Arts & Entertainment

Is Poison the Well a surprise pick by any means? No, but it's time to give credit where credit is long overdue. And while Miami usually claims this band (frontman Jeffrey Moreira reps Hialeah, hard), the rest of the members hail from towns across Broward and Palm Beach counties. Poison the Well sprang from the same fabled anything-goes, late-'90s South Florida hardcore/punk scene as fellow success stories Shai Hulud and New Found Glory. PTW has reached the same cult level of underground/overground success (even releasing one disc on a major, Atlantic). But unlike its peers, the band never switched its original home base. No, Poison the Well deserves props for touring the world relentlessly, playing to frothing American and European crowds of thousands, and then returning home to joltingly sunny South Florida. What's more, PTW puts the same level of balls-to-the-wall energy into its decidedly more intimate hometown gigs, playing for scarily rabid longtime fans at places like Churchill's Pub. Further, the band has continued a path of out-there musical innovation, melding its hardcore roots into spaced-out, experimental workouts that work just as well on a home stereo as at a show. The band's latest album, The Tropic Rot, was released digitally last month through Ferret Music. The physical release is this summer, and it comes an impressive ten years after the group's debut full-length, The Opposite of December. Happy anniversary, guys.

"Slice Paper Wrists" by Poison the Well:

Wrecks was last season's hardest-to-watch play, dealing with weakness, loneliness, desperation, and dysfunction in such a personal way that audiences actually left embarrassed — like they'd unwittingly paid to be peeping Toms for a night. With Wrecks gone from our stages and unlikely to reappear any time soon, it's probably safe to explain that its central conceit is the interior monologue of a widower at his wife's funeral. As the widower and play's sole actor, Gordon McConnell reveals that the deceased was much older, that his thing for older women stems from having been given up by his birth mother as a baby, and that his dead wife and long-lost mother are in fact the same person. McConnell's a brilliant actor and a grizzled vet of stage shows of every kind. Here, he ambled back and forth across the stage, spoke softly, allowed his sentences to wander aimlessly and trail off into silence, and generally behaved as though no one was watching. He was as distraught, scatterbrained, and introverted as any real-life mourner. He had clearly found some way to sympathize with his character's complex complexes and, in doing so in such an unshowbizzy way, forced the rest of us — folks who are usually turned off by the thought of marrying our mums — to do likewise.

Eugene Ionesco's plays are fantastical imaginative flights with no stable anchors in the real world. His characters often speak nonsense words, swing from states of extreme agitation to euphoria with no obvious catalyst, and find themselves in unlikely or impossible situations. It takes a good actor to connect this stuff to an audience in any way beyond the abstractly cerebral, and Barbara Bradshaw is very, very good. In The Chairs, she played one-half of an elderly couple (the other half was played by the excellent Dan Leonard) scurrying to set up chairs for a party taking place, either literally or figuratively, at the end of the world. At the party's climax, her husband intended to reveal the meaning of life. Of course, he didn't know the meaning of life (or anything else), as Bradshaw surely understood. No matter: This is a play about, among other things, the pitiable nature of the male ego and the way a woman coddles, boosts, and ultimately devours it in a cannibalistic orgy of mother love. Bradshaw got it just right. Her wide eyes and beatifically smiling face appraised her spouse like he was some combination of kitten, baby, and dinner, but she never showed her cards. From the beginning of the play to its crazy, apocalyptic end, she exuded a kindness so warm, thick, and impenetrable that only later, after leaving the play, might one realize how close it came to suffocating all present.

It has been a good year for South Florida's quirky local indie darling Rachel Goodrich, what with a glowing shoutout from the New York Times this past December and her official debut appearance at SXSW this past spring. It was all well-deserved and timed with the October 2008 release of her debut full-length, Tinker Toys. Like the playthings from which it cribs its name, the album is sophisticated in its simplicity and a whole lot of fun. A real lover of whimsy, Goodrich usually eschews the typical singer/songwriter guitar in favor of a wider swath of instruments, applying liberal doses of harmonica, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, xylophone, and even kazoo. She toys with her voice as well, shifting from a breathy whisper to an almost bluesy sigh, sort of like Billie Holiday gone twee-pop (just try to imagine it). Rather than being insufferably charming, though, the result is mentally indelible. For all her faux-naif trappings, Goodrich is an astonishingly mature crafter of melody, able to cinch clever wordplay and slightly hippied-out narrative into a recognizable pop structure. Occupying a rare creative space between the experimental stylings of acts like CocoRosie and the polish of VH1 faves like Sara Bareilles, Goodrich should soon rightfully take her place as South Florida's Next Big Thing.

