All stories by Bill Hirschman on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

No Such Thing As Dog Days Of Summer In SoFla Theater by Bill Hirschman

For anyone who still thinks that theater disappears in South Florida during the summer, take a moment to absorb the schedule for the rest of the month " and this isn't all of it.

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:31PM[SHARE]
Sunday, July 31, 2016

With 'Stalking the Bogeyman,' GableStage Explores Taboo Subject With Unadorned Gravity by Bill Hirschman

GableStage's Stalking the Bogeyman, a true life tale of sexual abuse and revenge, stands out for its intelligence, bravery, sobriety and sheer darkness Buoyed by the raw sting of truth tha…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:03PM[SHARE]
Monday, July 18, 2016

Flawed Glass Menagerie Shows Promise For New City Players by Bill Hirschman

New City Players' The Glass Menagerie starts a bit sluggishly, suffers throughout from some debatable technical decisions, and some performances are more compelling than others. But it build…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:40AM[SHARE]
Saturday, July 16, 2016

Actors' Playhouse Solo Comedy Buyer & Cellar: Hello Gorgeous by Bill Hirschman

A message is wrapped inside Buyer & Cellar about our relationship with celebrities, but it is only the anchor grounding Actors' Playhouse's hilarious trip down Alice's rabbit hole, or m…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 02:34PM[SHARE]
Friday, July 15, 2016

The Pursuit Of Dreams At Stage Door's Broadway Bound by Bill Hirschman

Broward Stage Door's Broadway Bound may not land perfectly all the time, but these theater pros deliver a no-excuses-needed effort that works often and effectively and ultimately satisfies.

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 10:38AM[SHARE]
Thursday, July 14, 2016

Edgy 'Cirkopolis' Wows, Entertains at the Arsht by Bill Hirschman

Cique Eloize's Cirkopolis cast has in common with their itinerant ancestors is the determination to thrill audiences with death-defying feats of agility, daredevil tricks and silly clown ant…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 10:29AM[SHARE]
Sunday, July 10, 2016

Style And Script Clash Through Ground Up 's The Good Father by Bill Hirschman

By John Thomason Since its return to regular summer programming in 2014, Miami's Ground Up & Rising has been specializing in a particular strain of western theater: the austere, bone-scr…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 12:16AM[SHARE]
Friday, July 8, 2016

Report From New York: Nose-Thumbing School Of Rock Is Surprisingly Entertaining by Bill Hirschman

Silly, stupoid and surprisingly successful, the Broadway musical spin on School of Rock works fine without Jack Black -- a good sign for the national tour.

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:01AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Report From New York: The Reason To See The Humans When Visiting Broadway by Bill Hirschman

Sometimes the confluence of talent that occurs in a New York City production creates something that won't be duplicated elsewhere. South Florida has proven that a regional production actuall…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 07:21PM[SHARE]
Sunday, July 3, 2016

Tight Harmonies Transport the Audience Back to the 1950s In The Wick's Forever Plaid by Bill Hirschman

The Wick Theatre has nearly mastered the musical revue genre by hiring solid talent and adding in a few extra production values " all of it evident in this summer's frothy paean to middle-cl…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 04:52PM[SHARE]
Saturday, July 2, 2016

Dramaworks' 1776 Provides Lessons All Too Relevant Today by Bill Hirschman

in these terrible times of violence, deprivation and polarization, the resonances in Palm Beach Dramaworks' imaginatively reinvented production of 1776 are deafening. Amid the laugh lines, t…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 01:42PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, June 29, 2016

An Unusually Apropos 1776 For Our Times At PB Dramaworks by Bill Hirschman

A deeply polarized citizenry, partisans with irreconcilable ideas about the role of government, a stalled deliberative body, confusion, anxiety. Sound familiar? The current political climate…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:53PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Report From New York: A Poignant Slice Of Small Town Dreams In Waitress by Bill Hirschman

While the production of Waitress faithfully follows the schematics of Adrienne Shelly's charming 2007 film, it does exactly what a musical should do: use the added tools of melody, lyrics an…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:32AM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 23, 2016

Breaking News: New Theatre Announces It is Closing by Bill Hirschman

Breaking news: New Theatre, Inc. (Coral Gables, Florida) New Theatre at South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center announces it is closing. This press release just in: Details to follow:

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 01:20PM[SHARE]

Report From New York: Folky Bright Star May Be Fading On Bway, But Look For It Locally by Bill Hirschman

The new musical Bright Star is a 21st Century celebration of the folk tradition complete with plucky heroines, gentle humor, unbending fundamentalists, facile fiddling, profound personal tra…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:16AM[SHARE]
Sunday, June 19, 2016

Evening Star's Shakespeare Abridged Is 90 Minutes, 125 Minutes Of Comic Anarchy by Bill Hirschman

