Saturday, May 31, 2014

The Scene for May 30, 2014

We can tell you that nothing is slowing down at the end of the season as far as we're concerned.  It seems impossible to find the time to get the updates in these days.

The bad news is that the eleventy hundredth tour of Jesus Christ Superstar has been canceled, so if you're one the 1,800 people who bought one of the 15,000 available seats for this show, expect a check in the mail.

The good news there's plenty of other shows playing south Florida, so you needn't worry about missing a show featuring ossified rock stars.  


Here's all of the many shows playing on the scene this weekend:

opening...

Broward Stage Door Theater offers Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh through July 6, 2014. 

 

you still haven't missed... 


Zoetic Stage presents The Great God Pan at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, through June 8.
 
Outré Theatre Company offers Thrill Me through June 8 at the Mizner Park Studio Theatre in Boca Raton.
 
Island City Stage presents The Pride at Empire Stage through June 22.
 
The Naked Stage production of  Miss Julie plays at Barry University’s Pelican Theatre, through June 8.
 
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest plays at Andrews Living Arts Studio through June 8.

[title of show] opens at Area Stage Company, through June 8.
 
The Delray Beach Playhouse presents Doubt through June 8.
 
The Plaza Theatre opens Cougar the Musical, through June 29.

The New Theatre presents Gidion’s Knot at  the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center through June 15.

 
Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah plays at Actors’ Playhouse through June 9.
 
GableStage presents Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, through June 15.


coming and going...

 The National Tour of Evita plays at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts through Sunday.

The District Stage Company performs Broadway Unplugged at the South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center this Friday and Saturday only.
 

community/conservatory


The Delray Beach Playhouse presents Doubt through June 8.
 
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest plays at Andrews Living Arts Studio through June 8.

[title of show] opens at Area Stage Company, through June 8.



last chance to see...

Thinking Cap Theatre presents Hot Dog at the Black Box Theatre at Don Taft University Center, AKA the home of the late Promethean Theatre Company.  Through June 1.
 
The Wick Theatre presents Ain’t Misbehavin’, featuring the music of Fats Waller, through June 1st.
 
Miami Theater Center presents Everybody Drinks the Same Water through June 1, 2014.


for kids...

 Area Stage Company presents Disney's Alice in Wonderland through Sunday.


Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Outré Theatre Company: Thrill Me (reviews)

