Author Archives: Bill Hirschman
Sister Act Rocks the House: Nun Musical is a Hard Habit to Break
We’re entering another period of as many as six productions opening in one week. As a result, reviews may not remain in the center featured position more than one day. Please check out recent reviews by clicking on entries listed …
Sidle Up To Side By Side By Sondheim At Stage Door
This critic worships the gospel according to Stephen Sondheim and knows nearly every beat of the original cast recording of 1976’s Side By Side By Sondheim. So there was cause for concern. Thankfully, no such trepidation is called for in Miami Beach Stage Door’s production of the revue playing at the Byron Carlyle Theatre.
This Show Boat Has Lovely Music But Uninspiring Acting
Warm, full-singing voices swiftly carry a happy audience down the Mississippi through a glorious score in Broward Stage Door’s Show Boat, but the acting and directing are so pedestrian that they rob the masterpiece of the magic it is capable of delivering. The magic is missing because Show Boat is more than its music. Still, audiences just wanting to hear Kern’s rich melody and sweeping underscoring tied to Hammerstein’s deceptively simple but deeply evocative lyrics will relish what Stage Door has wrought.
McKeever And Santaland Diaries Deliver Off-Beat Holiday Spirit
Indulge your inner contrarian with the new subversive Christmas tradition, the annual staging somewhere of the delightfully contrarian The Santaland Diaries. The satire about an unemployed actor forced to pay the bills by enlisting in the army of elf drones at Macy’s Santaland is being mounted this time by Parade Productions in its second season in Mizner Park in Boca Raton.
Backwoods Farce About Abuse Exit Pursued By A Bear Is A Hoot
Yards and yards of duct tape, a dead deer, a timely taser, emperor penguins, Shakespeare, a shotgun, Anderson Cooper, President Jimmy Carter and the titular ursine creature all are ingredients in this unalloyed hoot of an anti-spousal abuse comedy, Exit, Pursued By A Bear at the Theatre At Arts Garage.
Plaza Theatre’s Oddball “Luv” Allows Avi Hoffman Full Rein
Back during the Cold War, a theatrical genre flourished called the American absurdist comedy. Perfected by Herb Gardner and Bruce Jay Friedman, it took hip unconventionality to an extreme degree of kookiness, one crucial millimeter short of being a living cartoon. Perhaps the most popular entry was Murray Schisgal’s hilarious Luv, hauled out of mothballs this holiday season by the fledgling Plaza Theatre in Manalapan for an older audience that remembers the original production in 1964.
Our Theater Lovers’ Gift Guide To CDs, DVDs and Books
Over the past 52 weeks, the Theater Shelf column has evaluated a host of CDs, DVDs and books you might consider as gifts for your theater friends this season – or for yourself, for that matter. You can look over the archive using the hyperlinked index at BradHathaway.Com. As the holiday season approached, however, many more titles became available. Here is a sampling of titles that might please one or more of the people on your holiday gift list.
New Theatre 1-Act Festival / Slow Burns Sets Season
Slow Burn Looks Ahead Slow Burn Theater Company, the Boca Raton troupe attracted to edgy, challenging work, has chosen the titles for their 2013-2014 season, said co-artistic director Patrick Fitzwater and Matthew Korinko. Specific dates are not nailed down, but …
Bravura Turn By Janet Dacal Is Reason To See Last Five Years
A yin and yang vibe imbues Jason Robert Brown’s intriguing and imaginative two-character musical tracking the life cycle of a romance and marriage, The Last Five Years, receiving a warm, entertaining production at Actor Playhouse. But the reason to see it is the vibrant, bravura performance by former Miamian and current Broadway actress Janet Dacal.
Immediate Closing Of Mosaic Partly Rooted In Fiscal Reasons
If personal reasons motivated Richard Jay Simon’s resignation from the Mosaic Theatre that he founded, it was money that caused his board to close his “baby” Sunday, according to Simon and board chairman Myron Levy in interviews Monday.
The company was not in dire financial straits although it was struggling with a temporary cash flow problem, Simon said. But the board believed Simon’s planned departure at the end of this 12th season would create a financial setback that they could not overcome, Levy said.
A PaperStreet Web Design
