By ROY BERKO Stephen Karam is one of a new breed of contemporary American playwrights. His The Humans, the Tony Award-winning Best Play of 2016 (and a Pulitzer Prize finalist) is now on stage at the Connor Palace Theatre. The young Lebanese-Irish-American writes plays about the human experience that should not be as funny as they…
By AARON KRAUSE WILTON MANORS, Fla. — In a way, The Radicalization of Rolfe is to The Sound of Music as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet. Consider: In Rosencrantz and Radicalization, the playwrights imagine what minor characters might be talking and thinking about when we don’t see or hear them in the…
By HERBERT SIMPSON It’s only a few months before the 26th anniversary of the first American appearance of Edward Albee’s masterpiece, Three Tall Women, yet we’ve seen surprisingly few revivals. It’s admittedly difficult to perform, but hundreds of our high schools have performed the extremely demanding constant dance numbers of A Chorus Line without even one cast member…
By ROY BERKO Noted for her witty and compassionate prose, Paula Vogel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Oldest Profession, is now on stage at convergence-continuum. She writes with warmth about subjects which are often the object of repulsion. In probably her best play, How I Learned to Drive, which was recently staged at Cleveland Play…
By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — The lyrics resonate chillingly in the wake of the recent mass school shooting in South Florida, leaving 17 dead – and another shooting about a month later in Maryland, leaving two dead: Change don’t come easy You gotta believe me It ain’t gonna happen overnight. Change don’t come quickly,…
By AARON KRAUSE BOCA RATON — On the Playbill’s cover, gold, upper case letters spell out the title of the enchanting musical playing at The Wick Theatre and Costume Museum through April 8. If the gold coloring and capitalization are coincidence, they’re appropriately symbolic. That’s because we need a “Brigadoon” these days. It’s difficult not…
By AARON KRAUSE CINCINNATI — Theater and history buffs have a rare chance in Cincinnati to witness Shakespeare like they’ve never experienced in school. Chances are, you never studied Othello in the modern, painfully-timely manner Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) is presenting the Bard’s tragedy. Folks also might not have learned about the first African American…
By ROY BERKO The history of American musical theater is laced with firsts and trendsetters. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” introduced the well-made book musical in which a story was told, with music, lyrics and dance all integrated and setting the pattern of the first act ending with a conflict that would be solved in the…
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) While ruminating about the current production of A Streetcar Named Desire playing at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré, there was the thought of a scene in the hilarious fake rock biopic “This Is Spinal Tap” that sprang to mind. In describing an amplifier’s output, Christopher Guest’s…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When Robert Harling first created the six Chinquapin, Louisiana leading ladies who hang at Truvy’s salon, America was still living through the Reagan years. Steel Magnolias was Harling’s reference to the nature of the ladies, who, season after season, stand firm and tall like trees, dealing with the…
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) Three years ago the National World War II Museum’s entertainment staff decided to move away from the standard fare they offered, which was mostlyWorld War II-centric material. While the mission of the museum is to recall the triumph of the “Greatest Generation,” it makes sense to market…
By EDWARD RUBIN Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play, The Vagina Monologues, first came to the attention of New York audiences when it opened Off Off Broadway in 1996. Since then it has been published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Fashioned from some 200 interviews Ensler conducted among women from all walks of…
