Even the greats of government service will eventually succumb to the physical and mental ravages of age. So it is with Francis Biddle, the former attorney general under Franklin Roosevelt and chief American judge of the Nuremberg war trials. By the time we meet him in Joanna McClelland Glass’ biographical play Trying, he is 81 and a decrepit shell of his former self. … [Read more...]
No weak links in powerful ‘Osage County’ at Dramaworks
How fortunate for playwright Tracy Letts that he grew up in a bitter, vindictive and addiction-prone household. For his relatives became the inspiration for the Westons of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning August: Osage County, a darkly dramatic and often quite funny look at his wildly dysfunctional family. The three-and-a-half-hour, … [Read more...]
Older, but still relevant: ‘Twelve Angry Men’ heads to Dramaworks
Although written 68 years ago, Reginald Rose’s jury room melodrama Twelve Angry Men is surprisingly apt to our current social and political Zeitgeist. So says Palm Beach Dramaworks’ producing artistic director William Hayes, who had been planning to revive the play two years from now during the stage company’s 25th anniversary season. “With all that’s going on, the gender … [Read more...]
‘The People Downstairs’ is a smart new take on Anne Frank’s story
One of the great works of literature of the 20th century is The Diary of Anne Frank, a saga of courage and endurance in the form of a journal by a 14-year-old Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis with her family and others in a cramped Amsterdam attic. But what about those non-Jews in the office below who heroically risked their lives abetting these stowaways? That is the … [Read more...]
Dramaworks’s ‘Little Foxes’ a showcase for powerful performances
Is it just me or do most plays produced these days – even those written long ago – seem to echo our current political situation? Neither the family in uneasy economic straits in The Humans nor the tale of a business bully who goes to Washington in Born Yesterday actually mention Donald Trump by name, but it is hard to watch either and not think of The Orange One. The same … [Read more...]
First-rate ‘Iguana’ launches Dramaworks season
The Night of the Iguana may not be top-drawer Tennessee Williams, but it is receiving a first-rate rendering at Palm Beach Dramaworks, where the tale of connection and redemption at seedy Costa Verde hotel on the Mexican coast opens the company’s 17th season. The 1961 work explores whether, in Williams’ words, “two unstable lives can set the world on fire.” In its portrait … [Read more...]
With ‘Iguana,’ Dramaworks tackles Williams at his most personal
Palm Beach Dramaworks prides itself on producing plays by great American playwrights such as Edward Albee, Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. Yet in its 17 seasons is has never tackled a script by the lyrical Southern dramatist Tennessee Williams. Until now. Its season has kicked off with The Night of the Iguana, the 1960 tale of a defrocked, unhinged minister and a reserved, … [Read more...]