“I’m going to tell you a lot of good things about Paul Grellong’s Manuscript and the life it’s being given by the Inside Out Theatre Company. I’d also like to blast the show — or at least its plot — with a few nasty criticisms, but that’s going to prove…
Dear Sol Theatre: When I was a little boy, I was a great fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I loved how resourceful little Alice could be, bringing all of her upper-crust English politesse to bear in situations that would reduce most brave men to senseless blubbering and bowel…
Art is a lot more important than sociology, and any artist who forgets it is liable to replace drama with polemic. Case in point: Look at the windier works of Lee Blessing. Or the more overtly political screeds of Joe Strummer, the entire works of Ayn Rand, the latter-day Susan…
The Public Theatre of South Florida has spent the past several years in the unenviable role of Little Theater That Could, chugging gamely along, following its muse, and hemorrhaging cash all the while. In 2005, the Public mounted a massively ambitious season consisting mostly of heavy dramas like The Normal…
If you’re a tiny little theater with a tiny little budget, there is no better play to tackle than Three Angels Dancing on a Needle, by exiled Iranian playwright Assurbanipal Babilla. You need no sets, no props, no costumes. All that’s required is a director as perverse as Square Peg…
In the final year of Francis Biddle’s life, the then-unknown Joanna Glass took a job as his personal assistant and secretary. Decades later, Glass would transform her memories of that time into Trying, the play currently enjoying its SoFla premier at Palm Beach Dramaworks. If Trying is to be believed,…
Steel Magnolias, no matter what version you’re seeing, is a story about ordinary people giving the finger to circumstance, trying to live their lives on their own terms, and discovering that the right to self-determination doesn’t come cheaply. That said, the stage version is also about something else: the importance…
Avi Hoffman’s New Vista Theatre is a theater company started by Avi Hoffman, and its very first production is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, currently being performed in the future Avi Hoffman Commemorative Theater, starring Avi Hoffman as all characters and directed by Avi Hoffman…
Praise be to everything holy, David Wiltse’s Hatchetman has almost nothing to do with golf. I was really concerned about this before I saw the play, now enjoying its world premiere at Florida Stage: The advertisements all feature images of a tiny man teeing off atop a giantess’ bare navel,…
When David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Rabbit Hole opened on Broadway last winter, New York Times critic Ben Brantley advised would-be theatergoers to bring life jackets. He was concerned that the play might cause a weeping so uncontrollable as to constitute a drowning hazard. Brantley seemed pleased about this, as though he…
Unidentified Human Remains & the True Nature of Love is not a play about breasts, but let’s talk about breasts. In this play, you will see six (6) of them. They are all very nice. They come equipped with nipples, and they are all, to my mind, exactly the right…
I’ve got a friend with two mums, one of whom used to be an officer in the U.S. military. One drunken night in 1980, she had a passionate fling with another woman in some Eastern European city and woke up the next morning with the lady’s name tattooed on her…
I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love. On the surface, the Caldwell’s decision to house the production seemed like the most awesomely cynical move one could imagine, a coolly calculated tack to pacify the antediluvian nostalgia junkies who pay the theater’s bills. I thought the show would…
Tell Me Cuba. The history of Cuba is a long, rolling orgy of cataclysmically bad luck and even worse judgment, and very seldom is that sordid tale recounted with the clear-headedness and pure journalistic balls that filmmaker Megan Williams brings to Tell Me Cuba. Beginning with the native rebel Hatuey…
And the Sea Took Us. Marwella is a tiny fishing community on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, and there’s nothing very special about it. It is only one of the hundreds of villages destroyed by the Indian Ocean tsunamis of December 26, 2004. On that day, the town lost…
Despite spending six years between the sheets with Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller was a gloomy guy. His works are famous and varied and very, very beautiful, but they do not contain many smiles. Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, View From a Bridge, the two-dozen others — they all suggest…
Night of the White Pants stars Tom Wilkinson as a depressed, bored millionaire in the middle of an ugly divorce. He’s got a heart condition, he’s alienated from his two grown children, and his business interests are going down the shitter. Then, for reasons far too complex to adequately explain…
Michael Hollinger was a violist before he became a playwright. Apparently, he was very good — 22 years ago, Carnegie-Mellon felt compelled to offer him a free ride in its graduate program. He didn’t want it. According to his official bio, Hollinger disliked rehearsal and despised orchestral work — antipathies…
These reviews are part of our continuing coverage of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival: Pittsburgh. Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache directed Pittsburgh, but Jeff Goldblum produced it and came up with the idea. Jeff Goldblum is also the star of Pittsburgh, and the character he portrays is… Jeff Goldblum…
When it was first produced in 1988, Lee Blessing’s Two Rooms received glowing reviews for its clear-headed treatment of terrorism. It was an honest play. Face-to-face with a reality more brutal than what America’s armchair pundits will ever confront, Blessing’s characters exhibited a desperate confusion. It may have seemed like…
Flannel Pajamas. This one should have worked. It’s a good movie. It doesn’t hedge its bets, it doesn’t insult anybody’s intelligence, and it doesn’t lie. It’s well-written, skillfully acted, and lovingly directed. All the same, Flannel Pajamas made me want to crawl inside my own navel and die. And that’s…
I bleed admiration for the brave men of the Public Theatre. Last week, performing a shabby little play called All the Great Books (Abridged), they worked a minor miracle in front of the most unabashedly indifferent audience ever assembled in a theater. You should have seen them — a surly…