Rachel Goodrich at WLRN:

Like Santa Claus, the Third Avenue Art District Artwalk comes but once a year. And although there are no chimneys involved, there are gifts — if you consider it a gift to visit the studios of local artists and get wined and dined along the way. This year, the evening threw in a free visit to the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale to see two knockout exhibitions ("Pablo Picasso Ceramics/Carlos Luna Paintings" and "Coming of Age: American Art 1850s-1950s"), a cool after-party at the Girls' Club Gallery, and trolley transportation to and from all of the above. The event has been going on since 1996 and has grown to include nine studios: those of Tobey Archer (mixed media), Madeline Denaro (painting), Janet Gold (collage), Francie Bishop Good (photography), Tin Ly (metal sculpture), Margi Glavovic Nothard (architecture), Rosanna Saccoccio (printmaking and collage), Mary Lou Siefker (painting), and Wilma Bulkin Siegel (painting). There's not a stinker in the bunch, and this year, several of the artists presented some of their most exciting work in ages.

Unfettered by the demands of the commercial marketplace, the privately supported Art and Culture Center has taken that freedom and run with it, charting a course that sometimes appears to be fearless. Where else, for instance, would you find something as esoteric as "Exploding the Lotus"? That multimedia show displayed the work of nearly two dozen artists from the Indian subcontinent with a strong emphasis on the conceptual. Or how about "Nathan Sawaya: The Art of the Brick," an exhibition of art made exclusively with Lego parts? And we're still scratching our heads over the quirkiness of the recent "TM Sisters: Idealtonight." Under such adventurous previous curators as Laurence Pamer and Samantha Salzinger, the center has long challenged established norms, preferring edge over ease. Current curator Jane Hart has pushed things even further, especially with the Project Room, which presents small shows of the sort you'd be unlikely to find anywhere else in the area.

If variety is indeed the spice of life, then this year's schedule at the Boca Museum was a buffet as satisfying as it was highly seasoned. There were crowd pleasers such as "Degas in Bronze: The Complete Sculptures" and "Shock of the Real: Photorealism Revisited." There was a massive and far-reaching group show, the "57th Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition," and a look at some historically significant photography, "I Shot Warhol Wesselmann Lichtenstein Rosenquist and Indiana." There was also a trio of exhibitions — "Visiones: 20th Century Latin Art," "Guillermo Trujillo: Panamanian Master," and "José Clemente Orozco: The Graphic Work" — that put the museum at the forefront of the year's trend in Latin-flavored art. But where the museum excelled this year was in its smaller shows: the aforementioned Trujillo and Orozco, a selection of Tiffany works from a private collection, a tiny but precise Duane Hanson retrospective, and a quick survey of South Florida's own latter-day pointillist, David Maxwell. And if that diverse menu proved inadequate, there was always the museum's second floor, most of which is devoted to the vast permanent collections and the pleasures they serve up on a daily basis.

This time last year, we were lamenting the still-fresh loss of Enrique Martínez Celaya, who had abruptly closed his studio in Delray Beach and moved his family back to Los Angeles. Alas, one fewer world-class artist in residence in South Florida. He didn't even hang around long enough to see the opening of his small but well-received exhibition at the Miami Art Museum. But the artist, who was born in Cuba and grew up in Spain and Puerto Rico, soon had second thoughts about being back in the thick of the art-world B.S. that had originally driven him from L.A. Now he's back in Delray, where he recently put the finishing touches on a show of stunning new work to ship off to the Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York. He wasn't able to get his spacious old digs back, but he settled into a smaller studio next door and hopes to find a bigger place eventually. Meanwhile, he continues to oversee the operation of his Whale & Star publishing house, work on new paintings, and prepare for a small retrospective of his work drawn from a private collection, which will be displayed at the Boca Raton Museum of Art at the end of 2009. Southern California's loss is our gain, again.

