Author Archives: Bill Hirschman
Loopy Durang Comedy Vanya And Masha And Sonia And Spike Is Insightful And Flat Out Funny
Under the vanities and inanities, the witty literary allusions and the silly sight gags, “Vanya and Sonia and Marsha and Spike” gently pokes fun at people who have wasted their lives. But don’t fret, mostly director Joseph Adler and his cast deliver a good old-fashioned, absurdist character comedy at GableStage.
So Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Zelda, Picasso, Tallulah And Gertrude Stein Walk Into A Bar….
Scott and Hem, an imagined reunion of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, is half comprised of deadly accurate insights into the angst of creative souls; the other half is just deadly dumps of name-dropping and exposition. A talented cast and director struggle to make the play at Actors Playhouse land solidly, and sometimes they succeed, but not always.
Thinking Cap’s Absurdist Dramedy Lets Sleeping Dogs Die
Thinking Cap’s U.S. premiere of Sarah Kosar’s Hot Dog comes across as a mean-spirited hate letter to a dying parent whose time can’t come soon enough. It’s a play about caring, yet we hardly care about anyone in it.
Another Openin’ Another Show, Another Openin’ Another Show, And Another Openin’ Another….
The snowbirds have gone home, but South Florida theater never seems to go dark these days. This year-round trend has never been clearer than right now with a calendar is jammed with an overwhelming cornucopia of options over the next two or three weeks. Here’s an incomplete overview:
Report From New York: Mothers And Sons Charts Changes In How We View The AIDS Crisis
Terrence McNally’s drama Mothers and Sons examines the chasm that AIDS opened when troubled families were forced to face the sexuality of a loved one. But the play also shines a spotlight on that generational shift in perceptions that could only be chronicled by someone like the 75-year-old McNally who lived through that chapter of History.
Report From New York: A Heroic And Flawed Lyndon Johnson Wields Power In “All The Way”
Robert Schenkkan’s Tony-nominated play All The Way is blessed with a fascinating portrait by Tony-nominated Bryan Cranston as LBJ, but it’s his script’s premise that makes the evening stay with the audience days later. It contemplates that the need for pragmatic sacrifices, even for the most noble of goals, can corrupt the soul.
The Joint At The Wick’s Ain’t Misbehavin’ Starts Jumpin’ After Intermission
Something remarkable happened opening night when the band played the entr’acte to the second half of the Wick Theatre’s Ain’t Misbehavin’. What had been a merely competent if unremarkable evening of entertainment suddenly transformed. The joint, finally, was jumpin’ and it stayed that way much of the second half.
Dr. Ruth Bio-Play Is Charming But Not As Enchanting Or Vibrant As The Real Thing
Awash in sex, war, adversity, sex, divorce, achievement, motherhood, determination, sex, the Holocaust and sex, it’s difficult to understand how the biographical play Becoming Dr. Ruth can be mildly charming, intermittently funny, occasionally poignant but not as terribly compelling or enchanting as its heroine.
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