Author Archives: Bill Hirschman

Breaking News: Miami Mayor Scuttles Coconut Grove Playhouse Plan With Veto

Miami-Dade County’s current plan to resurrect the Coconut Grove Playhouse was dealt what may be a fatal blow Friday when City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez vetoed the project primarily on historic preservation grounds. Suarez said he hoped that the county was willing to collaborate with the city on a compromised phased-in full renovation and restoration of the iconic theater.

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Theater Cues & News: Matilda Jr., New City Reading, A New Patsy, Moving Measure, Theatre Lab Experiments, Traffic Woes

News of Broward Center & local students create Matilda Jr., New City Players seeks feedback on new play, Wick extends and gets new Patsy Cline, TCG brings 1,000 artists to Miami, Measure for Measure gets new home, Theatre Lab to have longer runs

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An Absurdist Take On Celebrity Worship At PB Dramaworks

Palm Beach Dramaworks is reviving the funny, poignant The House of Blue Leaves about a Queens family whose life is turned inside out when the Pope visits NYC in 1965. Ordinary people spurred by the papal visit will seek validation of their own worth by pursuing celebrity for themselves – or at least vicariously by their idol worship.

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Intriguing ‘Precious Little’ Delves Into Communication

Thinking Cap Theatre director Nicole Stodard and her fine trio of actresses have inarguably produced an engrossing emotional and intellectual puzzle to stimulate the heart and mind in Precious Little.

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Lion King Roars Back To The Arsht As Fresh as Ever

The procession of savannah creatures –magnificent lions, leaping, a lithe leopard, soaring birds and a story-high elephant – strolling up the through aisles and onto a theater stage in the opening scenes of The Lion King is still breathtaking no matter how many times you’ve seen it.

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Breaking News: County Plan For Coconut Grove Playhouse Passes Crucial Test Wednesday

The 13-year journey to resurrect the fabled Coconut Grove Playhouse squeaked by what may have been the last serious roadblock Wednesday when the Miami City Commission voted 3-2 to overturn objections from its Historic Preservation advisory board.. But there is one last hurdle: Mayor Francis Suarez procedurally has the power to veto the decision until 4:30 p.m. Monday, May 20th.

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Theatre Lab Gathers Scores Of Artists For Overnight Project

Self-absorbed celebrities adopting babies, patients bonding in an asylum and a batty New Age retreat featuring a large plastic cow – just a few of the offbeat moments in Theatre Lab’s Overnight Theatre Project on Monday in which theater professionals volunteered to spend a mostly sleepless 24 hours creating playlets from scratch.

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Knowing How It Ends Is Part Of The Secret For Flight 232

The highly theatrical, superbly effective United Flight 232 presented by the House Theatre of Chicago makes a strong ending to the Arsht Center’s Theatre Up Close series for the season.

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Viva La Parranda! Shares Soup, Stories And Song In A Very Original Production

Viva La Parranda! from Miami New Drama is more than a documentary play. It’s a microscopic and humanistic look inside a Venezuelan town, El Clavo, and singer Betsayda Machado has become the voice of El Clavo. During the lively original musical, it’s difficult to imagine the latest news of a city an hour and a half away, right now, so filled with violence.

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Music Not The Plot Is The Attraction in FGO’s Werther

Jules Massenet’s dramatic opera Werther is short on action, and its cast of characters limited. But it does have a reputation, however, of being the most French of French operas, and what has gained the 19th century work this reverence isn’t in its storytelling about the lovelorn poet and the woman he can’t have, but in the music.

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