Tag Archives: Bruce Linser
No Mystery Here: Irma Vep is a Madcap Hoot at Island City
Andy Rogow is the director of Island City Stage’s The Mystery of Irma Vep, but were he a less humble man, he might also take the title of chief illusionist or conjurer. For the production is nothing if not a magic show, a self-aware cornucopia of tricks from a creakier, more analog time of stage wizardry.
Growing Fear In The People Downstairs Is All Too Familiar
Theater is often political: but sometimes, like The People Downstairs, Michael McKeever’s harrowing world premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks, the relevancy of the Dutch people hiding the Anne Frank family only magnifies as current events overtake them.
MNM Prepares A Man Of La Mancha Relevant For Our Times
In this tarnished time of disaffection, divisiveness and abandoned ideals, the synergistic resonance of the musical Man of La Mancha is more than a welcome opportunity for director Bruce Linser. The hope-laden messages of aspiration for a better world could not be more timely than this month when MNM Theatre Company mounts the classic musical at the Kravis Center.
MNM’s Grease Struts Its Stuff When The Music Starts
If you hire strong voices as they did in MNM Theatre Company’s production, the venerable musical Grease cannot help but be entertaining with its elbow-nudging pastiche of faux late ‘50s-early ‘60s rock n’ roll. The challenge in which MNM doesn’t prevail is finding the difficult to locate tone for the script scenes because Grease is not simply a straight ahead comedy as it’s played here.
Stage Door’s La Cage Surely Entertains But Feels Lackluster
Broward Stage Door’s La Cage aux Folles stresses the universal virtues of love and loyalty, delivered with only a wry smile to acknowledge that its protagonists are an aging gay couple including one drag queen. While undeniably entertaining and featuring some rich voices, this edition is noticeably missing some of the pizzazz that the material requires to make it a memorable evening.
Dramaworks Explores Enduring Relevance of a Plains Populist
Woody Guthrie’s American Song is most decidedly a people’s musical, at least in its vivifying production at Palm Beach Dramaworks is more of a communal hoedown with Guthrie’s music as the soundtrack. Even the songs about poverty, death and hard living hide notes of hope, if we can only come together to find them.
MNM Theatre Co. Hosts A Welcome Return to Avenue Q
MNM Theatre ’s Avenue Q, the musical comedy with foul-mouthed and copulating puppets, has never been as clearly about education as now. It’s the curriculum about coping with disappointment waiting in the real world.
The drolly hilarious Avenue Q, being given a “fine, fine” outing by MNM, is also imbued with a quiet sadness and accompanying sympathy for the loss of hopeful naiveté.
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