Author Archives: Bill Hirschman

Arsht’s The Donkey Show Is A Midsummer Night’s….

By Bill Hirschman Reviewing The Donkey Show is irrelevant. The immersive multi-media experience at the Arsht Center joyfully cross-dressing as spectacle-drenched theater is about surrender, not analysis. A nearly naked aerialist spins above your head from a net before miming …

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Theater? Spectacle? The Arsht’s Donkey Show Prepares To Bray

The Arsht Center is laying a six-figure bet on The Donkey Show, a very loose version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream transmuted into the glitz and glitter of Studio 54. A hybrid of theater and the club scene with the performers working around the audience on the dance floor and at tables, The Donkey Show is an attempt to lure a broader clientele that would never think of Shakespeare as an entertainment option, says Arsht Executive VP Scott Shiller.

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Kim Ehly Delivers Welcome Addition With Baby GirL

Kim Ehly’s touching and rollicking play Baby GirL, the inaugural effort of her newly-minted Kutumba Theatre Project in association with Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale,is a wryly comic look at a young lesbian searching for her birth mother is an infectiously endearing tale of how we make our own families.

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Real Men Sing Show Tunes at Actors Playhouse is Frothy Fare Revealing Deepest Secrets

The world premiere musical comedy Real Men Sing Show Tunes…and play with puppets lazing through the summer at Actors’ Playhouse reveals men’s deepest darkest secrets, namely life-long confusion, anxiety and fear. T

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Dramaworks’ Fantasticks Is Cool Drink of Summer Lemonade

By Bill Hirschman A gentle, compassionate smile at human folly suffuses The Fantasticks when it’s produced as well as Palm Beach Dramaworks has. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s classic chamber musical is a refreshing tumbler of iced lemonade on a …

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Not Even Six Degrees of Separation In Play Reading

If you wonder just how small the theater world is, consider how Paul Paul Ben-Victor’s play This Little Jew Girl has found its way to a free reading at GableStage at 7:30 p.m. Monday with Ben-Victor, Todd Allen Durkin, Betsy Graver, and the corporation of Avi Hoffman, Laura Turnbull and Arielle Hoffman.

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Talkin’ in the Green Room With: Antonio Amadeo

Unlikely but perhaps, secretly, Antonio Amadeo is actually a nasty misanthrope, but no one will ever believe it. Amadeo is widely-regarded as one of the nicest guys and quietly talented members in the local theater community, eliciting comparisons to a teddy bear (although Amadeo himself reveals that he’s Batman.) Over the decades he has built an enviable resume including The Elephant Man, The Pillowman and The Unseen, as well as co-founder of Naked Stage.

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There Ain’t No Cure For The Summertime News

So much for the myth of the summer doldrums…. Besides recent and imminent openings at Mad Cat, Palm Beach Dramaworks, GableStage, Actors Playhouse, the XXVII International Hispanic Theatre Festival, three shows at the Stage Door venues, not to mention the Arsht’s Donkey Show, here’s some news and notes you might not have heard about regarding Naked Stage, Island City Stage, Lake Worth Playhouse, David Kwiat and PPTOPA.

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Photos From A Tribute To Jan (McArt, Of Course)

About 150 friends and alumni of the Royal Palm Dinner Theater gathered Sunday evening at the Count de Hoernle Theater in Boca Raton to honor actress, producer, director and impresario Jan McArt. Combined with a performance of Entr’acte Theatrix’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. A champagne and pizza dinner similar to what she hosted after Royal Palm Sunday matinees was provided.

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Run the Race With GableStage

Lawyers banter about innocence and justice in David Mamet’s incendiary play at GableStage, but the characters don’t bother to dissect long-decided issues about how the judicial system’s sausage is made. The title of the play and the real subject is Race. The double-helix construction of the twisting dialogue underscores Mamet’s thesis that bogus baggage of race relations subverts any meaningful discussion of seemingly straight ahead subjects as innocence and justice.

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