David Hare, one of Great Britain’s most acclaimed playwrights, is known for juggling the personal and the political in his works. That balancing act is particularly evident in his 1995 drama Skylight, a reunion of two former lovers from opposite sides of the political spectrum, being revived by Palm Beach Dramaworks beginning Friday. Although set in the days … [Read more...]
Lead actors keep madness of ‘Blue Leaves’ in canny check at Dramaworks
By Dale King The House of Blue Leaves, the darkly seriocomic John Guare play, is appropriately apt as the finale for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 19th season. The show that packed the West Palm Beach venue on opening weekend homes in on characters who desperately want their hopes and dreams to work. But a realistic assessment says they probably won’t happen. The Obie … [Read more...]
Dramaworks sees profundity in dark comedy of ‘Blue Leaves’
Palm Beach Dramaworks is closing out its 18th season uncharacteristically with a comedy – John Guare’s 1971 dark farce, The House of Blue Leaves. But director J. Barry Lewis insists it is not a departure for the company. “I believe that drama is comedy and comedy is drama. I think that they are one and the same,” he says prior to a recent rehearsal. “Comedy is an … [Read more...]
‘Arcadia’ a feast of intellectual riches at Dramaworks
Far too many evenings of theater leave one hungry for mental nourishment. Then there are the plays of Tom Stoppard, who challenges the brain with heady subject matter and tickles the funny bone with audacious wordplay. Introduced to the world in 1966 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his deconstruction of Hamlet by way of Waiting for Godot, Stoppard was long … [Read more...]
Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’ may be Dramaworks’s biggest challenge
Palm Beach Dramaworks audiences have had to grapple with the weighty plays of Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and such absurdists as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. But with its first foray into the canon of Great Britain’s Tom Stoppard, producing his Olivier Award-winning Arcadia, as dense with ideas as it is with wordplay, the company may be serving up its most … [Read more...]
Searing ‘Disgraced’ a triumph at the Maltz
Programming a not-for-profit regional theater is a balancing act between challenging material and work that is escapist entertainment, with many a company erring on the side of the latter. And yet last year – with the exception of plays by William Shakespeare – the most produced script in America was Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, his 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that holds a … [Read more...]