Tag Archives: Laura Turnbull

Dramaworks’ Devastating, Searing August: Osage County

You don’t want to go home again. Certainly, that’s the Weston family manse in the desolate prairie of Oklahoma as depicted in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ searing, devastating portrait of toxic family dysfunction in Tracy Lett’s masterpiece, August: Osage County, featuring as superb an ensemble as anyone could ask for, expertly molded by director William Hayes.

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Dramaworks Takes On Ultimate Epic of Family Dysfunction: August: Osage County

Remarkable for raging family furor, recriminations, love, regret, pain and torrents of alcohol-fueled vitriol, August: Osage County is accepted as one of The Great American Plays. Palm Beach Dramaworks is deep into weeks of rehearsal for this epic three-act, three-hour comic-tragedy with 13 cast members, director William Hayes, and a creative team taking on a Mount Everest of theater

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Like the Country It Unravels, ‘American Rhapsody is Complicated, Ambitious & Flawed

American Rhapsody, Michael McKeever’s sprawling premiere at Zoetic Stage, is a history play, a bildungsroman, a tribute to fluid families, a cautionary tale about where the zeitgeist might be headed. It spans more than 60 years and feels, perhaps like the American experiment itself.

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Milk and Honey Is Charming Musical, But Very Much the ’60s

Unabashed charm is not a quality one associates with modern musicals, but it is the predominant and reasonably satisfying virtue if you take the Wick Theatre’s time machine back 61 years to the opening of Milk and Honey, the first full-length musical by promising newcomer Jerry Herman.

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Can’t Tell You Why, But Savor ‘Now and Then’ When You Can

I am begging every critic colleague, everyone who has seen Actors’ Playhouse’s Now and Then to NOT give away anything! One of the many pleasures in this drama laced with humor is watching the story unfold bit by bit, knowing something is going on underneath but enjoying how layers are peeled away by a quartet of superb actors and director.

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Rx: The Cure For What Ails You

For older audiences who see the number of expensive pills they take each morning magically multiply over the years, the wicked satire of Big Pharma in the otherwise romantic comedy Rx is welcomed at Boca Stage. But as cutting as Rx can be (one dotty scientist says “If I knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research”) the Rx that playwright Kate Fodor prescribes for the modern malaise is, yes, love.

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Upcoming Brighton Beach Memoirs Is Different Neil Simon

With the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s upcoming Brighton Beach Memoirs, director J. Barry Lewis says people need to “come forward with a new perspective on what a Neil Simon play is, not just what you think.”

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No Doubt At All: Playhouse’s Doubt Will Make You Think

Actors’ Playhouse’s Doubt is not about guilt or innocence. It’s about doubt. The nature of doubt. The fallout of doubt. Living with doubt. Deciding whether to act when you have doubt. In these extreme days when some people believe truth is fungible or fear that it is can never be divined, John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play is excruciatingly resonant.

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The Children Is Eco-Thriller Told By Masterful Cast And Director

How do you review a play without spoilers when perception-changing revelations occur every few minutes including one halfway through that shoves the play in a 90-degree angle? Just trust us that GableStage’s The Children – eco-thriller, horror story, tale of domestic trouble, and a half dozen other themes – is a stunning experience melding playwriting, direction and acting.

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Tale As Old As Time — With Puppets: Beauty And The Beast

It’s unfair to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s Beauty and the Beast — which is as thoroughly charming on its own merits as you could ask — but understandable that the focus is diverted to its use of puppets to portray the enchanted household objects. So, yes, the vision that Producing Artistic Director Andrew Kato and director John Tartaglia came up with does indeed work, .

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