut becomes an international sensation, pulling in four Oscar nominations, the conventional wisdom is to quickly produce a follow-up to cash in on the first movie’s success. That is precisely what director-screenwriter Benh Zeitlin did not do after 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, a remarkable film about climate change in the Louisiana … [Read more...]
‘Miss Saigon’ retains power in Kravis revival
Romance in wartime is a familiar topic of musicals, but few are as emotionally wrenching or politically charged as Miss Saigon. Controversial when it first arrived on Broadway in 1991 – more for its casting choices than its themes – the show has gotten beyond that cultural authenticity issue and beyond a fixation with its onstage helicopter to demonstrate its lasting … [Read more...]
Maltz cast shines in Simon’s ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’
There has never been, and in all likelihood will never be, an American playwright as commercially successful as the late Neil Simon. From his Broadway debut in 1961 with Come Blow Your Horn, he has convulsed audiences in laughter season after season. But it wasn’t until 22 years later, with Brighton Beach Memoirs, that he eased up on his joke reflex, explored his own … [Read more...]
Lead performances lift iffy ‘Funny Thing’ at Primal Forces
When you grow up the daughter of cartoonist-playwright Jules Feiffer, the purveyor of comic urban neuroses, some of that has to rub off on you. So it has for Halley Feiffer, who juggled humor and anger in I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard (seen two seasons back at GableStage) and, to a lesser extent in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at … [Read more...]
At Theatre Lab, quirky ‘Glass Piano’ intrigues
Legend has it that a Princess Alexandra of Bavaria once ingested – or believed she ingested – a grand piano made of glass. Intrigued by the notion, playwright Alix Sobler has turned it into a fairy tale for adults, The Glass Piano, now receiving its U.S. premiere at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab. There is much to like about the play and its production, even if, … [Read more...]
Cerebral ‘Skylight’ rewarding at Dramaworks
With British playwright David Hare, we are rarely far removed from political debate. But with his justifiably acclaimed 1995 play Skylight, the political merges deftly with the personal, a head trip grafted onto an emotional tug-of-war, as two former lovers attempt to rekindle what they once had together from the ashes of an affair gone cold. Tom and Kyra are a study in … [Read more...]
‘Diego and Drew’: An amusing dinner party at Broward Center
In 1988, a small interactive stage show, Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding, a send-up of Italian nuptial rituals, opened in New York and grew into an international phenomenon. Building on the theater-as-party notion, two area theater pros, Matt May and Jennifer Sierra-Grobbelaar, have added a couple of topical twists to the formula – same-sex marriage and cross-cultural clashes – … [Read more...]
And the Oscar winners will be …
New Jersey casinos have started to take bets on the Oscars, but you probably do not have time to head that way and place a wager. So instead, take my scientifically projected winners’ list and bet with your friends and family or simply impress them by calling out the winners just before they are announced on the air. Regardless of how you use this valuable information, … [Read more...]
Slow Burn manages to sell second-rate, tuneless ‘Groundhog Day’
You have to admire the dedication of Slow Burn Theatre to revive musicals that got insufficient love on Broadway. (Yes, we’re looking at you Big Fish, Side Show and Parade.) Still, you have to also accept, no matter how well the company performs them, some of these shows are simply subpar. Which brings us to Groundhog Day, the stage adaptation of the 1993 Bill Murray … [Read more...]