Author Archives: Bill Hirschman
Stagebill Blog: Triumph And Tragedy — 2018 In SoFla Theater
Breathtaking tour de forces, heartbreaking tragedies on stage and in real life, shows you’ve never heard of and shows you’ve seen three times too often, troupes taking chances – some resulting in triumphs, some not landing too well: 2018 was another year to remember in this look back on South Florida theater.
Prolific Theater Artist Finds Welcoming Permanent Working Home In Wilton Manors
For theater artist Ronnie Larsen, “the roots are setting very deep” in Wilton Manors. “It just feels right to stay here.” Larsen is a playwright, actor, director and producer “whose work has been seen in every major city in America, as well as in Canada, Australia, Italy and London,” according to his website. Coming Jan. 10, Larsen has written a scene inserted into Ginger Reiter’s The Golden Girls Prequel at Empire Stage.
Vital Hamilton Dazzles – With Asterisks – At Broward Center
Hamilton, which explodes with power, vitality and imagination in the Broward Center for a five-week run, is not the Second Coming as many overheated observers would have you believe. But this tour from Broadway Across America demonstrates why this musical epic is a watershed work that may well transmute mainstream theater for a decade to come.
Playwright, Patron And Pillar Tony Finstrom Died Tuesday
Tony Finstrom, who died Tuesday at the age of 71, was a prolific playwright, an arts journalist and a generous patron, but above all Tony Finstrom was a man who loved theater down through the marrow of his bones. That love expressed itself in support for the arts in so many ways and to such an extent that he was inarguably one of the supporting pillars that helped enable the flourishing of South Florida theater over more than two decades.
This Season’s Winter Shorts Is A Mixed Bag At City Theatre
Much like the holiday season itself, there are things to endure and other instances that are jolly. That’s the mixed bag of City Theatre’s Winter Shorts now playing at the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
Uneven Yellow Brick Road At Stage Door’s ‘The Wiz’
Soul and spirit are characteristics we would expect from a production of the multi-Tony-winning musical The Wiz. And, to be fair, Stage Door Theatre’s mounting is, at times, spirited, hip, sassy and soulful. Several scenes feature vivacious acting and expressive singing. But too often, this production is tedious and even moribund.
Painful Drama, Absurdist Comedy Commingle In Dramaworks’ House on Fire
The script and the production of Palm Beach Dramworks need some refining, but when it’s most in the pocket, the world premiere of Lyle Kessler’s House on Fire dances a delicate pas de deux between comedy and tragedy, tension and levity, verisimilitude and whimsy, operating in its own subgenre of magic realism aka screwball existentialism.
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