Hand of God

Thank God — a new play about Catholic priests that mentions neither pope nor pedophilia. South Florida Everyman playwright/actor Michael McKeever’s production is about miracles, which might raise eyebrows. Plays about miracles can veer into theological, epistemological debate and result in a wholly intellectual play that puts the matinee crowd…

Just the Funny

David Christopher has reason to gloat. The fourth edition of the Miami Improv Festival, presented through Sunday on two stages at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium, is “our biggest one … not just in terms of the number of shows and workshops, but also in stature,” says the…

Stage Capsules

Exits and Entrances: Athol Fugard has the well-earned ability to suck the air out of any other plays competing against him on any given night. This snapshot of the mid-twentieth-century crossroads of change in South Africa is no exception. Although the playwright-icon isn’t here in body, his spirit shines through…

Bursting at the Seams

Every year at this time most of us determinedly scribble a list of New Year’s resolutions, pledges, if you will, by which we solemnly vow to live the remainder of our lives: Quit smoking, stop drinking, begin rigorous exercise regimen, go on strict diet, develop enviably muscular physique, find perfect…

Stage Capsules

Exits and Entrances: Athol Fugard has the well-earned ability to suck the air out of any other plays competing against him on any given night. This snapshot of the mid-twentieth-century crossroads of change in South Africa is no exception. Although the playwright-icon isn’t here in body, his spirit shines through…

Stage Capsules

Exits and Entrances: When Athol Fugard is in town, he has the well-earned ability to suck the air out of any other plays competing with him on any given night. This snapshot of the mid-twentieth-century crossroads of change in South Africa is no exception. Although the playwright-icon isn’t here in…

Good Santa Hunting

Regardless of the damage done by David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries and Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa, the wide-eyed hope inspired by Santa lives on. Tots dressed in their holiday best still ritually queue up with their haggard parents to create the kind of endearing memories that will later fuel pre-rehab…

Meta-Rap Flow, Full Blast

Talk about ebony and ivory! Two very, very loud shows opening this weekend playfully redefine a couple of ethnic-cultural niches while shamelessly aiming for the masses. Presented by the Miami Light Project at the Byron Carlyle Theater in Miami Beach is Will Power’s Flow. Then, direct from the land of…

Pulp Western

Now onstage at Coral Gables’ Miracle Theatre is Johnny Guitar: The Musical, which respins the tale of when the West was wild, the men were tough, and the women were Joan Crawford. Though the score is surprisingly gentle and its songs don’t match the transgressive thrills of the motion picture…

Girl Power

New Theatre’s Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women could be considered a Victorian-era Sex and the City. But the four New York women at the center of Alfred Allan Lewis’s memory play are not your average singletons searching for Mr. Right. These ladies are the crme de la femmes of high society,…

Strange but True

Not many events at Art Basel Miami Beach — and possibly just as few exhibitions shown over the course of Art Basel Switzerland’s 36-year history — are as rambunctious as “Cars & Fish” promises to be. The Miami Performing Arts Center’s (MPAC) official opening is still more than a year…

Take a Peek

The Miami Beach Cinematheque is no stranger to all things weird and wonderful, but this time its coordinators have devised something completely different to coincide with the Art Basel festivities in South Beach. Guy Maddin’s “Cowards Bend the Knee Peepshow Installation” is a movie within a movie, featuring live performance…

The Legend Marches On

Assuming the role of a woman who allegedly inspired 40,000 people to petition the Vatican for her canonization is no easy task. Trying to emulate the qualities that made Eva Pern an Argentine icon — namely sex appeal and dogged determination — is even more difficult while belting out thirteen…

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

Giacomo Puccini is often regarded as the world’s most beloved and most performed operatic composer, and a scene during the first act of Florida Grand Opera’s fall season opener, La Fanciulla del West, illuminates why. A moment early on in the recent opening-night performance at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium —…

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

M Ensemble’s first fall production not only begins its new season, but it also opens the festering wounds of America’s murky past, offering audiences an elegant yet tragic look at history’s harrowing repercussions. The action in Bourbon at the Border takes places in 1995 Detroit, but the play revolves around…

The Bad America

Bill Maher has publicly compared mentally handicapped children to dogs and called the death penalty a way of “thinning out the herd.” The iconic self-proclaimed bachelor is a clever, charismatic, and quick-witted man to watch onscreen, but speaking with him on the telephone, away from the spotlight, borders on irritating…

Stage Capsules

Brooklyn Boy: A writer from a fabled neverland called Brooklyn finally makes it big just as his personal life begins to fall apart. Donald Margulies’s bittersweet and not particularly satisfying comedy is so obviously personal that it feels unseemly to complain. Still, there is precious originality in the playwright’s treatment…

Our Body Issues, Ourselves

You have to admit, it’s a tough act to follow. In her runaway international hit The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler was anything but shy about that most private of private parts — and her disarming, in-your-face, beaver-affirming, life-empowering activist candor has translated into a theatrical phenomenon with a life of…

Haven of Horror

Pagans, rejoice! ‘Tis the scary season once again, and Halloween in all of its ghastly glory is listed as the second-largest commercial holiday, one that’s slowly sneaking up on Christmas. According to the National Retail Federation, this year alone consumers will spend an estimated $3.3 billion in their quest for…

Late Bloomers

Stranger things than Ethel exist in classical music, but not many. Then again, classical is not exactly the right word for this string quartet that plays nothing but decidedly new, often bizarre music. In the House of Ethel — a site-specific spectacle at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens — is…

Toe Shoe Tour de Force

It’s the dance homecoming of the year, except Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros didn’t really have to go anywhere. “I love Miami,” says Gamonet. “I’ve been very fortunate to be able to work in New York, Europe, and Latin America, but this is where I want to build a company.”…

Stage Capsules

American Buffalo: It’s all about a nickel, about a heist gone wrong. Three losers congregated in a Chicago junk shop plot to steal a Buffalo nickel that’s allegedly worth a lot of money. One of them says it’s business, it’s about “common sense, experience, and talent.” The play’s central irony…