Reviews
Laura Turnbull’s Tour de Force Highlights PB Dramaworks’ Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
This edition of Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at Palm Beach Dramaworks features an overwhelming bravura performance of Laura Turnbull as an embittered, self-pitying mother wildly striking out at her daughters as displaced revenge for the blighted tragedy that chance has made of her life.
Infinite Abyss Snow White Trash Starts Funny, Then Drifts
The first 15 minutes of Infinite Abyss’ Snow White Trash is a delightfully zany spoof that imaginatively reinterprets the fairy tale as a crass, royal blue hoot in which Disney’s sweet but dimwitted heroine takes refuge with the mullet-headed Dwarf Family living in a trailer park. Unfortunately, after that, there’s another 50 minutes left.
Theater Shelf: CD Reviews of Follies Revival and Knickerbocker Holiday
Follies – New Broadway Cast Recording Oh, my! What am I to do now? The 2011 Broadway Revival Cast recording of Follies has just come out on PS Classics and now my “desert island” list of recordings I’d want with …
Soul Doctor Tale of Rock Star Rabbi Is Wildly Uneven
One of the most frustrating evenings in theater is The Mess. One moment, you’re moved by ineffable loveliness, the next you’re groaning at ham-handed ineptitude. Such is the careening quality of the new biographical musical Soul Doctor, subtitled The Journey of A Rock Star Rabbi.
Cirque Dreams Holidaze Entrances Kids Of All Ages
The most satisfying spectacle amid all the glitter, spangles and amazing feats at the first matinee of Cirque Dreams Holidaze was the blaze of delight in the face of the little girl in Row K at the Broward Center at first matinee.But it kids of far more advanced chronological ages were also entranced.
Macbeth Is Absurdist Comedy Tailored To Mad Cat Fans’ Taste
Mad Cat Theatre Company is quite right to warn that their new production of Macbeth & the Monster is not children’s theater, although children may enjoy the nonsensical anarchy of this absurdist comedy. It’s theater about being children, trying in theatrical terms to tell a story with a child’s delightful disregard for the constraints of logic, convention or even common sense.
Don’t Bother Knocking, This House Is Rocking
If Boomers wondered why their parents feared rock ’n’ roll, Million Dollar Quartet provides a visceral object lesson of the exhilarating danger, galvanizing defiance and the electrifying sexuality of rhythm and blues. No record, no film, nothing captures the insolent immediacy of the gauntlet that rock threw in the face of the Eisenhower Era so well as some of the live performances in this road show at the Arsht Center.
Gift-Giving Guide for Theater Fans
If you’re on this site, the odds are you’re at least a theater fan, and likely a proud theater geek. Our Theater Shelf critic Brad Hathaway has been compiling the cream of the current crop of CDs, books and DVDs for the lovers of Thespis on your list (or for you to put on someone else’s list).
Stage Door’s I Love A Piano Is Very, Very Familiar Berlin Revue
With such irresistible raw material as the Irving Berlin songbook, Broward Stage Door’s production of I Love a Piano can’t help but be mildly entertaining and this edition finally emits infectious joy during the last 15 minutes. But for frequent theatergoers who have seen songbook after songbook, year after year, decade after decade, the doctor diagnoses a new malady: revue fatigue.
Ken Clement Gives Tour de Force in Actors Playhouse’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol
And in his current tour de force in the comical and touching Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol at Actors’ Playhouse, Ken Clement reaffirms his ability to single-handedly mesmerize an audience. Both narrator and stand-in for the 17-member cast of characters, Clement is a master storyteller enthralling us around an invisible campfire with playwright Tom Mula’s 90-minute alternate take on Charles Dickens’ classic that many people have grown weary of.
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