Theater in South Florida tends to appear in bursts, with a spray of shows often opening on the same weekend. In the scuffle, many shows tend to get overlooked. In some instances, that’s not so bad a consequence, but in the case of No Exit, now entering its final week…

Master Harold … and the boys: Athol Fugard’s modern classic has to do with the stormy relationship between a white teen and two black family workers in South Africa circa 1950. The fine GableStage production features assured, understated direction from Joseph Adler, which is well supported by some excellent, evocative…

Watching Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire The Gulf of Westchester at Florida Stage is something akin to witnessing a hotshot skier hurtling down an icy slope. Laufer’s topical tale of suburbanites caught up in divisive political debate over the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity, it’s…

A Picasso: Picture this: Bearlike Pablo Picasso sits in a dark stone cellar amid stacks of paintings, staring intently at his beautiful female model, who happens to be a Nazi official. As the woman begins to disrobe, Picasso sketches furiously, and despite the dank, dark surroundings, you can feel the…

If you’re looking for a quick trip to a faraway place, Joseph Adler and GableStage can arrange a 90-minute journey to an entirely different planet courtesy of their latest production, Master Harold … and the boys. Athol Fugard’s drama is set not only a half-century ago but in apartheid South…

There’s an adage in the writing business: “Write what you know.” Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr., known as A.R., certainly took that advice to heart. After studying playwriting at Yale in the 1950s, Gurney set out on a writing career based almost exclusively on his upper-crust family background, the clubby Northeastern…

A Picasso: Reviewed in this issue. Through May 2. Coconut Grove Playhouse, 3500 Main Hwy., Coconut Grove. 305-442-4000. Flyin’ West: Set in 1898, Flyin’ West follows three black sisters who’ve left the South and struck out on their own, settling in Nicodemus, Kansas. The hardships of freedom and independence are…

This just in: White people have a lot of secret racial prejudice. J.T. Rogers hammers home this theme in White People, now playing at the New Theatre in Coral Gables. The three-character show is more poetry than drama, a series of interlaced monologues that centers on deep-buried anger in white…

Picture this: Bearlike, charismatic Pablo Picasso (Peter Michael Goetz) sits in a dark stone cellar amid stacks of paintings, staring intently at his beautiful female model, who happens to be a Nazi official (Lucie Arnaz). As the woman begins to disrobe, Picasso sketches furiously and despite the dank, dark surroundings,…

Flyin’ West: Set in 1898, Flyin’ West follows three black sisters who’ve left the South and struck out on their own, settling in Nicodemus, Kansas. The hardships of freedom and independence are compounded by their struggle to protect themselves from white speculators trying to buy their land and splinter their…

How far will one friend go for another? In Trembling Hands, Ivonne Azurdia’s grotesque, funny crime drama now in its world premiere by the Mad Cat Theatre Company, the answer is very, very far indeed. Following up on her splendid Tin Box Boomerang, a hit for Mad Cat last season,…

A Picasso: Art and politics collide in this fictional drama set in Paris during the German occupation. The mysterious Miss Fischer is sent to interrogate the famed Pablo Picasso regarding the authenticity of three paintings left behind by their owners, who have fled the regime. April 13 through May 2…

Be thankful for small theaters. While the larger companies in South Florida cater to conventional tastes, the tiny troupes fill out the menu with an array of riskier, challenging programming. Fort Lauderdale’s Sol Theatre has made risk-taking a fundamental company rule. Tony Priddy and Robert Hooker’s cheeky crew debuted in…

Blind Date: Last year the New Theatre scored an incredible coup when it commissioned Nilo Cruz’s surprise Pulitzer winner Anna in the Tropics. This year lightning may have struck a second time as the New Theatre has delivered another masterpiece of a play. Mario Diament’s stunning, brilliant world premiere tracks…

If the traditional Broadway musical is your cup of tea, your cup runneth over with Fiddler on the Roof, now at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. The beloved, well-known classic about a tradition-bound Jewish community caught up in the turbulent changes of prerevolutionary Russia is a huge undertaking, but…

Blind Date: Last year the New Theatre scored an incredible coup when it commissioned Nilo Cruz’s surprise Pulitzer winner Anna in the Tropics. This year lightning may have struck a second time as the New Theatre has delivered another masterpiece of a play. Mario Diament’s stunning, brilliant world premiere tracks…

Blind Date: Last year the New Theatre scored an incredible coup when it commissioned Nilo Cruz’s surprise Pulitzer winner Anna in the Tropics. This year lightning may have struck a second time as the New Theatre has delivered another masterpiece of a play. Mario Diament’s stunning, brilliant world premiere tracks…

The Caldwell Theatre’s new show, Iago, certainly offers the promise of blood-pumping drama. James McLure’s play is set backstage during a mid-twentieth-century production of Shakespeare’s Othello and takes its inspiration from the tempestuous real-life relationship between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, and Leigh’s adulterous affair with the young Peter Finch…

Blind Date: Reviewed in this issue. Through April 4. New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St., Coral Gables. 305-443-5909. Boston Marriage: Reviewed in this issue. Through March 20. Trap Door Theatre at the Black Box Theatre, Miami Dade College North Campus, Building #5, 11380 NW 27th Ave. 305-237-1438. The Bris, the Bar-Mitzvah,…

Gay marriage is at the top of the news these days, so the Trap Door Theatre’s decision to produce David Mamet’s bitter comedy Boston Marriage could not be more timely. Mamet’s tale is a faux-Victorian intrigue about two nineteenth-century lesbians whose live-in relationship is considered by society to be platonic…

Sometimes life really does imitate art. In a parallel universe, the New Theatre’s artistic director, Rafael de Acha, could be a world-famous Hollywood studio chief, renowned for his skill at ferreting out new works of genius. In our own less-judicious universe, de Acha isn’t well-known outside of South Florida. But…

Blind Date: The New Theatre presents another world premiere with Mario Diament’s Blind Date. Diament is the Miami-based, Argentine-born author of The Book of Ruth and Smithereens. As the title suggests, the play explores encounters between strangers, sighted and blind. Directed by Rafael de Acha. March 6 through April 4…