Tag Archives: Ron Hutchins

Actors’ Playhouse Delivers A Margaritaville That Jimmy Buffett Would Drink To

Escape to Margaritaville at Actors’ Playhouse accomplishes what its title suggests. Specifically, the show conjures the kind of laid-back escape during which you might sport a hat and sunglasses, and hold a tall drink topped with a cherry or pineapple. In between sips, you snap, clap, tap, and/or sing along to Jimmy Buffett’s greatest hits.

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A Musical Beauty ‘Pageant’ Like None You’ve Seen – Probably

The musical comedy Pageant at Island City Stage delivers a lush array of talented contestants in carefully coifed wigs and gowns — except they’re all men.

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Theater Artists Struggle With Unique Fears, Fallout And Uncertainty From Virus Drama

Six months into the pandemic, theater artists are struggling with a profoundly damaging dimension particular to their purgatory-like limbo: The calling that gives their lives meaning requires interaction with other people in the same room. Late this summer, 33 South Florida storytellers agreed to draw back the curtain on their backstage battles that form the spine of an all too real three-act drama.

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Racism & South Florida Theater: Changing The Dance Steps

Asked to spotlight specific problems and potential solutions, everybody had a story of racism infecting the South Florida theater community. Some cited unintentional micro-aggressions in pressure-laden rehearsals. Others underscored systemic failings whose reform will require leaders, supporters and audiences to revaluate everything from what goes on stage to who decides what goes on stage.

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Fight It If You Want, Mamma Mia! Still Indomitably Infectious

Mamma Mia! is another one of those Great Continental Divides in theater: you either love it – or you hate yourself for standing up and clapping along in the final mega-mix medley of infectious earwigs. As proven by Actors’ Playhouse’s full-out production, the damn thing can be a lot of good ol’ fun if you let yourself enjoy it.

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New ‘West Side Story’ Has Winning Strengths, But Weaknesses Too

The West Side Story from the Prather family’s new Broadway Palm series at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center has so much to praise, yet, joins local productions to underscore how there are always aspects that fail to live up to what everyone intuits the piece can be.

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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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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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Silver Palm Theatre Awards Announces 28 Honorees

The South Florida Silver Palm Theatre Awards committee honoring theatrical excellence in South Florida will present the award to 28 individuals and organizations in its ninth season. Recipients range from veterans like Joseph Adler to newer names like Aygemang Clay.

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