thrill me..Outré Theatre Company opened its production of Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center on May 22, 2014.
What would you do for love? How far would you go to do what the one you loved asked of you? And how far would you go to be with that person forever?
In 1924, wealthy law students Leopold and Loeb abducted and brutally murdered a twelve-year-old boy, dumping his body in a culvert. Now, in 1958, Nathan Leopold sits before a parole board, struggling to explain the chain of events that led up to the murder.  What he reveals is a story of dark obsessions, of ties of jealousy and sex and arrogance, which lead one man to sacrifice his soul and his freedom to have what he so desperately desires.
Skye Whitcomb directed a cast that included Conor Walton and Mike Westrich.
John Thomason reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:
For a Leopold and Loeb dramatization whose focus never wavers from exactly where it should be, look no further than Thrill Me , a musical-theater labor of love from triple-threat composer/lyricist/book writer Stephen Dolginoff. Closing out Outre Theatre Company’s 2013-2014 season nine years after its off-Broadway debut, this two-man, one-act musical still has the offbeat immediacy and barebones potency of a feverish fringe festival favorite, and it offers further proof that in Outre’s finest productions, less is more. Fearless direction from Skye Whitcomb and a pair of wildly contrasting but deeply engaged performances from Mike Westrich and Conor Walton translate Dolginoff’s coffin-black vision with demented urgency.
The 16 solo piano songs, performed beautifully and funereally onstage by music director Kristen Long, resemble Sondheim both in their clever blackness and difficult fluidity, with the actors required to drift in and out of song. Both achieve this without missing a beat.
Dolginoff’s sympathies clearly lie with Nathan Leopold, whom Westrich imbues with the tragic pathos of a wronged man—a victimizer who never stopped being a victim himself, save perhaps for a twist late in the show. The actor’s inherent likeability… goes a long way at providing the emotional, relatable core of this sordid true-crime nightmare.
Walton’s Loeb, meanwhile, is a sheer terror, the show’s unfettered id… he first appears as a haunting, low-lit specter. Not until the end of the musical does he express humanlike vulnerability; for the rest of it, Walton is a larger-than-life demon… His performances …are as chilling as live theater can be.
The production’s minimalist staging receives a flawless assist from Stefanie Howard’s exceptional lighting scheme. Her work is full of subtle gradations, dangerous beauty (she effectively evokes a flickering fire during an arson scene, illuminating the actors’ faces in varying shades of red and orange) and dramatic punctuation…
Whitcomb deserves ultimate credit for respecting the darkness of this material, and for pushing Walton’s performance to truly frightening extremes. With any luck, this is the sort of show that will haunt your dreams.
Hap Erstein reviewed for the Palm Beach ArtsPaper:
Thrill Me is a creepy experience, a description that would surely please Dolginoff. He would also be pleased, I suspect, by the production at Outré Theatre Company in Boca Raton, a stark, chilling presentation, thanks to the dead-on performances of Mike Westrich (Leopold) and Conor Walton (Loeb) and the assured, minimalist direction by Outré’s artistic director, Skye Whitcomb.
Whitcomb stages Thrill Me with unflinching assurance and deadly unease. In its short past, Outré has overreached with some of its show choices, but this unnerving chamber musical plays to the company’s strengths and suggests the dramatic power of which the troupe is capable.
JW Arnold reviewed for South Florida Gay News:
Westrich… offers a nuanced performance, struggling with the moral compromises he is forced to make in order to win Loeb’s approval.
Walton, a veteran of many critically acclaimed Slow Burn Theatre productions, gives a chilling performance as Loeb, perhaps the best of his career. The audience rightly squirms in their seats as each of his increasingly evil plots is hatched with Walton’s sly grin and piercing eyes.
Both are at their best while singing Dolginoff’s alternately soaring and searing melodies. Under the music direction of Kristen Long, who also accompanies on the piano, their voices blend perfectly as Loeb pulls Leopold into each escalating emotional transaction.
Director Skye Whitcomb’s intimate staging is further accentuated by the stark lighting design by Stefanie Howard. Howard brilliantly sets the stage for the flashbacks as Loeb appears in a flash only to disappear into foggy memories.
“Thrill Me” is a disturbing show about disturbing subject matter, but in the hands of Westrich, Walton, Whitcomb and the Outre team, it’s also a powerful piece of musical theater that sheds light on a heinous crime that should not be forgotten.
Rod Stafford Hagwood wasted column space on The Stunned-Senseless:
Staged with cool efficiency by Outre Theatre Company, “Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story” is a two-man, 90-minute show with so many chilling moments you’ll wish for an intermission so you can catch your breath.
And that’s it.  Oh, he wrote more, but it was all crap.  This is the only part that’s actually a review.  I remember when The Sun-Sentinel provided some of the sharpest insights into local theatre: boy, those days are dead and gone.
 
The Outré Theatre Company production of Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story plays at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center through June 8, 2014.

Monday, May 26, 2014

The Naked Stage: Miss Julie (reviews)

Naked StageThe Naked Stage opened its production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie at Barry University’s Pelican Theater on May 23, 2014.

The year is 1894. Midsummer night’s celebrations are in full swing, but the Count’s daughter, the beautiful and imperious Miss Julie, feels trapped and alone. Downstairs in the servants kitchen, handsome and rebellious footman, Jean, is feeling restless. When they meet, a passion is ignited that soon spirals out of control. Strindberg’s masterpiece caused a scandal when first produced -- and has been hugely popular ever since -- for its searingly honest portrait of the class system and human sexuality.

