Performances

Chicken Coop’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Is Not Equal To Script’s Potential

Christopher Durang initially wrote Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike to precisely match the inimitable talents of David Hyde Pierce, Sigourney Weaver and Kristine Nielsen. So it’s no surprise that the earnest, eager and ambitious Chicken Coop Theatre troupe based at the Levis JCC in Boca Raton only succeeds in brief flashes and rarely delivers the script’s potential

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Fine Voices Battle Miserable Script, Lyrics In Flashdance

Broward Stage Door’s production of Flashdance the Musical has aspects worth recommending such as two charismatic leads with powerful voices worthy of a brass band. That’s fortunate because the Stage Door crew is fighting a losing battle with miserable lyrics and a mediocre script awash in crocheted sampler homilies about taking chances, never giving up, believing in yourself, risking it all, finding your true worth, Remember the Alamo, etc. etc. etc.

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Savor A Cup Of Memories At Stage Door’s Smokey Joe’s Cafe

Smokey Joe’s Café, the quintessential plotless rock n’ roll jukebox revue, is as dependable as light entertainment gets in the hands of experienced directors like Kevin Black at Broward Stage Door.

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Slow Burn Hosts Lovely Swirling Visit To The Secret Garden

Be grateful that Slow Burn Theatre Company with its audacious affection for large scale challenging musicals has decided to mount The Secret Garden, that ode to rebirth, memorable for its lush unconventional score that resembles streams of music intertwining into an aural waterfall.

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Straight White Men Succeeds At Thinking Cap Despite Thoughtless Jerks In Audience

Thinking Cap Theatre’s opening performance of Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men might have been among the best nights of theater in South Florida so far this season. I say “might have been” because I can’t be sure. The evening was crippled by drunken thoughtless, self-centered, rude patrons who learned their audience etiquette from watching Jerry Springer reruns in their underwear at home.

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The Kids Attending The School of Rock Kick Out The Jams

For a show whose strengths are its celebration of nose-thumbing non-conformity and anarchic scenes of unrestrained thrash metal music, School of Rock is a surprisingly conventional musical that mechanically ticks off all the check marks in theater’s dramaturgical by-the-numbers playbook.

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Winter Shorts: Welcome Holiday Warmth Against The Chill

Over 21 years, City Theatre’s ever-expanding enterprises have developed and maintained a brand-level reputation for entertaining theater; its return to cool weather programming with the current edition of Winter Shorts is just as diverting.

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When The Applause Fades: Dramaworks Gives Teachout Premiere of Billy And Me

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of the world premiere of Billy and Me, a fictionalization of the real life relationship between playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge, is a triumph of the imagination, technique, skill and showmanship of playwright Terry Teachout, director William Hayes and actors Nicholas Richberg and Tom Wahl.

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Extra! Extra! ‘Newsies’ At The Maltz Is Newsworthy

The Maltz Jupiter Theatre gives the Disney Broadway musical Newsies something to shout about with its energetic, acrobatic, tap-dancing, choreographic eye-popper of a staging about a group of rag-tag guttersnipes, who end up taking on the establishment.

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MNM’s Witty Little Shop of Horrors Is Open For Business

When entering a theater playing a musical you’ve enjoyed numerous times, it’s comforting to open the playbill to find the names of proven talents that reassure that you and the material are in good hands. Names, for instance, like Mike Westrich, Bruce Linser, Mallory Newbrough, Paul Reekie and Jim Ballard – some of the dependable hands delivering a solid entertaining edition of the delightful Little Shop of Horrors from MNM Productions.

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