Dating has never been easy. Back in the old days when parents and/or matchmakers set up the kids, the pressure to be liked was still there, but the voices in young people’s heads were few. Nowadays, when a swipe or a click reveals a blind date’s entire dating history – not to mention hearing internal, opinionated voices of friends and family – a first date can be sabotaged before it ever gets off the ground. Playwright Austin Winsberg, who wrote the book for the new(ish) Broadway musical, FIRST DATE, admits he based his highly recognizable scenarios on his own experience and those of his friends.
If ever there were a popular movie that begged to be turned into a live theatrical production – already known for its great songs, memorable characters, and a riveting storyline, it would be 1985 sci-fi sensation and audience favorite Back to the Future starring a young Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, it won numerous awards – including an Academy Award, three Saturn Awards and a Hugo, and became the highest grossing film in 1985 worldwide, inspiring two sequels. As the years went by, its fan base only increased, with critics and audiences now considering Back to the Future as one of the greatest science fiction films, and even one of the best films ever made!
Playwright Nilo Cruz challenges audiences to use their imagination in recreating a tragic love story set in 1939 in a two act drama “Sotto Voce”, running now through February 15 at GableStage in Coral Gables.
MY FAIR LADY, the iconic Lerner & Lowe musical of the 1950s, was the soundtrack of my childhood. Famous and beloved as the longest running Broadway musical in 1956 (with book & lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and music by Frederick Loewe), it won six Tonys, including Best Musical, was turned into an eight-Academy-Award-winning film (including Best Picture) in 1964 and has had a lasting influence on the trajectory of musical theater ever since. Believe it or not, everyone in America and the UK (where it held highly successful tours next) who grew up during the mid-20th century – whether they’d seen the show or not – could likely sing the lyrics to all the songs with glee! When has this ever happened … before or since?
Valentine’s Day, Slow Burn Theatre Company invites audiences to celebrate love, friendship, and the power of music with Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, the Tony® and Grammy® Award-winning Broadway phenomenon, running Friday, February 14 through Sunday, March 1 in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts as part of MD Now® Slow Burn Theatre Company’s 2025/2026 season presented by United Community Bank, with additional support from Funding Arts Broward and the Broward Cultural Division.
Lake Worth Playhouse’s current production of ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ arrives with the polish and ambition of a company that clearly loves musical theatre, even as it wrestles with the inherent contradictions of this particular show. Framed through the lens of a 1990s revival, the production attempts to sand down some of the sharper, more dated edges of Cole Porter’s backstage romp, nudging it toward something that feels more self aware and contemporary. The effort is evident and often admirable, but even with its modernization, Kiss Me, Kate remains, at heart, a cheesy musical. In this staging, it plays like a glossy B movie, entertaining in flashes, impressive in parts, but never quite convincing as a unified whole.
Some may say that the first show one sees in the new year might just set the tone for the 12 months ahead. If that’s the case, then I’m certainly in for a treat after the Kravis Center’s fabulous production of Some Like It Hot! I was already familiar with the story, having seen the 1959 MGM film it was based on, a crime comedy classic starring Old Hollywood legends Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. Nonetheless, the musical absolutely stands on its own as a fresh, sparkling take on the popular story, with its book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, music by Marc Shaiman, and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman. After accidentally witnessing a brutal mafia murder in 1933 Chicago, best friends and jazz musicians Joe (Matt Loehr) and Jerry (Tavis Kordell) are desperate to escape. Their plan? Disguise themselves as women—Josephine and Daphne—and join an all-female band headed for California. With mistaken identities, unexpected romances, and self-discovery journeys at play—and a group of gangsters hot on the duo’s heels—will their scheme succeed?
There are popular, stand-up comedy acts, and there are musical-theater revues by Broadway-caliber vocalists. And then there’s TOVAH FELDSHUH. I could say, with this multi-award-winning actress/singer/comedienne’s one woman show you get a twofer: a beautifully sung musical theater revue plus non-stop original comedy sketches, all perfectly interspersed. But then there’s more … SOOO much more! Because Tovah doesn’t just tell jokes, she quickly switches attire to become her comedic characters – in looks, speech, and mannerisms that span all ages, ethnic groups and nationalities. In addition to various American accents, she’ll talk like an Italian, Russian, or Turkish/Sephardic Jew. And she sings in pitch-perfect Yiddish, Hebrew, and Spanish.
The South Florida premiere of & Juliet, which arrived at the Adrienne Arsht Center on December 30 as a New Year’s celebration, positions itself as a bold corrective to one of Western literature’s most fatalistic romances. The musical opens by asking a simple question: what if Juliet did not kill herself at the end of Romeo & Juliet? From that divergence, the show launches into a high-energy jukebox musical built around pop anthems written by Max Martin (& friends), framed as a battle for narrative control between William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway. The result is a production that is head-bobbing and often well performed, but conceptually muddled, offering spectacle and charm where it ultimately needs conviction and emotional clarity.
On December 23, The Choir of Man arrived at the Kravis Center as part of its official U.S. tour, transforming the Dreyfoos Hall stage into a working pub, inviting the audience to order a pint. Nine men gather in a bar, they drink, they sing, they tell stories, and they invite the audience into the ritual. Over the course of ninety-some minutes, the show presents a sequence of musical numbers drawn from rock, folk, and pop, each loosely anchored to one of the men, the Joker (Conor Mellor), the Hard Man (RJ Griffith), the Poet (Conor Hanley), the Bore (Lewis Bennett), the Romantic (Tristan Whincup), the Beast (Rob Godfrey), the Handyman (Adam Hilton), the Barman (Mark Loveday), and the Maestro (Lee O’Reily). There is no narrative arc in the traditional sense. Instead, the evening unfolds as a night at the pub would, with songs, banter, toasts, moments of vulnerability, and a collective closing number and last call.
