2,704 stories by "Bill Hirschman"
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…
Details on Theater League Holiday Party The time, date and place have been set for the South Florida Theatre League’s annual holiday party and membership meeting: 7:30-10 p.m. Monday, …
It shouldn't work. Not anymore. Not in the 21st Century. That time-worn plot, the one-dimensional characters, the unabashed sentiment. But Florida Grand Opera's production of La bohème unde…
Tragedy suffused opening night at Outré Theatre Company's inaugural production of the dark musical The Wild Party, but it wasn't the story of Jazz Age hedonists plummeting through a doomed …
Some troupes ease into existence with a modest, surefire and frugal first full production. Not Outré Theater Company. South Florida's newest professional company bows Friday with Andrew Lip…
Miami Theater Center's inaugural adult project, a fresh vision of Chekhov's Three Sisters, is not a smoothly gelling work of art, let alone entertainment. The flaws are considerable, persist…
Cannily, there is not a feather in sight during the entire 85-minute The Birds at the Mosaic Theatre -- appropriate because the subject is not an eerie avian apocalypse, but how humanity rea…
Someone Must Have Said, "Macbeth" Backstage The opening of Broward Stage Door's return engagement of the bittersweet comedy Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks was postponed last week when actres…
Once upon the 1960s, there existed theatrical offerings on Broadway unapologetically called the tired businessman's musical. They were well-made, well-executed but unassuming diversions that…
