In an effort to bring Shakespeare to the masses, theater companies sometimes feel compelled to adapt the Bard to modern times, using familiar settings to ease the language complexity. This motive, perhaps, inspired New Theatre to put a contemporary spin on its latest South Florida Shakespeare Festival, featuring Much Ado…
In Terminal Baggage, Paul Tei and Ivonne Azurdia have hatched a batch of quirky tone poems that center on what people do in airports while waiting, interminably, to fly. The result is a production that skids into turbulence yet hits a cruising altitude to deliver an evening of well-acted fun…
Ella: It’s ten years this month since songstress Ella Fitzgerald died. Fitzgerald, whose romantically distinctive voice has gently passed from generation to generation since her first recordings in 1936, didn’t so much have her own songs but rather made anything she sang an Ella experience. In the past year, Florida…
The audience waiting for the curtain to rise for The Mystery of Irma Vep at Actors’ Playhouse was a thicket of blue-hairs strafing the room with chitchat louder than gunfire in Compton, yakking about where to get their grub on after the matinee. Thankfully they were silenced by a stern…
Dressed in a fitted black T-shirt and plain dark pants, Miami artist Michael Israel stands alone on an expansive stage. In his right hand he clutches a paintbrush. Before him is a blank canvas that measures approximately six by four feet. Behind him are hundreds of people who have gathered…
Miami is not known for its profusion of bona fide black theater. But that is about to change — at least for a weekend. Through August 5, the first Urban Theatre and Entertainment Festival/Awards will showcase a variety of films, plays, musicals, lectures, and workshops at various locations throughout Miami-Dade…
Ella: It’s ten years this month since songstress Ella Fitzgerald died. Fitzgerald, whose romantically distinctive voice has gently passed from generation to generation since her first recordings in 1936, didn’t so much have her own songs but rather made anything she sang an Ella experience. In the past year, Florida…
The only large thing about the M Ensemble company and its latest production, a gospel musical titled Mahalia, is Charlette Brown-Seward’s voice. And honey, it is a big ‘un. Despite the theater’s physical limitations — its seating capacity is approximately 60, and the stage is maybe seven feet deep —…
Ella: It’s ten years this month since songstress Ella Fitzgerald died. Fitzgerald, whose romantically distinctive voice has gently passed from generation to generation since her first recordings in 1936, didn’t so much have her own songs but rather made anything she sang an Ella experience. In the past year, Florida…
Ella: It’s ten years this month since songstress Ella Fitzgerald died. Fitzgerald, whose romantically distinctive voice has gently passed from generation to generation since her first recordings in 1936, didn’t so much have her own songs but rather made anything she sang an Ella experience. In the past year, Florida…
Early on in This Is How It Goes, Neil LaBute’s savage one-act play showing through July 23 at the Biltmore Hotel’s GableStage, the lead character confesses that he is an unreliable narrator and that the story about to unfold may not have happened quite as he says. And then he…
First let’s suck the marrow out of the matter: Some of the members of the London-based CandoCo Dance Company have one arm or one leg. Others use wheelchairs or canes. The label alone — mixed-ability, disabled, integrated, or inclusive, depending who you ask — is enough to distinguish the troupe,…
Beehive: The ’60s Musical Sensation: Even as the fine band warmed up the crowd with an “It’s My Party”-infused medley, deep in my gut the pain began. It was the same pain that accompanies all such musical reviews, and it sharpened with the play’s first chipper hit-parade memory, “The Name…
Beehive: The ’60s Musical Sensation: Even as the fine band warmed up the crowd with an “It’s My Party”-infused medley, deep in my gut the pain began. It was the same pain that accompanies all such musical reviews, and it sharpened with the play’s first chipper hit-parade memory, “The Name…
In the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s new miniature play, Rosemary and Elizabeth, there is a moment as tender as it is brief, when two widows hold hands and sigh. Lovingly directed by Margaret Ledford and acted with exquisite delicacy by Elizabeth Dimon and Kim Ostrenko, Rosemary is a triumph…
Five Course Love: One night, five restaurants, and fifteen characters sum up this tasty yet not entirely filling new musical onstage in the Miracle Theatre’s intimate upstairs room. Directed by David Arisco, the ensemble of Oscar Cheda, Janet Dacal, and Christopher A. Kent is the hardest-working trio in show biz…
One night, five restaurants, and fifteen characters sum up Five Course Love, the tasty yet not entirely filling new musical onstage in Miracle Theatre’s intimate upstairs room. Directed by David Arisco, the Actors’ Playhouse ensemble of Oscar Cheda, Janet Dacal, and Christopher A. Kent is the hardest-working trio in showbiz…
The Impressionists: In the 2000 movie Pollock, a crucially transformative scene places Jackson Pollock breaking through his previous conventions to slap paint on canvases. When wife Lee Krasner comes around to see what would forever after be recognized as his signature groove, she proclaims, “You’ve done it, Pollock. You’ve cracked…
The Impressionists: In the 2000 movie Pollock, a crucially transformative scene places Jackson Pollock breaking through his previous conventions to slap paint on canvases. When wife Lee Krasner comes around to see what would forever after be recognized as his signature groove, she proclaims, “You’ve done it, Pollock. You’ve cracked…
Watching M Ensemble’s production of Seven Guitars is like sitting in your neighbor’s back yard on Sunday: Although there’s not a lot going on, simply being invited generates a feel-good sense of belonging. But after spending an hour listening to strangers jabber about their lives without any real story line,…
Carmen: We know her, we love her, and we can’t get enough of her. People who have never been to an opera house could probably recognize Carmen within a few notes. And those who love opera remain fascinated by this sexy creature. Florida Grand Opera, which began its relationship with…
We know her, we love her, and we can’t get enough of her. People who have never been to an opera house could probably recognize Carmen within a few notes. And those who love opera remain fascinated by this sexy creature. Carmen was the heroine of Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella…
