Tag Archives: Patti Gardner

In Goldberg Variations, Traumatic Family Gathering Becomes Re-enactors’ Playhouse

The stage is a fungible place. Sets can transform, actors can fly, characters can break walls, especially the fourth. There is limitless potential in the blank canvas of floorboards and lighting, as Stuart Meltzer’s gently experimental The Goldberg Variations reminds us at Island City Stage.

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With ‘Stalking the Bogeyman,’ GableStage Explores Taboo Subject With Unadorned Gravity

GableStage’s Stalking the Bogeyman, a true life tale of sexual abuse and revenge, stands out for its intelligence, bravery, sobriety and sheer darkness Buoyed by the raw sting of truth that great nonfiction provides, Bogeyman is more than a play. It’s a public service.

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World Premiere Unlikely Heroes’ Family Drama Segues From Light Humor To Emotional Savagery

If Arthur Miller were also a doctor on the side, he might have written a play like Unlikely Heroes. A family drama full of long-harbored resentments and new ones stemming from intimate secrets revealed, this world premiere on view at Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center also hinges on a potentially fatal condition that will require an organ donation

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Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Picnic Discovers New Insights in Inge’s Lumbering 1953 Classic

With its novelistic heft, lumbering pace and large cast, the 1953 Picnic is a product of its time. But rather than reproduce a propulsive Picnic for impatient 21st century audiences, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ interpretation deftly colors around the edges of the main storyline, spelunking the script’s peripheral action for new revelations about Inge’s mid-century, middle-class, Middle-American strivers.

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Casa Valentina Explores The Men Beneath The Pearls And Lipstick At GableStage

Harvey Fierstein’s thought-provoking Casa Valentina play at GableStage explores is that sexuality as an infinitely varied stew of preferences, prejudices and other ingredients in varied measures

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Stars Of David Is Touching, Funny Revue About Identity

Seeking “Who am I?” is the defining journey of most lives, and our religious heritage is part of the solution, even if we don’t embrace that religion or its culture. Such is the soul of Stars of David: Story To Song, a musical revue, which, despite its cripplingly kitschy title, is a surprisingly entertaining, witty and poignant look at how Jewish-Americans struggle on that journey.

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Dramaworks’ Quiet, Insightful Our Town Is Worth Investing Your Attention, Imagination

For such a seemingly simple play, Our Town requires the audience to generously invest their attention and imagination. Thornton Wilder’s classic only works when its visitors travel more than halfway there. But for those willing to make that journey, the gossamer delicate play can vibrate the heartstrings and the synapses.

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“So A Man Turns Into A Snail…” Quirky New Musical The Trouble With Doug Is No Slug At All

Sometimes theater works even when you can’t quite explain how or why or even quite what you saw. Such is the quirky, thematically fuzzy but thoroughly entertaining new musical at Arts Garage, The Trouble With Doug. The titular trouble is the archetypical twenty-something hero is turning into a slug. Not a slacker. An actual slime-oozing, lettuce-addicted slug

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Actresses’ Efforts Inject Passion Into Stilted Talky Mamet Philosophy-Fest, The Anarchist

Not every show is a home run. But that doesn’t deprive the audience of an interesting night when talented actresses make a flawed script land as well as can be hoped. Patti Gardner and Jacqueline Laggy are worth watching spar in David Mamet’s decidedly difficult mess of a script, The Anarchist.

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Stars Of David Is Touching, Funny Revue About Identity

Seeking “Who am I?” is the defining journey of most lives, and our religious heritage is part of the solution, even if we don’t embrace that religion or its culture. Such is the soul of Stars of David: Story To Song, a musical revue, which, despite its cripplingly kitschy title, is a surprisingly entertaining, witty and poignant look at how Jewish-Americans struggle on that journey.

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