‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ could easily be subtitled Neil Simon’s Family in Crisis. But the esteemed playwright didn’t do that. Instead, he crafted a stellar autobiographical drama that melds whimsy with pathos, anger and, ultimately, forgiveness. He takes the time to develop the characters and spotlight their ability to deal with adversity without ripping apart the family bond.

Between my lack of much prior knowledge about the Miami Acting Company and the fact that I found myself at a school auditorium rather than any more conventional theatre venue when I showed up to attend their current production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from their rendition of the 2005 musical. 

As of last weekend, under the radar West Palm Beach theatre group Bob Carter’s Actor’s Workshop and Repertory Company is officially making its post-pandemic return with a compelling production of A Kid Like Jake, a thought-provoking play by Daniel Pearle that first premiered in 2013 and has only become more relevant as issues surrounding gender identity have found a place at our cultural forefront.

First produced in 1984 and written by pioneering queer playwright Charles Ludlam, this witty script is specifically designed for only two actors despite the fact that it features four principal characters—and that’s before you count any of their werewolf, vampire, or mummy alter egos! 

Unless you’ve ever considered pairing the music of eighties chart-topping girl group The Go-Gos and an epic poem written in the 1590s (The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, which also inspired many of Shakespeare’s works), the disparate elements that make up Head Over Heels may initially sound as mismatched as the star-crossed couples at its center. But while the resulting show, which enjoyed around six months on Broadway in the latter half of 2018 and is now hitting the So-Flo stage thanks to Slow Burn Theatre Company, may not quite be seamless, it is the rare feel-good musical comedy that I actually left feeling good. 

Like most writers worth their salt, I’m at least somewhat familiar with the work and life of extraordinary essayist Joan Didion. But even the extraordinary among us are by no means immune to the ravages of ordinary human tragedies, or to ordinary human grief, as both her book The Year Of Magical Thinking and her theatrical adaptation of the same name can attest.

Fefu and Her Friends is a 1977 play by María Irene Fornés that’s almost as well-known for being unconventional as it is for being remarkable. But the thought-provoking iteration that marks Thinking Cap Theatre’s post-pandemic return to full-fledged productions proves that this is a play as excellent as it is experimental, and one that deserves its lasting place in the American canon.

If the last 24 years of City Theatre’s Summer Shorts have been anywhere near as excellent as this year’s 25th anniversary edition, then the South Florida theatre community certainly has a lot to celebrate. This year’s program offered a roster of ten short pieces, three of which were world premiere works submitted to the company’s national short playwriting contest, four greatest hits returning from previous Summer Shorts iterations, one commissioned piece, and two other new pieces by well known playwrights.