2,662 stories by "Bill Hirschman"
Who besides Mad Cat Theatre Company would take a talking cat, who persistently pees on the rug, and a professional pickup artist instructing wannabees how to pretend to be genuine " and meld…
After taking barely a breather, the South Florida theater season resumes with a tsunami of shows, at least 26 professional productions alone through the first weekend in February. Here's the…
In theater, that most mutable and evolving art form, the passage of time is the forgotten factor in what the audiences see. So while having critics review a show opening night is unavoidable…
In this edition of Talkin' In The Green Room With, Angie Radosh explains why she panics upon seeing reruns of a particular I Love Lucy episode and she reveals the job you'll never guess that…
Theater Shelf, a recurring feature, reviews recently-released books, CDs and DVDs of interest to theater lovers. Some are popular titles like a new Original Cast Recording, others are works …
A couple of off-beat repostings for the holidays: Playbill.com posted 50 Iphone photographs taken of or by Janet Dacal of her homecoming to Miami as she rehearsed for Actors Playhouse's The …
Theater in South Florida ebbed and flowed like the beach surf in 2012 with triumphs and tragedies encompassing the death of three theater companies and the birth of four others.
We're entering another period of as many as six productions opening in one week. As a result, reviews may not remain in the center featured position more than one day. Please check out recen…
This critic worships the gospel according to Stephen Sondheim and knows nearly every beat of the original cast recording of 1976's Side By Side By Sondheim. So there was cause for concern. T…
Warm, full-singing voices swiftly carry a happy audience down the Mississippi through a glorious score in Broward Stage Door's Show Boat, but the acting and directing are so pedestrian that …
Indulge your inner contrarian with the new subversive Christmas tradition, the annual staging somewhere of the delightfully contrarian The Santaland Diaries. The satire about an unemployed a…
Yards and yards of duct tape, a dead deer, a timely taser, emperor penguins, Shakespeare, a shotgun, Anderson Cooper, President Jimmy Carter and the titular ursine creature all are ingredie…
Back during the Cold War, a theatrical genre flourished called the American absurdist comedy. Perfected by Herb Gardner and Bruce Jay Friedman, it took hip unconventionality to an extreme de…
Over the past 52 weeks, the Theater Shelf column has evaluated a host of CDs, DVDs and books you might consider as gifts for your theater friends this season " or for yourself, for that matt…
Slow Burn Looks Ahead Slow Burn Theater Company, the Boca Raton troupe attracted to edgy, challenging work, has chosen the titles for their 2013-2014 season, said co-artistic director Patric…
A yin and yang vibe imbues Jason Robert Brown's intriguing and imaginative two-character musical tracking the life cycle of a romance and marriage, The Last Five Years, receiving a warm, ent…
If personal reasons motivated Richard Jay Simon's resignation from the Mosaic Theatre that he founded, it was money that caused his board to close his "baby" Sunday, according to Simon and b…
Mosaic Theatre, one of the most respected theater companies in the region, is closing immediately, a decision made Monday by its board of directors, according to an announcement Sunday night…
A nameless terror has upended the fragile homeostasis in Agnes and Tobias' carefully-ordered uppercrust existence, all the more frightening because its anonymity makes it uncomfortably unive…
Actors Playhouse director David Arisco teasingly asks the reporter doing a story on the upcoming musical The Last Five Years, "Don't you want to take a picture of our Broadway star?' His jok…
If you've ever kicked in the chorus line of a community theater production of Mame, you'll likely adore Showtime Performing Arts Theatre's [title of show]. But if you've ever secretly practi…
New Theatre's production of Robert Caisley's sardonically titled Happy is not an evening you "like" watching an "emotional terrorist" spend 80 minutes mercilessly carving away a nebbish's il…
Darkness has often been an element of classic Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol, It's A Wonderful Life, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. But leave it to the House Theatre of Chicago…
By Bill Hirschman Know this, the Maltz Jupiter Theater's production of The Music Man  is what the American musical theater used to be. Joyful as a teenager skipping home after a first kis…
A con man has come to north Palm Beach County to steal your money. His name's not Bernie Madoff; it's Harold Hill. Well, actually, it's the effervescent triple-threat performer Matt Loehr we…