Arguably more than any other musical, memories of 1964’s Funny Girl have been so dominated by its original Broadway star – Barbra Streisand – that there has never been a major revival of the show. But audiences at the Wick Theatre in Boca Raton voted the Jule Styne-Bob Merrill musical biography of vaudeville vocalist and clown Fanny Brice (1891-1951) the show they most … [Read more...]
‘Drowsy Chaperone’ sends up theater, and its audience
Most new musicals are based on material from another medium, these days largely from the movies. But 2006’s five-time Tony Award winner, The Drowsy Chaperone, is a genuine original, a show about an apartment-bound guy fixated on musicals, who loves to play his cast recordings of vintage shows and imagine what they must have looked like onstage. On this particular occasion, … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ delightful treat for summer
As managing executive producer Marilynn Wick readily concedes in her pre-show speech, she has purposely aimed her summer show, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, at youngsters and at developing an audience of tots. Then she has chosen well, with one of the Mouse Factory’s most popular animated features, transformed into the company’s first Broadway venture in 1994, a … [Read more...]