Tag Archives: David Nagy

Glad To Be Conned By Stage Door’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

It’s a genuine compliment when a critic doesn’t particularly look forward to a show based on past productions and recordings – and then reassesses his antipathy based on seeing a fresh new production. So it’s saying something that Broward Stage Door’s Dity Rotten Scoundrels is a pleasing romp.

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Big Bang Still Daft Demented Fun At Actors Playhouse

Worse than Spiderman Turn Off The Dark, the mega-epic The Big Bang may be the most bloated, overwrought, inept, politically incorrect, painfully lame, downright stupidest musical of all time. That Big Bang would be the imaginary extravaganza being hawked at a fictional backer’s audition, not the identically-named romp now at Actors Playhouse and just as delightfully daft and demented as it was there in 2003 and 2005.

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‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’ Is… Well, You Can Get It If You Try

Often critics start their reviews with some analysis of the life lessons that a theatrical work contains. Not this time. The deep inner meaning of Broward Stage Door’s peppy perky production of Nice Work If You Can Get It is unabashedly “let’s have fun.”

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‘Evita’ Plays To The Masses With Thoughtful Complexity

David Arisco has directed Evita for Actors’ Playhouse three times. So, what’s different this go ’round? Well, to hear him tell it, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, written four decades ago about a celebrity turned power hungry politico in mid 1940s Argentina is even more relevant than ever.

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‘It Shoulda Been You’ Spotlights A Major Talent At Playhouse

The temptation is to announce that ‘a star is born’ in Actors’ Playhouse’s production of the musical It Shoulda Been You. But that would be mildly insulting to the fact that Cindy Pearce has been working on local stages about 14 years, most memorably as Penelope Pennywise in Slow Burn Theatre’s Urinetown.

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Stage Door’s Nine Nearly A Ten

Broward Stage Door’s production of the musical Nine, based on Fellini’s 8 1/2, is a fine evening of exuberant music and even more soaring voices.

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Danny Kaye Musical Entertains But Danny Himself Is AWOL

The Kid From Brooklyn, a bio-musical about Danny Kaye at Broward Stage Door, is blessed with strong singers, likable performers, a peppy period score, a fine live band, a few touching moments and other virtues – everything but one missing element. Danny Kaye.

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Gorgeous Music Elevates Stage Door’s The Most Happy Fella

Some directors say if you cast a show well, you’re more than halfway home to a successful production. So while the acting is just barely adequate in Broward Stage Door’s The Most Happy Fella, have they ever casted the voices beautifully and that makes for some stirring satisfying moments well worth the ticket.

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What Kind Of Year Was It? Our Critics’ “Best Of” 2016 Lists

Critics and award judges have been talking about it for weeks: The sheer amount of high quality work has made evaluating the last 12 months unusually challenging, but also an opportunity to remember one of the most rewarding calendar years in recent memory. So here’s a supremely subjective stab by all three critics here at Florida Theater On Stage at recognizing the shows and performances that stood out from a pack of productions.

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Sweet Charity’s Optimistic Hope Is A Strange Fit For This Week

Sweet Charity is a fundamentally flawed showcase that virtually no one has ever pulled off satisfyingly, but Broward Stage Door director Michael Leeds makes a solid enough stab at it that a receptive undemanding audiences won’t mind having spent a few hours in its pleasant company.

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