Since its inception around 2004, the foursome known as the Remnants were live favorites across the South Florida rock-dive circuit. A grimy, swinging, rock 'n' roll outfit fronted by firecracker frontwoman Cynthia DuVall, the group described itself — quite appropriately — as "the Who fronted by Tina Turner." In fact, in 2005, New Times awarded DuVall Best Female Rock Vocalist, describing her as "the ass-kicking, sass-spewing, rock-star love child Janis and Iggy never had." Alas, day jobs and other real-life concerns led the Remnants to finally call it quits last year, giving South Florida a little less "maximum rock and soul" to go around.

Precious few of the best indie-rock bands see fit to drive their vans south of Gainesville, which is why we're grateful for Marvelous Kendall, one of the resident DJs for href="http://respectablestreet.com/">Respectable Street's Thursday-night party, Flaunt. A whole range of sensational DJs pay visits, but with Marvelous Kendall in the house weekly, you're guaranteed to get rocked just right. With his exquisite taste, he plucks out the newest and finest in the genre as if he had access to your current and future iPod. You thought you were the only one who knew about Alamo Race Track? Or the White Rabbits? Wash those tunes down with a $1 Pabst or, in no-nonsense indie-rock fashion, with a $3 shot. Since it's 18-and-up, you can even bring your kid brother or your under-21 girlfriend. There's plenty of room, and look at it this way: The more people who get hip to Flaunt, the more likely those indie bands are to venture a bit farther south on the next tour. It'll be thanks to guys like Marvelous Kendall.

The Bikes play country music that Gram Parsons would be proud to listen to. The Deerfield fourpiece started out as an indie-rock band, but after the 2006 album Get Stolen, the Bikes took a twangy turn. The group's music has an Americana vibe reminiscent of great alt-rock bands like R.E.M., Drive-By Truckers, and Built to Spill. It's full of sullen vocals, rusty guitar licks, and assertive backbeats that you'd never confuse with contemporary pop country. But there's definitely a classic country bent to the group's lyrics: Lead singer Rick Ambrose delivers with the sort of resigned drawl that sounds as if he's sipping on a whiskey bottle midsong. And even when the Bikes do get to fiddlin', like on the track "Fumes," you never get the feeling things are headed for a hoedown — just a country-infused, slightly trippy jam session. Bands like the Bikes are the reason the alt-country genre has grown over the past few years. Let's just hope this group finishes its long-awaited follow-up album soon.

"Chainsaw Blues" from The Bikes:

No doubt about it: The Seafarer was a great production. It was a fantastic script paired with an almost perfect set and interpreted by maybe the best cast Mosaic Theatre has assembled since Glengarry Glen Ross in 2007. But it was a delicate job. Really, The Seafarer is nothing but the Christmas Eve banter of a bunch of severely impaired drunkards, and it worked only because the rhythms of the drunkards' banter were so natural and fun. Now, "nature" and "fun" are not automatic bedfellows — plenty of nature is boring as shit. And though it is impossible to know what innovations came from The Seafarer's actors versus its director, one must assume that Richard Jay Simon was responsible for the extreme coordination of his assembled thespians. Their conversation flowed as smoothly and easily as the whiskey they imbibed, and McPherson's panoply of emotions whizzed across their faces and through their voices in balletic synchrony. There was true collaboration happening, at dazzling speeds. It was as good as South Florida theater has ever been.

Not since Mr. Reese introduced peanut butter to chocolate has there been such an inspired pairing as this show of more than 40 O'Keeffe paintings and more than 50 Adams photographs. The two met during their first extended stay in New Mexico in 1929, when she was 42 and he was 27. She eventually settled there, while he continued to visit. "Natural Affinities" refers not just to the friendship they maintained for the rest of their lives but also to their connection with the distinctive landscapes of the desert Southwest. The results were documented in the often-wonderful juxtapositions of this exhibition, which enhanced our appreciation of both artists in equal measure.

