Author Archives: Bill Hirschman
Hardworking Artists Can’t Overcome Predictable Script About Marilyn Monroe
There’s nothing especially wrong with Boca Stage’s The Unremarkable Death of Marilyn Monroe, certainly not with the admirably tireless, skillful efforts of Leah Sessa or Keith Garsson. But in the end, playwright Elton Townend Jones gives us nothing at all new – least of all fresh insight — in a predictable rehash of the legend or the truth behind the legend.
Growing Fear In The People Downstairs Is All Too Familiar
Theater is often political: but sometimes, like The People Downstairs, Michael McKeever’s harrowing world premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks, the relevancy of the Dutch people hiding the Anne Frank family only magnifies as current events overtake them.
Frustratingly Short Run For Nilo Cruz’s Lovely World Premiere Hotel Desiderium At Arca
This is not a traditional review because we saw the world premiere of Nilo Cruz’s latest play Hotel Desiderium at its fifth sold-out performance Nov. 21 at Arca Images, that late because it was a very busy week of theater openings across the region. But you can’t have caught any future performances in the run because there aren’t any.
The Drama Behind The Rebirth of Miami New Drama’s Satchmo Musical “A Wonderful World”
The creation of a musical always contains more drama than what ends up on the stage. But then there is the anguish and celebration that commandeered the pre-virus birth and now this winter’s resurrection of A Wonderful World that closed the night before it was to open at Miami New Drama.
Stephen Sondheim: An Appreciation Of What He Taught Us About Art And Ourselves
There will be hundreds of appreciation pieces in print and online memorializing Stephen Sondheim who died Friday. There will be tens of thousands of mourning Facebook posts and emails spun around the globe. But this one will be slightly different from the majority, although thousands and thousands of devotees feel the same way.
Courage Among Ordinary People Honors The People Downstairs
Secretly, we wonder if we could be heroic in real life, whether we could find the courage to risk our lives to protect or rescue someone else. The question is at the heart of Michael McKeever’s The People Downstairs premiering at Palm Beach Dramaworks, focused on the people who hid Anne Frank’s family for two years.
Silence Is As Eloquent As The Actors In ‘To Fall In Love’
Despite two of the finest performances in what already has been a surprisingly benchmark season so far in South Florida, the most memorable player in Theatre Lab’s superb To Fall In Love is silence — not simply during the breath-arresting finale, but the silence reigning over the tense, tentative minutes of the opening scene and employed regularly throughout the evening by director Louis Tyrell and actors Matt Stabile and Niki Fridh.
Watching The Familiar Story of Your Life Retold in Middletown
Middletown is a charming, comfortable evening at Actors Playhouse, sitting around a living room with middle-class couples (Loretta Swit, Didi Conn, Adrian Zmed, Donny Most) telling you familiar stories of their lives and yours. Intentionally told with no props, scenery and the cast reading from scripts on music stands, the simplicity is intentional, perhaps to underscore the universality of the touchstones being discussed.
Dire Ecology & Economy Eclipsed By Relationship Challenges in New City Players’ Lungs
The protagonists’ primary fear in Lungs — bringing a child into an environmentally crumbling world and an economy in freefall – is secondary to the challenging script’s focus: examining the fragility and tensile strength of relationships – both given a solid production by New City Players.
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