Monthly Archives: September 2012
Andrews’ Steel Magnolias Touches Hearts With Pathos, Fails To Nail Whipcrack Humor
What continues to enchant critics who have to see more productions of Steel Magnolias than most civilians is what a truly funny, finely observed and genuinely touching script that Robert Harling constructed back in 1987. What’s different about Andrews Living Arts Studio’s uneven new production is that, atypically, it’s the pathos that works far better than the comedy.
News Briefs: Two Late Additions Plus GableStage’s Fundraiser That CostsYou Nothing
Last Minute News: Two Shows M Ensemble Company is launching a new play series this weekend only with Hate! An American Love Story, a one-woman piece written and performed by local actress Christina Alexander and directed by Karen Stephens. No …
Chance Remark At Stage Door Holocaust Play’s Intermission Leads To Moving Surprise
Two Florida men who by chance sat next to each other at the Holocaust play at Broward Stage Door, A Shayna Maidel, discovered they had been in the same forced labor camp during World War II.
AAPACT Dutchman Starts Too Slowly; Finishes In Blazing Anger
The script of Dutchman, Amiri Bakara’s classic 1964 play of racial and sexual politics, crackles with the explosive rage that Langston Hughes’ predicted in “A Dream Deferred.” The fact that this production doesn’t find that passion or electricity until two-thirds of the way through the 40-minute play doesn’t prevent the audience from appreciating Bakara’s themes or enjoying the laudable aspirations of the ambitious production.
News: The Mormons Are Coming and Violence In Theater
Stage Combat Violence, the ultimate expression of dramatic conflict, has long been a staple of theater, going back to the days of Og the Caveman retelling his war exploits around the fire. The way violence is represented in theater is …
GableStage’s Ruined Is Powerful Tale of Atrocities and Suvival
GableStage’s powerful Ruined examines our species’ simultaneous capacity for a bottomless cruelty absent in animals and an inextinguishable humanity that borders on divinity. This engrossing rendition of Lynn Nottage’s play about people struggling to survive the hellish civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo also has a duality. It is one of the finest pieces of local theater seen this season, featuring superb acting, notably from Lela Elam as an indomitable owner of a bar/brothel.
And Make Our Garden Grow: Finding The Solutions…
By Bill Hirschman In the film Shakespeare In Love, the producer says theater’s “natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster… Strangely enough, it all turns out well.” When asked how, he says, “I …
Alliance’s Home Sweet Funeral Home Is Imaginative If Uneven
A group of loopy scenarios fuel eight daffy short plays by local playwrights thumbing their nose at Death in an often funny if markedly uneven collection commissioned by the Alliance Theatre Lab entitled Home Sweet Funeral Home.
And Make Our Garden Grow: Finding The Solutions
Who are we? Where do we want to go? What’s standing in our way? How do we prevail? The dwindling days before the season gears up are a prime time for us all, audiences to artists, to invest in a tough self-examination of South Florida theater. We’ll suggest concrete answers in three extensive essays every other day beginning today.
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