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...
PBD’s Sweeney Todd is riveting
Sweeney Todd (Shane R. Tanner) raises his razor high (Photo courtesy of Palm Beach Dramaworks). WEST PALM BEACH — How do you sympathize with a barber who slashes the throats of his customers, instantly killing them and sending their remains down a chute for his partner-in-crime to bake them...
Adaptation of graphic novel set to music has world premiere
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Award-winning Bay Area playwright and composer Min Kahng thought his discovery several years ago was “fascinating” and “unique.” It would be “fun and interesting” to adapt for the stage, he further believed. Kahng has done that. His adaptation of one of the first-ever graphic novels...
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...
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...
This lighthearted ‘Legend’ will whisk you away from your worries
CORAL GABLES, Fla. Go ahead, poke fun at drag queens all you want. Call them weirdos, freaks or any other name to express your disapproval at their lifestyle or your inherent dislike of them, for whatever reason. The bottom line is that at least twice now in the make-believe world...
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...
Taken into the mind of a frustrated, tortured artist
MARGATE, Fla. — There’s a moment during the Tony-Award-winning musical “Nine” when a cacophony of voices drifts through the air, belonging to women speaking, or even shouting, on top of one another. The resulting noise vividly symbolizes the chaos racing through the mind of renown but struggling Italian filmmaker Guido Contini,...
Slow Burn Theatre Company’s ‘Aida’ contains emotional depth
FT. LAUDERDALE — “Love Transcends Death” is a poem by Naoimh Spence, but it’s also a powerful premise in several theatrical shows, including “Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida,” a heartfelt, touching tale of honor, loyalty and forbidden love which is receiving a remarkable production by the Carbonell Award-winning, Ft. Lauderdale-based Slow Burn...