Margaret M. Ledford directed a cast that featured Katherine Amadeo, Matthew William Chizever and Deborah L. Sherman

 

Bill Hirschman reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:

For a century, August Strindberg’s tragedy Miss Julie has been interpreted as a seesaw of power exercised through class and sexual politics. But in Naked Stage’s production, as lives lie in ruins, everyone ultimately is revealed a slave, never a master, when they toy with those three elements. Any impression of dominance is self-delusional.

...Naked Stage’s production is a satisfying, intriguing rendition deftly directed by Margaret M. Ledford and acted at full throttle by Matthew William Chizever, Deborah L. Sherman and Katherine Amadeo, the company’s co-founder who has longed to play the title role for some time.

Amadeo succeeds in the seemingly impossible task of making credible the passive-aggressive Julie whose borderline psychosis and extreme mood swings would challenge any actress… Even more difficult – thank you Strindberg — is making plausible how Julie can be imbued with unquestioning knowledge of her superiority as the entitled one percent and then to see her weepily reliant on someone who shines her father’s boots. Somehow Amadeo pulls it off…

Chizever… conquers his similar challenge. Jean has ambitions of reinventing himself as the owner/operator of a hotel in Italy… yet (he) makes completely believable that Jean is in thrall to the class system: genuinely admiring his master, well-versed in the protocols and pitfalls, and perfectly aware how disastrous a liaison with Julie could be.

Sherman has the challenge of Strindberg’s least defined role... But Sherman makes Christine’s single-minded devotion to the order of things the only fully admirable person in the play.

Ledford is one of the region’s best directors – we’ve used that phrase several times before. This show seems a little out of her wheelhouse, but she is more than capable of leading us through the intimate eavesdropping and the serpentine changes.

Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:

Directed with exquisite attention to detail by Margaret M. Ledford, Miss Julie reunites Naked Stage artistic director Katherine Amadeo and Matthew William Chizever, last paired in the company’s powerful Turn of the Screw. The two have a fiery dramatic chemistry, one that deepens the impact of the power shifts and sexual gamesmanship inherent in Miss Julie.

Vocally and physically, the commanding Chizever is an imposing presence as Jean squares off against Amadeo’s slender, luminous Miss Julie. Yet the actors and director Ledford keep the sadomasochistic sexual tension crackling

The production values are of a piece with the direction and acting. Antonio Amadeo has designed a gray period kitchen with servant-summoning bells in a high and dominant position (more symbolism). Doing double duty as costume designer, Sherman gives Christine and Miss Julie clothing that underscores class differences, and she dresses Chizever as an elegant gentleman-servant. Doubling as lighting designer, Ledford subtly underscores mood with light and shadow. And Mitch Furman’s sound design, signaling a brewing scandal and the count’s return, sets the stage for tragedy.

Roger Martin reviewed for Miami ArtZine:

Join me, friends, in snapping off a salute to the bravest little theatre in town, Naked Stage. They’ve just opened August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, first performed in 1906, that has all the psychoses of the morning-after banter between Doctors Ruth and Phil should they have stopped talking long enough to get it on, intimately.

Katherine Amadeo as Miss Julie brings a raging conviction to the 25-year-old woman dissatisfied with her boring life… Amadeo brings wilfulness to a monstrous height, her downfall all the more harrowing. Chizever, his voice, his sophistication, his guile, brutality, his very self satisfaction and his fear are worth seeing over and over again.

Deborah L. Sherman plays, Christine, the cook, and unfortunately it’s a minor role, for Sherman is a fascinating actress and she makes the most of every moment as Jean’s fiancée.

Margaret M. Ledford’s direction and Naked Stage’s production shoot the piece along so there’s never a need to check one’s watch. Naked Stage overcomes today’s “What me? See a classic? Nah.” So congratulations to them all. Bravery, indeed.

