Bill Hirschman

The villain (played by Karlen Edean) and hero (Brandon Campbell) clown around in New City Players’ production of "The 39 Steps." (Kevin Ondarza/Courtesy)

Theater review: New City Players’ rendition of award-winning ’39 Steps’ revels in wicked lampoon

October 7, 2025 at 2:12 p.m.

Comic theater is a challenging adroit meld of wry humor, physical slapstick, verbal timing, invisible stagecraft and a devotion to maximizing the opportunities for unscripted bits of business. All of...

Justin Albinder and the company of "Parade," playing at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. (Larry Marano/Courtesy)

Review: Entire 23-member cast deserves praise in Slow Burn Theatre’s superlative ‘Parade’

February 20, 2025 at 12:19 p.m.

Slow Burn did a solid job with "Parade" when it mounted the 1998 piece early in its existence in 2014. But this is something special.

Florida Grand Opera's small-scale "Fellow Travelers" is set during the McCarthy era in Washington, D.C.

Review: FGO’s ‘Fellow Travelers’ a powerful yet intimate McCarthy-era tale

April 26, 2022 at 10:20 p.m.

From FloridaTheaterOnstage.com. Florida Grand Opera's current triumph "Fellow Travelers" has no overweight heroines or bearded villains, no castle turrets or pyramids, no army of comely dancing slaves. Indeed, this 2016...

Review: Assessing FGO’s ‘Rigoletto’ through a 21st Century lens

March 15, 2022 at 11:37 a.m.

From FloridaTheaterOnstage.com. Works of performance-based art often are reinterpreted over time by imaginative artists. But sometimes, as with Florida Grand Opera's "Rigoletto," our perception of a work changes because our...

Review: Florida Grand Opera’s ‘Salome’ spills blood and laughter at the Arsht Center

November 30, 2018 at 11:38 a.m.

Someone asked on opening night if Florida Grand Opera’s production of “Salome” was anything like the early productions in 1905-1907, when its psychosexuality caused it to be banned in a...

Review: Florida Grand Opera closes season with ‘A Masked Ball’

December 17, 2018 at 2:02 p.m.

Most artists strive to hide how something is being achieved. Even the most surreal, nonrepresentational and artificially theatrical endeavors desire the audience to get lost in the overall experience. But...

Review: Orchestra raises Florida Grand Opera’s ‘Before Night Falls’

November 30, 2018 at 6:42 a.m.

The true-life narrative in "Before Night Falls" is profoundly powerful and undeniably affecting: A gay Cuban poet, inspired by the beauty of the island but brutally oppressed by the government,...

Florida Grand Opera’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ is crying out for intimacy

December 17, 2018 at 1:59 p.m.

This may be heresy, but maybe grand opera shouldn't always be so grand. Florida Grand Opera's current production of Tchaikovsky's romantic tragedy "Eugene Onegin" reportedly has a more intimate feel...

FGO’s ‘Carmen’ tinkers with tradition

December 18, 2018 at 7:55 a.m.

For a century, appreciation of classic operas like "Carmen" focused on the precision of their execution of established tropes and standards. But with theater revivals, from "Hamlet" to "Hello, Dolly!,"...

‘The Passenger’ is a devastating trip into the human psyche

December 18, 2018 at 7:50 a.m.

Tales of starving Bohemians and Druid priestesses may leave some modern audiences unmoved, but Florida Grand Opera's shattering production of "The Passenger" is proof why opera exists and what it...

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