Verbal and pictorial hosannas to the strawberry have been rolling in for eons. In 1795 gentleman farmer, founding father, and future two-dollar-bill poster boy Thomas Jefferson, noted for raising strawberries on his Virginia plantation, wrote to his chum James Monroe that, in Jefferson’s not-so-humble opinion, the plant was one of…
Theater comes in all shapes and sizes, from loud, lavish, traditional musicals to small-cast, single-set dramas. The most intimate of all, the solo performance, offers a chance for direct audience/actor connection and an opportunity to take on material that might be too risky for a larger venture. Two such shows…
“Pray for us.” So ends a note Judd Apatow sent out last week to television critics who have been supportive of his series Undeclared, among the few half-hour comedies to debut last fall with any modicum of acclaim and expectation. Set at a northern California university and populated by awkward…
After a long absence from American screens, British stage director Richard Eyre, best known for his agreeably nasty The Ploughman’s Lunch in 1982, makes his return with an alternately depressing and uplifting drama about Dame Iris Murdoch’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease and the heroic efforts of her husband, John Bayley,…
To call a movie the most accessible Dogme 95 film ever made is not merely damning with faint praise. It also threatens to alienate the two segments of the population that might consider going to see such a film in the first place: fans of the back-to-basics, no-frills-of-any-kind Danish filmmaking…
Maybe this won’t seem like such a big deal to you, since you don’t watch The Education of Max Bickford–which is on CBS Sunday nights. Or maybe you’re one of the 9 million who do, in which case, well, sorry about that. But stay tuned nonetheless, because this small tale…
From the first moments of Red Herring, Florida Stage’s sly new comedy, you know something’s up: A billboard advertising kippers reads: “Put a Fish in Your Pocket.” Characters talk intensely into phones that have no cords. In this wacky Fifties of playwright Michael Hollinger’s imagination, what seems normal and straight-faced…
Damien B. is a nonprofit arts center run by the Boisseau family from France. One of its goals is to bridge the gap between artists from Miami and Europe, offering them a place to work and show art. The three-story building has eight studios, a showroom, and a big outdoor…
So when was the last time we heard from Olivia Newton-John? Can anybody say “comeback time”? Don’t get too excited, now. Seriously, why is it that John Travolta gets to have resurrection after resurrection, forgiven for endless sins, yet no one seems all that enthusiastic about his former female costar?…
Miami is a notoriously tough town for jazz joints. For that matter, most types of musical venues encounter loads of trouble trying to survive here. Through the years jazz clubs have opened with much fanfare and closed with barely a whimper, leaving many a jazzhead in the proverbial lurch. Still…
Bamboo, spider mums, birds of paradise, and carnations of all hues fill the room. Seated among this motley profusion of stalks and stems, store-bought bouquets, and fresh yard clippings are seventeen women, most age 50 or older, members of Ikebana International, Miami chapter 131. Their work tables overflow with bushy…
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, “going down the toilet”: Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers…
Heaven and Hell have long been subjects for human speculation, but when it comes to fiction, let’s face it: Perfection isn’t very interesting, and Hell wins hands down. Writers love going to Hell; it’s dramatic, dangerous, and sometimes funny. Witness the production at Fort Lauderdale’s Sol Theatre of Hell on…
If they teach the work of Todd Solondz someday, assuming he’s not already in the curriculum somewhere, the lectures are bound to be rather short. To grasp the material without actually attending, just bone up on a little bargain-basement Freud, a whiff of primal therapy, and a sprinkle of Jerry…
Miguel Piñero was poet, playwright, and actor — and thief, liar, and junkie. If everyone has within them a mix of the beautiful and the ugly, few of us have either to the extremes Piñero did. He was in Sing Sing by his early twenties, the iconic leader of New…
To put a curse on someone, insult them, or complain up a storm, there’s no better language than Yiddish. The 1000-year-old tongue, perpetually in danger of dying, boasts colorful expressions such as “six feet under baking bagels,” which means a person is in an untenable situation, or “don’t knock me…
Perhaps the most compelling question of our time has nothing to do with terrorists, civil liberties, or the economy. What we all secretly wonder is whether teen pop divas Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are really virgins or sluts, right? The singers’ image-makers do their best to confuse us. Britney…
It’s a little-discussed but obvious fact that the movie business is not interested in women over age 40. Not only do statistics show miserable labor stats for mature actresses, but there are precious few films that target older female movie fans. This may be, as many assert, a symptom of…
Nobody can argue there’s something distinctly odd about New Orleans, Louisiana. There’s Mardi Gras, the yearly bacchanal possibly unrivaled around the world, where girls gone wild get captured on video in many mammary-revealing moments. There’s frightening foodie and short-lived sitcom star Emeril Lagasse. But New Orleans also is a city…
Exhibit A. Time: May 1927. Scene: Groundbreaking for a synagogue. Action: Two city managers silently mouth some presumably inspirational words to the assembled multitude — women and baby girls in bonnets, men and boys in white shirts with ties, a (mostly) solemn troop of Boy Scouts — after which beefy…
Talk long enough with any television exec over 55, and sooner or later he’ll get around to mentioning the La Brea Tar Pits, that enormous shimmering stinkhole in Los Angeles where the liquefied remains of some 660 species of organisms still burble. These old-timers, with skin light brown and pockets…
A positive sign in South Florida’s stage scene is the vitality of its fringe community, individual artists and tiny companies that create a range of intriguing, unique projects. But much of this flies under the radar of the major media and most theatergoers; searching out this kind of show takes…