John Thomason reviewed for The Miami New Times:

This bracing and urgent production from the Naked Stage proves that Miss Julie is as relevant now as it was more than a century ago.

Amadeo is irrepressible and coquettish, both the architect of her own demise and the play's most tragic victim, while Chizever is a fount of repressed animalism regularly — and convincingly — surprised by his own outbursts. Their chemistry smolders, with director Margaret Ledford eliminating as much space between them as possible and using nocturnal blue lighting to artfully conceal one of the most suggestive onstage sex scenes in recent memory.

Deborah L. Sherman provides eviscerating support as Jean's fiancée Christine, enlivening a secondary part with the nuance of a lead…

Rich enough to benefit from multiple viewings, this is quite simply one of the year's best productions.

The Naked Stage production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie plays at Barry University’s Pelican Theater through June 8, 2014.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Zoetic Stage: The Great God Pan (reviews)

Zoetic Stage GGP Zoetic Stage opened its production of Amy Herzog’s The Great God Pan at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on May 22, 2014.

Jamie's life in Brooklyn seems just fine: a beautiful girlfriend, a budding journalism career, and parents who live just far enough away. But when a possible childhood trauma comes to light, lives are thrown into a tailspin. Unsettling and deeply compassionate, The Great God Pan tells the intimate tale of what is lost and won when a hidden truth is revealed to the world.

Stuart Meltzer directed a cast that included Nicholas Richberg, Matt Stabile, David Kwiat, Angie Radosh, Aubrey Shavonn Kessler, Mary Sansone, and Barbara Bradshaw.

 

Bill Hirschman reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:

The unalloyed success of this production can be traced to the sensitive, subtle performances and Stuart Meltzer’s carefully-paced direction that helps the actors excavate deeply into their characters’ angst.

This is a quiet play in which the characters are not especially conscious that a toxic river flows under the surface that they have submerged for decades and then they fight off acknowledging it for most of the show.

No one succeeds with this as well as Richberg, fresh off Zoetic productions of Assassins and All New People and GableStage’s Cock. He starts out so normal, so recognizable as the guy in the next cubicle. He and Meltzer calibrate in millimeters the insidious progress of the poison, making his transformation totally credible.

Most of the rest of the cast is on the same level. You don’t realize just how good Stabile is until you remember his completely different personas in The Timekeepers, The Last Schwartz and The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. But if you’re an acting student, study Bradshaw and Radosh who find tiny inflections that bring a verisimilitude to their characters.

The uniform quality of these performances likely reflect on Meltzer’s guiding hand. It’s his pacing that is remarkable and his forcing the actors to dig deep into the characters’ complex psyches, requiring that the actors have a clear understanding of how every uncompleted sentence would have ended.

His physical staging of the first show in the round for Zoetic is flawless.

Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:

Amy Herzog is one of the country’s hot young playwrights, a Pulitzer Prize finalist whose plays 4000 Miles and After the Revolution have already been produced in South Florida.

That’s half of her small body of work. Now Zoetic Stage is closing out its season at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater with an intense, exquisite production of a third Herzog play, The Great God Pan.

Director Stuart Meltzer gives the play a spare but powerful Brechtian staging, having the “offstage” actors stay on the sidelines to watch the in-the-round action along with the audience.

…to a man and woman, the cast delivers thoroughly engrossing performances, finely calibrated and rich with detail. Herzog’s play doesn’t neatly answer each question it raises. But it rivets the audience, thanks not just to provocative writing but to Zoetic’s exemplary production.

Roger Martin reviewed for Miami ArtZine:

…for eighty minutes we watch an excellent Nicholas Richberg torture himself over whether or not he was abused. Twenty-seven years previously. The urge to scream: get over it, if it happened it’s gone, get on with your life. Don’t be so damned selfish.

These are good actors working here, but the characters are drawn sparsely. Having the actors sit on benches around the playing area heightens the effect of the scenes being presented by rote. (The cellist plays during the scene changes.)