Why We Have a Body is a zany impressionistic play that ought to be monstrous fun for the actresses who tackle it. And indeed, the actresses of the now-deceased Sol Theatre seemed to be enjoying themselves last summer as they juggled Claire Chafee's endless witticisms with her bottomless reflections on the natures of gender and fate. Ambar Aranaga, Erynn Dalton, Monica Garcia, and Phyllis Spear were fast-moving and quick-thinking, tearing through Chafee's script in an athletic way that somehow suggested they were trying to achieve liftoff. Momentum was nurtured and sustained, from Aranaga's lusty portrayal of a quirky, incurably violent, and gun-toting history buff to Spear's infinitely dour turn as her mother, boating in reflective solitude down some primeval canal in the Yucatan. It really was like juggling: a mass of words and ideas kept afloat by nothing but sheer enthusiasm, losing not a single watt of its energy as it passed from actress to actress. Why We Have a Body featured the kind of punch-drunk interplay that comes around only every few seasons, and we'll probably have a good long wait before we see its like again.

True musicians cannot be tethered. They can't be made to sit still on a stage and dutifully blend in. Besides, that's not what you're looking for with live music: You want danger and experimentation. You want Kenny Millions<. A proven player of many instruments, Kenny refuses to settle for just one. He prefers to have several, from saxophone to guitar to clarinet, strapped to his person at any time during Radio-Active Record's monthly experimental night, PunkJazzNoise. He is also partial to fondling them all, in unison, while twitching and pawing his way through the crowd. Creating cacophonic dissonances of spastic proportions didn't happen overnight for this musical maniac. He got his start in New York's bustling early '70s gig scene. From there, he traveled to Europe, kickin' it with even more of the world's great players before putting down roots in Hollywood in the late '80s. You can catch his jazzier side on weekends at Sushi Blues Cafe, the swank sushi bar owned by Millions and his wife. But to see this man's most cheese-grater-to-the-ear experimental side, you'll have to dip into PunkJazzNoise on the third Thursday of every month.

Kenny Millions live at Radio Active Records in Fort Lauderdale in May 2008:

It's easy, when confronted with Boynton Beach-based electro-glam trio Kill Miss Pretty, to get wrapped up in the group's theatrics. Taking a page from the Bowie how-to book, the band makes each of its shows a costumed spectacle. The three have performed dressed as a ringleader with circus clowns, a race-car driver with pit crew, and a cop and muggers — to name just a few get-ups. The musicians even appeared in their birthday suits on a recent New Times cover. What all this might distract from, though, is that frontwoman Alicia Olink boasts an enviable set of pipes. On the group's latest album, Permission for Strange, Olink slithers through one slippery range. She might move from a bratty schoolgirl sing-speak to a subdued coo to an all-out wail. It's as explosive as her onstage antics and just as exciting.

"Drawing Pictures of Haunted Houses with You" from Kill Miss Pretty:

As in-house curator at the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale, Jorge Santis brought more than 30 years of curating experience, not to mention his own story as a Cuban exile, to bear on this thrilling survey of Cuban art, and it showed. No other South Florida museum show this year had the historical and political sweep of "Unbroken Ties." Not even MoA/FL's own "Breaking Barriers" exhibition of Cuban exile art a decade ago could compare. Santis' secret was to include the work of artists still living on the island alongside that of their exiled compatriots — a move no other South Florida museum would have had the cojones to attempt. The move paid off with a rich three-act saga that captured, in roughly 80 works by 60 artists, the breadth and depth of the 20th-century phenomenon that is Cuba.

Raised in the Boogie Down Bronx, the MC born John Joseph Cullen left his gritty native borough for the sunnier climes of Coral Springs in 1993. To our benefit, he brought his hometown's reverence for true hip-hop culture and dove into the break-dancing scene at now-defunct spots like the Sugar Shack and Club Boca. He soon discovered, though, that his real gift was for rhyming — he scored his current nickname in honor of his easy-gliding delivery. Eventually, around the turn of the millennium, one of his demos landed with Maseo of De La Soul. That led to Butta V's closest thing to a big break: a guest spot rapping on De La's track "Oh No" and a release of his 2004 debut album, Brand Spankin', on Maseo's Bear Mountain Recordings imprint. He's continued a steady grind since then, and if a quality hip-hop act has rolled through town — KRS-One, Boot Camp Clik, Wu-Tang Clan — Butta Verses has probably opened for them. A follow-up full-length, Reality BV, followed last September and raised the bar, showcasing Cullen's slow-burning narrative technique, crafty wordplay, and a flow as smooth as... well, you know.

