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…
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 about not…
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…
If there’s an award for great theatrical moments, this year’s prize will undoubtebly 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…
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…
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…
He was called, among other things, fascinating, abrasive, wise, vain, ruthless, tenderhearted, indefatigable, and contentious. His wife once commented: “How glad I am that I married this crazy man instead of some dull son of a bitch.” Such was the impact of Dalton Trumbo, the famed screenwriter and raconteur whose…
Americans can’t seem to agree on much these days, but all must allow that these are tense, restless times. War, terrorism, a divided electorate, and a widespread debate about the nation’s purpose are everyday subjects on television, in newspapers, and at the local java joint, yet few contemporary plays and…
Whew! Summer is here with a vengeance, a fierce season that is, in some ways, a little like winter up north. Most everyone starts spending more time indoors and plotting how to minimize the time spent walking in full sunlight between car and destination, while the spare room or the…
In the restaurant business, one classic mistake is to pay more attention to the presentation of the meal than to the cooking. Beautiful décor and lighting and expert service always enhance a dining experience, but they can’t compensate for an ill-prepared entrée. The same truth applies to show business. Take,…
Let’s begin with the bottom line: By any measure, The Shakespeare Project, the New Theatre’s summer repertory of King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is an undeniable success. These masterworks, played by a plucky acting ensemble of 13, are delivered in visually striking stagings by artistic director Rafael De…
Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, now in its Florida premiere at the Caldwell Theatre, is nothing if not ambitious. Its subjects are wide-ranging — among them, major league baseball, gay identity, prejudice, and tolerance — and so are its genres. The play wants to be both a pressure-cooker drama and…
Has it already been a year since City Shorts was last in town? This festival of short plays (20 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…
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…
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 not only set a half century ago but in apartheid South…
here’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 uppercrust family background, the clubby Northeastern…
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…
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,…
Be thankful for small theaters. While the larger companies in South Florida cater to conventional tastes, the tiny troupes fill out the menu with an array of riskier, challenging programming. Fort Lauderdale’s Sol Theatre has made risk-taking a fundamental company rule. Tony Priddy and Robert Hooker’s cheeky crew debuted in…
If the traditional Broadway musical is your cup of tea, your cup runneth over with Fiddler on the Roof, now at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. The beloved, well-known classic about a tradition-bound Jewish community caught up in the turbulent changes of prerevolutionary Russia is a huge undertaking, but…
The Caldwell Theatre’s current show, Iago, certainly offers the promise of blood-pumping drama. James McLure’s play is set backstage during a mid-20th-century production of Shakespeare’s Othello and takes its inspiration from the tempestuous real-life relationship between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Oliver and Leigh’s adulterous affair with the young Peter Finch…
