Best Director - Joseph Adler for Pillowman
Imagine this: You were viciously abused as a child, and now you're a writer. You are totally unsuccessful. Your major subject matter is the torture and murder of children. You're really into it. The children in your stories eat cookies filled with razorblades or are dispatched with power drills used in extremely unconventional ways. At this very moment, you're being interrogated by police officers in the middle of a totalitarian state. These police officers suspect that you have, in fact, been murdering children in real life. Maybe you have: Certainly kids around town seem to be dropping dead in all the ways you describe in your writings. Your mentally handicapped brother is being tortured in the next room. It is highly improbable that you will live to see tomorrow. Now imagine appearing onstage in this wretched condition and getting an audience to not only sympathize with you, but find your entire situation utterly amusing. Sound improbable? Joe Adler made it happen, in an October production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman that was funnier and more powerful than the star-studded Broadway production that set tongues a-wagging in Manhattan the previous year.
Best Supporting Actor - Matthew Glass in Romance
In a play full of plus-size performances, little Matt Glass dwarfed everybody. David Mamet's filthy courtroom farce was one of the year's funniest shows, and Matt was not only its funniest character but also the most sympathetic. The love-starved boyfriend of the prosecutor, he pranced into the courtroom leaving a trail of handcuffs and dildos in his wake, sat himself on the judge's knee, and proceeded to interrupt the workings of the American justice system with his tale of domestic woe. He was too ridiculous to take seriously - some terrible amalgam of everybody's most vicious stereotypes about vacuous drama-junkie queens - but he somehow made you feel for him anyway. Deeply. Those who saw him do it are still wondering how he pulled it off.
Best Set Design - Lyle Baskin for Fat Pig
The set of Neil LaBute's tale of aborted love between a sweet fat chick and a not-so-sweet skinny guy was lovingly, elegantly, exactingly, and simply rendered by Lyle Baskin, a designer who regularly sends GableStage's brilliant shows rocketing to the next level of awesomeness. Fat Pig was a brutal, heartless story - one of the play's four characters had the soul of a poet, and she was endlessly shat upon by the other three, all of whom had approximately the soul of a moldering potato - and its cruelty was suggested, not by drab colors and an absence of stuff, but by a preternatural stillness. The opening scene's supposedly bustling cafeteria had the feel of a Chuck E. Cheese in the wake of a plague; the final scene's beachside setting looked and sounded like the beach, but somehow communicated "desert." Scenes set in a sushi bar and an office suggested cheerful surfaces and spiritual death, a hollow classiness created by an intelligence driven to make everything pleasant and nothing personal. One look at Baskin's set, pretty and functional and chilling, might tell you more about Neil LaBute than Neil LaBute could tell you about himself.
New Times - Best of 2005
BEST ACTOR - David Kwiat (QED)
David Kwiat Kwiat's performance as the dying oddball physicist Richard Feynman in QED (at GableStage) was in production a full year ago.
Award competitions such as the Oscars often have short memories in such cases, but all these months later Kwiat's funny, touching portrait
of one man's search for peace and meaning still resonates, an exceptional example of an exceptional actor's style: understated, deeply felt,
and fully alive.
New Times - Best of 2004
BEST THEATRICAL PRODUCTION - The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
In theater, sometimes everything just falls into place. That was definitely the case with GableStage's masterful
presentation of THE GOAT. Featuring Edward Albee's bitterly funny script, a fine cast, exceptionally
effective direction from Artistic Director, Joseph Adler, and an outstanding set design by Rich Simone, this
production was a gleeful blend of absurdity, horror and dry humor that sent audiences' heads spinning.
BEST DIRECTOR - Joseph Adler
The ebullient, outspoken Adler might seem a complete mismatch with tat, taciturn Edward Albee (The Goat or
Who Is Sylvia?). Nonetheless, Adler's masterful staging of Albee's provocative tragicomedy was a perfect
meeting of master minds. Adler is well known for his gutsy, go-for-broke style, but his work with THE GOAT was
particularly risky and insightful, put together with such skill that many of his roll-the-dice choices looked as
if he were using loaded bones to make point every toss.
New Times - Best of 2003
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - David Kwiat (Dirty Blonde)
It's about time Kwiat received recognition as a one-man repertory company. A chameleon of an actor who appears regularly in many local theaters,
Kwiat is a director's dream. He can take the tiniest role and turn it into a perfectly realized character. Some of his recent work was memorable --
the brooding Irish drinker in The Weir and the embittered Yiddish actor in Smithereens, both at New Theatre; as well as his hilarious cameos in
Comic Potential at Actors' Playhouse. But it was GableStage's Dirty Blonde that really turned into a Kwiat riot as he rolled out one carefully
etched characterization after another.
