I was initially intrigued by Palm Beach Dramaworks’ (PBD) first-ever revival play TRYING by Joanna McClelland Glass because of its premise. It shows how people of extremely disparate backgrounds and generational experience can spar yet keep working together to where they eventually respect and even deeply care for one another. If an ailing, patrician 81-year-old former US attorney general and judge from a prestigious American family and a vigorous, determined non-Ivy-League educated young woman of 25 from a small Canadian prairie town (who’s hired as his secretary) can learn to get along, perhaps there’s still hope for the rest of us. Particularly in our contentious times.
Plays of Wilton (POW!) and Ronnie Larsen Presents will present the revival of Michael McKeever’s award winning play, “Daniel’s Husband,” at The Foundry from May 23 through June 16, 2024. Daniel and Mitchell are the perfect couple. Perfect house, perfect friends – even a mother who wants them married. A turn of events puts their perfect life in jeopardy, and Mitchell is thrust into a future where even his love may not prove to be enough. “Daniel’s Husband” is a bold reflection of love, commitment, and family in our perilous new world.
Thank you for being a…fan! Following sold-out performances and rave reviews across the country, The Golden Girls are back and better than ever with a brand new stage show that’s more exciting than a trip to the Rusty Anchor. Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue will head to more than 60 cities in 2024 including a month of performances September 3 – 29 in the Amaturo Theater at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
Much has been said about how the Spanish we speak in Miami has affected the native English, and of how this has led to the emergence of a new dialect in the bilingual generations. According to several academic studies, this phenomenon occurs when two languages come into close contact. Not to mention the interpersonal relationships of South Florida Latino families. From gestures to tone, Spanglish is here to stay.
When ACT’s (Actors Community Theatre of Davie) popular director Jerry Jensen decided to keep their latest production, CLOSE TIES by Elizabeth Diggs, in the playwright’s setting of 1981, it was a no-brainer. Audiences would surely love revisiting a family’s summer home set in the quieter and more rural Berkshires of decades past. Where, as Jensen states in his Director’s Notes, “There are no cellphones or even area codes, no PCs, an office where the father uses a Dictaphone. The kitchen table is the center of family activity. But the family relationships are as timely today as they were then.”
Twenty-fifth anniversaries are traditionally commemorated with a gift of silver. But when Palm Beach Dramaworks marks its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2024-25, what the company has in store for its audience is pure gold. PBD will celebrate this milestone occasion with a stimulating roster of plays that epitomize its commitment to “Theatre to Think About.”
Playwright Elena Maria Garcia and Stuart Meltzer’s “Cuban Chicken Soup”, a one woman comedy starring Garcia, now running through May 19 by Zoetic Stage at the Carnival Studio Theater of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, is a humorous look at Latina and Jewish culture in Miami.
How did we get here? As we rapidly approach the intermission season, the limbo space between one performing arts season to the next, institutions in South Florida are wrapping up their efforts, while some are showcasing their penultimate selection of talent. One venue with a firecracker of a musical play is Miami’s Arsht Center and “Peter Pan.” Only on stage for one week, this new adaptation of the classic 1941 play offers contemporary outlooks to dated and harmful portrayals of women and Indigenous cultures.
Multi-accomplished South Florida actor/director/producer … and on, Larry Buzzeo, fresh from his successful inaugural season as founder and artistic director of ArtBuzzTheatrics at Empire Stage, is returning to our beloved Flagler Village blackbox with the sung-through musical, FALSETTOS. You heard right: This far too seldom produced, full-scale William Finn (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book with Finn) musical that was nominated for seven and won two Tony Awards (for Best Musical and Best Score) in 1992 – and was then nominated for Best Revival in 2016 – has finally arrived! ArtBuzz and Empire Stage are presenting “Falsettos” in Fort Lauderdale from April 26 through May 19.
South Florida Symphony Orchestra pays tribute to the 60th anniversary of The Beatles first performance in America in 1964 with a “Classical Mystery Tour” concert of 24 Beatles hit songs augmented with the sounds of the symphony orchestra on Saturday, May 11 at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale.
