The Mosaic Theatre's The Seafarer won the 2008 Carbonell for best play.By Hap ErsteinFORT LAUDERDALE -- In a year that saw a near-revolt among some of the participating theaters, several of whom charged that South Florida’s Carbonell Awards were broken and badly in need of repair, the 33rd annual awards for excellence in professional theater in South Florida were handed out … [Read more...]
Theater review: ‘The Weir,’ Irish things that go bump in the night
Dennis Creaghan (left), Lena Kaminsky, Karl Hanover,Frank Converse, Declan Mooney in Palm BeachDramaworks' production of The Weir. (Photo by Shel Shanak)By Hap Erstein Put a handful of Irishmen in a bar and they will soon be drinking and swapping lyrical tall tales. It is a fact of life and of the theater, as evidenced by Conor McPherson’s simple, plotless, yet haunting … [Read more...]
Theater feature: Veteran TV, stage actor Converse makes local debut in ‘The Weir’
Declan Mooney, left, and Frank Converse in The Weir, at Palm Beach Dramaworks.By Hap ErsteinWhen stage, screen and television star Frank Converse was growing up, actors had two ways to go with their careers.“I came from a school where we were either going to be Marlon Brando or Laurence Olivier,” he says. “Those were the choices in the ‘60s. I went for the latter, I got into a … [Read more...]
Bests of 2008: Theater
Nanique Gheridian (center) stole the show inPalm Beach Dramaworks' production of 'Benefactors.'By Hap Erstein 1. Master Class (Maltz Jupiter Theatre) — The interweaving of the life of opera great Maria Callas, her tempestuous public coaching sessions and Terrence McNally’s musings on the nature of art makes for exciting theater, but it needs a powerful actress in the … [Read more...]
Theater review: Dramaworks masters the absurd in ‘The Chairs’
Dan Leonard and Barbara Bradshaware Old Man and Old Woman inPalm Beach Dramaworks' productionof The Chairs.By Hap Erstein Need a reminder that life has no meaning? You could either turn on the news or head to Palm Beach Dramaworks and catch the company’s production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs. Ionesco, a major figure of the Theater of the Absurd movement, took a dim … [Read more...]
Commentary: South Florida’s Carbonell Awards in jeopardy
By Hap ErsteinThe topic on the minds of most of the South Florida theater community at the moment, that has heated flurries of e-mails zapping back and forth through cyberspace, is the proposed suspension and likely subsequent demise of the controversial Carbonell Awards. Without consulting with or giving advance notice to the army of volunteer nominators and judges, the … [Read more...]