Like the phoenix of his name, River has risen again, exhumed for one last movie. The James Dean of Generation X, actor River Phoenix died in 1993 at age 23 from a drug overdose. Now, 20 years later, the movie he was shooting at the time of his passing, Dark…
Hate! at Miami Theater Center: Solo Show Breaks Down Bigotry
Keeping Austin weird since 1995, the Texas theatrical collective Rude Mechanicals aims to create works that express “big ideas, cheap laughs, and dizzying spectacle.” To that end, it has challenged and revised sacred cultural cows such as The Decameron, Snow White, and The Taming of the Shrew and produced works…
A couple of years ago, an interracial couple told Miami actress Christina Alexander that several churches had refused to marry them. This sparked an idea — for a one-woman show about equality told from multiple points of view, connecting the historical and emotional dots between interracial and gay marriage. The…
Virgin births aren’t just the domain of the Bible and episodes of House. They were also the extraordinary claim of a real-life, 36-year-old nun living in a New York convent in the late 1970s, and the result was far from heavenly. The baby’s body was found asphyxiated in a convent…
Other Desert Cities at Actors’ Playhouse: Ideology Trumps Family
Like many great artists, Cuban playwright Virgilio Pinera had the misfortune of creating art that was long ahead of his time and far removed from his place. Shunned by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and virtually the entire Spanish-American literary establishment, Pinera’s radical writings reflected on natural and cultural identity, not…
All New People at Arsht Center: Zach Braff’s Play Is Full of Quirky Characters
At 37, actor Zach Braff can identify with the Millennials. But as a creative type, his persona is pure Generation X: neurotic, psychically wounded, emotionally adrift, numb to the malaise of adulthood. That said, he’s not averse to wacky meet-cutes, nimble verbal patter, and puns so bad they’re good, often…
If you sat through all 242 minutes of Kenneth Branagh’s unabridged Hamlet movie, masterly as it may have been, chances are there were times when you just wished Shakespeare would get to the damn point already. In Miami wunderkind Tarell Alvin McCraney’s condensed edit of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, which he…
Like a show opening with a band’s greatest hit, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s radical edit of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins with the master’s most famous phrase of his most famous soliloquy: “To be or not to be.” And off we go, into a 90-minute, one-act version that gets right to the…
Did you think you’d seen the last revision of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? Think again. New World School of the Arts graduate Tarell Alvin McCraney, the emerging writer-director whose previous play, 2011’s The Brothers Size, was one of the best productions of that or any…
Like a show opening with a band’s greatest hit, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s radical edit of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins with the master’s most famous phrase of his most famous soliloquy: “To be or not to be.” And off we go, into a 90-minute, one-act version that gets right to the…
Cat Lady may be the first show from Mad Cat Theatre Company to showcase an actual mad cat. This pussy is positively vehement: Played by Ken Clement in a black feline costume, Oliver the cat rails against his owner, Kristina (played by the show’s creator, Kristina Wong). He’s fed up…
A third-generation Chinese-American who is eccentric, multitalented, and cute as a button, Kristina Wong straddles the line between stand-up comedian and socially conscious commentator, creating unique solo theater shows in the process. Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explored the high incidence of depression and suicide in Asian women, and…
Miami Theater: 2012’s Best Productions
It was a difficult year for theater in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre, whose sudden closure was announced this month, was the third quality company to shutter for various reasons, after the Caldwell in Boca Raton and the Promethean in Davie. Luckily, Delray’s Theatre at Arts Garage…
The minimalist musical The Last Five Years is a dead relationship’s post-mortem. Using his own failed nuptials as inspiration, composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown channeled his universal frustration into this ingenious, 15-part, one-act song cycle charting both the ascent and descent of his relationship with his wife — at…
Happy at New Theatre: How Content Are We, Really?
There’s nothing like a sullen, perceptive 20-something artiste to puncture the veil of contentment for the average American husband and father. At least that’s the point of view proffered by Happy, a “rolling world-premiere” play by Idaho drama professor Robert Caisley. The main character, Alfred, has been married for 14…
The thrill of first love, the stability of marriage, and the pain of divorce are all present in the 14-song musical The Last Five Years — just not necessarily in that order. An off-Broadway hit in 2002 (and due for a New York revival next year with Anna Kendrick), this…
A plot description of A Christmas Carol would be superfluous for anyone who has lived in this country for at least one holiday season. Those who didn’t grow up with the Charles Dickens novella have undoubtedly encountered any one of the hundreds of adaptations the 1843 book has undergone for…