"Work" off of the debut album "Brand Spankin'" from Butta Verses:

Born in rural Wyoming, ramblin' singer/songwriter Jesse Jackson got his start around Miami Beach, busking on the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall and charming the pants off anyone who crossed his path. Several years and more than a few one-night (musical) stands later, Jackson brought his show a little north to Broward and Palm Beach counties, where he has recently and frequently held court at Dada in Delray Beach on Thursday nights. Though his actual music is based on the best, time-honored traditions of the Great American Songbook, everything else about his live show is unpredictable. Perhaps Jackson will invite a friend to play tuba. Perhaps he will invite several friends, some of whom might play even more seldom-seen instruments like the sousaphone. Perhaps it'll just be him in one-man-band mode, singing, strumming, and keeping rhythm however else he can. Whatever happens, no two Jesse Jackson performances are ever alike — and none is less than spell-binding.

"If Wishes Were Horses" from Jesse Jackson:

For a while there, Charlie Pickett's story was one of South Florida's greatest tales of almost-was. In the '80s, the Dania Beach native was a local powerhouse, playing all over South Florida as leader of his punky, roots-inflected outfit the Eggs. Eventually he and his merry band toured from coast to coast, gaining a cult following and critical respect but never really reaching national liftoff. The frustrated Pickett gave up music and became a lawyer and now maintains a practice in Palm Beach County. Still, in ensuing years, thanks much to the internet, Pickett's star slowly rose until he was hailed as one of the unsung early heroes of the so-called alt-country movement. A retrospective reissue, Bar Band Americanus, was released on Chicago-based Bloodshot Records last year, and Pickett hit the road once again. What's all the fuss about? Largely, it's his slightly rough, blues-polished croon with dashes of Chuck Berry, Johnny Rotten, and Lou Reed. Pickett's singing style is slightly flat and wavering but swells with a distinctive, bittersweet emotion, an appropriate instrument for professing undying love before telling you to kiss off.

"Overtown" from Charlie Pickett & the Eggs:

The sudden cancellation of the Langerado Music Festival this year was one of the sadder events of the local scene. Critics, however, would say it was expected. Long ago (well, in 2003), Langerado began as the brainchild of hometown promoters Ethan Schwartz and Mark Brown. In its earliest form, it was an informal jam-down at the small-ish Young Circle in Hollywood. By 2005, it had blossomed into a two-day event at the larger Markham Park in Sunrise. But it was still more or less an informal jam-down based on communal camping and dancing till the wee hours to tripped-out sounds from the likes of Umphrey's McGee and String Cheese Incident. Later years saw the festival grow even larger in attendance and length (three days) and more inclusive in its musical lineup, inviting a host of indie-rock (Vampire Weekend, the Walkmen) and even hip-hop luminaries (Beastie Boys, the Roots). The jam-band crowd, however, fretted that the festival was losing its original soul, and all message-board hell broke loose when organizers announced that the 2009 edition would take place in downtown Miami. There would be no camping, and the lineup would be decidedly less jammy — its headliners including acts like Snoop Dogg and Ryan Adams. The result? Poor ticket sales — so poor that Langerado pulled the plug on itself barely a month before it was set to go off. It remains unclear whether it'll bounce back in time for a 2010 edition. Langerado, we hardly knew ye.

Matisyahu beat-boxing live at Langerado in 2007:

Look, everyone knows about the Broward/Palm Beach holy trinity of venues for mid-sized touring acts: Revolution, Culture Room, and Respectable Street. But what about hyper-local spots that nurture homegrown talent, especially the kind that can't legally get into most other venues? For the cream of that crop, we give you the Talent Farm, nestled in a shopping center in the far reaches of Pembroke Pines. Sure, it's so far west it's practically in the swamp, but it's the hub of a very thriving microscene of mostly young bands whose names often form complete sentences. The place will give almost anyone a first shot at playing live, but at the same time, it boasts a more professional stage setup and sound system than most bars back on the beaten local-circuit path. And the Talent Farm is more clued-in about the internet than most local venues: It streams all its shows online for free, recognizing that will draw more of a crowd in the long run. Further, for a small fee, during off-hours a house engineer offers simple demo recording services. Nurturing tomorrow's local favorites today, the Talent Farm truly lives up to its name.