It’s an impressively simple set by Jodi Dellaventura. In the round with a forest glade centered. Bird noises abound. A creek chuckles off stage. The floor is covered with wood chips and four tree stumps, one in each corner delineate the playing area.

John Thomason reviewed for Miami New Times:

The Great God Pan is about the unreliability of memory and the emotional cost — or potential gain — of exploring its darker recesses. Enjoying a pleasingly abstract if not fully connecting production from Zoetic Stage, it's a difficult piece with more moving parts than it initially seems.

Meltzer has assembled a superb cast. Radosh brings both observant humor and touching melancholy to Jamie's mother, Cathy, embodying a woman caught adrift by Frank's allegations, which conjure the bleakest time in her life. There is much warmth and vitality in Kwiat, who brings intuition and actorly curiosity to the role of Doug, Jamie's father. Stabile's pain and discomfort in discussing his character's tragic past is palpable, and Richberg is the production's steadfast anchor, delivering a profoundly identifiable, no-frills performance.

The Great God Pan is staged in the round, a first for Zoetic. Jodi Dellaventura's minimalist scenic design consists of amber bulbs dangling from a suspended wooden beam, illuminating a field of wood chips punctuated on four sides by shaved tree trunks, which act as the characters' chairs. A cellist, Aaron Merritt, sits off in a corner, his performances of famous Bach and Benjamin Britten suites adding ­instrumental flavor between scenes. There are no props and very little extroversion in the performances, but the actors step in and out of the field when necessary; in general, it seems Meltzer has smartly integrated more movement than in previous productions of this play.

The  Zoetic Stage production of Amy Herzog’s The Great God Pan plays at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on June 8, 2014

Friday, May 23, 2014

The Scene for May 23, 2014

It’s Memorial Day Weekend – which more or less brings the traditional South Florida Theatre Season to a close.
  
As if. 

There are no less than NINE plays opening this week at theatres across South Florida.  Theatre season?  We don’t need no stinkin’ theatre season!

There are loads of plays going on all over South Florida.  Why fight for a square yard on a hot crowed beach when you can have a nice cool seat in one of our many theaters?

Here's all of the many shows playing on the scene this weekend:

opening...

 
Zoetic Stage opens The Great God Pan at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, through June 8.
 
Outré Theatre Company opens Thrill Me at the Mizner Park Studio Theatre in Boca Raton.
 
Island City Stage opens The Pride at Empire Stage, through June 22.
 
The Naked Stage opens Miss Julie at Barry University’s Pelican Theatre, through June 8.
 
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest plays at Andrews Living Arts Studio through June 8.

[title of show] opens at Area Stage Company, through June 8.
 
The Delray Beach Playhouse presents Doubt through June 8.
 
The Plaza Theatre opens Cougar the Musical, through June 29.

The New Theatre presents Gidion’s Knot at the Roxy Performing Arts Center.  Guess the landlord finally fixed the plumbing. the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.  Sorry about that - we should have checked our sources.
 

you still haven't missed... 

 
Thinking Cap Theatre presents Hot Dog at the Black Box Theatre at Don Taft University Center, AKA the home of the late Promethean Theatre Company.  Through June 1.
 
The Wick Theatre presents Ain’t Misbehavin’, featuring the music of Fats Waller, through June 1st.
 
Miami Theater Center presents Everybody Drinks the Same Water through June 1, 2014.
 
Scott and Hem plays at Actors’ Playhouse through June 9.
 
GableStage presents Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, through June 15.
 

community/conservatory



The Delray Beach Playhouse presents Doubt through June 8.
 
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest plays at Andrews Living Arts Studio through June 8.

[title of show] opens at Area Stage Company, through June 8.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Actors’ Playhouse: Scott and Hem (reviews)

APMTActors’ Playhouse opened its production of Mark St. Germain’s Scott and Hem and the Miracle Theater on May 14, 2014.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway wrestle with the sparks of art and the perils of creativity - and the personal destruction they can reap - in this combative new play set amidst Hollywood's glittery backdrop. Fueled by friendship and rivalry, two literary heavyweights reunite in 1937 for a final night at the Los Angeles resort villa, the Garden of Allah. This smart and powerful new drama by Mark St. Germain explores the cost of love and friendship, along with the personal and professional price of being a writer.

