If I ever question the validity of devoting so much time to theater criticism in a town like this, there’s no stronger reassurance than the occasional, sudden privilege of attending a momentous event or meeting a luminary from the world of the stage. Last week I enjoyed the honor of…
When Gary Sinise was playing Tom Joad in the acclaimed Broadway version of The Grapes of Wrath, he was fortunate enough to receive a visit from the author’s widow. After Elaine Steinbeck expressed her approval of Sinise’s interpretation of her late husband’s work, the actor mentioned it seemed high time…
In an effort to market the newest commandment — Thou Shalt Have Family Values — both major political parties have made attempts to define just what a family is. According to their guidelines, several groups didn’t cut the mustard. Forget gay couples and straight married ones without children. And forget…
Night and the City is a movie about bruisers and losers. Robert De Niro plays Harry Fabian, a perennially hopeful ambulance-chasing attorney living in New York City’s SoHo district, who decides — later in life and for no apparent reason — to realize dreams of hitting the big time. What…
Long before film critic Michael Medved became the insipid defender of family values and de facto darling of the Quayle campaign he is today, he had something a critic desperately needs or he’s dead in the water, a quirky sense of humor. Medved, with the help of his brother Harry,…
Though I was provided with excellent seats for “Give ‘Em Hell Harry!”, and though artistic director Arnold Mittelman was gracious enough to invite me to his theater balcony supper afterward, I must confess that I walked out of the play shortly after intermission. Now, as a critic, one might argue,…
Never having been particularly enamored of fly fishing, male bonding, or Presbyterianism, I did not read Norman Maclean’s autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, until very recently — and only then to coincide with the film version directed by Robert Redford and at the prodding of some friends who…
‘Tis the season to face the theater of 1992-93, so a broad review of last year’s high and low points seems to be in order, as well as a peek into which shows ahead merit breaking into the piggy bank. And since everyone in this place remains too polite to…
To enter Ridley’s Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise and its phantasmagoric fifteenth-century world, you will need to check your piddling prerequisites at the door. Historical scholarship, stylistic authenticity, narrative cohesion — attributes the dull, unsophisticated mind might expect in a portrait of Christopher Columbus and his times — are deemed…
I had the privilege of attending two Bob Marley concerts in my life. Both were in the Seventies and in England, an island not as far removed from Marley’s own, Jamaica, as their different climates and race denominations would indicate. The English worshiped Marley’s outsized personality and were equally captivated…
Admittedly, it’s helpful of the Miami Herald to separate theater listings into “Professional/Equity,” “Professional Non/Equity,” “Community,” “Dinner Theater,” and “In Spanish” (as if Spanish is a show-business category), but such divisions mean nothing unless they are defined. As South Florida gains a more vital, arts-oriented population and more refugees from…
“Ingmar Bergman is, in my most carefully considered opinion, the greatest filmmaker the world has seen so far.” (The italics are mine.) Those words were written by critic John Simon in 1972 in what remains the definitive book in English about the Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman Directs. But twenty years…
Pulitzer or no Pulitzer, David Mamet’s 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross is not a masterpiece. Its salient metaphor, the ritualistic hard selling of worthless marshlands with quasi-poetic names such as Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms, is bludgeon-heavy in the extreme, this despite the recessionary economy of the Bush years…
Every molecule of my hyper-educated mind, every atom of refined artistic taste yearns to dismiss the old-fashioned, cornball 1950 John Patrick comedy, The Curious Savage, now transported through that ever-churning South Florida time machine to the stage of the Caldwell Theatre. This is not new, not moving, not powerful, and…
Mbongeni Ngema’s agitprop musical Sarafina! enthralled American audiences during its long Broadway run: The stark contrast between the infectious mbaqanga rhythms straight out of South Africa’s embattled black townships and the cruelties of apartheid made it a political placard you could tap yourfoot to. The movie version is admirable but…
With one Eighties-chic, progressively atmospheric TV series on his resume (Miami Vice), another (Crime Story) applying the music-video aesthetic to the Sixties, a feature film about a techno-burglar with a heart of gold (Thief), and another (Manhunter) introducing the cannibalistic serial killer, few in their right minds would offer Michael…
Of all the techniques used to teach acting, Sanford Meisner developed one of the most famous, practical, and, curiously enough, the simplest. Meisner and his Neighborhood Playhouse cohorts (count David Mamet among their graduates) believed that the key to the craft was found simply in the art of listening and…
The under-the-table political ethic of LBJ, Richard Nixon, and Watergate, the ascent of the Gipper in 1980 preaching the gospel of “morning in America,” the still unresolved legacy of Iran-contra, Bush and “read my lips,” right up to the current presidential campaign, with the models of Bush, Bill Clinton, and…
Despite the normally vapid state of TV, remote-control fast-forwarding does occasionally result in the unearthing of something worth staring at. Case in point: One night while zapping through the dreck I came across an interview, conducted by Dick Cavett, of the cerebrally luminous author/philosopher Gore Vidal. America’s internal conflicts, postulated…
Woody Allen has spent the past fifteen years since Annie Hall prolifically staking a claim for cinematic greatness. Hardly a year has gone by without one or two films from the myopic, diminutive writer/director/performer, who wants as much to be a great artist as Richard Nixon wants to be a…
With Mel Brooks on the skids, Eddie Murphy retooling as Mr. Romantic, and Woody Allen all tied up in divorce court, somebody in the movies had to pick up the slack…yukwise. Enter Andrew Bergman, the fellow New York Magazine dubbed “The Unknown King of Comedy” back in 1985. Unknown no…
First, an anecdote, since as most populations outside America know, a sense of humor can help to ease one’s pain. The story concerns nineteenth-century playwright Sir Charles Sedley, author of the comedy Bellamira. During the very first performance of the play, the roof of the theater caved in. Luckily, few…
