Author Archives: Bill Hirschman

Area Stage’s Enveloping Beauty and the Beast Charms Again

Area Stage’s Giancarlo Rodaz’s visionary, deeply moving new production of Beauty and the Beast, a near identical production as it mounted last summer, but with two new leads, is as radical a restaging as John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd.

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Unrequited Yearning For Dreams Deferred In Grand Horizons

Boca Stage’s Grand Horizons has A-list cast for an unusual mélange of considerable domestic comedy intersecting with serious themes about aging, dreams deferred and unrequited yearning.

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M Ensemble’s 1972 River Niger Captures Conflict in Black Lives

M Ensemble Company revives the 1972 award-winning The River Niger capturing a crossroads in Black life in America with a depiction of passionate, intelligent people debating diametrically opposed philosophies of how Black citizens should fight for justice in a racist world.

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I’m Still Here: SoFla Theater’s Epic Journey Through the Pandemic and Beyond

Part 2 of a 4-part in-depth series tracking South Florida theater’s arc of paralysis and pivot through the pandemic and into the future, certainties becoming uncertain, and an unquenched drive to not just survive but prevail, worthy of a Shakespearean epic. Today, theaters and artists begin their struggle back.

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Peter, Cher, Alexander, Jean and Vivian Headline Arsht Broadway Tours Next Season

A newly revised version of the classic musical Peter Pan, plus a bio-musical about Cher, plus a couple shows you’ve might have heard about Hamilton and Les Misérables are among the offerings next season at the Arsht Center’s hosting of Broadway in Miami tours.

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Kravis Musical Tootsie Changed From Film But Remains Fun

The tour of the musical Tootsie, which makes large changes from the film, isn’t a deep show and falls short of scoring points in the battle between the sexes. But it sure is fun.

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I’m Still Here: SoFla Theater’s Epic Journey Through the Pandemic and Beyond

Part 1 of a 4-part in-depth series tracking South Florida theater’s arc of paralysis and pivot through the pandemic and into the future, certainties becoming uncertain, and an unquenched drive to not just survive but prevail, worthy of a Shakespearean epic

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Delightful Honeymoon In Vegas Is Classic Musical Comedy

From Slow Burn Theatre Company’s brass-unleashed overture with a live band, to an ebullient cast, to winning music and witty lyrics, this musical version of the film Honeymoon in Vegas is the kind of full-fledged fully-entertaining classic musical comedy you thought no one wrote anymore.

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Actors’ Playhouse Delivers A Margaritaville That Jimmy Buffett Would Drink To

Escape to Margaritaville at Actors’ Playhouse accomplishes what its title suggests. Specifically, the show conjures the kind of laid-back escape during which you might sport a hat and sunglasses, and hold a tall drink topped with a cherry or pineapple. In between sips, you snap, clap, tap, and/or sing along to Jimmy Buffett’s greatest hits.

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No Exit: Dramaworks Bows Lewis’ Look At Blue Collar Youths’ Blocked Dreams

If the 1920s gave birth to The Lost Generation, then the 2020s saw the taking root of The Trapped Generation. Palm Beach Dramaworks’ premiere of Carter W. Lewis’ The Science of Leaving Omaha depicts a world in which the The American Dream no longer exists as a viable possibility in the minds of 20-somethings and their younger siblings.

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