By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is classified as a comedy, and for good reason. There’s plenty of mischief and merry making, which merge to form a frolicking night of theater. It ends (mostly) happily. But there’s a darker side to the play involving mourning, unrequited love and a resultant lovesickness. If you dig […]
By AARON KRAUSE MIAMI SHORES — A “hurricane party” hardly refers to a celebration involving University of Miami sports teams in the new, clever, satirical comedy Firemen are Rarely Necessary, set partly in Miami in a not-too-distant future. Normally when a mammoth hurricane is about to make landfall in a state, you’d expect to hear […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) Kenneth Lonergan recently received an Academy Award for his screenplay of “Manchester by the Sea,” a dark and depressing tale that produced an Oscar winning performance by Casey Affleck. Lonergan seems to excel in writing about depressing people in dismal places, people who have a glimmer of […]
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By AARON KRAUSE WILTON MANORS, Fla. — Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” But have you ever found yourself wishing that you were the director of your life – one with the power to say something like, “OK, let’s stop right there and take it from, […]
For those who truly love classic Broadway theatre, there are few shows that pack as much firepower as Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. It was a tour de force for Ethel Merman, perhaps the greatest belter known on the Great White Way, and has since provided vehicles for the likes of Bernadette Peters, Reba […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) Although he only lived to be 39, Thomas “Fats” Waller produced one of the most impressive volumes of popular music during the swing period of the 1930s and 1940s. With his characteristic stride style on the piano, he took jazz and popular music to new heights it […]
By AARON KRAUSE CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Go ahead, poke fun at drag queens all you want. Call them weirdos, freaks or any other name to express your disapproval at their lifestyle or your inherent dislike of them, for whatever reason. The bottom line is that at least twice now in the make-believe world of theater, […]
By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — For the majority of us, our parents are among the closest, most familiar, dear and rock-solid support in our lives. They made us, after all. Without us even knowing it, however, parents can take on other characteristics: unpredictable, mystifying and scary. We may wonder: Which characteristics and genes of […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) Suzan-Lori Parks based a good portion of Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), her tale of slavery set during the Civil War, on the ancient Greek tale of “The Iliad. ” As if to hammer the point home, she even went so […]
By AARON KRAUSE WEST PALM BEACH — If he were a real person, Johnnypateenmike O’Dougal would never win a “Citizen of the Year” award. Guaranteed. He talks incessantly, regardless of whether anyone in the room wants to hear his babble. He’s a self-centered, rude, loud, crotchety, curmudgeon. Picture an individual walking into a community newspaper […]