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…
Watching Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire The Gulf of Westchester at Florida Stage is something akin to witnessing a hotshot skier hurtling down an icy slope. Laufer’s topical tale of suburbanites caught up in divisive political debate over the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity, it’s…
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…
If you’re looking for a quick trip to a faraway place, Joseph Adler and GableStage can arrange a 90-minute journey to an entirely different planet courtesy of their latest production, Master Harold … and the boys. Athol Fugard’s drama is set not only a half-century ago but in apartheid South…
A Picasso: Picture this: Bearlike Pablo Picasso sits in a dark stone cellar amid stacks of paintings, staring intently at his beautiful female model, who happens to be a Nazi official. As the woman begins to disrobe, Picasso sketches furiously, and despite the dank, dark surroundings, you can feel the…
There’s an adage in the writing business: “Write what you know.” Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr., known as A.R., certainly took that advice to heart. After studying playwriting at Yale in the 1950s, Gurney set out on a writing career based almost exclusively on his upper-crust family background, the clubby Northeastern…
A Picasso: Picture this: Bearlike Pablo Picasso sits in a dark stone cellar amid stacks of paintings, staring intently at his beautiful female model, who happens to be a Nazi official. As the woman disrobes, Picasso sketches, and despite the dank, dark surroundings, you can feel the temperature rise. That’s…
Picture this: Bearlike, charismatic Pablo Picasso (Peter Michael Goetz) sits in a dark stone cellar amid stacks of paintings, staring intently at his beautiful female model, who happens to be a Nazi official (Lucie Arnaz). As the woman begins to disrobe, Picasso sketches furiously and despite the dank, dark surroundings,…
This just in: White people have a lot of secret racial prejudice. J.T. Rogers hammers home this theme in White People, now playing at the New Theatre in Coral Gables. The three-character show is more poetry than drama, a series of interlaced monologues that centers on deep-buried anger in white…
A Picasso: Reviewed in this issue. Through May 2. Coconut Grove Playhouse, 3500 Main Hwy., Coconut Grove. 305-442-4000. Flyin’ West: Set in 1898, Flyin’ West follows three black sisters who’ve left the South and struck out on their own, settling in Nicodemus, Kansas. The hardships of freedom and independence are…
How far will one friend go for another? In Trembling Hands, Ivonne Azurdia’s grotesque, funny crime drama now in its world premiere by the Mad Cat Theatre Company, the answer is very, very far indeed. Following up on her splendid Tin Box Boomerang, a hit for Mad Cat last season,…
Catering to obsessed foodies who crave tasting menus, and battling boorish socialites who demand priority seating, Sam Peliczowski mans the telephone lines booking reservations at a wildly popular Manhattan restaurant. In Fully Committed we meet Sam, an actor for whom this is a pays-the-rent job, and a colorful cast of…
Flyin’ West: Set in 1898, Flyin’ West follows three black sisters who’ve left the South and struck out on their own, settling in Nicodemus, Kansas. The hardships of freedom and independence are compounded by their struggle to protect themselves from white speculators trying to buy their land and splinter their…
