Reviews
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.
Zoetic’s The SantaLand Diaries Is Witty Satire, But Not For Kids
The SantaLand Diaries is a holiday tale – not a warm inspiring morality fable for Christmas, but a harrowing if hilarious horror story for Halloween.
In Zoetic Stage’s production, the satirical monologue of a would-be actor slaving as an elf in Macy’s SantaLand is a wry, acerbic riff on the desensitizing corporate commercialization not just of the holiday, but of genuine sentiment as well.
Musical Shrek Is Silly Fun But Not As Satisfying As The Film
Don’t go looking for the sassy charming movie Shrek in its musical incarnation now appearing in the Broadway Across Miami tour at the Arsht Center for one week only.
Streaks of imagination and wit surface frequently, but this generally unengaging mediocrity misses the effortless irreverence in Dreamworks’ animated romance between a large green ogre and a beautiful princess.
Theater Shelf: Lend Me a Tenor & The Trumpet of the Swan CDs
Brad Hathaway, our critic of CDs, DVDS and books related to theater, has been busy this fall looking at a large number of potential additions to your library. We’re going to start running several over the next two weeks as …
New Theatre’s Twain and Shaw Not Engrossing Enough
Bill Schwartz as Twain listens to Stephen Neal as Shaw holding forth / Photo by Eileen Suarez By Bill Hirschman An intriguing premise and the words of two witty literary giants are not enough to build an engrossing evening in …
Maltz’s Joseph is Lavish, Energetic and Winning
By Bill Hirschman The Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s almost profligately lush, unflaggingly energetic and totally winning edition of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat will thankfully make you forget any of the dozen high school, church or amateur productions that may …
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.
Florida Grand Opera Mounts First Zarzuela, Luisa Fernanda
The fiery politics of 1868 Spain on the eve of a rebellion are nothing compared to the politics of the heart raging in the Florida Grand Opera’s season opener, the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda.
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