Unlike its recent seasons, Boca Stage has no Neil Simon plays in its current line-up. But with America’s Sexiest Couple, boy, does it come close. Its playwright, Ken Levine, is no stranger to sitcoms, having spent much of his career writing episodes of M*A*S*H, Cheers and Frasier. Still, this Levine stage comedy will bring to mind a couple of Simon classics --– Plaza Suite … [Read more...]
‘The Thin Place,’ at Boca Stage, is more puzzling than creepy
Unlike horror movies, which want to scare the bejesus out of us, Lucas Hnath’s cerebral ghost story The Thin Place merely wants to creep us out and perhaps have us think about the possibility of an afterlife. Whether or not you are persuaded by this curiously structured play, which demands several leaps of faith by its audience and ultimately ends on theatrical gimmickry, … [Read more...]
Words matter, and are the matter, in Boca Stage two-hander ‘The Sound Inside’
It is no accident that Bella Baird, the central figure in Adam Rapp’s compelling, though arch, play The Sound Inside, is a professor of creative writing at Yale University. For Rapp, himself a former novelist, needed a character obsessed with literature, meticulous with words, someone whose self-conscious dialogue sounds carefully composed, as if written down before it is … [Read more...]
‘Communion,’ at Primal Forces, deftly explores issues of character
Although the word "communion" brings to mind the Catholic ritual of accepting the body and blood of Christ, Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor seems more interested in its alternate definition, “the sharing or exchanging of mental or spiritual thoughts or feelings.” For there is plenty of such sharing – as well as withholding – in MacIvor’s Communion, receiving its regional … [Read more...]
Three strong women aim for ‘Communion’ at Primal Forces
Keith Garsson and his Primal Forces theater company are on the move again. After a season and a half at Delray Beach’s Arts Garage, which then dropped its theater program, he returned to Andrews Living Arts in downtown Fort Lauderdale. But after one show there, it too suspended production. So Garsson packed up again and moved across town to Empire Stage, where he opens the … [Read more...]