Kathy McCafferty and Patricia Kilgarriff in Outside Mullingar. (Photo by Samantha Mighdoll) Palm Beach Dramaworks sets aside the heaviness of Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee and William Inge for an uncharacteristic comedy, a romantic comedy no less. And while plenty of theater practitioners will tell you that producing comedy is harder than drama, you would never know it from the … [Read more...]
Dramaworks takes on the ‘mountain’ of O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey’
Even for a theater company like Palm Beach Dramaworks whose mission is exploring the major plays of the American stage, it took them a decade and a half to approach Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, one of the great works of the 20th century. “The organization had to be ready, I had to know for the most part who my cast was going to be,” says producing artistic … [Read more...]
Dramaworks’ Beautiful ‘Night Music’ perfect for your Florida summer night
From the 1970s — Stephen Sondheim’s most creative period, the decade of his major collaborations with director Harold Prince — comes A Little Night Music, their lush, irony-fueled tale of the follies of love. It kicks off Palm Beach Dramaworks’ latest summer of staged concerts, a hybrid format that trades in scenic challenges for evocative, stage-wide projections and focuses in … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 15-17
Theater: Opening this weekend at Palm Beach Dramaworks is Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, a play with music depicting a solo club act by jazz and blues legend Billie Holiday at a rundown Philadelphia lounge, just months before her death in 1959. Hooked on heroin, she is coaxed through a dozen of her iconic musical numbers by her longtime pianist. Tracey Conyer Lee, who had … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Buried Child’ at Dramaworks; ‘Oklahoma!’ at the Wick; ‘Memphis’ at Kravis
Diving headlong once again into the murky pool of absurdist theater, Palm Beach Dramaworks — the home of “theater to think about” — offers up Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, which features few concrete ideas but many stark dramatic images calculated to elicit emotional reactions. With such plays as Fool for Love and True West, Shepard has demonstrated a fascination with the … [Read more...]
Dramaworks’ ‘Liaisons’ played to icy, venomous perfection
Fifty Shades of Grey is the current hot novel of a sado-masochistic sexual predator and his prey, but do not think for a moment that there is anything new about this steamy tale of dominance, submission and matters of the heart. You could draw a direct line between E.L. James’ contemporary best seller and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a similar yarn of malice and deceit that curled … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’, ‘Tryst,’ and ‘Vanya and Sonia…’
“Erratic” is the word that comes to mind to describe the inaugural season of Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre. But when it is good, the eight-month old company can compete with any troupe in South Florida, as it proves with its current production of the Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. The 1978 Tony Award winner set the gold standard for composer tribute songfests and by … [Read more...]
Dramaworks offers ‘Company’ worth keeping
There’s good news and bad news at Palm Beach Dramaworks. The good news is a confident, polished concert of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, now playing through Sunday. The bad news? After this very satisfying evening and the previous, even better semi-staged Man of La Mancha, we may never see a fully produced musical at this West Palm Beach playhouse again. Company was not even … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 26-29
Film: The airwaves are full of reports of the current presidential campaign, but for an even more momentous election, check out Nanni Meretti’s drily comic film Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope). It begins with the College of Cardinals, assembled within the Sistine chapel, and a paper ballot vote, with most of the cardinals secretly praying they do not get elevated to the right … [Read more...]
Dramaworks opens new home in superb style with ‘All My Sons’
Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons, his first commercial success on Broadway, has numerous thematic and narrative similarities to Death of a Salesman, the Pulitzer Prize winner that premiered two years later. But if the earlier play has been under the shadow of the playwright’s masterwork, you would never know it from the powerful new production at Palm Beach Dramaworks. … [Read more...]