Tag Archives: Jim Ballard

Playhouse’s Million Dollar Quartet Kicks Out The Jams

It almost should go without saying that the rock ’n’ roll blisters the paint off the walls of Actors’ Playhouse’s balcony theater in its thoroughly satisfying edition of Million Dollar Quartet.

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Difficult But Intriguing Musical ‘A Minister’s Wife’ At GableStage

When a company like GableStage takes risks so many others will not, there’s bound to be some triumphs, some failures, and mixed results as in A Minister’s Wife. The local artists give everything they have to pull off this intriguing chamber musical. It’s more the strange choice of a fascinating but flawed property that isn’t easy to love.

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Frost/Nixon Is Resonating Life-And-Death Boxing Match

The strength of the acclaimed 2006 play Froist/Nixon is that no one is depicted in pure white hats or black hats. That facet is brought out in the Maltz’s production better than in any earlier edition thanks to a complex multi-faceted creation by actor John Jellison under the impeccable direction of J. Barry Lewis.

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Forum’s Funny Bone Missing In The Wick’s Vaudevillian Farce

The Wick Theatre’s production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum benefits from Stephen Sondheims’s score and lyrics, but the cast and director need to inject more vaudevillian humor to overcome the material’s inherent sexism,

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The Heart Is Just Another Tool To Exploit In Dramaworks’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses

When done well, the astringent Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an increasingly horrifying descent into a morally bankrupt aristocratic society. Palm Beach Dramaworks’ solidly executed and lushly produced edition comes very close to achieving that level, but it falls just a shade short of communicating the venality of curdled souls.

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Uggams’ Glorious Voice Is Primary Virtue In Sluggish Mame

Whenever Leslie Uggams lets loose that glorious voice, whenever the live band swings into one of Jerry Herman’s standards, the Wick Theatre’s production of Mame is an irresistible pleasure. But when the music stops, so does the show. The non-musical scenes – and some of the musical ones – just lie there on the stage limp and colorless.

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Most Happy Fella Among Best Sung Musicals Of The Season

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ current staged concert of Frank Loesser’s 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella overflows with a purity of emotions common to even the most ordinary of us, proclaiming them one of the glories of existence to be welcomed, not shied away from.

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Vibrant, Zesty Zorba! Gets Staged Concert At Dramaworks

From the first tinkling of the bouzouki, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ mounting of the rarely-seen Kander and ebb musical Zorba! fairly throbs with life-affirming spirit in direct spite of the vagaries of Fate.

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Spamalot Is Supremely Silly And Delightfully Demented Fun

A delightfully demented cast enhanced by the inventive imagination of chief jester/director David Arisco and choreographer Ron Hutchins make Actors’ Playhouse’s Spamalot a satisfying pleasure even on its fourth or fifth visit.

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Maltz’s Dial M For Murder Is Sturdy Piece Of 1950s Theater

If you wonder what theater was like back when it was as popular as film and far more influential than the upstart television, you can see a prime example in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s time machine production of the 1952 potboiler Dial M For Murder.

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