David Arisco directed a cast that featured Gregg Weiner, Tom Wahl and Jennifer Christa Palmer.

 

Bill Hirschman reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:

A talented cast and director struggle to make the play at Actors Playhouse land solidly, and sometimes they succeed in this fictionalized encounter between writers trying to help and/or sabotage each other at low points in their careers.

But the actors cannot triumph for long when St. Germain keeps ripping loose every 25 seconds with some clumsily manufactured allusion like, “Hey, you remember the time we all got blotto in Paris and you screwed Picasso’s wife while Zelda played the trumpet and Faulkner had a three-way with Harpo Marx and a matador which is why Zelda’s now locked in an asylum and Stein is spreading gossip that I’m a homosexual.”

I’m only exaggerating a little..

As good as the cast is – Tom Wahl and Gregg Weiner are among the best actors in the region – it would take Ian McKellen and Judi Dench to make this dialogue sound natural.

Wahl makes a believably urbane but haunted Fitzgerald and Weiner is equally persuasive as the blunt, hard-living Hemingway. They embrace the admiration and jealousy each character feels toward the other. Jennifer Christa Palmer is an intelligent, no-nonsense assistant to MGM’s chief who is tasked with babysitting Fitzgerald and trying to keep him sober enough to finish the assignment.

Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:

In bringing the play to life, director David Arisco has cast a pair of impressive Carbonell Award-winning actors as the literary giants.

Wahl, sporting Fitzgerald-styled hair and a smoking jacket (the artful costumes are by Ellis Tillman, the wigs by Gerard Kelly), is handsome and patrician, believable as the Jazz Age great who gave the world The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night and so much more. Weiner’s Hemingway is crude, lascivious toward Eve and, underneath his cocky veneer, awash in the depression that would eventually lead to his tragic suicide. Palmer’s Eve is a type, a smart gal trying to keep Fitzgerald and her own career from derailing. But the play’s juice comes from the back-and-forth of Wahl and Weiner.

Scott and Hem features a handsome period set by Gene Seyffer and Mitch Furman, and lighting design by Luke Klingberg that ranges from a mood-setting sunset to a jarring wash of green as Hemingway exits reciting words from The Great Gatsby. The play itself is a minor look at major figures, but Wahl and Weiner keep the clash of two troubled titans intriguing.

Roger Martin reviewed for Miami ArtZine:

If you’re of that certain age where you can recall the 1930s and you’re of that certain bent where you read the novelists of the time, and I don’t mean as a high school assignment, you’re going to enjoy the hell out of Scott and Hem now playing at Actors’ Playhouse. And of course, if you’re a little young for the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and even ’60s, but you can appreciate good theatre, you’re going to enjoy the hell out of it too. It’s that kind of show…

This is all great fun and fascinating to watch and director David Arisco made it doubly so by casting Tom Wahl as Scott Fitzgerald and Gregg Weiner as Hemingway. These two play off each other in grand fashion, Wahl as the slim, almost effete chronicler of the wealthy and Weiner as the burly, heavy drinking all he-man ("my mother sent me the gun my father used to kill himself").

Two good actors who are matched, smart ass line for line by the perfectly played Miss Eve Montaigne, Orlando’s Jennifer Christa Palmer. An acting hat trick for Arisco.

The Actors’ Playhouse production of Mark St. Germain’s Scott and Hem plays at the Miracle Theater through June 8, 2014.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Mondays are Dark

Today’s dark theater is Barry Univerity’s Pelican Theater, the home of The Naked Stage.  It’s a tiny little afterthought tucked away in a corner of the campus, but TNS always manages to give flight to your imagination so you don’t notice the cramped quarters.  Or, they so tailor the production that you can’t imagine it being done in a larger hall.  Either way, it’s a gift.

