Reviews
Sirois/Alliance Off Center of Nowhere Is Funny Sit Com Hiding Serious Theme
On the surface, David Michael Sirois’ Off Center of Nowhere is what would result if the Neil Simon of the 1970s wrote a rollicking comedy about teen pregnancy, abortion and racism, laced with a lot of profanity. The Alliance Theatre Lab’s world premiere is sit-com funny until it intentionally slams the audience into a concrete wall that will leave most observers stunned. That’s when you realize Off Center is really about the limits of how far people can bend their moral for loved ones before breaking. How unconditional is unconditional love?
Director & Star Deliver Fresh Hello Dolly As If It’s Brand New
There’s a brand new musical comedy you’ve never seen before playing at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. It’s something called Hello, Dolly! and if you think you’ve seen it before, we’ll argue with you. Because director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge and leading lady Vicki Lewis invest the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart warhorse with a freshness that nearly obliterates the iconic images created by Gower Champion and Carol Channing.
Say Goodnight Gracie Brings Burns and Allen’s Story Back to South Florida
It’s grossly unfair to expect an actor to impersonate an icon who remains vivid in the audience’s memory, but watching the most recent incarnation of Rupert Holmes’ biographical Say Goodnight Gracie at the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center, you just keep wishing George Burns was there.
Tharp’s Come Fly Away Isn’t Theater But It’s Entertaining
Twyla Tharp’s surrogates in Come Fly Away effortlessly swirl and slide across the stage like you think you do in your dreams – and to sound of Sinatra yet, crooning “The Way You Look Tonight.” This 75-minute dance recital – it arguably doesn’t qualify as musical theater because there is not a shred of overarching plot – is an undeniably enchanting evening playing at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach this week and moving to Arsht Center in Miami next week.
Mosaic’s Death and the Maiden Is Taut Psychological Thriller
Torture, vengeance and morality take center stage in Death and the Maiden, a suspenseful thriller now receiving a riveting production at Mosaic Theatre in Plantation.
Promethean’s Swan Song, The Unseen, Is A Hell Of An Exit.
The cruel irony is that The Unseen, the last show before The Promethean Theatre closes its doors forever, is one of the finest productions that the company has mounted in its eight-year history. Craig Wright’s tale depicting two political prisoners tortured in a Kafkaesque dungeon is one of the most incisive explorations of existentialism since Waiting For Godot and No Exit. But the script is elevated to agonizing, visceral life by actors Antonio Amadeo, Andrew Wind and Alex Alvarez, led by the inestimable insight of director Margaret M. Ledford.
M Ensemble’s Harlem Duet Is Thought-Provoking But Wildly Uneven Look at Race and Sex
Playwright Djanet Sears has crafted an intriguing contemplation of the intersection of the macro issue of race on the micro-dynamics of an individual marriage in Harlem Duet. But Sears’ insightful script gets a hodgepodge treatment in M Ensemble’s production. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lowell Williams, this edition is by turns subtle and overly-melodramatic, illuminating and opaque, clear and confusing.
Billy Elliot Mines Imaginative Staging, Superb Choreography
With its flights of imagination – literally, since the hero imagines himself soaring — Billy Elliot, The Musical is a triumph of theatrical staging. If this road tour at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts is not overwhelmingly moving, it remains one of the most thoroughly entertaining musicals to pass through here in some time.
GableStage’s A Steady Rain is a Deluge of Great Acting
The bond between two friends is tested by their own morality and betrayal in A Steady Rain by Keith Huff, now making in southeastern premiere at GableStage in Coral Gables. Together,actors Gregg Weiner and Todd Allen Durkin create a riveting pas de deux that is not to be missed.
A PaperStreet Web Design
