Reviews

Showbiz Lampoon Ruthless Is A Bit Long, But Wickedly Funny

Everything about Ruthless! The Musical at Actors Playhouse from dripping furs to the Ethel Merman voices, everything is over the top. Way over the top. Thank goodness. Well, actually, don’t thank goodness. Ruthless is a gleefully uninhibited celebration of greed, venality, ambition and ego. In other words, show business.

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Dramawork’s Mice And Men Is Muted But Moving Revival

Human beings have to dream – no matter their likelihood, no matter the cost. This sampler cliché find its truth in the tactile tragedy that is Palm Beach Dramaworks’ muted but moving revival of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men.

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Surprisingly, One More Time, Chicago Razzle Dazzles ‘Em

Productions of some musicals are like Original Cast Recordings that you don’t play too often for fear they might get stale. When you do revisit them, you say, “Oh, right, that’s why I liked it.” Such is the current national tour of Chicago kicking off the Broadway Across Fort Lauderdale series.

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Whimsical Premise, Energetic Acting Can’t Support Half-Hour Skits In The Monster Project

Imagine if the writers at Saturday Night Live created an evening of comedy skits with a Twilight Zone/Rocky Horror sensibility. They’d probably produce something akin to The Monster Project, a quartet of playlets by local writer Brian Harris mounted by Playgroup LLC.

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Theater Shelf: New CDs Of Pippin, Annie, Hands On A Hardbody & Mordden’s Latest

Theater Shelf, a recurring feature, reviews recently-released books, CDs and DVDs of interest to theater lovers. Some are popular titles like a new Original Cast Recording, others are works you’ll be intrigued by, but didn’t even know about.

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Andrews Living Arts Studio Explores Female Psyche In Evening of One-Act Plays

Andrews Living Arts Studio’s An Evening of 1-Acts pairs two decidedly different plays, offering interesting book ends with an eye on how women think, feel and perceive themselves.

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Ground Up’s Gruesome Playground Injuries Depicts Wounded Bodies And Souls

The old joke goes “How do porcupines make love? Very carefully.” In Ground Up and Rising’s sad and ultimately moving production of Gruesome Playground Injuries, the answer may be “not at all.” The difficulty of forging relationships among emotionally wounded people is at the heart of this decidedly off-beat, oddly-made play.

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1993’s Twilight of the Golds Is Problematic In 2013 But Still Affecting And Unnerving

It’s hard to know what is more upsetting while watching family relationships disintegrate in Jonathan Tolins’ the affecting drama The Twilight of the Golds at Broward Stage Door. Is it that the precious loyalties might disintegrate at all or the disturbing reason that they disintegrate?

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Not At All For Everyone, Outre’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson Was A Bloody Bloody Blast

Outré Theatre Company staged a concert version of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson this past weekend at Mizner Park to see whether the fledgling company could pull off the logistics and to ask the audience whether they want to see a full production. Count this as the first enthusiastic “yes.”

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Laughing Through The Pain Suffuses Sons of the Prophet

GableStage’s Sons of the Prophet is a comedy about suffering. It’s a serio-comedy, to be sure, a wry compassionate look at the inescapable downside of being human. But humor drawn from the awkward collision of quirky characters suffuses Stephen Karam’s Pulitzer-nominated script, even though every major character is in emotional and even physical pain.

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