Serious theater? In Broward County? Don’t chuckle. You’ve been asleep if you haven’t noticed some decided cultural shifts in what used to be the Land of Laughs and Musicals. Broward stage companies have long leaned toward the sweet and silly when programming their seasons, usually top-heavy with musical reviews and…
This is a busy time of the year, so let’s get to the point of this review fast. If you want to see a classic example of sitcom at its silliest, get over to Ray Cooney’s Caught in the Net at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. No, that’s not a sneer;…
In the curious, peculiar little world of theater, there has always been and always will be an ongoing debate between the aficionados of art and those of entertainment. Aesthetes tend to roll their eyes at anything corny, sweet, or obvious, while fun-loving fans head for the door at the first…
Some movies you see because you want to. Others you see because you have to. For anyone who is interested in film noir, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1955) is one of the latter. Just as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) is credited with starting the genre in the…
Stop the presses! I must report that I have just seen a film that could top my personal list of the worst movies of all time. The new contender is La Cienaga (The Swamp), a recent release from Argentina that is so godawful it makes Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from…
Is the glass half empty or half full? Thoughtful theatergoers may rue what may be missing on the South Florida stage scene — classical productions, experimental theatricality, multimedia — but none can deny the area’s strengths, chief among them plenty of entertaining, vigorously produced musical offerings. Any number of musicals…
If high drama is your cup of tea, you should find what you’re looking for at theater companies all over South Florida. Just don’t look on the playbill. The offstage news from several local theaters is as full of dire foreboding, narrow escapes, and last-minute miracles as The Perils of…
Think of modern Broadway comedies and Neil Simon immediately springs to mind. The prolific and popular playwright spans four decades of American theater with no fewer than 28 plays and musicals produced on Broadway. And at age 74, he shows no signs of letting up; his Forty Five Seconds from…
In the theater world as in society, a happy few are much more fortunate than the rest. Consider the prosperous and respected Florida Stage. Now entering its fifteenth season, the Stage is blessed with a lovely facility (a 250-seat thrust theater with excellent sightlines), critical acclaim (22 Carbonell nominations for…
Revolutionary times have always been tempting backdrops for film stories. Some are fictional epics set against a historical backdrop (Dr. Zhivago, The Year of Living Dangerously). In these there’s plenty of personal drama, love, and thrills, with the historical setting essentially background to the fictional derring-do. An alternative approach is…
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl: the classic model for romantic comedy and drama. According to Rebecca Gilman, it’s also the prescription for obsessive stalking. Gilman, an up-and-coming playwright with a penchant for issue-oriented suspense, has served up a hyperrealistic portrait of one woman’s nightmare in the…
Not long ago you could look and look and look for revivals, and the screen would remain blank. No more. Apocalypse Now Redux pulled in large crowds, and The Wide Blue Road also did well. Re-releases of classics from Fellini, Godard, and Melville are planned for the next couple of…
In more than a few ways, producing live theater is akin to staging a military campaign, involving rapidly changing logistical considerations of time and personnel and never enough money. Generals must marshal their limited resources, placing assets where they will be the most effective. That also is the way it…
What is pornography? If someone can give me a workable definition, I’d have a better handle on Baise-Moi (Rape Me), a new French film about two women on the run that contains extreme violence and hard-core sex. Apparently the French government was shocked by this film and banned it as…
Where is the epicenter of live theater in South Florida? There are several contenders, but none can top Coral Gables, with five professional companies in residence. If you toss in the Coconut Grove Playhouse, just down the road, and City Stage, which books the University of Miami theater in the…
One of the toughest decisions in my job is choosing which show to cover. Given the amount of theatrical activity in South Florida, there just is not enough room to review every show. This week, though, the choice was easy: I was going to New York. My long-time friend and…
Ah, the backstage show-biz story. A classic movie genre. Think Bullets over Broadway, think Shakespeare in Love, think The Producers. Seen one, seen ’em all, you say? Consider this real-life scenario: A musical director from India plans to produce an Italian opera in Italy. He asks a Chinese director to…
Amid warehouses and train tracks on NE Flagler in Fort Lauderdale, the new Sol Theatre Project’s neon logo lights up the dark night like a cheery inn. The interior space is disarming. With a bookcase crammed with scripts, a large-mouthed bass mounted over a window, mismatched couches, and stuffed chairs,…
I don’t know what motivated Rafael de Acha and his New Theatre to produce Nilo Cruz’s new play Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams. Maybe it was the topicality and locality of a South Florida production of a play about Cuban Americans searching for their roots. Cruz himself has been…
Let’s see — which movie sports the most clichés? Outside of the Naked Gun-style spoofs, The Monkey’s Mask, a new murder-mystery from Australia, is a serious contender for that dubious honor. The Monkey’s Mask is essentially a run-of-the-mill film noir whodunit with a central twist: The wisecracking, lonely gumshoe hero…
Since the here and now has been so visceral these last days, many South Floridians may have spent little time looking ahead. But eventually they should, when it comes to theater. The upcoming season looks promising; both established companies and upstarts have ambitious plans. As has been the case for…
Pity the poor classic-film lover. All of the great films have been seen, over and over. The only thrill left is to imagine what it might be like to see Citizen Kane or The Seven Samurai or Children of Paradise for the first time. If that’s your wish, you’re in…
