By Dale King About a year ago, the Broward Stage Door Theatre celebrated the fact that it was moving from its run-down, two-stage, bunker-style cement building at the rear of a shopping plaza on West Sample Road in Margate to a new, more modern, state-of-the-art theater, the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center a dozen or so miles south of the old site. The nearly … [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...]
Stage Door’s new venue outshines uneven ‘La Cage’
You want the good news first? The 26-year-old Stage Door Theatre has moved from Margate, across Broward County, to a gorgeous new $11.6 million playhouse, the 1,100-seat Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. With ample wings and fly space, plus all the bells, whistles and amenities that its former home lacked, the complex should be the envy of every other resident company in South … [Read more...]
Broward Stage Door ends Margate residency with sparkling Sedaka
By Dale King Breaking up is hard to do, opined pop music legend Neil Sedaka in a hit tune he released in 1962, then re-issued in slower ballad style in 1975. The Broward Stage Door Theatre is not breaking up, but it is breaking away from the cement-walled, bunker-style, two-stage, former movie house behind a shopping plaza on West Sample Road in Margate that it has … [Read more...]
Stage Door offers touching ‘From Door to Door’
By Dale King It’s no secret that Broward Stage Door Theatre will vacate its current premises on West Sample Road in Margate and move to newer, more modern and technologically advanced digs at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center this fall. So, it’s a bit touching that the next-to-the-last production at Broward Stage – James Sherman’s From Door to Door – is very much a … [Read more...]
Gershwin score brings the bubbly to ‘Nice Work’ at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Suppose you could write a great musical with songs a couple of other guys already composed? And suppose those other guys just happened to be George and Ira Gershwin? Creating a laugh-laden production from such enviable grist would be nice work if you could get it. But some other folks already got it. As a result, a “brand-new” Gershwin musical production hit … [Read more...]
Strong leads put sizzle in ‘Flashdance’ at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Flashdance: The Musical, is alive, well and playing to packed houses at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Margate, 25 years after welder by day, “flashdancer” by night, Alexandra “Alex” Owens blew the specs off a panel of snooty judges to win admission to a terpsichorean academy by way of a sexed-up jazz dance performed in a tight, black body suit and leg … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 24-26
Dance: Americans have been getting into the holiday spirit with Tchaikovsky ever since the 1950s, when George Balanchine resurrected an overlooked part of a double-bill (with the one-act opera Iolanta) from 1892 about a girl’s magical Christmas in which a nutcracker battles to the death with the Mouse King and rodent horde and ends up in the arms of a prince. The story, by … [Read more...]
Stage Door unloads a powerhouse ‘Dreamgirls’
Broward Stage Door is rapidly becoming a theater company to reckon with. Over the years, its resources and artistic output have been nothing if not erratic, but the Coral Springs troupe keeps setting the bar higher, announcing its intention to do complex shows that seem way over its head and then flooring us with its achievement. Earlier this year, it mounted a miraculous … [Read more...]
‘Saturday Night Fever’ at Broward Stage Door revives 1970s classic in superlative style
By Dale King Disco isn’t dead. At least not at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Margate, where increasing numbers of disco divas and down-to-earth denizens are flocking to experience Saturday Night Fever, the musical that turned normal 1970s evenings into disco nights and sent millions to apparel stores to buy satin shirts and boogie shoes. The musical adaptation based … [Read more...]