By Dale King Summer may be a slack season for many students. But not for the actor wannabes in Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance. They’ve spent weeks gearing up for perhaps their busiest time of the year – the annual two-play Summer Repertory Theater Festival. The first show, a high-energy production of Peter and the Starcatcher, opened in the … [Read more...]
Broadway Review 2: A gritty revival and a musical like no other
Ahead of this season’s Tony Awards presentation on Sunday, June 16, here are more of my Broadway reviews: * Appropriate — Where would the theater be without dysfunctional families? With his Broadway debut, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins conjures up an extraordinarily vicious clan in the Lafayettes, who reunite in the dilapidated rural Arkansas home of their recently … [Read more...]
Broadway Review 1: Four new musicals contend in Tony season
Following a very busy April, in which two dozen new shows opened to end the Tony Award-eligible season, a host of new musicals by debuting composers arrived, many of them adaptations of popular novels and their subsequent movie versions. * Water for Elephants — Who wouldn’t want to run away and join the circus, even one so ramshackle and cash-strapped as the … [Read more...]
‘Trying’: Overlong play at Dramaworks rescued by impressive performances
Even the greats of government service will eventually succumb to the physical and mental ravages of age. So it is with Francis Biddle, the former attorney general under Franklin Roosevelt and chief American judge of the Nuremberg war trials. By the time we meet him in Joanna McClelland Glass’ biographical play Trying, he is 81 and a decrepit shell of his former self. … [Read more...]
‘Kite Runner’ just as moving on stage as it was on film, in pages
Reportedly more than 30 million copies of Khaled Hosseini’s pre-9/11 Afghanistan-set novel of friendship, betrayal, death-defying risk and eventual redemption, The Kite Runner, have been sold worldwide and countless millions more saw the powerful 2007 movie adaptation. But even if you are already familiar with this tale that spans decades of evolving Middle Eastern history, you … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 7: Gritty ‘Outsiders’ not otherwise persuasive
April 28, 2024: I completed my bite out of Broadway today with my eighth show in six days --- The Outsiders --- based on S.E. Hinton's novel and Francis Ford Coppola's movie adaptation. It's a visceral musical, steeped in the street warfare between the blue-collar Greasers and the socially better-off Socs. The comparison may be unfair, but it is hard not to think of West Side … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 6: Intense ‘Appropriate,’ dazzling ‘Illinoise’
April 27, 2024: Today, Saturday, was a two-show day with productions that couldn't be more different. At the matinee I saw Appropriate, an intensely dramatic look at a highly dysfunctional family. And in the evening I saw a recently opened dance concert/musical, Illinoise, that challenges what a musical is. Appropriate, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins in his Broadway debut, is … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 5: Timely ‘Suffs’ an auspicious debut for actress-creator
This afternoon, I, my wife and a couple of good friends from high school who got married a week before us (wow, 52 years ago) met up and went on a food-themed walking tour of Greenwich Village. In addition to a history lesson of the neighborhood, we snacked on bagels, pizza, pie crust cookies, Italian rice balls, Belgian-style fries, artisan chocolates and designer cupcakes. A … [Read more...]
Boca Stage ends season with charming ‘America’s Sexiest Couple’
Unlike its recent seasons, Boca Stage has no Neil Simon plays in its current line-up. But with America’s Sexiest Couple, boy, does it come close. Its playwright, Ken Levine, is no stranger to sitcoms, having spent much of his career writing episodes of M*A*S*H, Cheers and Frasier. Still, this Levine stage comedy will bring to mind a couple of Simon classics --– Plaza Suite … [Read more...]
‘What’s Best for the Children’: Sharp topical comedy premieres at FAU Theatre Lab
Educating our youngsters --- deciding what and what not to teach them --- is a very serious matter. But apparently that news never made its way to playwright Idris Goodwin. For he has taken the subject of education in America today and turned it on its ear, examining the matter from an absurdist perspective in a jaunty little comedy called What’s Best for the Children, now … [Read more...]