Island City Stage scores a triumph with outrageous season-opening HIR

Island City Stage scores a triumph with outrageous season-opening HIR

Photo by George Wentzler Lawrence Buzzeo (front) as Arnold Connor appear in a scene from Island City Stage’s production of HIR. Pictured in the back are Daniel Capote as Isaac Connor and Mia Matthews as Paige Connor. WILTON MANORS, Fla. — The curtain opens, revealing a cheery, brightly-colored home sporting...

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A sensitive, encouraging show brimming with humanity

A sensitive, encouraging show brimming with humanity

  (Photo by Ahron R. Foster) Dina (Katrina Lenk) and Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub) share a moment in The Band’s Visit.   NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. — You might call them “The Hope Musicals.” The Broadway shows Come From Away and The Band’s Visit offer hope — hope that goodness still exists...

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A unique stage experience is brought to vivid life

A unique stage experience is brought to vivid life

(Photo courtesy of Area Stage Company) Mallory Newbrough (Dora) and George (Robert Richards, Jr.) appear in a scene from Area Stage Company’s production of An Octoroon CORAL GABLES, Fla. — “If anything, the theatre is no longer a place of novelty,” says a character in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’  An Octoroon. “The...

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Oleanna proves powerful, provocative in Boca Raton

Oleanna proves powerful, provocative in Boca Raton

Photo courtesy of www.eveningstarproductions.org. Carol (Sara Elizabeth Grant) presents which she feels is damning evidence against her professor, John (Todd Bruno), in Evening Star Production’s staging of David Mamet’s Oleanna.    BOCA RATON — Depending on your point of view, and how it’s directed and acted, David Mamet’s scorcher of a play,...

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Morality play about science, religion sizzles in GableStage production

Morality play about science, religion sizzles in GableStage production

(Photo by George Schiavone) Betsy Graver and Jovon Jacobs appear in a scene from GableStage’s production of Informed Consent   CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Art has the ability to make us feel a variety of emotions, including fear and helplessness. Consider the following from Deborah Zoe Laufer’s heartfelt, heartbreaking and unsettling...

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New City Players’ Twelfth Night is highly entertaining, but achieves mixed results

New City Players’ Twelfth Night is highly entertaining, but achieves mixed results

Ernesto Gonzalez as Sebastian (Photo by Ryan Arnst) FT. LAUDERDALE — Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is classified as a comedy, and for good reason: There’s plenty of mischief and merry making, which merge to form a frolicking night of theater. It ends (mostly) happily. But there’s a darker side to the...

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Provocative dark comedy seeks to light a fire under audiences regarding climate change

Provocative dark comedy seeks to light a fire under audiences regarding climate change

(Photo by George Schiavone) MIAMI SHORES — A “hurricane party” hardly refers to a celebration involving University of Miami sports teams in the new, clever, satirical comedy Firemen are Rarely Necessary, set partly in Miami in a not-too-distant future. Normally when a mammoth hurricane is about to make landfall in...

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World premiere about musical masterwork as related to life performed with flair by Island City Stage

World premiere about musical masterwork as related to life performed with flair by Island City Stage

  WILTON MANORS, Fla. — Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” But have you ever found yourself wishing that you were the director of your life – one with the power to say something like, “OK, let’s stop right there and...

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New City Players offers plenty of proof of cast members’ skill in production of relateable, powerful play

New City Players offers plenty of proof of cast members’ skill in production of relateable, powerful play

FT. LAUDERDALE –For the majority of us, our parents are among the closest, most familiar, dear and rock-solid support people in our lives. They made us, after all. Without us even knowing it, however, our parents can take on other characteristics: unpredictable, mystifying and scary. We may wonder: Which characteristics and...

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Cast of The Cripple of Inishmaan finds humanity behind characters’ oddities 

Cast of The Cripple of Inishmaan finds humanity behind characters’ oddities 

WEST PALM BEACH — If he were a real person, Johnnypateenmike O’Dougal would never win a “Citizen of the Year” award. Guaranteed. He talks incessantly, regardless of whether anyone in the room wants to hear his babble. He’s a self-centered, rude, loud, crotchety, curmudgeon. Picture an individual walking into a...

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