Tag Archives: Rayner Garranchan
Cancel The Cookout: Don’t Miss Ground Up & Rising’s Scorching Our Lady of 121st Street
We’ve written a paragraph like this only two or three times: Stop what you are doing. Stop reading this review. Go to the phone or online and order tickets right now for Ground Up & Rising’s superb production of Stephen Adly Gurgis’ Our Lady of 121st Street.
Slow Burn Theatre’s Ambitious Rent Pays Off In Spectacle
Slow Burn Theatre Company’s Rent is ambitious, daring, electric and 2 1/2 hours of non-stop rock ‘n’ roll — a no-holds barred, take chances, go-out-on-a-limb spectacle. But when stripped of the spectacle, the characters, some facing death, with others living in the shadows of HIV/AIDs, lack life.
Speaking Verse Needs Work, But Outre’s Othello Is Praise-Worthy Undertaking From Outre
Audiences need to savor the undeniable virtues of local Shakespearean productions — even when counter-balanced by well-intentioned but equally undeniable shortcomings. Such is the case with the laudable Outré Theatre Company production of Othello imaginatively directed by Christina Groom and featuring Troy Davidson in a persuasive central performance.
Outre’s Nightmarish ‘Back Of The Throat’ Exposes How Post 9/11 Paranoia Allows Abuses
The temptation is to describe the nightmarish Back of the Throat as Kafkaesque as Outré Theatre Company depicts an America gone mad. But it’s not. That’s the real horror. The extremities unfolding before the audience are a logical if artistically exaggerated extrapolation of the paranoia and xenophobia unleashed against Arab-Americans after 9/11. It’s naturalism not surrealism.
Juan C. Sanchez’s Disturbing Collection Of Playlets Is Anything But Paradise
Juan C. Sanchez’s Paradise Motel begins in the clouds and ends in the sewer. Charting five decades in the devolution of a fictional motel on Calle Ocho—and the parade of lovers, hustlers, sharks and addicts that have occupied its rooms—this collection of seven playlets presents an uncompromising vision of urban decay that will ring wincingly true for its Miami audience
Kutumba’s The Beebo Brinker Chronicles About Lesbians In The 1950s Doesn’t Quite Gel
The question nagging Kutumba Theatre Project’s The Beebo Brinker Chronicles was what did it want to be? Farce? Drama? Satire? Soap opera? A lampoon of 1950’s pulp novels? An homage to 1950’s pulp novels? If it was all of the above, it didn’t meld into a cohesive whole, even when isolated moments worked as farce, soap opera, homage or lampoon.
Shorts Gone Wild Isn’t Particularly Wild, But It Is Consistently Funny
Shorts Gone Wild is pretty tame stuff for South Florida, but this outing of light comedies with a live-and-let-live LGBT message is more consistently entertaining than some of City Theatre’s earlier forays into an alternative adults-only version of its venerable Summer Shorts program.
Summer Shorts Is, As Usual, A Daffy, Uneven, Goofy Smile
By Bill Hirschman Sometimes for actors, especially playing comedy, the only option is to jump off the cliff and see if you can fly. The miracle is that sometimes, as in City Theatre’s Summer Shorts, is that, indeed, they soar. …
Playing A Dolphin, Dracula and Mothra In Same Show: Everyday Challenge At Summer Shorts
Imagine you’re Ken Clement in City Theatre’s Summer Shorts opening this week. One minute he’s a dolphin, a few minutes later he;s Dracula and still later he has to find his inner Mothra. Performing in the annual festival of short plays, a rite of summer now in its 18th edition, requires talents they don’t dwell on in drama school.
Joy In The ‘Hood; Dreaming In The Heights
It’s been a long, long time since a locally-produced musical has thrust inside an audience’s collective chest to touch its heart like Actors’ Playhouse’s triumphant production of In The Heights. Several shows this season have produced near raves among critics and audiences, but this production is cause once again for recalibrating your standards.