Tag Archives: Patti Gardner

Neil Simon’s Gingerbread Lady: Harrowing Descent Into Alcoholism — With Laughs

Neil Simon’s dark comedy The Gingerbread Lady gets a fine production at Primal Forces featuring a bravura performance from Patti Gardner.

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Dramaworks’ Spitfire Grill Is One Of The Season’s Finest Musicals

When was the last time a musical slipped into your veins and rode your bloodstream for two hours? When did a musical speak so accurately of your own pain and longing that you knew you were not alone? With The Spitfire Grill, Palm Beach Dramaworks has gifted South Florida with one of the most heartfelt, moving evenings of musical theater in recent years.

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The Wick’s Pirates Is The Very Model Of A Modern G&S

This may seem a backhanded compliment, but it is meant with awe : The most memorable aspect of The Wick Theatre’s The Pirates of Penzance is you can understand the bloody words. The production has many other virtues: delightfully broad comedy a parade of costumes that are a hoot in themselves, first-rate soloists and an overwhelming choir-smooth ensemble.

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GableStage’s If I Forget: Powerful Tale of Family Strife Over Cultural History

Raging family dysfunction played against an equally volatile backdrop of social upheaval makes for two seemingly separate but brilliantly acted and directed plays united in GableStage’s production of If I Forget — the emotional equivalent of a skiff tossed about in a raging tempest in the middle of a wintry ocean.

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MNM ‘s Less Zesty But More Heartfelt La Cage aux Folles

For a show that shattered a ceiling in 1983, La Cage aux Folles has become a warhorse in 2017. MNM Productions’ edition embraces the spangles, glitz and sheer Jerry Herman of it all. So if you haven’t seen it in a while, this is an entertaining reminder. What sets this apart is how it emphasizes the heart rather than the heat – and that’s a welcome emphasis for those who may have seen this classic once too often.

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Impressions Is A Pleasant Stroll Through Gallery Of Imagination

Not every theatrical event has to be an outsized venting of passion filled with intellectual pyrotechnics. Sometimes a work can be satisfying to the brain and the heart as a gentle celebration of imagination and human behavior as with Pigs Do Fly’s world premiere of Michael Leeds’ Impressions.

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Michael Leeds Makes ‘Impressions’ With Pigs Do Fly

Pigs Do Fly Productions — which has done mostly short plays by, for and about people 0ver 50 — has jumped even deeper into the play-ing field by presenting the world premiere of Michael Leeds’ Impressions, which opens this weekend.

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In Goldberg Variations, Traumatic Family Gathering Becomes Re-enactors’ Playhouse

The stage is a fungible place. Sets can transform, actors can fly, characters can break walls, especially the fourth. There is limitless potential in the blank canvas of floorboards and lighting, as Stuart Meltzer’s gently experimental The Goldberg Variations reminds us at Island City Stage.

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With ‘Stalking the Bogeyman,’ GableStage Explores Taboo Subject With Unadorned Gravity

GableStage’s Stalking the Bogeyman, a true life tale of sexual abuse and revenge, stands out for its intelligence, bravery, sobriety and sheer darkness Buoyed by the raw sting of truth that great nonfiction provides, Bogeyman is more than a play. It’s a public service.

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World Premiere Unlikely Heroes’ Family Drama Segues From Light Humor To Emotional Savagery

If Arthur Miller were also a doctor on the side, he might have written a play like Unlikely Heroes. A family drama full of long-harbored resentments and new ones stemming from intimate secrets revealed, this world premiere on view at Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center also hinges on a potentially fatal condition that will require an organ donation

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