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Theater Review: “Waist Watchers the Musical”
People with a passion to perform will do it anywhere. That “let’s put on a show” mentality works not only for barns, school gyms and storefronts but, occasionally, for Ramada hotel meeting rooms, as in the case of Waist Watchers the Musical, currently being presented at the Ramada Waterfront Sarasota by PLATO, which formerly performed [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”
By Kay Kipling In 1961, when it first hit Broadway, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was a blithe but nevertheless sharp musical comedy about one young man’s climb up the corporate ladder from window washer to president—with a lot of entertaining rungs along the way. More than 50 years later, this Frank [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: FST’s “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”
By Kay Kipling Even if you’ve seen the musical Smokey Joe’s Café several times, as I have, you’ll probably still find yourself caught up in Florida Studio Theatre’s current production. It’s not just a wave of nostalgia for all those great ’50s and ’60s tunes by legendary team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, although remembering [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Twelfth Night
If you think of Shakespeare’s classic Twelfth Night as a “rom-com” (romantic comedy), the FSU/Asolo Conservatory’s current production boasts a lot more of the “com” than the “rom.”
Read More >>Theater Review: Applause
In the theater, timing is everything. But the timing frequently feels off with the Players’ production of the theater-centered Applause—not so much in the cast’s delivery of their dialogue, as in the sort of no-man’s land time period the piece inhabits. Applause first bowed on Broadway as a star vehicle for Lauren Bacall back in [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Evita
Faithful local community theatergoers know the work of actors Steve and Dianne Dawson well; the couple, married in real life, has performed together many times in some memorable productions. Their current collaboration, with director-choreographer Rick Kerby, takes place on the Manatee Players Riverfront Theatre stage and brings back to life the controversial historical figure [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: “Perfect Wedding” and FST’s New Gompertz Theatre
A Perfect Wedding is now on stage at Florida Studio Theatre. Photo by Maria Lyle. It was a treat Friday evening to get a first glimpse of Florida Studio Theatre’s renovated Gompertz Theatre. Much remains to be done before the entire project, which includes adding new, smaller theaters to FST’s property on First Street, is complete [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: Crimes of the Heart
Lucy Lavely, Maxey Whitehead and Kelly Campbell in Crimes of the Heart. Photo by Gary Sweetman. As director Barbara Redmond remarks in her notes for the Banyan Theater Company’s production of Crimes of the Heart, Beth Henley’s three sisters in the play do bear a strong resemblance to another well-known three sisters—the ones of Chekhov’s [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: FST’s “Talley’s Folly”
Dominic Comperatore and Maren Bush in Florida Studio Theatre’s Talley’s Folly. To the couple involved in any love story, theirs is a special and unique romance. But it takes a writer to tell their story in a way guaranteed to make it as unique and special to everyone else hearing it. That’s what playwright [...]
Read More >>Theater Review: The Piano Teacher
Christopher Swan, Donna Gerdes and Megan DeLay in Banyan Theater Company’s The Piano Teacher. When the curtain rises on Julia Cho’s The Piano Teacher (now playing at the Cook Theatre in a Banyan Theater Company production), the audience is at first lulled into a sense of old-fashioned coziness, as the elderly woman at center stage [...]
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