A man walks into a bar and – OK, we’d stop right there if we’d vowed to keep this particular review 100 percent spoiler free.

But Sean Grennan’s dramatic comedy (or “dramedy,” as director David Arisco describes it) is neither a joke nor a shaggy dog story.  Even if you guess what’s going on minutes into the new Actors’ Playhouse production of “Now and Then” (and many people will), Grennan’s play keeps you hooked from start to finish.

What has always set theatre apart as a medium is the chance it offers us to not only tell or hear stories but to connect with others through the shared experience of stories. And though the uniquely immediate and uniquely communal nature of the theatre can sometimes get lost, amidst the multitudes of other concerns that go into putting together a season and then putting up a show, both aspects of the art form were back at the forefront of up and coming director Giancarlo Rodaz’s immersive reimagining of modern classic Beauty And The Beast via Area Stage.

Written By Christine Dolen

Originally Published on artburstmiami.com

Area Stage Company’s new immersive production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” is, as the French would say, magnifique.

Presented in a transformed Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the show is a two-year labor of love and creativity on the part of Giancarlo Rodaz, Area Stage’s associate artistic director.  Working with numerous collaborators, the young director has achieved a larger-scale success on the order of his immensely popular immersive version of “Annie,” which the company presented in June of 2021, in the company’s smaller South Miami theater.

Island City Stage’s 2021-2022 season is finishing up with a bang with their current production of Donja R. Love’s One In Two. The play, inspired by Love’s own experience as an openly HIV positive black gay man, gets its name from a statistic that’s hard to fathom, and one that is hard to fathom is so often ignored: as opposed to one in six gay or bisexual white men and one in four gay or bisexual latino men, one in two gay or bisexual black men will be diagnosed with HIV at some point during their life. 

Anyone who’s ever felt like an outcast—or who’s ever had a special mentor or teacher whose guidance was essential to making them the person they are today—will likely find much to relate to in Educating Asher, a charming new work from first-time playwright Eytan Deray that is currently premiering at the Wilton Manors venue Empire Stage. 

The basic premise of Black Sheep, a play by Lee Blessing that premiered in 2001 at Florida Stage and is now reappearing in South Florida for the first time since courtesy of the Main Street Players, is one that is rife with dramatic potential. Karl, the proverbial black sheep of the obscenely wealthy Winship family, is set apart from his WASPy relatives not only by his sordid past, which involves a conviction for the murder and a ten year prison sentence, but by his skin tone, the result of an ill-fated interracial marriage. Though he has been disowned by his parents due to his crime, Karl’s uber-rich Uncle Nelson is all too eager to take him under his wing, as is the rest of Nelson’s quirky family: his wife Serene, his son Max, and Max’s soon-to-be fiance Elle. 

Theater arts students at Florida Atlantic University are bringing their Summer Repertory schedule to an energetic conclusion with an unconventional musical production described by Director Kevin Covert as a “celebration of humanity and the human spirit.” Rent — a rock retelling of Giacomo Puccini‘s 1896 opera, “La Bohème” – taps an abundance of talented students, dresses them in meticulously crafted costumes and places them in the center of a stunningly designed set that portrays the seediness of a niche New York neighborhood circa 1996. 

Miami’s Actors Playhouse continues its commitment to mounting the productions it put off due to the pandemic with a production of Hank Williams: Lost Highway, a 1987 musical about the life of the titular country music legend. One of an array of biographical jukebox musicals probably chosen for the certainty the star’s name recognition will have, as far as attracting crowds. The show devotes much of its running time to recreations of the performances of Williams and his bandmates, who were together known as the Drifting Cowboys.

Though the Halloween season may be a few months away, any impatient horror fans or theatre lovers can get a dose of spookiness a lot sooner than October thanks to Infinite Abyss’s Fright Night. Though the thrills the show offers are more in the campy vein than truly scary ones in this send up of the 1985 film of the same name, the relatively straightforward story is still genuinely creepy and suspenseful enough to easily keep audience attention for its two hour running time.