“Erratic” is the word that comes to mind to describe the inaugural season of Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre. But when it is good, the eight-month old company can compete with any troupe in South Florida, as it proves with its current production of the Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. The 1978 Tony Award winner set the gold standard for composer tribute songfests and by … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Ghost, the Musical,’ ‘Million Dollar Quartet,’ ‘The Trouble With Doug’
You want proof that Broadway tours across the nation are starving for product? Head to the Broward Center during the next week and get a look at Ghost, the Musical, as muddled and lifeless as any show that someone thought warranted a national showcase. In 2012, this movie-to-stage transfer eked out almost a five-month run in New York after garnering a dismissive set of … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Over the River’ delights at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Joe DiPietro’s play Over the River and Through the Woods is comfort food for the soul. It’s delightfully funny, but comes with a helping of drama and a garnish of pathos. The concoction shows how the elders in a closely knit Italian-American family in New Jersey deal with a “crisis.” And, of course, a crisis could be anything that doesn’t fit into their … [Read more...]
Community theater: LW Playhouse does Python in rollicking style
By Dale King If history had unfolded the way it does in the wacky musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, we might all be riding imaginary horses, negotiating with the knights who say “Ni,” fending off insults from surly Frenchmen and slapping each other with fish. Lake Worth Playhouse drops the curtain on its 2013-14 season with a rollicking rendition of the show adapted from the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 2: ‘Act One’ and ‘A Gentleman’s Guide’
A few days before I arrived in New York, it snowed here, as most residents are eager to point out, as they enjoyed today's bright, sunny, 65-degree spring day. I naturally celebrated the great weather by burrowing indoors to take in two shows. In the afternoon, it was Act One, James Lapine's epic adaptation of writer-director Moss Hart's 1959 autobiography of escape from the … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Dividing the Estate’ and ‘Evita’
Take economic bad times, add a land-rich but cash-poor clan brimming with selfish money-grubbers and you have a recipe for a dysfunctional family play like Dividing the Estate, which landed on Broadway for 50 performances in late 2008 and early 2009, just before its author, the prolific Horton Foote, passed away. He again takes us to fictional Harrison, Texas, the site of so … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Steel Magnolias,’ ‘Chess,’ Dirty Blonde,’ and ‘Mr. Marmalade’
April may not be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once declared, but it has brought us some disappointing theater. Steel Magnolias — Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre has filled its inaugural season with mainstream commercial musicals. So you would think its only divergence from that menu would have to be a pretty sure-fire, high-quality, audience-friendly play. Well, no. Sandwiched … [Read more...]
Community theater: Fine cast boosts Delray Playhouse’s ‘Pajama Game’
By Dale King The Pajama Game may not be the newest or flashiest musical to hit Broadway. But the tune-filled 1954 show has long theatrical legs, some truly comic moments, a story with timeless appeal and a score that engendered some standards. The show, now being staged at the Delray Beach Playhouse, deals with labor troubles at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory, where worker … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Full Monty,’ ‘Fighting Over Beverley,’ ‘Rags,’ and ‘Sister Act’
In 1968, Broadway was aghast (and titillated) when a tribe of hippies went naked in Hair. Thirty-two years later, a handful of unemployed steel workers strip down to nothing onstage in The Full Monty and it is practically family entertainment. OK, I guess it depends on the family, but if you have a taste for untoned, scrawny, fat or aging bodies, then The Wick Theatre has the … [Read more...]
Community theater: A strong ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ at LW Playhouse
By Dale King Lake Worth Playhouse has taken a bold step in its decision to present One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a generally grim drama. Based on the 1962 Ken Kesey novel that shed a cold, clinical light on the insensitive methods used to treat inmates at an insane asylum, the stage presentation adapted a year later by Dale Wasserman fell flat. Milos Forman breathed new … [Read more...]