Reviews

Welcome Back, Come From Away

It seems fitting that Broadway Across America marks its return to the Broward Centerwith the Tony and Olivier Award winning musical Come From Away that honors themes of community, perseverance, isolation and fear of the unknown. It seems that during last 18 months we’ve all come from away. And now we are back, a bit changed like the myriad characters in Come From Away, but happy to be back.

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Noel Coward On Noel Coward, Acting, Writing And “Theatre”

Noël Coward meant to write a full tome on “Theatre” but time, health and a score of other projects apparently got in the way. But Barry Day, a stage producer, biographer of literary figures, Sherlock Holmes novelist and prolific Coward devotee, realized that Coward had in essence done it indirectly. Thus, the germ for Noel Coward On (And In) The Theatre.

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PPTOPA’s Cabaret Once Again Warns Of Current Dangers

PPTOPA’s earnest, merely passable production of Cabaret is notable for a few solid performances, but especially for the script which, decade after decade, becomes an increasingly relevant warning. Even more than the original stories, Masteroff’s 1966 “book” warns of an everyday populace willing to accommodate the rise of a totalitarian regime that promises answers, even to the point of self-inflicted blindness to its dangers.

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Sing Along If You Must: “Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again” At Wick

No matter the time zone, country or phase of the moon, Mamma Mia! is playing somewhere, in this case an inarguably competent production at The Wick Theatre. Even those who have never been a fan of the work have to admit its score contains tunes that spark Pavlovian responses of joyous clapping and swaying along in audience members, even if they’ve aren’t familiar with the ABBA “ouvre.”

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Zoetic Stage’s Breathtaking Frankenstein Delivers A Different Brand of Horror

The “horror” in Zoetic Stage’s Frankenstein shares little kinship with the film monster with bolts in his neck terrorizing the countryside or even the 1818 novel of science gone wrong. But a different very contemporary terror is there all the same from the breath-taking wordless prologue of a stitched together embryo clawing out of a pod to the silent final image of two bodies crawling through Arctic waste.

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Songs for a New World Is A Welcome Return For Theater

Jason Robert Brown’s brilliantly insightful and emotionally powerful Songs for a New World lets you know you’re not going crazy all alone in Slow Burn Theatre’s season opener that would be a triumph even if it didn’t signify a full-throated celebratory return of regional theater.

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Miami New Drama Offers Free Season Opener “A Special Day”

What better way to mark the return of live, in-person theater than to celebrate the major role that an audience’s imagination plays in this unique art form? In fact, the professional, nonprofit Miami New Drama (MIND) is offering audiences free admission to a return engagement of the Mexico City and New York-based, nonprofit company Por Piedad Teatro’s production of A Special Day.

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Swirling Realities Within Realities In Gay-Themed ‘Twentieth Century Way’

The Twentieth Century Way creates intersecting, overlapping realities in Island City Stage’s celebration of its 10th season by restaging its 2012 inaugural play. This thought-provoker melds questions about people acknowledging their true identity, amalgamating actors in general hiding behind their roles, and gay men hiding their sexuality from a homophobic society and themselves.

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Racial Issues Permeate Main Street’ Players’ ‘Shakespeare is a White Supremacist’

The premise: A white director leads a multi-ethnic cast in a Midsummer’s Night as an answer to charges of institutional racism. But with wry humor and painfully incisive drama, Main Street Players’ edition of Andrew Watring’s “Shakespeare is a White Supremacist” examines the intersection of theater and racism as a metaphor for larger problems afflicting society in 21st Century America.

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Despite The 10-Foot Star, ‘Mastodon’ Not Just Child’s Play

Yes, there is broad humor, over-the-top characters, cartoonish sets, a fairy tale vibe and a 10-foot tall puppet, but Theatre Lab makes it clear that Rachel Teagle’s world premiere script of The Impracticality of Modern-Day Mastodons is not children’s theater, but an adult evaluation of dreams.

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