Reviews

Report From New York: A Welcome Return Into The Woods

It has been said that this New York production of Into the Woods merging heart, humor, energy and imagination is better than the original. But it is it’s own vision executed with an excellence that occurs when the finest talents invest themselves in creating a fresh vision. It is closing soon but will move part and parcel to nationwide tour almost immediately.

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Cut Loose With Slow Burn Theatre’s Rousing Footloose

A hallmark of Slow Burn Theatre Company is its knack in finding new, mostly young talent and shaping those performers’ creativity. That approach—and this current round of talent—are on full display in the high energy, highly entertaining production of Footloose, now at the Broward Center.

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Report From New York: Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt Questions Assimilation

Leopoldstadt’s breathtaking scene of a family’s debate whether to flee the Third Reich — ended by a knock on the door — is only one facet in Tom Stoppard’s borderline masterpiece that tracks a half-century in the lives of a bourgeoise Jewish family in Vienna as the world around them changes.

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Aesop’s Fable-ous Xmas Tree Gifts Tales To Celebrate

In Aesop’s Fable-ous Christmas Tree at Main Street Players, Aesop’s fables receive a holiday spin in vignettes illuminating important life lessons by reinventing the classic fables. Humor, rhythmic elements, rapping, puppetry, poetry, song, and storytelling combine to create a vivacious and humorous afternoon or evening of live theater.

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Wick Cinderella Is a 21st Century Reboot of the Classic

Charm bubbles throughout the Wick Theatre’s lush production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, a very 21st Century riff on the classic musical that can legitimately be promoted as entertaining for the whole family. The original beloved score is beautifully enhanced with new orchestrations, but don’t go expecting Hammerstein’s fairy tale script that you may have seen with Julie Andrews or Lesley Ann Warren.

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Cast of Region’s Top Actors Triumph in 12 Angry Men

A baker’s dozen actors we’ve seen in myriad roles over the past decade or more submerge themselves so deeply in their characters that they are nearly unrecognizable. An unequalled assemblage of A-list talent and accumulated skill merge into a single ensemble in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ vibrant revival of the classic jury room drama 12 Angry Men.

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Ethics, People Are Dispensable In Hnath’s Scathing Red Speedo

A tattoo of a sea serpent is playwright Lucas Hnath’s damning metaphor for the grip of ambition to the point that betrayal of anyone is an accepted expedient in the scathing Red Speedo from producer Ronnie Larsen at The Foundry. Using competitive sports as a milieu, Hnath depicts people willing to violate moral codes and personal loyalties in pursuit of the American Dream — as ingrained today as it was when Arthur Miller decried it in 1949.

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Misfit Nerds Spell ‘Winning” In MNM’s Putnam Spelling Bee

That every hero and heroine in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a misfit we secretly recognize from the bathroom mirror explains how this musical has thrived 17 years. Add to successful productions, MNM Theatre Company’s accumulation of youngsters trying to find their self-worth amid the high-pressure competition of the bee finals.

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New City Players’ It’s A Wonderful Life Is Indeed

In the 21st Century, the adjective “merry” has fallen out of use except in conjunction with a holiday. But “merry” is precisely the right word to describe the brew of warmth and humor in New City Players’ smile of a production in It’s A Wonderful Life. While staged as a radio play, this production involves three-dimensional acting by five real-life performers who portray the 50 or so characters.

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City Theatre’s Constitution May Be Season’s Most Important Play

The contradictions of what we say the Constitution is, what we want it to be, and what it really is, what it really does are at the heart of one of the most timely and important pieces of theater to be produced in South Florida this past year — City Theatre’s What the Constitution Means to Me.

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