Let’s not understate the facts just because they’re so wild: Bernadette Peters is the single greatest living exponent of musical theater. Frank Rich said so in the mid-1980s, during Ms. Peters’ star turn in Song & Dance, and every critic on the planet has more-or-less agreed, as Ms. Peters blazed…

This has not been a boring few weeks for theater people. It seems like every company in the three counties has decided that late February is the best possible time to open a show. Recent weeks have seen openings at Mad Cat Theatre, New Theatre, Actor’s Playhouse, Broward Stage Door,…

I once went to a Bingo game in Cranston, Rhode Island. I was 13, and I was not only the youngest person in the room, I was the youngest person in the room by something like sixty years. The exception was my father, who had driven his own great aunt…

Strictly speaking, SPAM is a cooked-meat product containing bits of many long-dead animals — pigs, chickens, turkeys, clumsy factory workers — jammed together and canned for the gastronomic pleasure of Hawaiians and others. Spamalot is not a dissimilar product. Part of former Monty Python Eric Idle’s never-ending quest for money,…

In his preshow announcement at Agnes of God, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ executive artistic director, Bill Hayes, points out that Agnes has not been performed in South Florida for almost 30 years. You think: Amazing! Such a famous play, so talked-about in its time and so well-regarded. Thirty years? Of course,…

Do you know what fish really, really hate? Raw effluent! Yes! And do you know what Phish really, really hate? Again: raw effluent! Yessir — no man or beast likes swimming with the floaters, and Alligator Alley understands this well. Which is why their Tuesdays are now given over to…

The last time somebody went to war with February, it was a disaster. That was when Elisabeth Achelis, of Brooklyn, spent 25 years lobbying various international authorities to endorse her “World Calendar” concept, which would have burdened February with an unthinkable two extra days. She worked tirelessly to gain acceptance…

The last time somebody went to war with February, it was a disaster. That was when Elisabeth Achelis, of Brooklyn, spent 25 years lobbying various international authorities to endorse her “World Calendar” concept, which would have burdened February with an unthinkable two extra days. She worked tirelessly to gain acceptance…

I wouldn’t ordinarily tell you this, but I got wood when I went to see Florida Grand Opera’s new production of The Pearl Fishers. That usually doesn’t happen at the opera. I do not like older women, pronounced jawlines, or hairy men. And although I’ve got a certain daddy-bear crush…

This year, The Florida Renaissance Festival runs through March 11th at Quiet Waters Park (401 S. Powerlines Rd., Deerfield – check out www.ren-fest.com for directions), and there are many good reasons to go. So many, in fact, that naming them here would be impossible. What we can and will do…

According to the accepted wisdom in these parts, Florida Stage is just about the best thing going. Like Caldwell Theatre to the south and Palm Beach Dramaworks to the north, it’s a big-budget company with high production values and a clientele that smells a little like medicine. Unlike those theaters,…

A year ago, Inside Out Theatre produced a play called Manuscript, which was about, among other things, how secrets tend to destroy people. Then came Brian Friel’s profound The Faith Healer, about the spectacular disintegration of two people who thought they loved each other. And then, in November, came the…

In the middle altitudes of the Serengeti, the greenery perks up in the wake of the wet season. After the long rains of April and May, the herbivores of the African savannas relax and in huge numbers feed on the plentiful clumps of short green grass that cover the northern…

Lauren Feldman’s Fill Our Mouths is the story of Evan, an American married woman who falls in love with a deaf lesbian in Paris. Yes, I know, it’s ridiculous. People rightly squirm when so much PC potential finds its way into a single script. Characters with disabilities exploring alternative lifestyles…

Listen: Unless your yearly salary is in the very-high six figures, don’t bother seeing Suite Surrender. There’s no need. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s not something you’ll remember a week or even a day later. It is the comedic equivalent of a rice cake, a bowl of miso…

“To be perfectly honest, I like the Cubans. I don’t like Cuban men, because they try to fuck my wife in front of me. They’re filthy animals that way.” That was the first thing out of comedian Ralphie May’s mouth when I asked him if he was looking forward to…

Midway through Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, there’s a scene in which several exotic fish offer a critique of the film thus far. They praise the preceding scene — called “Find the Fish” — but complain that, fun as it all is, nobody’s said much about “the meaning of…

There is no sign of trouble upon entering the Rising Action Theatre Company’s new digs on Oakland Park Boulevard. The theater is full of wood and warm light, and you feel glad that the arts have found such a lovely little home on the outskirts of Wilton Manors. Cling to…

Zombies have been big in the ΄00s. There have been zombie-zombies (Dawn of The Dead), thinking zombies (Land of The Dead), funny zombies (Shaun of The Dead), still-alive zombies (28 Whatevers Later), canine zombies (I Am Legend), and in the theater community of South Florida, an endless parade of singing…

Far more good things than bad transpired on the stages of Broward and Palm Beach in 2007, and many of them are obvious only in retrospect. Quite often in theater, you won’t think much of a play or of a scene in the moment of performance. It’s only later, after…

It’d be the easiest thing in the world to write off Simply Barbra as the most obvious and ill-advised drag show in the history of men in dresses. Barbra Streisand’s mannerisms are tricky to lampoon and trickier to emulate, and the voice — that glass-shattering, earth-rending, note-scooping, ball-blasting freak of…

If you can get past their oppressively overquaffed opening-night parties, Florida Stage really is an interesting experiment. It is a huge company with expensive facilities and, if its location in the middle of Manalapan means anything, an almost disturbingly wealthy subscription base. Yet the theater handles exclusively new or very…