Tag Archives: Ben Sandomir

Zoetic’s Cabaret a game changer

  By Oline Cogdill When the John Kander/Fred Ebb musical Cabaret opened on Broadway in 1966, it was a gamechanger in its staging, tone and story. Certainly, other musicals tackled politics in specific eras—such as Sound of Music (1959) and …

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“Put On A Happy Face”  at the Wick’s Bye-Bye Birdie

  By Britin Haller The Wick Theatre & Museum Club’s 10th anniversary season is off to a rollicking start with Bye-Bye Birdie, a winner of four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, when it opened on Broadway in 1960. Set in …

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Moving Zoetic Stage’s Musical Is Far More Than Next To Normal

This Zoetic production of Next To Normal – easily one of the finest in its history — blesses the audience with a deeply affecting meld of fluid staging, glorious music and five superb performances clustered around an incandescent one by Jeni Hacker as Diana that exceeds superlatives.

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Delightful Honeymoon In Vegas Is Classic Musical Comedy

From Slow Burn Theatre Company’s brass-unleashed overture with a live band, to an ebullient cast, to winning music and witty lyrics, this musical version of the film Honeymoon in Vegas is the kind of full-fledged fully-entertaining classic musical comedy you thought no one wrote anymore.

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We’re Still Here: A Look Back at South Florida Theater 2022

Quite a come back year: World premieres, epic musicals, moving two-character dramas, you name it. Here’s not so much a “best of the year” list – no such list can be reliable or complete – but a random recognition of outstanding performances, productions, trends and just moments that theaterlovers will carry with them into 2023.

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Attend the Tale Once Again of Sweeney Todd at PPTOPA

The complexity of Sweeney Todd with tongue-twisting lyrics and a breakneck score is, far more difficult to master than most civilians appreciate. So render props to Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts’ respectable production, which features some engaging performances, some quite fine voices and an earnestness of artists clearly filling items on their bucket list.

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Sorry, Can’t Resist: PPTOPA’s Gleeful ‘Something Rotten’ Isn’t

You don’t have to know that Sondheim and Webber share the same birthday to adore the broad send-up of musical comedy tropes melded with an equally wicked spoof of Shakespeare in PPTOPA’s Something Rotten — which isn’t.

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Sparkling Wit Suffuses Island City’s Veronica’s Position

Creatures with the kind of quick wicked wit you only wish you had, the kind who rarely let pass the opportunity for a pithy exit line, populate Rich Orloff’s Veronica’s Position in Island City Stage’s thoroughly entertaining production.

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Slow Burn’s 9 to 5 Carries A Little Extra Spin In #metoo Era

When the 9 to 5 bowed in 1980 , the movie about women rebelling against being taken advantage of was downright funny, even if the injustice and sexism it depicted was universally acknowledged as all too common. The musical version revived by Slow Burn Theatre Company is still pretty funny, but in the wake of the #metoo movement, it inherently contains a bit more topspin on the revenge fantasy against behavior now deemed inexcusable.

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“Disaster!” Is Anything But

If you are a Boomer (and be warned, maybe only if you’re a Boomer or their progeny), Slow Burn Theatre Company’s hilarious spoof Disaster! will be in contention for one of the silliest, stupidest and downright funniest nights you have had in theater in recent years.

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