This year, our fall Arts & Eats Guide lists all that's timeless and fresh in Miami, from visual art to delicious food. Theater, dance, music, and drinks all make a much-needed appearance throughout the season as well. Pick up one of our printed guides Thursday, October 2, where you'll find profiles, interviews, and detailed event calendars to guide you through the upcoming cultural season.
More than six decades after it premiered, I Love Lucy remains the most popular program in television history.
Lucy, the scatter-brained redhead with stage ambitions; her Cuban bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo; and squabbling landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz kept America in stitches during the Eisenhower era and are still watched in syndication in more than a dozen languages across the globe.
See also: New Bass Museum Curator of Exhibitions Reflects on Miami's Artistic Boom
Now South Florida fans of America's favorite funnywoman can travel back in time to catch Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel live onstage and in color when the Adrienne Arsht Center's Broadway in Miami 2014-15 season delivers a lineup of smashing musicals beginning with I Love Lucy Live on Stage, running through October 5.
The new production is set in 1952, where you'll find yourself a member of the audience awaiting the filming of two hilarious episodes of I Love Lucy at the Desilu Playhouse soundstage. Soon a charming host appears to fill you in on the new technology called television.
Then it's time to be thrilled by the escapades of the kooky redhead in the Ricardos' New York apartment before swaying to the Cuban tunes of the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra at the Tropicana nightclub. Adding to the nostalgia are the Crystaltone Singers, who deliver live advertising jingles of show sponsors like Brylcreem in catchy, finger-snapping harmonies.
Prepare for starry-eyed enchantment this Halloween when Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella brings romance to the Magic City October 28 through November 2. The Tony Award-winning musical promises to cast a spell on audiences with its contemporary version of the classic fairy tale featuring an amazing orchestra performing some of the celebrated writing duo's most beloved songs, including "In My Own Little Corner," "Impossible/It's Possible," and "Ten Minutes Ago." So, ladies, slip on those glass slippers, release your inner princess, and get ready for the masked ball!
December 2 through 14, a riotous pair of Mormon missionaries will brand a weird brew of blasphemy and Heaven on the 305 when The Book of Mormon sizzles on the Arsht stage. The production, co-created by South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q's Robert Lopez, follows a ditzy duo of Latter-day Saints evangelists to a remote Ugandan village where they are confronted by a one-eyed, genocidal warlord and a village decimated by AIDS. The sensational religious satire that bagged nine Tony Awards in 2011, including Best Musical, achieves somewhat of a miracle by combining gloomy elements with salty language and sunny melodies to test your faith.
Prepare to embrace the New Year when Disney's eye-popping Beauty and the Beast, based on the Oscar-winning animated film, delivers a tale as old as time December 30 through January 4. The lavish production, which has melted the hearts of more than 35 million people worldwide, boasts dazzling numbers, unforgettable characters, spectacular sets, and costumes in the classic story of Belle, a young woman in a provincial town, and the Beast, who is really a young prince trapped in a spell cast by an enchantress. This holiday season, discover if the Beast can learn to love and be loved. If he surrenders to Belle's tender hugs, the curse will break and he'll transform into his former self.
Stop the presses! Newsies, the smash hit from Disney and winner of the 2012 Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Choreography, will have you cheering for the underdog when it arrives February 3 through 8. Filled with pulse-pounding numbers and high-flying dance routines, the lively production based on true events, weaves the story of a band of news delivery boys who become unlikely heroes when they defy the Big Apple's most powerful men in a riveting fight for what's right despite harrowing odds.
Way before Dorothy parachuted into Oz, two girls, the emerald-skinned Elphaba and the beautiful Glinda, met and became unlikely chums. But eventually the BFFs became zealous rivals, morphing into the despicable Wicked Witch of the West and the beloved Glinda the Good. The iconic witches of Oz are turbo-charging their broomsticks for sunny Miami when the Tony-winning Broadway phenomenon Wicked swoops into town March 11 through 29 to conjure a merry Munchkinland on the shores of Biscayne Bay.
Gangsters and nuns usher in spring at the Arsht when Sister Act, the hysterical musical comedy based on the '80s Whoopi Goldberg movie of the same name, will leave your toes tapping in divine rhythm April 14 through 19. The production unveils the story of Deloris Van Cartier, a wannabe diva whose life is upended when she witnesses a crime and the cops hide her in a convent. Meanwhile, under the disbelieving eye of Mother Superior, Deloris helps her fellow sisters hone their singing pipes after rediscovering her own voice in this devilishly clever tribute to the healing nature of friendship.
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