By Dale King If history had unfolded the way it does in the wacky musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, we might all be riding imaginary horses, negotiating with the knights who say “Ni,” fending off insults from surly Frenchmen and slapping each other with fish. Lake Worth Playhouse drops the curtain on its 2013-14 season with a rollicking rendition of the show adapted from the … [Read more...]
Community theater: Fine cast boosts Delray Playhouse’s ‘Pajama Game’
By Dale King The Pajama Game may not be the newest or flashiest musical to hit Broadway. But the tune-filled 1954 show has long theatrical legs, some truly comic moments, a story with timeless appeal and a score that engendered some standards. The show, now being staged at the Delray Beach Playhouse, deals with labor troubles at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory, where worker … [Read more...]
Community theater: A strong ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ at LW Playhouse
By Dale King Lake Worth Playhouse has taken a bold step in its decision to present One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a generally grim drama. Based on the 1962 Ken Kesey novel that shed a cold, clinical light on the insensitive methods used to treat inmates at an insane asylum, the stage presentation adapted a year later by Dale Wasserman fell flat. Milos Forman breathed new … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ creaky but still funny at Delray Playhouse
By Dale King The venerable George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy You Can’t Take It With You holds a pretty important place in the annals of film and television. The three-act play from the late 1930s was “the first-of-its-kind situation comedy,” said Randolph DelLago, the play’s director and artistic boss at the Delray Beach Playhouse, where Can’t Take It is now playing. That … [Read more...]
Community theater: Strong acting trio drives ‘Crimes of the Heart’
By Dale King In the play, Arsenic and Old Lace, the lead character, Mortimer Brewster, comments on the mental stability of his relatives. “Insanity runs in my family,” he says. “Actually, it gallops.” The same might be said of the three MaGrath sisters in Crimes of the Heart, the tragicomedy now playing at the Broward Stage Door Theatre. While their cerebral processes may … [Read more...]
Community theater: “Ain’t Misbehavin’” does right by Waller at LW Playhouse
By Dale King Thomas “Fats” Waller lived a short but notable 39-year life. A master of stride piano and a sparkling entertainer, he was a fine songwriter whose best work occupies an honorable place in the Great American Songbook. He deserved wider recognition, but it took 35 years from his 1943 death before the high-energy compilation of his tunes, Ain’t Misbehavin’, hit the … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘9 to 5’ dated, but still makes a fun show at Stage Door
By Dale King Dolly Parton is more than just a dwarfish country vocalist with conspicuous curves and an explosion of blonde hair. Inside that yellow-coiffed cranium is the brain that concocted money-maker Dollywood. And it also crafted the words and music to the 2008 show, 9 to 5: The Musical, now playing at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs. And while the … [Read more...]
Community dance: A brace of Nutcrackers
As aficionados are happy to point out, The Nutcracker is a most unusual classical ballet in that it doesn’t really have a central character. What it does have is a first half in which mime is crucial to telling the story, and a collection of widely varied dances for the second. It’s a strange story, too, drawn from a tale by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and no … [Read more...]
Community theater: Fine actors make poignant case for ‘Daisy’
By Dale King Driving Miss Daisy is not a holiday play. Not even close. But this light comedy about a black chauffeur hired to transport an elderly Jewish widow who is no longer capable of operating her car safely is a beautiful show – written with the smoothness of a heartwarming holiday production. It doesn’t jump headlong into matters of race or religion, of whether public … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Game’s Afoot’ at LW Playhouse a gift for the season
By Dale King It’s no secret that playwright Ken Ludwig has a fancy for farce. It shows up big time in such slapstick comedies as Lend Me a Tenor and Moon over Buffalo. Two years ago, he wrote The Game’s Afoot, a comedy-mystery set in 1936 that mixes elements of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the run-and-door-slam humor of the film, Clue. It’s also a … [Read more...]