The West Boca Theatre Company’s current production of My Name Is Asher Lev earns a unique and high compliment: of all the plays I’ve written about in the past 5ish months (my, how time flies), it’s the only one that I left actively inspired to create. 

Theatre Lab’s fifth season continues with The US premiere of The Glass Piano by Alix Sobler, which premiered last year at London’s Coronet Theatre—loosely based on the utterly fascinating case of the real Princess Alexandra of Bavaria. The Glass Piano explores the story of a princess who suffered from a delusion that she had swallowed a grand glass piano as a child and must maneuver delicately to avoid shattering it.

The Lake Worth Playhouse’s acclaimed Black Box series is back until this February 9th with a quietly stirring production of Fulfillment Center by Abe Koogler, which premiered off-Broadway 2017. The play’s title does double duty, serving as both a literal description of the corporate warehouse it revolves around and an ironic nod to a set of characters who seem incapable of fulfilling their own — or each other’s — emotional needs. The story aptly encapsulates the play’s two major themes: nigh-inescapable human dissatisfaction and the potential for capitalism to deepen that dissatisfaction.

Kinky Boots, playing until this February 8th at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center courtesy of Prather Production’s Broadway in Broward series, is in many respects a fairly typical musical comedy: one in which a plucky underdog fights for a noble cause amidst an array of colorful characters.

Last night, I saw the Wick Theatre’s production of Evita, knowing more or less nothing about either the show or Argentinian history. After seeing Evita, I still don’t know much about what seems to be quite a complicated era, or even about the famously divisive figure the show centers on, infamous Argentinian first lady and “spiritual leader” Eva Peron. I have gathered from a little informal research that she’s an interesting enough “character” that, if left to my own devices, I could probably entertain myself reading about her for days.

Stories of addiction are, unfortunately, nothing new. However, this well-worn subject is examined in a refreshingly original way in Quiara Alegria Hudes’ Water By The Spoonful. This play surprised the establishment by landing the 2012 Pulitzer Prize without first having a prominent New York production. 

Forget Victoria’s Secret; it’s Linda Klein and Barbara Gehring who know the real secrets, at least to making ladies laugh! The unrealistic beauty standard peddled by such media is just one of the many everyday tribulations of womanhood the two mine for humor in their Girls Only: The Secret Comedy Of Women.

At the end of The Last 5 Years, which the Maplewood Playhouse is currently staging, the play’s central couple breaks up. The breakup is no spoiler; because they also do it at the play’s beginning!

My Son the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy, a one-person show performed and written by talented actor and comedian Brad Zimmerman, is described in its program as “part stand-up, part theatre.” However, while the evening indeed featured more highs than lows, this viewer found herself wishing it had included a little more of the latter – and a little more originality in the former.

My last review was of Watson, a show which explores the consequences of giving into nefarious pressure. Playwright Joseph McDonough’s new play, Ordinary Americans, instead illustrate the cost of speaking up against the powers that be.