The running time for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (Revised) is advertised at 90 minutes On opening night at Evening Star Productions, it ran two hours. This is a tes…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 01:46PM[SHARE]
Saturday, June 18, 2016

Crazed Chameleons Dominate Vanguard's Parallel Lives by Bill Hirschman

The Vanguard meant no self-aggrandizement posting photos of Lucy and Ethel, Carol and Vicki, across their set for the hilarious sketch comedy, Parallel Lives. But it's apt. Because Elena Mar…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 03:50PM[SHARE]
Friday, June 17, 2016

Soul of Motor City Delivers The Detroit Sound At Stage Door by Bill Hirschman

Greying Boomers may instinctively resist that the music of their lives is being repackaged into stage revues with little or no story the way Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer's songbooks have …

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 08:45AM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 16, 2016

Beauty And The Beast Redux Redux Redux Still Effective by Bill Hirschman

There's a virtue, I suppose, in reliability. When you go to see something with Disney's name in the title whether it's the Pirates of Caribbean Ride in Orlando, Anaheim, Toyko or Paris, you …

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 10:24AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Floridian Miles Wilkin Honored With Tony For Bringing Broadway Across America by Bill Hirschman

For about three seconds Sunday night, the Tony Awards broadcast a pre-recorded glimpse of Miles C. Wilkin and slipped in a sentence saying that he was receiving a "Special Tony Award. But W…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 10:38AM[SHARE]
Monday, June 13, 2016

Slow Burn's Heathers Sings To The Teenage Misfit In Us All by Bill Hirschman

You know you wanted to murder some abusive soul-crushing bullies and snobs when you were in high school. Heathers knows it and wants to liberate your daydream. So do the cool kids and not-so…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:07AM[SHARE]
Saturday, June 11, 2016

Ethan Henry & Makeba Pace Give Superb Farewell Performances In M Ensemble's Fine Fences by Bill Hirschman

Rage and defiance " against racism, against betrayal, against cruelty, fate and death itself " washes out into the audience with a ferocity rarely seen in Florida theater in The M Ensemble C…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 01:46PM[SHARE]
Friday, June 10, 2016

Storycrafter Studio's Fantasy The Wish Maker Fails To Enchant by Bill Hirschman

Acknowledge that the premiere of The Wish Maker, written and directed by local playwright Cynthia Joyce Clay and produced by her Storycrafters Studio, is well-intentioned and earnest. But th…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 01:24PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, June 8, 2016

A Dream Come True For A SoFla Actor: Beauty And The Beast by Bill Hirschman

When Danny Burgos steps on the Broward Center stage on June 15 in the national tour of Beauty and the Beast, the moment will resonate for him as few have before. It was on those same floorbo…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:37AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Talkin' In The Green Room With… Daisy Tanner. by Bill Hirschman

Some show business legends say they were born in a trunk offstage in between the matinee and evening performances. Daisy O. Tanner can't quite say that. But the two-month-old daughter of acc…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:09AM[SHARE]
Monday, June 6, 2016

Feeding The Bear Has Promise, But It Needs More Feeding by Bill Hirschman

Feeding The Bear, a serio-comedy focused on caring for a father succumbing to Alzheimer's (featuring a drag queen with a cooking TV show), has all the necessary ingredients for a tasty confe…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 08:09AM[SHARE]
Sunday, June 5, 2016

Music Is The New Element In City Theatre's Summer Shorts by Bill Hirschman

Hardly unusual in musical theater, Meredith Bartmon strolls around the Carnival Studio stage singing passionately about her dreams and, later, her refusal to compromise those dreams. But th…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 10:41AM[SHARE]
Friday, June 3, 2016

Managing Director Eileen Suarez Leaves Miami's New Theatre by Bill Hirschman

Eileen Suarez, who rose at New Theatre from working the box office in 1996 to shepherding the company through rocky shoals and significant growth, has resigned as managing director, she conf…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 11:25AM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 2, 2016

S.F. League Hosts Free Readings Of New Works All Summer by Bill Hirschman

Audiences from Key West to Boca Raton for the fourth year may see new plays in development by area playwrights for free through the South Florida Theatre League's Summer Theatre Fest.

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:28AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Annual Summer Shorts Will Feature The Sound of Music by Bill Hirschman

The ever-developing Summer Shorts Festival, now entering its 21st year in Miami, will sound a bit different this year: two of the ten-minute works will be musicals.

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 09:34AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Mad Cat's The Flick Will Intrigue Some, Leave Others Unenthused by Bill Hirschman

Sometimes critics use the words "ambitious" and "intriguing" as backhanded compliments or cowardly faint praise, but Mad Cat Theatre Company's production of the Pulitzer-winning The Flick ea…

SOURCE: Florida Theater On Stage at 08:13AM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off