Tag Archives: David Arisco

Million Dollar Quartet’s Reprise At Actors’ Rocks Once Again

So…what do Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis have in store for an encore in Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre’s much-anticipated return engagement of Million Dollar Quartet? The foursome has re-created sounds that seem more crisp and controlled, without losing the vibrancy and electricity audiences ate up during the 2016 production.

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Once Again, Once Soars And Lands As Paean to Love

What the musical Once illustrates on the stage of Actors Playhouse is the unparalleled power of song to capture and then share the pure pain and pleasure of love.

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Playhouse’s Noises Off Is Inherently Funny, But Uneven

Noises Off is one of the funniest farces written in the English language and a solid match for Actors Playouse talents. The laughs are plentiful, but this production didn’t wring everything out of this piece that you’ve seen done elsewhere.

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A Last Look Back At 2017, A Fine South Florida Theater Season

One pleasure of a theater critic’s job are these year-end retrospectives that require looking back at reviews and be reminded, “Oh, yeah, that was really great. And right, there was that. And how could I forget that one?”

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‘Evita’ Plays To The Masses With Thoughtful Complexity

David Arisco has directed Evita for Actors’ Playhouse three times. So, what’s different this go ’round? Well, to hear him tell it, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, written four decades ago about a celebrity turned power hungry politico in mid 1940s Argentina is even more relevant than ever.

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Beauty In The Eye Of The Beholder: McKeever’s Finding Mona Lisa At Actors’ Playhouse

The world premiere of Michael McKeever’s Finding Mona Lisa at Actors Playhouse initially might seem a light, fascinating beach read about Leonardo DaVinci’s masterpiece — a sometimes droll, sometimes broad comedy for a summer evening. But this episodic time-travelling romp is far more about the multi-faceted relationship of Art and human beings

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‘It Shoulda Been You’ Spotlights A Major Talent At Playhouse

The temptation is to announce that ‘a star is born’ in Actors’ Playhouse’s production of the musical It Shoulda Been You. But that would be mildly insulting to the fact that Cindy Pearce has been working on local stages about 14 years, most memorably as Penelope Pennywise in Slow Burn Theatre’s Urinetown.

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Timely ‘All The Way’ Exposes How Your Sausage Is Made

Although the Actors’ Playhouse folks are working very hard to master this Everest of a play, All The Way, about Lyndon Johnson’s campaign to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this time they have barely fought the work to a standstill.

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Carousel Swirls And The Music Swells At Actors Playhouse

The miracle of the Carousel when it’s done well, as it is in this Actors Playhouse production, is that although it’s 72 years old and its protagonists are a wife-beating ne’er-do-well and the woman who stubbornly loves him despite the domestic violence, the bloody thing works in the 21st Century.

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What Kind Of Year Was It? Our Critics’ “Best Of” 2016 Lists

Critics and award judges have been talking about it for weeks: The sheer amount of high quality work has made evaluating the last 12 months unusually challenging, but also an opportunity to remember one of the most rewarding calendar years in recent memory. So here’s a supremely subjective stab by all three critics here at Florida Theater On Stage at recognizing the shows and performances that stood out from a pack of productions.

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