Oh, how deceiving first appearances can be. At the start of Tracy Letts’s Bug, now in its Florida premiere at Gablestage, a leggy redhead stands in the doorway of a battered motel room, sipping some wine and swaying gently to lively Colombian music playing somewhere off in the night. It’s…

It’s pretty near impossible not to be impressed with the Actors’ Playhouse’s gangbuster production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (yes, the corporate moniker is part of the official title). This should come as no surprise; the Coral Gables troupe has become the undisputed king of musical theater in South…

The official motto of the Coconut Grove Playhouse is “Broadway by the Bay,” but its unofficial one should be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Playhouse has featured a string of successful if skimpy “biomusicals” about great American songwriters and singing stars — Al Jolson, Al Dubin, Alberta…

If South Florida theaters were planets, Miami’s Mad Cat would be off in a separate galaxy. The gritty, award-winning ensemble works out of a small performance space on lackluster Biscayne Boulevard, putting up shows that are unique to this region. They’re mostly about ordinary South Floridians with basic problems of…

Comedy tends to bubble up from deep anxiety or perhaps even worse. “The secret source of humor,” Mark Twain once remarked, “is not joy but sorrow.” Hence, Miklat, Joshua Ford’s 2002 comedy about… well, personal angst, moral confusion, poison gas attacks, and war in the Mideast. Despite — or perhaps…

There have been plenty of plays and films about boxing, but the intense mano-a-mano conflict of the sport makes it an enduring subject for drama. In the tradition of Golden Boy and Rocky comes the New Theatre’s latest project, Barrio Hollywood, a world premiere with considerable potential: it’s not only…

There are several good reasons why South Florida playgoers may want to trek out to Plantation to take in Amadeus, now playing at the Mosaic Theatre. First and foremost is Peter Shaffer’s grand potboiler of a script about the life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Because of its formidable…

If there’s an award for great theatrical moments, this year’s prize will undoubtedly go to Nilo Cruz and his Anna in the Tropics, now playing at the Coconut Grove Playhouse: In the play’s final image, a half-crazed Cuban girl dressed in a Russian costume staggers toward a huge palm tree…

Theater has long been praised for holding “the mirror up to nature” to reveal reality through the artifice of performance. Yet, remarkably, our post 9/11 reality — filled with threat, fear, war, blundering, and duplicity — took quite a while to filter into new plays. Now, a somber, deeply pessimistic…

With hurricane season most decidedly upon us, questions of probability and fate are on the minds of many. How is it that some people suffer when disaster strikes while others walk away unscathed? Is survival a matter of chance, will, or preordination? Such thoughts are at the fore of Michael…

Americans can’t seem to agree on much these days, but all must allow that these are tense, restless times. War, terrorism, a divided electorate, and a widespread debate about the nation’s purpose are everyday subjects on television, in newspapers, and at the local java joint, yet few contemporary plays and…

“Hell is other people,” Jean Paul Sartre once opined. To Christopher Durang, hell is psycho roommates screwing up your seaside holiday. That’s the freakish situation in Betty’s Summer Vacation, Durang’s comedy of menace that is receiving a first-rate staging from Miami’s Mad Cat Theatre Company. Durang’s thin script has been…

Whew! Summer is here with a vengeance, a fierce season that is, in some ways, a little like winter up north. Most everyone starts spending more time indoors and plotting how to minimize the time spent walking in full sunlight between car and destination, while the spare room or the…

In the restaurant business, one classic mistake is to pay more attention to the presentation of the meal than the cooking itself. Beautiful décor and lighting and expert service always enhance a dining experience, but they can’t compensate for an ill-prepared entrée. The same truth applies to show business. Take,…

Let’s begin with the bottom line: By any measure, The Shakespeare Project, the New Theatre’s summer repertory of King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is an undeniable success. These masterworks, played by a plucky acting ensemble of thirteen, are delivered in visually striking stagings by artistic director Rafael de…

Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, now in its Florida premiere at the Caldwell Theatre, is nothing if not ambitious. Its subjects are wide-ranging — among them, major-league baseball, gay identity, prejudice, and tolerance — and so are its genres. The play wants to be both a pressure-cooker drama and a…

Summer Shorts: City Theatre’s annual festival of short plays, a highlight of the South Florida stage scene, is back with mini comedies and dramas in all styles and sizes. Twenty playlets from one to twenty minutes long are presented in two separate programs, which can be taken in on separate…

All hail irrationality! And Wayne Gretzky too (hold on a minute — we’ll get to that). Irrationality is the only explanation of why the Atlantis Playhouse’s Gary Waldman decided against all logic to present The Life, a stark, gritty musical about pimps and prostitutes that’s a 180-degree change from the…

The Gulf of Westchester: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire about the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity it’s breathtaking. Laufer doesn’t get the gold at the finish line — she cartwheels out of control well before that — but her reckless bravado makes for the kind…

Has it already been a year since Summer Shorts was last in town? This festival of short plays (twenty minutes max) has become a nationally recognized event in its nine-year history and something of a must-see/must-be-seen-there social event for South Florida cognoscenti. Shorts has its own cheerily subversive personality; this…

The Gulf of Westchester: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire about the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity it’s breathtaking. Laufer doesn’t get the gold at the finish line — she cartwheels out of control well before that — but her reckless bravado makes for the kind…

There are few sure things in theater, as in life, but a sex comedy from funnyman Steve Martin performed by a first-rate cast should be one of those. Sad to say, The Underpants, now in production at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables, is something of a disappointment. Martin’s adaptation…