The official motto of the Coconut Grove Playhouse is “Broadway by the Bay,” but its unofficial one should be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Playhouse has featured a string of successful if skimpy “biomusicals” about great American songwriters and singing stars — Al Jolson, Al Dubin, Alberta…
Barrio Hollywood: The New Theatre’s latest world premiere has considerable potential: it’s not only a play about boxing, it’s also about Mexican-American culture, family loyalty and cross-cultural romance. To this add some imaginative staging by the New’s Rafael de Acha and evocative, colorful production design and all signs point to…
If South Florida theaters were planets, Miami’s Mad Cat would be off in a separate galaxy. The gritty, award-winning ensemble works out of a small performance space on lackluster Biscayne Boulevard, putting up shows that are unique to this region. They’re mostly about ordinary South Floridians with basic problems of…
Charles Busch’s 1984 camp classic Vampire Lesbians of Sodom began life as a cabaret act and famously went on to become one of off-Broadway’s longest-running hits. Though much of the play’s initial success had to do with the glamour and chutzpah of Busch himself — a nice Jewish boy with…
Just the Funny, like all companies of its type, is only as good as its performers, who must work with constantly shifting material. The actors, who perform at 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. every Saturday, provide constant amusement. Although the subject matter and jokes vary with each show, some of the…
Barrio Hollywood: The New Theatre’s latest world premiere has considerable potential: it’s not only a play about boxing, it’s also about Mexican-American culture, family loyalty and cross-cultural romance. To this add some imaginative staging by the New’s Rafael de Acha and evocative, colorful production design and all signs point to…
Comedy tends to bubble up from deep anxiety or perhaps even worse. “The secret source of humor,” Mark Twain once remarked, “is not joy but sorrow.” Hence, Miklat, Joshua Ford’s 2002 comedy about… well, personal angst, moral confusion, poison gas attacks, and war in the Mideast. Despite — or perhaps…
Miami Light Project launched its sixteenth season Saturday night at the Gusman Center for the Arts downtown, with Laurie Anderson’s The End of the Moon. The season continues November 11 with Haiti’s Beethova Obas, and soars all over town with such diverse offerings as the local debut of Japan’s Rinko-Gun…
Amadeus: Peter Shaffer’s play about the life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a satisfying potboiler. John Felix is splendid as the villainous Antonio Salieri, a hard-working but mediocre composer who seethes in jealousy and despair when Mozart effortlessly proves his musical genius. Director Richard Jay Simon ably stages…
There have been plenty of plays and films about boxing, but the intense mano-a-mano conflict of the sport makes it an enduring subject for drama. In the tradition of Golden Boy and Rocky comes the New Theatre’s latest project, Barrio Hollywood, a world premiere with considerable potential: it’s not only…
You’ve heard about Irish Alzheimer’s? That’s when you forget everything but the grudges. And that’s the kind of cute, deep-down affectionate humor at the heart of Late Nite Catechism. The one-nun show, starring Kathleen Stefano, has turned the Encore Room at the Coconut Grove Playhouse into a parochial school classroom,…
Amadeus: Peter Shaffer’s play about the life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a satisfying potboiler. John Felix is splendid as the villainous Antonio Salieri, a hard working but mediocre composer who seethes in jealousy and despair when Mozart effortlessly proves his musical genius. Director Richard Jay Simon ably…
There are several good reasons why South Florida playgoers may want to trek out to Plantation to take in Amadeus, now playing at the Mosaic Theatre. First and foremost is Peter Shaffer’s grand potboiler of a script about the life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Because of its formidable…
To hear him tell it, there is little out of the ordinary about the time Ralph met Rona, about his annoying but seemingly harmless pushiness, about the girl’s eventual return of his insistent “Hello, hello, hello.” Soon we learn, however, that Rona is but ten years old, that Ralph is…
CORAL GABLES — Isabelle Czerny, an elderly classical pianist, was murdered last weekend at the Shear Madness hair salon, which is neatly nestled inside the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables. Dets. Nick Rossetti (Michael St. Pierre) and Miguel “Mikey” Ortiz (Francisco Padura) were working undercover at the scene, yet still…
Amadeus: Reviewed in this issue. Through October 17, and October 28-31. Mosaic Theatre, American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation. 954-577-8243. Air, Fire, Water: Jim Tommaney’s three short plays range widely in subject and effectiveness but stick to a central tone of foreboding. In…
If there’s an award for great theatrical moments, this year’s prize will undoubtedly go to Nilo Cruz and his Anna in the Tropics, now playing at the Coconut Grove Playhouse: In the play’s final image, a half-crazed Cuban girl dressed in a Russian costume staggers toward a huge palm tree…
If optimism and determination are the twin guardians of success, then Teddy Herrell Jr. and his African-American Performing Arts Community Theatre are doubly blessed. The plucky troupe, which aims to present professional theater accessible to inner-city audiences, especially young people, appears undeterred by challenges it has taken on. Witness AAPACT’s…
Air, Fire, Water: Jim Tommaney’s three short plays range widely in subject and effectiveness but stick to a central tone of foreboding. In Air, a speaker opposed to the war in Iraq is threatened by shadowy government operatives. In Fire, a psychiatric patient menaces his therapist. In the best of…
Theater has long been praised for holding “the mirror up to nature” to reveal reality through the artifice of performance. Yet, remarkably, our post 9/11 reality — filled with threat, fear, war, blundering, and duplicity — took quite a while to filter into new plays. Now, a somber, deeply pessimistic…
A lot can be said about luna del pingüino, but above all, there is this: It works. Constantly surprising, interactive, and gently transgressive, bursting with smiles even at its most unsettling, ready to face today’s serious moral challenges but readier still to entertain, it is a one-man show but also…
With hurricane season most decidedly upon us, questions of probability and fate are on the minds of many. How is it that some people suffer when disaster strikes while others walk away unscathed? Is survival a matter of chance, will, or preordination? Such thoughts are at the fore of Michael…
