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Sarasota Film Festival 2013: Opening Night
By Kay Kipling (photos by Rebecca Baxter) The 15th annual Sarasota Film Festival commenced Friday with the opening night film and party at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. And a nearly full house turned out to view the documentary Blackfish, with director Gabriela Cowperthwaite in attendance. The festival hasn’t usually started things off with a [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Florida Studio Theatre’s In the Book Of
John Walch’s new play, In the Book Of (now showing at Florida Studio Theatre’s Gompertz Theatre) uses as a reference point the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, telling the story of the widowed Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. That relationship between two women is paralleled by the relationship in this play between another [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Harvey
Those with fond memories of the film version of Harvey, featuring Jimmy Stewart’s indelible performance as Elwood P. Dowd, may or may not have seen Mary Chase’s original stage version, dating from 1944—or at least not in a long time. If they find themselves in a reminiscing frame of mind, they might want to drop [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Venice Theatre’s Crowns
Crowns, a musical version of the popular coffee table book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in ChurchHats, by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, was adapted by playwright Regina Taylor for the stage a decade ago. (It played some seasons back at Asolo Rep.) And it was successful both in its initial production and in subsequent [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: The Game’s Afoot
By Kay Kipling Lovers of Sherlock Holmes (and I count myself as one) can never get enough of the superlative sleuth, even in versions that have little to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original. We’re just mad about him. Holmes isn’t really a character in Ken Ludwig’s comedy-murder mystery, The Game’s Afoot, which just [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Miss Saigon
For the cast and crew of the Manatee Players, it must feel a bit like they’ve died and gone to heaven, to open a show—especially one like Miss Saigon—in their brand-new Manatee Performing Arts Center. Seven years or so in the making, the building’s interior boasts so much more space and better equipment and access [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Clybourne Park
By Kay Kipling Too many plays, while they may be entertaining, don’t require much effort from the audience to keep up, and don’t leave you with much to think or talk about afterward. That certainly can’t be said for Bruce Norris’ award-winning Clybourne Park, currently onstage at Asolo Rep; this piece about issues of race, home ownership, [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Our Town
Our Town is one of those plays that has become so familiar and so beloved, it’s hard to believe it struggled to open on Broadway, back in 1938, as the program notes for Venice Theatre’s current Stage II production mention. Watching it today, after the countless productions it’s had in the past 75 years, it [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Soul Crooners 2
When it comes to presenting musical revues, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe has it down to a formula: Kick off the evening with lots of energy and keep it coming, pack the show with hits most people in the audience will remember and sway along to, and oh, yes—have the cast members sing directly to the [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: “Stop Kiss”
By Kay Kipling Part of the purpose of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s MFA training program is to prepare its students for all types of acting and all types of roles, which sometimes requires them to portray characters quite a bit older than they are. That can be a challenge for them and interesting for the audience, [...]
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