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Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins

by Anthony Chase
Brian Christopher Williams’ play, Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins, transports us back to 1977. In that year, a former beauty queen and iconic American singer named Anita Bryant became the unlikely leader of a campaign to overturn a law in Dade County, Florida intended to protect homosexuals against discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation. The campaign was called “Save Our Children,” and while it was successful in overturning the local law, its unintended consequence was to help ignite a militant gay rights movement from coast to coast. More than the Stonewall riots, more than years of harassment, Anita Bryant helped awaken homosexuals from complacency and inspire them to political activism.

Gutenberg! The Musical!

by Anthony Chase
There is a scene in Mel Brooks film, The Producers, in which Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are reading through a stack of scripts looking for the worst play in the world. At one point, Wilder reads out loud “Gregor Samsa awakes to find himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic cockroach.” Not recognizing the famed opening lines of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” Mostel dryly says, “Too good!”

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

by Anthony Chase
I have never seen a less sentimental rendering of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof than the one currently on the stage of the Andrews Theatre, under the auspices of the Irish Classical Theatre Company. Greg Natale has delivered a smart and searing production, in which the conflicting desires of the characters collide in a shower of theatrical sparks.



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