By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK CITY — If you’re the father of a young boy or young man, you can relate to Lorenzo’s predicament: You want to instill wholesome, moral values in your son, whom you feel is learning from you. Then he meets and becomes fascinated by a man with violent tendencies, but deep down,…
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK CITY — The Play That Goes Wrong should be titled The Play That Goes Right. Oh, it’s understandable why authors Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields came up with their title. Practically nothing the characters do in this play-within-a-play, now on Broadway, seems to be correct. That’s likely quite…
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK CITY — In a well-rounded, vivid performance, a riveting Jeffrey Roth shines as the supposed JFK killer. The multi-award-winning, renown La MaMa theater company is presenting the staging, in association with GOH Productions along with the Czechoslovak-American Theatre company. For parts of the production, running through Nov. 19, you may…
By AARON KRAUSE MIAMI BEACH — Birth isn’t one of the major life cycles at the center of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Our Town. Of course, someone is born during the play — and the result is the heartbreaking ending that has flooded audience seating areas with tears since the classic play premiered in 1938….
By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — There are lighting effects galore (some overdone, some mood-enhancing by Thomas Shorrock) in Slow Burn Theatre Company’s mostly commendable, high-flying production of Tarzan: The Stage Musical. It runs through Nov. 5 on Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ intimate Amaturo Stage. Fortunately, director/choreographer Patrick Fitzwater doesn’t forget to highlight…
By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — Chances are, you’re familiar with The Sound of Music. But you’ll rediscover this classic musical anew once you’ve witnessed three-time Tony Award-winning director Jack O’Brien’s fresh, vital take on the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein show. The production, which has been on the road since 2015, is playing the Broward Center…
By AARON KRAUSE CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Creepy, foreboding music leaves a chill in the air at the beginning of GableStage’s practically flawless Southeastern premiere production of The Humans, about a middle-class family gathered for Thanksgiving. Such music that produces slight shivering is usually reserved for films by the likes of Stephen King or directed…
By AARON KRAUSE MIAMI — Exactly two years after the bio-musical On Your Feet! The Emilio & Gloria Estefan Broadway Musical opened for previews on Broadway, the first national touring production of the electric show about the Miamians opened – where else? – in Miami recently. And what a reception the large crowd gave the famous…
By AARON KRAUSE CORAL GABLES, Fla. — “If anything, the theatre is no longer a place of novelty,” says a character in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon. “The fact is, we can more or less experience anything nowadays.” The above quote could easily refer to the play itself. More accurately, this play within a play within…
By AARON KRAUSE BOCA RATON — Depending on your point of view, and how it’s directed and acted, David Mamet’s scorcher of a play, Oleanna, is either: A work about political correctness on steroids and the fall of an Arthur Miller-like “Common Man,” or a tale about a vulnerable, seemingly-depressed female student battered and bruised…
By AARON KRAUSE WILTON MANORS, Fla. — “I will obliterate those who oppress and repress people they do not understand,” the ambitious, young, wide-eyed, if a bit naïve, man proclaims confidently. “And I will seek justice for those who’ve been marginalized by society.” If you think such a person sounds like someone sorely needed in…
By AARON KRAUSE MARGATE, Fla. — As you hear his one-liners zing from the mouth of one character to the ear of another, a sense of serenity and amusement envelops your body. Suddenly, fears of nuclear attacks and terrorist plots escape your body like tension from tight shoulders following a refreshing, deep-tissue massage. A sense of…
