| Sarasota, FL 83 °F |  |
Top Stories
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, [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: 9 to 5
Eve Caballero, Nancy Denton, Alana Opie and George Naylor. Despite its impressive pedigree—the very popular 1980 film that inspired it—9 to 5 the Musical didn’t get a lot of respect from New York critics when it played on Broadway in 2009. That’s probably not too surprising; this show, with music and lyrics by the [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Florida Studio Theatre’s “The Columnist”
By Kay Kipling Depending on your age and your interest in politics, you may or may not remember the name Joseph Alsop—the real-life title character of Florida Studio Theatre’s current production, The Columnist, by David Auburn. For years he was a feared and much-followed journalist whose column was syndicated widely, and he wielded significant power [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: “The Heidi Chronicles”
By Kay Kipling Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, about art historian Heidi Holland coming of age from the 1960s to the 1980s, touched a chord with many viewers when it first bowed in the late 1980s—and took home both a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize, too. With its often funny, often touching look at the [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: “Anything Goes”
By Kay Kipling If the production of Anything Goes currently onstage at the Manatee Players Riverfront Theatre seems a little different from the way you remember it, don’t worry. This Cole Porter musical has undergone a number of changes since it first bowed in 1934—a shifting around of songs and relationships, a rewriting of some [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: The Players’ “Sunset Boulevard”
By Kay Kipling How do you make a musical version of such an iconic Hollywood film as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard? It certainly takes confidence on the part of the composer, and Andrew Lloyd Webber has never been short of that. His version of Sunset, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Asolo Rep’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”
By Kay Kipling It’s certainly no coincidence that the music leading us into the curtain rise for the Asolo Rep‘s Glengarry Glen Ross is jazz. The dialogue between the characters of this David Mamet play comes off like jazz; it’s as if these people are improvising, riffing off what one of them says and bouncing [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s “Jitney”
By Kay Kipling Much as I appreciate Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s musical shows, I always look forward to it when they tackle dramas, especially when the dramas are by Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson. The company has presented Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Fences in the past; now onstage is their production of his earlier [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Asolo Rep’s “You Can’t Take it With You”
By Kay Kipling For a company like Asolo Rep, the Kaufman and Hart classic You Can’t Take It With You is a perfect marriage. With its repertory acting troupe and FSU/Asolo Conservatory cast members, a large ensemble piece like this one, filled with diversely eccentric characters, allows the Asolo to truly deliver on all of [...]
Read More >>