Reviews
Report from New York City: Catch This Streetcar
As unassailable as television actress Nicole Ari Parker is as the wounded Southern belle, Blanche DuBois, Emily Mann’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire leaps like it was hit with a cattle prod every time Blair Underwood erupts into a scene.
Stage Door’s Six Dance Lessons Needs Evenly Matched Partners
By Bill Hirschman Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks is a gentle message comedy about lonely people reaching out somewhat obliquely for human contact. But this occasionally charming pas de deux at Stage Door’s Miami Beach venue is thrown out …
“Time Stands Still” Is Fodder For Introspection As Drama Unfolds
Donald Margulies’ drama Time Stands Still which enjoys a solid production at GableStage is not a thrilling or enthralling production; it’s one that keeps you thinking long after the lights come back up about whether we are jettisoning our responsibility as human beings to, first, feel something and, second, act on it.
Florida Report From New York: End of the Rainbow’s Sole Strength Is Star Turn
End of the Rainbow is an unsparing, but somewhat compassionate portrait of her final months as she lurches through a five-week gig in London’s. The play itself wears the audience down with the endless, repetitive swirls of Garland’s death spiral. It has one virtue: Tracie Bennett’s tour de force as Garland. What’s missing is any sense of what made her beloved or even an icon. It nearly makes you want to call Dr. Kevorkian to put her (and us) out of her misery.
Florida Report From NYC: “Once” Is Charming, Affecting Tale
Or Coming To A Theater Near You (Or Not) By Bill Hirschman Welcome to our semi-annual scouting trip for shows likely to appear in South Florida in a local production or a national tour — or shows you should make …
CD Review: Score of Once is Affecting, Often Lovely and Occasionally Haunting.
The msuic of the Broadway show Once is affecting, often lovely and occasionally haunting. However, if you expect an Original Broadway Cast album to give you a glimpse into a theatrical experience you might have missed, you will find this album frustrating at first. As likely as it is that you will come to love the score, you can’t get much of an idea of the show itself just from these 16 or 17 or 18 tracks.
Florida Report From New York: Leap Of Faith & Raul Esparza
The terrific 1992 film that this musical Leap of Faith is based on contains a roof-raising gospel number with the lyric: “Are you ready for a miracle?” That’s exactly what’s needed with this tale of a con man (played by Raul Esparza) and his crew traveling the drought-stricken Midwest posing as evangelistic faith healers, ripping off indigent folks desperately looking for hope during tent revivals.
Experience Death and Harry Houdini At Arsht Center Before It Disappears
There couldn’t be a more fitting space for The House Theatre of Chicago to bring its production of Death and Harry Houdini to South Florida than the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center. The biographical play/magic show embraces the most famous magician of all time’s mad-as-a-hatter life. It brings to the front that mysterious element of “carny,” taking audiences on the journey from his early career as a card-trickster in a sideshow to a household name.
FGO’s Romeo et Juliette Has Fine Soprano And Staging But Won’t Touch Your Heart
Florida Grand Opera’s incarnation of Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette under the direction of David Lefkowich is an inventively staged, well-acted mounting of this stark take on Shakespeare’s classic. But like FGO’s other essays on love this season such as La Rondine, Luisa Fernandez and Rigoletto, the technically admirable production starring Maria Alejandres and Sebastien Gueze isn’t likely to quicken the pulse of the audience.
A PaperStreet Web Design
