With most of our 401(k)s and stock portfolios hemorrhaging money and the economy apparently heading for a recession, you might think that Sarah Burgess’s dark-toned Dry Powder, a financial comedy, was written yesterday instead of 2016. Set mainly in the upscale offices of a New York capital management firm, amid the jargon-spewing and back-stabbing of its rival … [Read more...]
At Boca Stage, ‘Grand Horizons’ goes for the laughs
In the prologue to Bess Wohl’s Grand Horizons, before we learn that Nancy and Bill French have passed their 50th anniversary, we watch as they wordlessly ready their breakfast as a team, the familiar exercise of a much-married couple. So it is more than a little surprising when the first words out of her mouth are “I think I would like a divorce.” Responding without … [Read more...]
Powerful ‘Time Alone’ at Boca Stage charts two kinds of imprisonment
Anger and pain are the shared emotions that link widow Anna Jackson and convicted killer Gabriel Wayland. They also share the stage — but never the same space — in Alessandro Camon’s powerful play of dueling monologues, Time Alone. Beyond their well-earned rage, these two lost souls have another unexpected connection, revealed only in the final moments of the 90-minute … [Read more...]
The Civil War, played for laughs: Boca Stage’s sharp, funny ‘Ben Butler’
Comedy depends on the element of surprise. And the most surprising thing about Ben Butler, Richard Strand’s Civil War tug-of-war over a runaway slave who seeks asylum at a Union army post, is that the dire situation is played for laughs. The play is full of verbal wit, delivered with verve by a capable four-member cast at Boca Stage, under the crafty direction of the … [Read more...]
‘Rx’: Boca Stage’s gentle skewering of Big Pharma delivered with dispatch
Workplace depression is not an officially recognized medical condition, but that does not stop Schmidt Pharma from trying to develop a lucrative cure for what ails so many of us. That includes Meena Pierotti, managing editor of American Cattle and Swine magazine, a trade publication so dreary that depression seems the logical response to employment there. Meena is the … [Read more...]
Boca Stage’s ‘Warrior Class’ a sharp lesson in The Swamp
Scratch the surface of a politician and chances are you will find scandal or at least dirty laundry that will render him unelectable for higher office. That is the cynical premise of Kenneth Lin’s taut, tight 80-minute civics lesson, Warrior Class, now receiving its area premiere at Boca Stage (formerly Primal Forces). The play’s battlefield ricochets between a … [Read more...]
Gardner helps lift Simon’s minor ‘Gingerbread Lady’ at Primal Forces
Nine years after he made his Broadway debut with the wisecracking Come Blow Your Horn, long after he was proclaimed the commercial theater’s reigning king of comedy, Neil Simon made a drastic tonal shift with the darkly dramatic The Gingerbread Lady. This tale of an alcoholic nymphomaniac and her emotionally needy friends did have glimmers of the serious Simon of his later … [Read more...]
Actresses make ‘Having Our Say’ an unmissable conversation
With presentational monologue plays – either one-person shows or sweet duets like Emily Mann’s Having Our Say – the question usually comes to mind, “Who are these characters talking to?” But in the case of Sadie and Bessie Delany, two centenarian African-American sisters who break the theatrical fourth wall from the start of their rambling, but endearing verbal tour of … [Read more...]
Turnbull carries off a tour de force in ‘Pink Unicorn’
What’s a mother to do? Big-haired, small-town Texas mom Trisha Lee is taken aback when her teenage daughter Jolene announces to her that from now on she should no longer be considered a girl but gender-neutral, so please call her “Jo(e)” and refer to her by the pronoun “they.” The semantics of gender politics is the least of Trisha’s problems, once her unconditional-love, … [Read more...]
With ‘Mystery of Love & Sex,’ Arts Garage launches quirky new theater season
By all measures, the theater program at Delray Beach’s Art Garage had a very good season, the first one guided by Keith Garsson and his resident director, Genie Croft. Their edgy slate of plays was critically well received, two of the four productions had extended runs and overall the season turned a profit. The question now is can they continue their success or will they fall … [Read more...]