By Dale King If you’ve never ridden in a surrey with a fringe on top; if you’ve never viewed a sunrise and declared, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” or if you’ve never bought a picnic lunch at auction to share with the lovely young lady who filled it with luscious goodies, then you’ve never enjoyed the wonderful music, rousing dance numbers and varied plot lines of the … [Read more...]
Boca Stage’s take on 1960s sex farce charms at Delray Playhouse
Moving further away from its original mission of producing edgy, offbeat theatrical fare, Boca Stage — now in residence at the Delray Beach Playhouse — serves up a popular commercial sex farce from the 1960s, Boeing, Boeing. If that title sounds familiar, perhaps you recall a 1965 movie version that starred Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, or a 2008 Broadway revival in which … [Read more...]
‘To Life 4’ doesn’t innovate, but does please Willow Theatre audience
Why is To Life 4 different from all other previous editions, asks director/writer/narrator Shari Upbin in a phrasing that brings to mind a Passover seder. The answer is that it isn’t at all different and that seems to please the show’s fans just fine. The revue celebrating Jewish songwriters and performers, currently playing at the Willow Theatre in Boca Raton’s Sugar Sand … [Read more...]
Standout lead performance makes Carole King bio ‘Beautiful’
The beginning and ending of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical depict the legendary singer-songwriter at Carnegie Hall performing numbers from her multiple Grammy Award-winning album, Tapestry. If those scenes are the standout highlights of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s new production, that is because they show King at the peak of her writing talent, because the stunning … [Read more...]
Wick’s ‘Fiddler’ stays with tried-and-true, and it works
Wherever the late Jerome Robbins is, he should be smiling down on the Wick Theatre. The Boca Raton stage company has mounted that perennial favorite, Fiddler on the Roof and, as the program acknowledges, Norb Joerder has reproduced Robbins’ original direction and Robert Abdoo has reproduced his original choreography. Many have tried to improve on Robbins’ deft, … [Read more...]
Ageless, universal ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ comes to The Wick
In the early 1960s, when the creators of Fiddler on the Roof were developing a musical about Tevye the dairyman and his rebellious daughters in 1905 Russia, they assumed it would have limited appeal. To their surprise, Fiddler was embraced by theatergoers far beyond the Jewish community, becoming at one point the longest-running show in Broadway history and an … [Read more...]
Maltz takes on ‘Beautiful’ look at classic pop songwriter
From a shy Brooklyn teenager who composed chart-topping songs that others recorded to a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical chronicles the career and life of one of the pop music world’s most acclaimed singer-songwriters. Following the show’s five-year Broadway run, it now arrives at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in its South Florida regional … [Read more...]
‘Mockingbird’ still makes strong impact in Sorkin adaptation
It is rare these days for a non-musical to receive a national tour. It has to have a superior script and production or a bankable name in the leading role. Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s enduring novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, has both of the former and Richard Thomas as Alabama attorney Atticus Finch provides the latter. Now at the Kravis Center … [Read more...]
Dramaworks’ ‘The Messenger’ proves powerful, topical
By Sharon Geltner Palm Beach Dramaworks is achieving a lot of significant firsts. It is emphasizing new plays. And it just staged (it ran Dec. 8-24) the world premiere of The Messenger, scripted by its first residential writer, Jenny Connell Davis. The four-character, 100-minute play is about a Hungarian Holocaust survivor teaching math in Southern California who is … [Read more...]
‘Bye Bye Birdie’ at The Wick: An appealing return to 1950s America
The world of rock ‘n’ roll was, pardon the expression, all shook up when in 1958 Elvis Presley put his hip-swiveling act on hold to enlist in the Army. But music’s loss was the musical theater’s gain, as Lee Adams, Charles Strouse and Michael Stewart used that news as their inspiration for their show biz-meets-Middle America satire, Bye Bye Birdie. Classically trained … [Read more...]