A World Premiere Now Playing at The Foundry

“Could of” … “Should of” …. Hollywood, CA, is littered with ghosts of missed opportunities and roads-not-traveled to stardom. If our own obsessively creative and talented local playwright Ronnie Larsen – also founding producer/artistic director of Plays of Wilton (POW!) at The Foundry in Wilton Manors – had decided to write a typical “alternative universe” story, he would have had Mae West say YES to the Oscar-winning role of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s legendary noir movie, Sunset Boulevard. 

Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre production of the well-known two act drama  “Dial M For Murder” lives up to its billing as a thrilling whodunit drama involving a planned murder that goes in a completely unexpected direction. The play is running now through Sunday, June 7 at the venue located in Coral Gables.

Playwright Jonathan Spector’s one act play “Eureka Day” is contemporary, given that the main topic of the play centers on whether a parent’s child needs to be vaccinated. On the surface, there seems to be no humor with this topic.

An oft-cited attribute of live theater is its ability to transport audiences into the hearts, minds, and lived experiences of the actors. More than just opening a window into another place and time, when good actors fully embody their roles, they also viscerally invite us into their character’s very soul. At its highest altruistic level, theater can foster understanding and compassion for individuals who are different – whether culturally, socio-economically or, as in this case, biologically neurodivergent. 

The 1930s was a very special decade in theater history. It’s when Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for their Broadway comedy hit YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (adapted a year later into a Frank Capra film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture). In 1947, a group of theatrically minded volunteers first gathered at the Parish Hall of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to launch what was then called “The Little Theater of Delray Beach.” With J. Stuart Warrington’s professional guidance, high standards were set from the onset and after years of fundraising, the Delray Beach Playhouse was built on Lake Ida to serve as a cultural hub and exceptional regional theater to this day. 

Actor David Rosenberg stars in playwright Michele Lowe’s dramatic one man, one act play “Moses”, running now through Sunday, May 17 at Zoetic Stage at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami.

Sadly, Stephen Sondheim is no longer with us, but his body of work lives on. If anything, the prolific, groundbreaking American lyricist and composer – often credited with reinventing the 20th century musical – is enjoying a resurgence of interest since his death in 2021 at age 91. I was excited to see an excellent production of his early “flop” Merrily We Roll Along at Delray Beach Playhouse two years ago, mere months before the Broadway version won a Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. And swore if any more Sondheim came to our area (I was especially interested in his inaugural revue of Side by Side by Sondheim), I’d make it my business to attend.

If you missed the spectacular THE CHER SHOW on Broadway a few years back, or even the popular two-year national tour that followed, fret not. Because now you can see it all, complete with legendary Bob Mackie costumes (for which the new musical won a Tony) and original stage design, right in our hometown!

The title of Sarah Treem’s The How and the Why comes from the idea, eventually articulated by one of its characters, that every scientific phenomenon is explainable from both perspectives. And though much of the piece revolves around the two main characters’ careers as evolutionary biologists, the most engaging “how” and “why” questions the script poses have less to do with their competing theories than with the unexpected evolution of the complex relationship between them.