Keith Garsson bounces back with a sexy season of Primal Forces, Palm Beach Dramaworks produces two world premieres, Slow Burn serves up its first non-musical and in case you haven’t had enough inclement weather this hurricane season, The Wick promises to make it rain inside its theater. All in all, it looks like a promising 2017-18 at area stages. Here’s a preview, in … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ delightful treat for summer
As managing executive producer Marilynn Wick readily concedes in her pre-show speech, she has purposely aimed her summer show, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, at youngsters and at developing an audience of tots. Then she has chosen well, with one of the Mouse Factory’s most popular animated features, transformed into the company’s first Broadway venture in 1994, a … [Read more...]
Four years on, Marilynn Wick proud of theater she’s built
Having just completed her fourth season producing live theater at the playhouse that bears her name, Marilynn Wick takes a brief pause in her typical 10-to-14-hour workday to survey what she has built in Boca Raton, on the site of the defunct Caldwell Theatre. An entrepreneur her whole life, she knows the odds of The Wick Theatre and Costume Museum succeeding were high. … [Read more...]
Current theater: Twisted ‘Broken Snow;’ bubbly ‘Beehive’
A dark, twisting and twisted tale called Broken Snow inaugurates the professional theater program of JCAT at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami Beach. With a decade of community and children’s theater under its belt, the company makes a polished debut into Carbonell Award-eligible productions, even if the subject matter of Ben Andron’s world premiere … [Read more...]
Strong leads, lively production make ‘Guys and Dolls’ sparkle at the Wick
The eccentric underworld characters of Damon Runyon fit comfortably in the realm of musical comedy. For while they are obsessed with gambling on everything from the ponies to craps to cheesecake consumption, they are also preoccupied with romance. At least they are in Guys and Dolls, a 1950 confection from Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows, considered one of a handful of perfect … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘West Side Story’ remarkably strong
West Side Story is not an Olympic sport, but if were, its degree of difficulty rating would be off the charts. The symphonic score by Leonard Bernstein requires singers of exceptional skill, the original choreography by Jerome Robbins calls for classically trained, inexhaustible dancers and the acting needs to be of, well, Shakespearean level. But Wick Theatre executive … [Read more...]
‘West Side Story’: 60-year-old classic comes to The Wick
Sixty years ago, a remarkable collaboration of composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, book writer Arthur Laurents and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, took William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet onto the gang-dominated streets of New York City. The result was an enduring work of the musical theater, West Side Story, which kicked off the new year at Boca … [Read more...]
Good performances kick Wick’s ‘Sister Act’ into high gear
Twenty-four years ago, Whoopi Goldberg had a sizeable movie hit with Sister Act, playing a nightclub singer hiding out from thugs in a Philadelphia convent. Like so many popular movies, it was turned into a stage musical, arriving on Broadway in 2011, running almost a year and a half. But — as with every other show that season — it was overshadowed by the monster success of … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Sister Act’ offers escapism with a heart
Ask Patrece Bloomfield, who is making her Wick Theatre debut in Sister Act as Delores Van Cartier – a/k/a the Whoopi Goldberg character in the 1992 movie – how she got the role and she will answer in two words, “Divine intervention.” How appropriate for a musical that takes place largely in a convent. Bloomfield was appearing in a theme park show at Universal Studios in … [Read more...]
McArdle, Clow winning in Wick’s charming ‘Playing Our Song’
As veteran director Norb Joerder readily concedes, The Wick Theatre was looking for a small musical to open its season, concerned about ticket sales before the snow bird audience arrives. In that sense, the company chose well with 1979’s They’re Playing Our Song, a two-character, on-and-off romantic comedy based on the quirky – and doomed – relationship between composer Marvin … [Read more...]