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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 >>Theater Review: Asolo Rep’s “The Aliens”
By Kay Kipling It must be heady indeed for any playwright, especially a fairly young one, to be compared to Chekhov and Beckett. But one can understand the comparisons when watching the funny-sad, touching FSU/Asolo Conservatory production of Annie Baker’s The Aliens now onstage at the Cook Theatre. Like those two theatrical giants, Baker moves [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Viagara Falls
After being closed for a time due to financial and landlord issues, the Golden Apple Theatre is open once more, with a new name—the Golden Apple Celebrity Theatre—and some new partners for longtime owner Bob Turoff in the Nederlander/Browne Production company under the direction of Stanley Browne.
Read More >>Theater Review: John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker
When I first heard that the Sarasota Ballet was going to produce its very own brand-new production of The Nutcracker, set in the 1930s and with a Ringling Circus theme, I had no doubt that the choreography (by Matthew Hart) would be strong…
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