For a work brimming with pure theatricality, few plays can top The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the tale of an autistic teenage boy’s struggle to make sense of the world around him. Following critical and popular successes in London and on Broadway, the play is now available for stylistic reinterpretation by resident companies, which must have been catnip for … [Read more...]
Ryan’s ‘Tar Beach,’ at FAU, is compelling but feels unfinished
As even 14-year-old Reenie – the narrator of Tammy Ryan’s memory play, Tar Beach, now on at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab – senses, the summer of 1977 is a significant time, particularly for her coming-of-age in her hometown of Ozone Park, Queens. Amid a sweltering heat wave, serial killer Son of Sam lurks about, terrorizing teenage girls. Just as … [Read more...]
Miami’s M Ensemble wins big at Carbonells
A low-budget African-American theater company in Miami was the big winner at the 42nd annual Carbonell Awards ceremony Monday night at the Broward Center. Although M Ensemble has been producing plays for 47 years, it had barely been recognized by the South Florida awards for theater excellence until that night. Its mounting of Kings of Harlem, about the struggles of a black … [Read more...]
Sharp FAU cast does well by Gunderson’s ‘The Revolutionists’
There are several things you can count on in a play by Lauren Gunderson. It will center on women with a feminist bent, it will have crisp, witty dialogue yet make plenty of serious points and it will self-reflectively keep reminding us that we are watching a play, what theater folks call “meta.” Certainly that is the case with The Revolutionists, a tongue-in-cheek … [Read more...]
Sagal’s ‘Most Wanted’ a triumph at FAU Theatre Lab
Welcome back, Peter Sagal. True, the host of National Public Radio’s current events quiz show, Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, has hardly been out of the public eye lately. Wait, wait, make that “out of the public ear.” But when he began the show 20 years ago, he stopped writing plays, and if you want to measure the size of that loss, head to Florida Atlantic University … [Read more...]
Chekhov meets Beckett in Laufer’s provocative ‘Three Sisters of Weehawken’
What do you get when you cross an iconic play by Anton Chekhov with those of Samuel Beckett, by way of Christopher Durang and his puckish touch? Such a stew would probably resemble Deborah Zoe Laufer’s The Three Sisters of Weehawken, an amiably nutty and ultimately touching new work now receiving its world premiere at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab. As her title … [Read more...]