ORLANDO THEATER REVIEWS

Theater West End was wise to split Angels in America in the season as two separate performances, each with their own block in the schedule. Originally, I was concerned that the Part Two of it all might turn away prospective theatergoers. But upon watching both parts now, and bearing in mind my own f...

When it comes to theater, seeing an original work is always a gamble.  Yes, I know that many popular pieces of theater started as original works, but this does not mean I personally want to invest my time in it.  ...

What did our critic think of THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE at Theatre South?...

In a production that marries 16th-century gravitas with 21st-century urgency, Director Monica Long Tamborello finds a delicate balance between Act I’s playful hope and Act II’s harrowing descent, reminding us that while the feud is ancient, the loss of innocence remains a devastatingly contempor...

The reason the play works at all is because of the sheer strength of its production values and the commitment of its cast. When you look at all the design elements – sets, lighting, illusions, choreography – and combine it with performers who move through that space with the same ease as one bre...

Part bar, part group hang, and part chaotic theatrical experience, The Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of MEAN GIRLS blurs the lines between a traditional show and an immersive club experience. While the scrappy staging and mid-show cocktail deliveries lean heavily into the troupe’s imm...

While much of the dramatic weight of Angels in America undeniably stems from the specter of AIDS, it would do the play a huge disservice to reduce it to a story about disease alone. What Theater West End makes clear is that Kushner’s work is as much about identity, loss, and the human struggle to ...

Titusville Playhouse’s HAIRSPRAY delivers a high-energy 'Baltimore fairytale' that stays true to the show's tradition of camp and exuberance. Featuring several standout performances, the production deftly balances infectious musical numbers with a technicolor parade of 1960s fashion. While celebra...

If “& Juliet” works at all, it’s because it commits to the premise without apology: a Shakespearean remix told through the lens of pop music, meta-theatre, and a general belief that stories never really die, they just get re-written. This touring production of the still-running Broadway musica...

One of the most effective things the musical gains by moving from page to screen to stage is permission to reframe the story without betraying it. By leaning harder into the Curtis brothers as the emotional spine, the musical clarifies a distinction that’s always been present in the text but rarel...

This new approach to the storytelling of Hadestown helped make me appreciate some of the compromises on the tour. And to further appreciate what they still maintained from the first tour and Broadway production. The set’s slightly modified (Hades’ door is more centered, for one), but we get to k...

The 2024 production earned seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, which I feel is an earned acknowledgment that speaks more to the craftsmanship, the ambition, and the emotional journey present in the show. The stage production’s direction, choreography, puppetry design, and ensembl...

In 1991, American Novelist Bret Easton Ellis published the highly controversial novel American Psycho. Through the story, we dive headfirst into a greed, lust, and ego-filled world told through the eyes of Patrick Bateman. A man so narcissistic, so label-driven, money hungry, and at the root of it a...

The benefit of a stage production means it will always be malleable to change, always willing to look at how a story written in the past can still be relevant in the present, and remain timeless for the future. What follows in this new production of The Wiz is a recontextualization of our favorite c...

Drag culture in La Cage aux Folles isn’t just the “bold face” of the gay community; it’s a celebration of visibility itself, a way of inviting even those on the periphery to understand more deeply what it means to live authentically, unbothered, and unashamed....

At its heart, Sister Act: The Musical is a celebration of sisterhood and the unexpected bonds formed in the most unlikely places. While Deloris Van Cartier begins her journey chasing fame, her time with the nuns reveals a deeper calling: not spiritual in the traditional sense, but rooted in connecti...

For anyone who’s seen Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a lot of the familiar story beats remain here. However, this local production by Encore Performing Arts takes a unique approach to their mounting of this stage musical....

One would think a musical all about corn would be a one-trick pony with the same tired joke made again and again. Corny jokes about corny people in a corny town. That’s exactly what SHUCKED wants the audience to expect. The very first song, aptly titled “Corn,” extols the virtues of the vegeta...

If you are a fan of a certain 'boy who lived' then Theatre South Playhouse’s delightfully humorous and nostalgic production of Matt Cox’s PUFFS or SEVEN INCREASINGLY EVENTFUL YEARS AT A CERTAIN SCHOOL OF MAGIC AND MAGIC could be right up your (Diagon) alley....

Silly stories like this work better on stage, where the particulars of the real world aren’t around to underscore implausibility. It’s quite a setup: 20-year-old bride-to-be Sophie has never known a father, but by the time the prologue is over, she has already swiped her mom’s diary, identifie...

In the realm of musical theatre, jukebox musicals have their supporters and their detractors. People who are already fans of an artist or group whose music forms the score of such shows are already pre-programmed to like a production due to their familiarity with and affinity for the music used in t...

When SOME LIKE IT HOT began on Broadway, it was celebrated for updating a classic film to modern audiences in ways and themes not readily apparent from the original source material. After having played a successful year-long run on Broadway, the show concluded on December 30, 2023. Nine long months ...

When it comes to the holidays in the opera world there are few standards as beloved as Gian Carlo Menotti’s AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS. The first opera written expressly for television and first broadcast on NBC on Christmas Eve 1951, the piece has been produced countless times over the last 73 ...

It’s not often that audiences have the chance to experience a completely new musical here in Central Florida, but that is what is happening every night (and select days) on stage at Titusville Playhouse with the premiere of WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD which plays on the Titusville, FL stage through Dec...

The feelings that one gets when sitting in the audience for a musical production can run the gamut from sadness and heartbreak to joy and excitement. But it is a rare experience when a production causes one to experience the full breadth of human emotion – becoming transfixed and transported to an...