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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 [...]
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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, [...]
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 [...]
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