The first thing you need to know about Stephen Brown’s new play, Everything is Super Great, is that the title is facetious. In fact, nearly everything is pretty awful for the four disconnected characters that populate this “comedy about what’s missing.” For each of them has a void in his life, a missing person or a stunted relationship that keeps his or her existence … [Read more...]
Playwright confronts work, romantic past in ‘Everything is Super Great’
Nineteen-year-old Tommy, the main character of Stephen Brown’s Everything is Super Great – a sarcastic title is ever there was one – lives a lonely life in a dead-end job at Starbucks. He is attracted to the female assistant manager who has no interest in him, he has no friends, his older brother has been missing for months and an inept therapist has arrived at Tommy’s home … [Read more...]
Standout performances lift FAU’s ‘Next to Normal’
By Dale King Leave it to students in the master of fine arts program at Florida Atlantic University to wrap up their first season — one that featured some shockingly emotional, nerve-twisting, heart-wrenching productions — with a shockingly emotional, mentally twisted finale. The show, Next to Normal, is a frank portrayal of a family in psychological crisis. The tale of … [Read more...]
Student theater: Compelling ‘Mill Fire’ at FAU
By Dale King Mill Fire is a horrific, haunting and deeply emotional play, a story of Birmingham, Ala., a steel town on the skids circa 1977; a massive, deadly fire and explosion in an apparently malfunctioning steel mill furnace that kills five workers; and the chaos the disaster inflicts on a community whose populace is already at the edge of upheaval. The script, by … [Read more...]
At FAU, a ‘Frankenstein’ of the mind as well as body
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...]