By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With a cast of 68 performers – 38 of them children – the current production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! at Rivertown Theaters for the Performing Arts is not only their biggest, but certainly their most elaborate show. It’s an opportunity for youngsters to carry much of the […]
By AARON KRAUSE BOCA RATON — There isn’t necessarily an art to dealing with difficult life situations. Rather, different people have their own way of coping with, for instance, a void in their existence. Some individuals might pretend everything is just fine. Admitting that something valuable or someone dear to them is missing might prove too […]
By AARON KRAUSE BOCA RATON — Before Lin-Manuel Miranda there was Meredith Willson. Sure, Miranda’s bold use of non-traditional musical genres in Hamilton may have changed the way writers create musicals. But in the late 1950’s, theater audiences and professionals probably thought that the late, multi-talented Willson’s creative use of song in The Music Man was just as revolutionary. […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Smartly and deftly written by Karen Zacarías, Native Gardens is a dark comedy, but one that is at its very core, extremely funny. Given the particularly volatile political climate in contemporary America, Zacarías scores by highlighting specific areas where differences in cultures and age clash most. She […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There’s a point late in David Mamet’s script for November, a comedy written more than a decade ago, when the “i-word” is mentioned. It’s spoken by the character of President Charles Smith as he muses that he always thought he would be remembered for something. The line […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) NEW ORLEANS – It has become almost fashionable for many in the theatre world to find disfavor with the final collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, The Sound of Music, The almost antiseptic manner in which the vile anti-Semitic Nazis are addressed in the book […]
By AARON KRAUSE WEST PALM BEACH — Brutal reality shatters sensitivity, fragility and illusion with the force of a monster hurricane in the professional, non-profit Palm Beach Dramaworks’ highly intense, heartfelt and heartbreaking production of A Streetcar Named Desire. To be sure, in this first-rate mounting of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Stanley Kowalski (an […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) NEW ORLEANS – The NOLA Project began its tentative life as a New Orleans-based production company almost 15 years ago with The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh. This dark comedy staged days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall was part of the trilogy of plays that included […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When President Dwight David Eisenhower was interviewed by historian Stephen Ambrose for his eventual official biography “Eisenhower: Soldier and President,” he made a startling statement. “Andrew Higgins was the man that won the war for us,” Eisenhower claimed, “because we had no boats anywhere at the outset […]
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 […]