Two years before Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were born, the city of Madrid spawned Lope de Vega, one of the most prolific dramatists in theater history. Vega penned 1,800 plays and 3,000 sonnets, and sure, they weren’t all gems. (It’s hard to imagine anyone writing so many plays without…
Recently, the White House took historic first steps to end travel restrictions to Cuba. But until an epic Capitol Hill battle, which will likely end in blood, tears, and airline tickets, lifts the travel ban entirely, you’ll have to settle for swaying your hips to the conga drumbeat at the…
It was a very strange thing when Louis CK scored a family sitcom on HBO called Lucky Louie. Why? Well, here was a guy who’d made his name telling the dirtiest, most depraved jokes about his wife and two little daughters — crotch smell, toddler masturbation, borderline coprophilia — and…
After Jerome Allen “Jerry” Seinfeld finally wrapped his nine-season stint as the crank-ass king of network TV, he got married, gained some weight, bred a couple of rug rats, and stopped pretending to be a nice guy. Basically, the Brooklyn-bred comic let loose. He was rich, powerful, and famous enough…
Ramón del Valle-Inclán was a scraggly-bearded, one-armed, bohemian playwright from Spain, who penned sordid tales that were a slap in the face to bourgeois sentimentality. This weekend, Miami’s International Hispanic Theatre Festival presents his play, Divinas Palabras. It’s about a preyed-upon midget whose mother forces him to travel from carnival…
This week in theater: Tap Dogs and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival
International Hispanic Theatre Festival and Tap Dogs take Miami
City Theatre’s 2010 Summer Shorts festival picks lame plays
This week in theater: Offstage violence and sweaty predators
Unreasonable Doubt in the Gables needs work
David Mamet’s Oleanna, when treated with even half of the passion and smarts evident in Max Pearl’s blistering Pinecrest Rep production, is an exhilarating play. It’s chock full of big ideas that hurtle across the stage, fueled by the audience’s contempt — nay, hatred — of a student named Carol,…
This week in theater: A schizo romp through a schizo world in Distracted
This week in theater: Two quarreling Jews and a deadly showerhead
Marco Ramirez’s pulpy supernatural thriller Broadsword gets a glam workover at the Arsht Center
GableStage and the New Theatre on plucking your eyes out
The “straw man” fallacy is pernicious, and it goes something like this: You say, for example, that drug laws ought to be relaxed. I accuse you of promoting the intoxication of children. “But that’s not what I’ve said!” you respond, and indeed it’s not — but I’d rather argue against…
The Bartered Bride By Bedrich Smetana. April 9 and 10. New World School of the Arts, College Opera Theatre, Gusman Center, 174 E. Flagler St., Miami; 305-374-2444; gusmancenter.org You probably haven’t seen The Bartered Bride before, and you probably shouldn’t let this opportunity slip by. Bedrich Smetana is an overlooked…
Alliance Theatre Lab’s Orphans gets loving treatment
SoBe Arts kills Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Horses, sexual angst, and first-rate acting in New Theatre’s thrilling Equus
Sarah Kane’s Blasted at GableStage explores how power corrupts
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Through March 14. By Gabriel García Márquez; adapted by Nilo Cruz. The Playground Theatre, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores; 305-751-9556, theplaygroundtheatre.com Nilo Cruz does Gabriel García Márquez! The Cuban-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright adapted Márquez’s short story for a kids’ production at the…
