Tag Archives: Stuart Meltzer

Zoetic’s Cabaret a game changer

  By Oline Cogdill When the John Kander/Fred Ebb musical Cabaret opened on Broadway in 1966, it was a gamechanger in its staging, tone and story. Certainly, other musicals tackled politics in specific eras—such as Sound of Music (1959) and …

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Zoetic Stage presents Wicked Child

By Oline H. Cogdill Family get-togethers can be fraught with underlying disagreements, resentments augmented by past histories. But in the case of the extended family in Zoetic Stage’s solid production of the intelligent Wicked Child, it is love and respect …

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Clyde’s launches Zoetic Stage’s 14th season

By Oline H. Cogdill A sandwich is more than ingredients between two slices of bread at Clyde’s, the truck stop diner that is the setting and title of Lynn Nottage’s deliciously insightful play now receiving a superb production at Zoetic …

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Clark Gable Slept Here at The Foundry in Wilton Manors

      By Aaron Krause Picture yourself almost continuously laughing while maintaining an iron grip on the novel you are reading. Your eyes have remained wide open for so long that your eyelids feel heavy. But you force them …

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Moving Zoetic Stage’s Musical Is Far More Than Next To Normal

This Zoetic production of Next To Normal – easily one of the finest in its history — blesses the audience with a deeply affecting meld of fluid staging, glorious music and five superb performances clustered around an incandescent one by Jeni Hacker as Diana that exceeds superlatives.

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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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We’re Still Here: A Look Back at South Florida Theater 2022

Quite a come back year: World premieres, epic musicals, moving two-character dramas, you name it. Here’s not so much a “best of the year” list – no such list can be reliable or complete – but a random recognition of outstanding performances, productions, trends and just moments that theaterlovers will carry with them into 2023.

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Ethics, People Are Dispensable In Hnath’s Scathing Red Speedo

A tattoo of a sea serpent is playwright Lucas Hnath’s damning metaphor for the grip of ambition to the point that betrayal of anyone is an accepted expedient in the scathing Red Speedo from producer Ronnie Larsen at The Foundry. Using competitive sports as a milieu, Hnath depicts people willing to violate moral codes and personal loyalties in pursuit of the American Dream — as ingrained today as it was when Arthur Miller decried it in 1949.

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Dark, Funny Rollercoaster Ride Through Adolescence In Zoetic’s Our Dear Dead Drug Lord

Miami native Alexis Scheer’s Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, a stygian dark and terribly funny play about modern day adolescence executed by Zoetic Stage, is a stunning – a carefully chosen word – piece of pure theater. A scene can be downright hilarious then suddenly blood-chilling, and then, as the blood is still chilling, there are laugh lines.

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Zoetic’s Sondheim: It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This

Some of the most skilled theater artists in the region deliver a gloriously funny and moving celebration of the work of the finest musical theater genius of the 20th and 21st Century in Zoetic Stage’s do-not-miss-this production of Side by Side by Sondheim with more emotional depth and directorial touches than in any of the many other revues.

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