South Florida playwright Michael McKeever has cranked out so many well-crafted full-length stage scripts over the past two decades that it is easy to overlook that he has also quietly mastered the short play format. That should be harder to ignore now that he has compiled seven of his brief sketches into an evening he calls The Whole Caboodle. First performed from 1998 to … [Read more...]
Community theater roundup: ‘Eye Is on the Sparrow’; ‘Drowsy Chaperone’
By Dale King Ethel Waters died 35 years ago. But the spirit of this bold and opinionated woman, who rose from dire poverty to become one of the greatest and most outspoken African-American singers and actresses of the early to mid-20th century, is unquenchable. Public demand for a retelling of her life story and reprise of her best-known songs prompted the Delray Beach … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Birds’ compels without avians; ‘Venus’ actress captivates
When Alfred Hitchcock turned Daphne du Maurier’s apocalyptic novella The Birds into a movie in 1963, it became a visually literal thriller of avian menace instead of a character-based psychological tale. Now comes Irish yarn-spinner Conor McPherson (The Seafarer, The Weir) to translate the story to the stage, suggesting that man may have less to fear from feathered creatures … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘Master Harold’
Most fairy tales see the world in extremes of good and evil or right and wrong. But leave it to Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, in their musical constructed from intertwined fables, Into the Woods, to consider the ambiguity in these stories, asking us to look at matters from the witch’s viewpoint or the much-maligned giant’s perspective. Is it that adult take on stories … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Two compelling visions of dysfunction
Even with the stamp of approval of the Pulitzer Prize and the name recognition that comes with a film version that starred Joanne Woodward, Paul Zindel’s stage play The Effect of Gamma Rays in Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is rarely revived. It is a fragile tale of a young girl’s survival despite a bitter, abusive mother, a play that could easily be derailed in lesser hands, but … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Riveting ‘Angry Men,’ half-accomplished ‘Cane’
The “golden age of television” of the 1950s produced many classic dramas that went on to further acclaim in other media. Think of Requiem for a Heavyweight, or Marty, or The Miracle Worker. Certainly earning a spot on that list is Reginald Rose’s dramatized civics lesson, Twelve Angry Men, which the Maltz Jupiter Theatre has dusted off and given a vigorous mounting that makes … [Read more...]