By AARON KRAUSE WEST PALM BEACH — This isn’t how your grandparents experienced Man of La Mancha. No, the nonprofit, professional MNM Theatre Company’s intense, fourth-wall breaking, moving and at-times-grim production feels deeper and more modern. For instance, when we walk into the theater, there is no curtain. Rather, the set and the performers are […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Sea Wall/A Life, two extraordinarily powerful one-act plays, presented in monologue form, are holding court at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. Fueled by strong reviews, and the star power of film and stage actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge, it is one of the most deeply moving productions currently gracing the stage […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It seems hard to believe it’s been more than a decade since Tracy Letts won his Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play and a similar Drama Desk Award for August: Osage County. Almost as incredulous is that this heartfelt tale of family dysfunction took […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (‘Steppin’ Out’) Given the interest in country music driven by Ken Burns’ current PBS series, it might surprise some diehard country music fans to learn mega-talented singer and songwriter Dolly Parton had actually penned an entire Broadway score of her own music. Bowing on Broadway in 2009 at the […]
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By ALAN SMASON It’s been more than 400 years since the bulk of the Bard of Stratford-on Avon’s works were written in what is referred by today’s scholars as early modern English. Some 200 years before Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in a prose described as Middle English, peppered with French idioms. The differences between what […]
By AARON KRAUSE INDIANAPOLIS — Hairspray might not offer the most in-depth examination of race and racial attitudes. Nevertheless, this big-hearted, tuneful and sweet, (yet not saccharine) Broadway favorite from 2002 remains a refreshing reminder. It’s one that we need especially today. Among other things, the multi-award-winning Hairspray reaffirms how a little activism, teamwork and solidarity can effect change […]
By ROY BERKO In its off-Broadway production, Shakespeare R&J (which is now on stage at convergence continuum) ran for a year, making it the longest running version of “Romeo and Juliet” in New York history. The piece was described as “Hot-blooded … Wrenching … pulsates with an adolescent abandon and electricity of which Romeo himself […]
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News “Silly is as silly does,” could easily be the subtitle following the name of the current comedy/farce romp The Underpants, now on stage at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White stage. However, when the playwright in question is the wildly talented and brilliant Renaissance man of comedy who […]
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News There have been many love stories written about the redemptive power of love in all its art forms: poems, songs, odes, sonnets, essays, novels, movies, and stage plays over the centuries. Be it the 2500-year-old Greek theatre with its ancient plays and their paean’s to love and war– or the […]