In his hilarious stage memoir, Charles Nelson Reilly talks about his days as a Broadway understudy, his death-obsessed uncle, and his memories of Ruth Draper, “the best actor who ever lived.” But the story that captures the comedy-spiked bathos at the heart of the show is the anecdote he tells…
James McLure’s one-act Pvt. Wars made a neat splash back in 1979 when it appeared at the celebrated New Playwrights Festival at the Actors Theatre in Louisville. But between that time and now, the work has run aground, having hit many of the metaphorical icebergs that are apt to sink…
Earlier this month actor and director John Fionte could have used a couple of clones. Through mid-September he starred in the musical revue Side by Side by Sondheim at the Broward Stage Door while directing another show, Scotland Road, at the Academy Theatre, while also rehearsing for his lead in…
Somewhere between writing dialogue for the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story and creating Sunday in the Park With George, the only Broadway show to date based on an impressionist painting, Stephen Sondheim revolutionized American musical theater. Inspired by the elaborate story musicals of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein…
Like her contemporary, the movie star James Dean, Patsy Cline arrived in pop-culture heaven prematurely, the result of a tragedy. She died in a plane crash in 1963 at the age of 30, leaving behind two small children and the work that resulted from 12 recording sessions, not to mention…
Like many late-night theatrical troupes around the country, Punch 59 presents sophisticated sketch comedy on a variety of odd topics. But unlike most other groups, this one is named for a torn-off section of an election poster urging voters to punch a certain key in a voting booth. Director/ writer/actor…
The names have been changed and so has the setting, but no one will fail to recognize August Strindberg’s neurotic heroine and her boy toy in New Theatre’s unrelenting and compassionate production of Miss Julie. By transferring it to colonial Latin America, artistic director Rafael de Acha recasts the Swedish…
Actress Elizabeth Dimon was so delightfully adroit last spring in the Caldwell Theatre Company’s production of The King’s Mare and the Florida Stage’s Quills that it should surprise no one that she walks away with the part of Cissy, the female half of the comic pair of lovers in A…
When he was 107 years old, the story goes, Broadway legend George Abbott was asked what he thought was the most important development in the theater to have taken place in his lifetime. His answer: “Electricity.” Though his active career as an actor, director, and producer spanned some six decades…
Charles Nelson Reilly exists in several universes simultaneously — almost all of them in show biz. He was recently nominated for an Emmy for his guest appearance as Mr. Hathaway on The Drew Carey Show, and he played UFO expert José Chung on a popular episode of The XFiles two…
Socrates and Plato, Emerson and Thoreau, Mr. Kotter and Vinnie Barbarino — the history of Western civilization is cluttered with memorable teacher-student pairs, each bringing its unique dynamic to one of the most powerful types of relationships in humankind. It’s no surprise that quite a few 20th-century dramas — from…
If nothing else, Naked Boys Singing! lives up to the hype of its title. The cast members are naked, they are male, and they sing. In fact they sing rather well. That’s a good thing, since the revue, already a hit at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles (another production…
The fascinating part of Twilight at Monticello: An Evening With Thomas Jefferson is not the hour-and-45-minute monologue that serves as the main attraction but rather the short qanda period that follows, in which actor-creator J.D. Sutton answers questions about the show’s subject. He does this first in character as the…
The Sisters Grimm. Written and performed by JamesDoyle and Madison Tyler. Directed by GinaMontet. Ongoing. EDGE/Theatre, 405 Espanola Way, Miami Beach, 3055316083.
One Flea Spare. Written by NaomiWallace. Directed by Rafaelde Acha. Starring DavidAlt, Ursula Freundlich, Israel Garcia, and Lisa Morgan. Through July25. New Theatre, 65Almeria Ave, Coral Gables, 3054435909.
One Flea Spare. Written by NaomiWallace. Directed by Rafaelde Acha. Starring DavidAlt, Ursula Freundlich, Israel Garcia, and Lisa Morgan. Through July25. New Theatre, 65Almeria Ave, Coral Gables, 3054435909.
Cross-dressing is almost always funnier when men dress up as women rather than the other way around. Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli are drag standbys in theaters and cabarets around the world. Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton are routinely skewered by male performers on Saturday Night Live and in improv…
By day he’s a personal trainer. By night he’s a… musical composer? Yep. David Sexton is co-owner of the South Beach gym IronWorks, and his first musical comedy, Nothing Less Than Love, opens this week at the Hollywood Playhouse. The show is patterned after traditional Broadway hits from the ’50s…
Playwright John Patrick Shanley once told the New York Times that he bought a copy of Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s 19th-century textbook Psychopathia Sexualis because “I have an unhealthy interest in sex and eccentric German people.” (Well, who doesn’t?) It might stand to reason then that he named his 1997…
Mixed Emotions! is the name of Richard Baer’s astoundingly popular comedy about two golden agers who fall in love. Since its February opening, the show has been a hit for the Broward Stage Door Theatre, which has extended it through late July. Mixed emotions might also describe a demanding theatergoer’s…
Like the old adage about good campers who can start a fire with only three matchsticks, the M Ensemble Company has struck a full blaze with Home, a production crackling with inventiveness that defies its low-budget parameters with combustible theater talent. Samm-Art Williams’ drama-in-poetry about a young Southern farmer who…
When you’re a playwright working alone, it can seem like you’re creating the sound of one hand typing. Unlike painting or fiction writing, theater is a collaborative art, and playwrights need feedback to give shape to their work. “You must hear it — you have to have someone read it…