New Times - Best of 2002
BEST LOCAL DIRECTOR - Joseph Adler
And the winner is.... Once again the award goes to Adler for his range of work and the professionalism with which it is produced. From gritty naturalism in the creepy and mind-bending Boy Gets Girl to lyrical musical drama inThe Dead to the brilliant absurdism of Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby, Adler moves all over the stylistic map and handles each stop with assurance. His direction is marked by clarity, energy, and a palpable love for the actor's craft. It's no coincidence that many actors shine in his productions. Until someone else manages all this in one season, the crown remains firmly planted.
BEST LOCALLY PRODUCED DRAMA - The Play About the Baby
Who's afraid of putting on Edward Albee? Not GableStage. And this production of the playwright's mind-bending verbal labyrinth was a dizzying, enigmatic tour de force. Strong all around, from Joseph Adler's crisp staging through the tight and engrossing performances (including some nifty work from John Felix and Cynthia Caquelin). Add to the mix the excellent work of Jeff Quinn, Daniela Schwimmer, and Nat Rauch -- for sets/lighting, costumes, and sound respectively -- and what you get is hard to beat, even if it were competing in a theatrical capital.
BEST ACTRESS - Pamela Roza (Boy Gets Girl)
Roza was memorable as a tightly wound professional woman in Manhattan being stalked by a would-be suitor. Her emotional range and willingness to explore the character's ugly sides helped turn Rebecca Gilman's issue-driven potboiler into a dark, troubling character study. We've seen Roza before in other psychological dramas, such as Extremities, where she played a rape victim who turns the tables on the perpetrator, literally and emotionally trapping her tormentor; and in her disturbing performance in Medea Redux (the title tells you something), one of three plays in Bash by Neil LaBute, where she revealed a simultaneous vulnerability and hardness that made us remember why watching live performances by talented actors is a riveting experience.
BEST HOTEL - Biltmore Hotel
Before you enter this 76-year old landmark, you already know you're close to paradise... That's right, this
is not simply a hotel. This is another universe. You walk through archways and courtyards, click across
elaborate tile floors, sit against carved wood and detailed tapestries... swim in one of the world's greatest
pools, eat among brilliant pinks and purples of bougainvillea and verdant banana leaves, treated like a
member of the old raj, take high tea indoors in the fabulous lobby, with choices of tea and finger sandwiches
that embarrass Harrods... sit on your private balcony and take in the tropical landscape cleverly disguised
as a golf course. Good theater next door at Gablestage, spa in the basement...
New Times - Best of 2001
BEST LOCAL DIRECTOR - Joseph Adler
In an interview with New Times last year, GableStage artistic director Joe Adler said, "Television, and to some extent movies, is about maintaining a level of mediocrity. This is not the case with theater. It's a much bigger commitment. The audience is a participant." Adler combined his numerous years of film and TV experience with his passion and directorial savvy, turning Popcorn into a dark and riveting satire about the movie industry, among other things. Known for his emotive directorial style, Adler knows how to get the best out of his actors. By pairing Claire Tyler and Paul Tei, he created just the right balance of innocence and evil. Adler consistently shows a keen awareness of the context of contemporary theater. He never makes theatergoers slaves to the stage. And he often uses film, video, music, and sound to propel the play into the imagination of the audience. In Popcorn Adler reminded audiences that live theater can offer excitement that television and film can't, without record, play, and rewind.
New Times - Best of 2000
BEST THEATRE FOR DRAMA
GableStage, The Biltmore Hotel
The newly created GableStage arrived with a bang on the staid landscape of South Florida theatre last season.
To be precise the company started off with a muscular production of David Hare's Skylight, only to
follow it up with the most compelling combination of programs and performances in the region. Ranging from the
familiar (Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men) to the spanking new (Patrick Marber's
Closer, in its first production outside New York), artistic director Joseph Adler's choices of material,
production standards, and the crackerjack performances he gets out of his actors are consistently engaging and
becoming more exciting all the time.
BEST SOLO SHOW
Judith Delgado as Diana Vreeland
In a season fraught with top drawer solo performances, Judith Delgado towered over all. Playing fashion diva
Diana Vreeland, the actress delivered a performance that lived up to Vreeland's motto: "Give 'em what they
didn't know they wanted." Delgado, a genius at transforming herself, turned the tastemaker and
long-time Vogue editor into something of her own (and director Joseph Adler's) making. It was a
performance that reached out and grabbed us by our lapels.
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