Tag Archives: Wesley Slade

Wick’s Bright & Brassy Music Man With Tartaglia and Kleiner

There may never be as great a production of The Music Man as the lightning-in-a-bottle original with performances of Barbara Cook and Robert Preston. But the Wick Theatre edition led by Norb Joerder and starring John Tartaglia and Julie Kleiner is as satisfying and entertaining a holiday treat as you could ask for.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

We’re a Believer: Charming Shrek Lets Its Freak Flag Fly

Slow Burn Theatre Company’s Shrek the Musical is pure unadulterated fun, not just youngsters in the audience watching familiar fairy tale characters cavort in atypical ways, or older kids enjoying nose-thumbing humor involving farts and belches, but also adults quietly enjoying the more sophisticated jokes, cultural references and gentle skewering of the unrealistic tropes they were raised on.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Man, Two Guvnors Is Entertaining If A Bit Long

There are probably 27 synonyms for the word funny and 157 familiar tropes. All the words apply and all the classic bits can be found in Actors’ Playhouse’s farce One Man, Two Guvnors.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tale As Old As Time — With Puppets: Beauty And The Beast

It’s unfair to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s Beauty and the Beast — which is as thoroughly charming on its own merits as you could ask — but understandable that the focus is diverted to its use of puppets to portray the enchanted household objects. So, yes, the vision that Producing Artistic Director Andrew Kato and director John Tartaglia came up with does indeed work, .

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MNM Theatre Co. Hosts A Welcome Return to Avenue Q

MNM Theatre ’s Avenue Q, the musical comedy with foul-mouthed and copulating puppets, has never been as clearly about education as now. It’s the curriculum about coping with disappointment waiting in the real world.
The drolly hilarious Avenue Q, being given a “fine, fine” outing by MNM, is also imbued with a quiet sadness and accompanying sympathy for the loss of hopeful naiveté.

Posted in General, Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s A Hard-Knock Life Between The Laughs In Inishmaan

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ team finds the special vibe of Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy set in an unforgiving climate of the heart in The Cripple of Inishmaan.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hand To God Explores Man’s Baser Nature With Pitch Black Comedy — And Puppets

Okay, yes, Hand to God has cute obscenity-spouting puppets having sex on stage, but the similarities to Avenue Q stops dead right there. This scorchingly funny and aggressively irreverent play at GableStage is a pitch black comedy about using the fiction of religion to rationalize and excuse the baser natural instincts of Mankind.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

GableStage’s It’s Only A Play Skewers And Honors The Craziness Of Theater Folks

GableStage has produced a version Terrrence McNally’s satire about theater, It’s Only A Play, that is funnier and has far more heart than the Broadway edition.

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forum’s Funny Bone Missing In The Wick’s Vaudevillian Farce

The Wick Theatre’s production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum benefits from Stephen Sondheims’s score and lyrics, but the cast and director need to inject more vaudevillian humor to overcome the material’s inherent sexism,

Posted in Performances, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment