For most of us, combining the words dance and Miami Beach in a sentence conjures up the same image: a self-esteem-shrinking battle with a member of the ubiquitous velvet-rope squad. You attempt to persuade the very important door personnel that you are attractive, thin, and/or cool enough. He or she…
Day of Reckoning: The sad and seamy underbelly of the mythical American dream is not a place of hope, though this production makes a scattered attempt at embracing quite a bit of America’s historical landscape: Ku Klux Klan rallies, slavery and its aftermath, burning crosses, forbidden love, shameless hate, interracial…
The first question many people ask about The Full Monty at the Miracle Theatre is not if the play is any good, but if the male performers actually bare their tackle. The answer is yes. This Broadway musical — showing at Actors’ Playhouse through April 9 — is based on…
And Then She Moved the Furniture: The Public Theatre presents the first production of Miami playwright Manny Diez’s chilling tale of army base domestic abuse, a fictional telling of a true story out of Fort Bragg during the summer of 2002. Four soldiers murdered their wives, and two of them…
The sad and seamy underbelly of the mythical American dream is not a place of hope. Nor is it a world that is easily described, though New Theatre’s powerful production of Day of Reckoning makes a scattered attempt at embracing quite a bit of America’s historical landscape: Ku Klux Klan…
What is it about gangsters that we find so fascinating? From the real-life Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel to the fictional Tony Soprano, mobsters have become as much a part of American culture as Apple Computer. But as rich as our nation’s history is with tales of organized crime, it’s unlikely you…
America/America: One Nation, Many Stories: The Dance Now! Ensemble is set to premiere its newest work. Drawing on the company’s trademark fusion of contemporary Western dance, ballet, modern, and contemporary jazz, the show will spotlight the nine-person troupe performing a dazzling display of athleticism and art. Set to a haunting…
The town of Plantation recently seems to have become a womb for young male violence, with the most recognized wickedness to come out of this pseudo-Fitzgerald West Egg lately being the alleged bashing of homeless men in January by baseball bat-wielding teen lads. Bad, sad news all around. But Plantation…
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men: Some things mature with age, others don’t. Almost 40 years after Ceremonies premiered off-Broadway, it still offers a powerfully rich portrayal of a disenfranchised African-American family in crisis. But it also projects such a clichéd, outdated, and stereotypical image of black men that it begs…
To most people, food sustains life. But to the culinary celebrities converging on Miami February 24 through 26 for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, food is life. And they’re set to nourish the hungry crowds with shows of sustenance. “You can call me a lot of things,” quips…
Few things are more difficult to describe than childhood molestation. But Paula Vogel’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning controversial play, How I Learned to Drive, now onstage at the University of Miami’s Jerry Herman Ring Theatre, does just that. Set in Maryland largely during the Sixties, this 90-minute dark comedy moves in…
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men: Some things mature with age, others don’t. Almost 40 years after Ceremonies premiered off-Broadway, it still offers a powerfully rich portrayal of a disenfranchised African-American family in crisis. But it also projects such a clichéd, outdated, and stereotypical image of black men that it begs…
Slam is the World Wrestling Entertainment of the literary universe. It’s a sport like Fox’s Survivor. There’s competition. Someone wins. Someone loses. And that makes Will “Da Real One” Bell, a six-foot five-inch, 36-year-old Liberty City native, the main draw at Miami Art Central for the Invitational Poetry Slam February…
Some things mature with age, others don’t. Almost 40 years after M Ensemble’s latest show premiered off-Broadway, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men still offers a powerfully rich portrayal of a disenfranchised African-American family in crisis. But Lonne Elder III’s classic tale also projects such a clichéd, outdated, and stereotypical image…
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka topped the charts with a slew of hits during the late Fifties and early Sixties; many of them are now considered golden oldies. The twenty-odd Sedaka classics Breaking Up uses to narrate its predictable plot will lure baby boomers and doo-wop…
Eclectic by design and multicultural with a vengeance, Miami Light Project’s Here & Now: 2006 is the riskiest and most ambitious edition yet. This innovative performance, multimedia, and film festival — produced in collaboration with the new Miami Performing Arts Center — is a hothouse for local talent. Through February…
Julio Bocca is, simply put, one of the great dancers of our age. But the hunky American Ballet Theatre star is much more: a sometime Broadway baby who starred in the musical Fosse, a choreographer, a director, a persuasive ambassador for Argentine culture, and an electrifying showman with an eye…
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant: With just two productions under their belt, the cast and crew of White Orchard Theater are courageously readying the curtain once again, this time for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s provocative 1972 play. Set in the bedroom of the show’s title character, this provocative work…
You’d think Cirque du Soleil’s dauntless artistes were superhuman. That is unless you witnessed the heart-stopping finale during this past Friday’s opening-night performance of Varekai and the gymnast who painfully missed his landing. Watching paramedics rush toward his motionless body magically unmasked the 56-strong troupe for what they really are:…
Imagine a ballet with a Billy Joel cover band for an orchestra. That pretty much describes Movin’ Out in a nutshell. The brainchild of two-time Emmy-winner Twyla Tharp — with a little help from the Piano Man himself — Movin’ Out is not your average Broadway show. In fact it…
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant: With just two productions under their belt, the cast and crew of White Orchard Theater are courageously readying the curtain once again, this time for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s provocative 1972 play. Set in the bedroom of the show’s title character, this provocative work…
Michael McKeever is a raconteur of small miracles, dispelling the myth you can’t create a self-contained, highly nuanced world of performance in the space of two hours. Miami’s own prolific playwright can deliver walloping polemic, drawing-room comedy, and satire roiling in a stew of symbolism — usually in the course…
