Reviews

Avi Hoffman Pays Tribute To Theater Icon Joseph Papp

Avi Hoffman is ensuring that proper homage is paid to Joe Papp, the visionary who intersected art and community by making theater accessible to the general public in comprehensibility, neighborhood performances and free admission in “Joe Papp at the Ballroom,” a one-man musical world premiere playing a limited run at GableStage.

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Need A Good Time? How About Taking Someone To The Prom

In these difficult times, sometimes all you want, all you need is a good ol’ Big Broadway Musical Comedy with a rousing score, enthusiastic performers, an unabashedly uplifting message and a kick-butt finale. The national tour of The Prom at the Broward Center will ease what ails you.

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Reinvigorated Music Reigns In Louis Armstrong Bio Premiere A Wonderful World At MiND

There are stunning actors in this premiere A Wonderful World, breath-taking choreography and visuals in this life of jazz legend Louis Armstrong as he navigates a racist world and his own fallibilities. But it’s the decades-old brass-fueled music, reinvigorated and pulsating in celebratory revels and soul-scorching ballads, that drive this achievement at Miami New Drama.

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‘Jacob Marley’ Gifts Welcome New Angle On Ye Olde Carol

For all of us who have seen 17 too many editions of A Christmas Carol, City Theatre gifts us a joy-inducing riff on Charles Dickens’ public domain property, the gospel according to Jacob Marley.

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Small Town Seniors Entertain In Pigs Do Fly’s Helen On Wheels

Few an resist feisty, foul-mouthed septuagenarians such as Helen Wheeler because, well, we do not normally expect a woman in her 70’s to tackle someone into submission, or use a blowtorch to free an inmate from jail as is depicted in Helen on Wheels, a delightfully funny and moving, sweet, but not syrupy peek into small town eccentricity.

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Hardworking Artists Can’t Overcome Predictable Script About Marilyn Monroe

There’s nothing especially wrong with Boca Stage’s The Unremarkable Death of Marilyn Monroe, certainly not with the admirably tireless, skillful efforts of Leah Sessa or Keith Garsson. But in the end, playwright Elton Townend Jones gives us nothing at all new – least of all fresh insight — in a predictable rehash of the legend or the truth behind the legend.

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Growing Fear In The People Downstairs Is All Too Familiar

Theater is often political: but sometimes, like The People Downstairs, Michael McKeever’s harrowing world premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks, the relevancy of the Dutch people hiding the Anne Frank family only magnifies as current events overtake them.

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Frustratingly Short Run For Nilo Cruz’s Lovely World Premiere Hotel Desiderium At Arca

This is not a traditional review because we saw the world premiere of Nilo Cruz’s latest play Hotel Desiderium at its fifth sold-out performance Nov. 21 at Arca Images, that late because it was a very busy week of theater openings across the region. But you can’t have caught any future performances in the run because there aren’t any.

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Courage Among Ordinary People Honors The People Downstairs

Secretly, we wonder if we could be heroic in real life, whether we could find the courage to risk our lives to protect or rescue someone else. The question is at the heart of Michael McKeever’s The People Downstairs premiering at Palm Beach Dramaworks, focused on the people who hid Anne Frank’s family for two years.

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Silence Is As Eloquent As The Actors In ‘To Fall In Love’

Despite two of the finest performances in what already has been a surprisingly benchmark season so far in South Florida, the most memorable player in Theatre Lab’s superb To Fall In Love is silence — not simply during the breath-arresting finale, but the silence reigning over the tense, tentative minutes of the opening scene and employed regularly throughout the evening by director Louis Tyrell and actors Matt Stabile and Niki Fridh.

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