Depressed playwright Sarah Kane killed herself in 1999, and 4.48 Psychosis was her last work. It sounds like a last work, too: full of desperate and unhappy self-indulgence, a sense of options exhausted and possibilities closed. Think of the sound of Elvis Presley’s booming, bloated voice on 1977’s Moody Blue,…
Dialectics being the dry things they are, plays set up around meetings-of-minds tend toward the masturbatory and dull. The Mission isn’t either, because of an almost Murder She Wrote-like penchant for pulpy plot twists and sudden shocking revelations. Awful as that sounds, and awkwardly as it’s executed (the most shocking…
Dear God, what can be said about Forbidden Broadway? Even the most overwhelmingly devoted theatergoers who see the thing can’t think of much to say on the ride home. Mostly, the postshow wrapup goes something like this: “Hey! Remember when they sang ‘Liza One Note’? That was funny, wasn’t it?”…
It’s Carbonell time again. The auditorium at the Broward Center has been booked for months, the menu for the sponsors’ gala has long been planned and vetted, and South Florida’s theaterfolk have already decided what to wear. As I write, the definitive list of winners and losers is sitting in…
Plenty of bad things have their partisans. Vegemite, for example. Leonardo DiCaprio, for another. Industrial pork farming. Ralph Reed. American Idol. And so it goes with The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, a wonderful play by Tennessee Williams being brutally murdered by Jim Tommaney and the giddy psychopaths at…
I take great umbrage!” the feisty voice of Jiminy Glick says during a recent phone interview with Martin Short from his home in Los Angeles. Reflecting on such absurdities, which frequently come out of his characters’ mouths, Short adds, “I’ll think, I’ve never used that expression in my life…. I…
Not far from Joe Adler’s GableStage, convicted sex offenders live under a bridge because they’re not allowed to live anywhere else. Many of us in the surrounding area are happy about that; we think the bridge is a perfectly good place for those people, if we really must share terra…
Many of us are misery junkies, pure and simple. We adore the early records of Elvis Costello and think Cormac McCarthy is entirely too cheerful. We distrust happy endings on principle, for we know most happy endings are wholly inappropriate. Life, after all, contains only one real ending, and it…
Spamalot: Strictly speaking, Spam is a cooked-meat product containing bits of many long-dead animals — pigs, chickens, turkeys, clumsy factory workers — jammed together and canned for the gastronomic pleasure of Hawaiians and normal people alike. Spamalot is not a dissimilar product. It’s a Tony Award-winning retelling of Monty Python…
Good things sneak up on you in Miami. Some days you’ll discover that a scurvy-looking takeout window at the wrong end of the Design District is selling the best damn Cuban sandwich you’ve ever eaten. Some days you’ll discover that the drug-addled geek who drew your portrait for a buck…
The Sorrows of Young Werther: Of the many reasons this adaptation of Goethe’s play succeeds, the director’s savvy use of the small venue ranks highest. Jesús Quintero and his upstart troupe recognize that close quarters allow for eye contact with the audience and for the use of nuances that would…
Kenny Carnes’s Last Words wouldn’t play well in the rest of the theatergoing world. A one-man show examining the human side of the death penalty, it simply wouldn’t make sense. Most countries with happening theater scenes don’t kill their prisoners. This one does, though: More than 1,000 people have been…
The Sorrows of Young Werther: Of the many reasons this adaptation of Goethe’s play succeeds, the director’s savvy use of the small venue ranks highest. Jesús Quintero and his upstart troupe recognize that close quarters allow for eye contact with the audience and for the use of nuances that would…
Levee James begins as a fond family reminiscence, with a woman visiting her brother-in-law and his children on a cotton farm in rural Georgia. This, the first of four scenes, should be when playwright S.M. Shephard-Massat gets his exposition out of the way: who Levee James is, what has brought…
Altar Boyz: The hit off-Broadway musical about a fictional Catholic boy band brims with delightful sacrilege. The show is set up like a concert, with songs and between-song banter, and is moving in the flashy, exuberant manner of feel-good musical theater. It is the Boyz’ mission to save us all…
New Times spoke on the phone last week with the dusky-voiced Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, who will be portraying Floria Tosca through the majority of Florida Grand Opera’s upcoming production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. One of the most psychologically dramatic operas — its plot bursts with torture, murder, attempted rape, and suicide…
The men and women who nominate things for Tony Awards are probably very smart and very, very cultured. These people know why all Playbills look alike. Perhaps they’ve noshed on lobster poached in vanilla cognac at Le Cirque, or truffle risotto at Masa. Maybe they’ve figured out why Bernadette Peters…
Love Is Good: An Evening with Christine Andreas: If it weren’t for the marketeers who fill store aisles with red hearts, we might forget the buy-chocolate-for-the-person-you-sleep-with holiday is approaching! Before cynicism has taken all the fun out of a fancy dinner and a dozen roses, remember that romance and beauty…
Altar Boyz is a hit off-Broadway musical about a fictional Catholic boy band, and it is among the most sacrilegious things I’ve ever seen. To me the sacrilege was both obvious and delightful, but some audience members seemed to feel differently. Our divergent opinions might have had something to do…
In a press release, New Theatre has this to say about its new production, Fill Our Mouths: “Gay or straight? Hearing or deaf? Set in Paris, a heterosexual woman’s sexually adventuresome affair with a hard-of-hearing lesbian weaves a sensual fabric of communication and self-realization. As the relationship grows between them,…
Jeffrey Ross is famous for, among other things, posing this question to Courtney Love and a viewing audience of millions in 2005: “How is it possible that Courtney Love looks worse than Kurt Cobain?” Ralphie May is famous for, among other things, making fun of retarded people’s inability to pronounce…
In a few months New Times will roll out its annual “Best Of” issue. Nestled among Best Tattoo Artist, Best Streetside Falafel Stand, and Best Club in Which to Meet a Midget Mutant Amputee Leather Nun, you’ll find theatrical best-ofs: best show, actor, actress, director, and so forth. But there…
