Fit To Be Tied: Tormented Arloc hates his promiscuous mother and falls for an “angel” in a local dramatic production. Long, somewhat aimless, and without conjuring any discernible interest, Nicky Silver’s play needs about three more drafts and some quality actors before it will be even remotely watchable. — Dan…
Whew! Summer is here with a vengeance, a fierce season that is, in some ways, a little like winter up north. Most everyone starts spending more time indoors and plotting how to minimize the time spent walking in full sunlight between car and destination, while the spare room or the…
The EDGE Theatre’s self-appointed mission is to “find new playwrights and produce the neglected works” of well-known writers. That this charge knowingly does not lend itself to works with tremendous commercial appeal is admirable. However, that same mantra becomes troublesome when long and dreadful pieces like Nicky Silver’s Fit to…
Josephine’s Bakery: A small bakery in France is given a rambunctious welcome by two overtly gay proprietors of the establishment and an orchestra of misfits. By mistakenly attempting to be a topical, biting black comedy instead of taking solace in what it really is — a rowdy, raucous farce –…
In the restaurant business, one classic mistake is to pay more attention to the presentation of the meal than the cooking itself. Beautiful décor and lighting and expert service always enhance a dining experience, but they can’t compensate for an ill-prepared entrée. The same truth applies to show business. Take,…
With Josephine’s Bakery, showing at the Prometeo Theatre’s new home on the downtown Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College, things get off to a raucous, deliriously fun start, then slow down and never quite get back up to speed. The play, informed by Jean Anouilh’s The Orchestra, is billed as…
King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The New Theatre’s annual Shakespeare fest is played in true repertory, with King Lear, the Bard’s greatest tragedy, alternating nightly with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that popular comedy of lunacy, love, and poetry. Director Rafael de Acha and his superior design team deliver…
The Life: The tiny Atlantis Playhouse takes a crazy gamble on The Life, a dark and gritty musical about pimps and prostitutes on New York’s mean streets in the Eighties. The risk pays off. This rarely produced Tony Award winner (in its first-ever regional production) features a fine score from…
Let’s begin with the bottom line: By any measure, The Shakespeare Project, the New Theatre’s summer repertory of King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is an undeniable success. These masterworks, played by a plucky acting ensemble of thirteen, are delivered in visually striking stagings by artistic director Rafael de…
Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, now in its Florida premiere at the Caldwell Theatre, is nothing if not ambitious. Its subjects are wide-ranging — among them, major-league baseball, gay identity, prejudice, and tolerance — and so are its genres. The play wants to be both a pressure-cooker drama and a…
Richard Feynman was a physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1965, helped develop the atomic bomb, and was a key member of a panel that investigated the Challenger explosion in 1986. He was also a loon. Oozing eccentricity as often as possible, Feynman — aside from being considered the…
Desert Storm: Jim Tommaney’s antiwar fable balances three stories: soldiers on the war front, their concerned parents back home, and inside the Oval Office as the first President Bush and aides discuss U.S. involvement in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. The fictional plight of the soldiers and families hits hard,…
All hail irrationality! And Wayne Gretzky too (hold on a minute — we’ll get to that). Irrationality is the only explanation of why the Atlantis Playhouse’s Gary Waldman decided against all logic to present The Life, a stark, gritty musical about pimps and prostitutes that’s a 180-degree change from the…
There are eighteen songs in Songs for a New World, some more imaginative than others but all striking in their deceptive simplicity. The common themes in this revue of composer Jason Robert Brown’s work are life and happiness, or lack thereof. They run the gamut from unabashed optimism to shocking…
Summer Shorts: City Theatre’s annual festival of short plays, a highlight of the South Florida stage scene, is back with mini comedies and dramas in all styles and sizes. Twenty playlets from one to twenty minutes long are presented in two separate programs, which can be taken in on separate…
Has it already been a year since Summer Shorts was last in town? This festival of short plays (twenty minutes max) has become a nationally recognized event in its nine-year history and something of a must-see/must-be-seen-there social event for South Florida cognoscenti. Shorts has its own cheerily subversive personality; this…
Three separate actions drive the narrative of Jim Tommaney’s Desert Storm, an ambitious but uneven drama that combines fact and fiction. The stories involve soldiers on the war front, their concerned parents, and President George H.W. Bush’s deliberations over sending troops into Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in August…
The Gulf of Westchester: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire about the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity it’s breathtaking. Laufer doesn’t get the gold at the finish line — she cartwheels out of control well before that — but her reckless bravado makes for the kind…
The Gulf of Westchester: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire about the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity it’s breathtaking. Laufer doesn’t get the gold at the finish line — she cartwheels out of control well before that — but her reckless bravado makes for the kind…
There are few sure things in theater, as in life, but a sex comedy from funnyman Steve Martin performed by a first-rate cast should be one of those. Sad to say, The Underpants, now in production at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables, is something of a disappointment. Martin’s adaptation…
Theater in South Florida tends to appear in bursts, with a spray of shows often opening on the same weekend. In the scuffle, many shows tend to get overlooked. In some instances, that’s not so bad a consequence, but in the case of No Exit, now entering its final week…
Master Harold … and the boys: Athol Fugard’s modern classic has to do with the stormy relationship between a white teen and two black family workers in South Africa circa 1950. The fine GableStage production features assured, understated direction from Joseph Adler, which is well supported by some excellent, evocative…