 
The Naked Stage is now in rehearsals for August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, which will open May 23, 2014.  We can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with this time, but we’re sure it will be ingenious.

Here’s your Monday Reading List.
 

A Critic’s Proper Role

James Roos was a classical music critic, but an excerpt from his memoire published in Thursday’s Miami Herald illustrates the role a critic is supposed to fill in the arts community.

South Florida Represented

Florida Theater On Stage reports that Kim Ehly’s Baby Girl will be performed at this year’s New York Fringe Festival.
The world premiere directed by Ehly was the inaugural offering of her troupe Kutumba Theatre Company in July 2012. Word of mouth from audiences in the tiny Empire Theater in Fort Lauderdale was so overwhelming that performances often sold out and the work received a Carbonell nomination for best new work.

Arts for the Future

Got kids?  Got kids who like to do plays?  The Sun-Sentinel has a comprehensive list of theatre summer camps across South Florida for your perusal.

A Boost in a Rough Economy

It’s no surprise that people attend theatre because they enjoy it, but The Stage finds a study that says that it feels better than you might have thought.
People who attend plays have a level of wellbeing equivalent to the amount of happiness derived from a £1,000 annual income increase, new research on the social impacts of culture has found.
But it won’t help you pay off your mortgage or credit card debt.  Dammit.

A Gathering of Playwrights

Florida Theater On Stage fills us in on CityWrights, a weekend of workshops for playwrights hosted by City Theatre in June.
Now in its fourth year, CityWrights Professional Weekend for Playwrights gives writers a unique opportunity to meet, take workshops from and connect with a variety of creative professionals, from playwrights and publishers to agents and directors, said Susan Westfall, City Theatre’s co-founder and literary director.

It Ain’t The Blues

Broadway World reports that Blue Man Group will be playing The Adrienne Arsht Center this week.

The Dreams of Space

The Minnesota Playlist notes the passing of an abandoned movie theatre into the hands of a developer, and ruminates on the many theatre companies looking for homes but failing to revive existing spaces.  It’s certainly a familiar story here, as we watch The Coconut Grove Playhouse wander in and out of the news while the Hollywood Playhouse just sits and rots, all but forgotten.  And The Royal Poinciana Playhouse?  Haven’t heard a thing since it was announced that a lease was issued. 
So why do they molder away?  Because maintaining and running them costs more than most people realize.  Like the Grove; there’s a small bunch of radicals who want to use the $20 million held in escrow to fix the existing structure and start it running as a theater again.  But the fact is that because the structure is so bad, $20 million isn’t anywhere near enough to fix the building to the point of occupancy, let alone outfit it as a contemporary theater.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Scene for May 9th

Sorry for the lapse in posting; real life got overwhelming for a bit.  But we’re back at it once again.

We’ll be catching up all the reviews that we’ve missed in our interval, even if they’ve already closed.  That may take us a couple of weeks to catch up, and we’ll be prioritizing shows that are currently playing but we’ll get there.


Here's all of the many shows playing on the scene this weekend:

opening...

    The Wick Theatre presents Ain’t Misbehavin’, featuring the music of Fats Waller, through June 1st.

you still haven't missed... 

The House Theatre of Rose and The Rime plays at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts through May 18.
 
Miami Theater Center presents Everybody Drinks the Same Water through June 1, 2014.

last chance to see...

The Theatre at Arts Garage production of The Trouble With Doug closes Sunday, May 11. 

A Tribute to Andrew Lloyd Weber with Music of the Night raps it up at The Plaza Theatre.

Becoming Dr. Ruth concludes the Winterstage Series at
Parker Playhouse on Sunday.


community/conservatory


The Main Street Playhous presents Secrets of the La Croix through May 18.

J’s Cultural Arts Theatre presents Our Town through May 18.