Now in its 33rd season, The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival reaches deep into the Bard’s folios for a less frequently performed dark comedy, Measure for Measure, a particular favorite of the company’s artistic director, Trent Stephens. “I might have a bias. I might seek these less frequently produced plays out,” he explains. “There are many works of Shakespeare’s that … [Read more...]
Two Boca high school thespians up for national Jimmy Awards
Two Boca Raton students will be representing Palm Beach County today in the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (the Jimmy Awards) in New York City. Maya Sharma from Saint Andrew’s School and Lucas Brown from West Boca Raton Community High School were the top winners in the fourth annual Kravis Center Dream Awards, competing with 135 other students from 15 Palm Beach … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Sheldon Harnick, exacting lyricist of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
Broadway’s golden era of the 1960s just lost one of its greats. Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof – the final survivor of that classic musical’s creative team – has died at the age of 99. If he only wrote Fiddler, Harnick’s place among the top tier of musical wordsmiths would be secure. (Has there ever been a Jewish wedding in the past half a century … [Read more...]
FAU Summer Rep opens with delightful ‘Musical Comedy Murders of 1940’
By Dale King The heat is on --- meteorologically, that is. And Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance has kicked off its 2023 Summer Festival Repertory Theatre season with an over-the-top sampling of frenetic comedy, one of the most fast-paced and hectic murder mystery parodies to cross the stage of the Marleen Forkas Studio One Theater on FAU’s Boca … [Read more...]
Comedian Glaser brings truth-talking to salty standup
Not afraid to storm the barricades, whether the topic is sex, men, dating, pop culture, being a single woman or suffering from anxiety and depression, Nikki Glaser says she wants to speak truth from her own perspective. “I don’t mind making people uncomfortable to talk about real issues,” she says. Admitting “it’s hard to make me embarrassed,” Glaser also admits to being … [Read more...]
Broadway veteran Langel launches new theater company
Broadway performer-author-acting coach Jodie Langel is about to add another role to her crowded résumé and life — executive director and founder of a new theater company. This June, she launches the Boca Raton-based Off-Glades Theater Company, whose mission is “to promote and produce musical theater in South Florida for the cultural development of young people in the … [Read more...]
Challenging two-hander ‘Topdog/Underdog’ packs punch at Dramaworks
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has more important things on her mind, but one takeaway from her 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner, Topdog/Underdog, is surely to be careful when you name your children. For their father, as a perverse joke, named his two African-American sons Lincoln and Booth. As a result, they have been pitted against each other throughout their lives and … [Read more...]
Delightful ‘Disenchanted!’ at MNM gives us straight talk, song from the princesses
As if Disney didn’t have enough trouble from the attacks by Ron DeSantis, now the various princesses from its animated feature film corral are rebelling against the Mouse Factory for the sexist stereotypes given to them. At least that is the premise of Disenchanted!, a sly satirical revue now receiving its South Florida premiere at the Kravis Center’s Rinker … [Read more...]
‘Ain’t Too Proud’: Vocally stunning bio of Temptations offers overstuffed menu
By Dale King If thoughts of Detroit are rattling around in your mind, it probably means you’re pondering one of two things --- cars or music. And if you’re hankering for some of the best rhythm and blues tunes on the planet, your destination should be the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, where the jukebox musical, Ain’t Too Proud --- the … [Read more...]
Lake Worth Playhouse season ends with smart, energetic ‘Newsies’
By Dale King Newsies takes a high-energy, somersault-flipping, song-filled dip into a generally factual, historic event — a work stoppage involving newspaper delivery boys, called “newsies” — at the end of the 19th century. The show, a thought-provoking, entertaining and entrancing tale about industrious street kids with a genuine interest in righting wrongs — … [Read more...]