Shoreline Vista at The Talent Farm:

Playing live around town for less than a year, the shadowy character known as Panic Bomber has already developed some minor lore. Legend has it that once upon a time, Richard Haig was a local rock musician who got fed up with the grind of being hustled off stage in time for the night's main event — a DJ. So he turned to dance music himself, supposedly in some kind of act of defiance that's explained, sort of, in a treatise on his website. Whatever. The music he makes, regardless of the reasoning behind it, is slick and dance-floor-friendly, working up to a funky electro-house groove that's rough enough around the edges to belie its creator's rock roots. And unable to fully relinquish a band's spectacle of performance, Haig's devised a pretty sweet light-up costume to boot. Look out for him at a more discerning — hmmm, some would say "hip" — dance club near you.

Panic Bomber live at The Vagabond:

Last May, just as our nation's most visible political performers were turning into caricatures of themselves and making strawmen of their enemies, Florida Stage unleashed Ordinary Nation: a political play that made a mockery of categorical political definitions. Plenty of people forgot it the moment it was done with — it was subtle almost unto quietude — but others, it haunted. The story of a lefty academic with a bookie dad, a gambling-addict daughter, and a wife who is cheating on him with a GOP senatorial candidate, Lewis' play showed us the profound ways in which our politics inform our lives. And then, in the play's final half-hour, it showed us politics' limits. The heart, as it turns out, has its own ideologies that don't respect party lines.

The thing about Oswaldo Guayasamín, an Ecuadorian artist who died in 1999 at age 79, is that he takes you off guard. First he hits you viscerally with full force — painting human flesh, for instance, with such rawness and immediacy that you want to recoil. Then, once you've had a chance to learn a little about the origins and context of his imagery, he engages you intellectually, stirring up your sense of moral outrage over such things as poverty and torture and the coolly bureaucratic machinations of war. His work is not for the fainthearted, and not surprisingly, it went largely unshown in the United States for more than half a century. That's why it was such a coup for FAU's little Schmidt Center Gallery to snag this small but significant retrospective of Guayasamín's paintings, drawings, and prints, which are just as relevant today as ever.

All actors in The Seafarer were excellent, but Dennis Creaghan was un-fucking-believable. A recently blinded alcoholic Irishman — with a big, affable spirit and a bounty of deep, personal pain — he captured your heart and imagination within the play's first five minutes and never relinquished them. His performance was largely a collection of tics and habits: a stutter as he groped to find the proper profanity with which to respond to a given affront to his dignity; the way he raced to think of an innocent-sounding way to ask for a fifth, sixth, or seventh refill of his whiskey glass; or the way his reedy raconteur's voice filled with gaiety as he lambasted his loser brother — just to let the assembled know it was all in good fun. He was a remarkably complete character, as affecting and full of soul as any of the season's leading men, and you should probably know that one local critic went to see his performance on three separate occasions, just to see if the thing was a fluke. It wasn't.

For good Darwinian reasons, we remember trauma with more clarity than pleasure. This, perhaps, is why tragediennes win more awards than their comedienne counterparts. Last year, Nanique Gheridian turned in a memorable performance as Sheila, the frightened, mousy wife of razor-witted Colin (played by Todd Allen Durkin). Abused, afraid to speak above a squeak, and seemingly incapable of articulating an opinion about anything, she spent the whole play trying her best to disappear. She seemed to grow smaller each time Durkin opened his mouth. Her laughter, always nervous, became ever more tremulous until it was just a tickly flutter — a shamed little spasm of the tonsils. Her character was a woman embarrassed to be alive, and she made her embarrassment our own. Many thespians could have done likewise, but Gheridian went further by making us see the woman her character could have been. When her eyes shyly appraised her feet, they were wise eyes, full of intelligence. You could read in her face the thousand cutting things she'd love to say to her husband, if only she could open her mouth.

The Seafarer is a big play set in a little room. Comprising nothing more than the banter of old friends (and one diabolical houseguest) in an Irish basement on Christmas Eve, it warmly and humanely paints its characters' portraits as completely as any play can: their histories, flaws, world views, and most private pains. Its playwright's eternal muses are grief, guilt, and redemption, but The Seafarer goes much further. In a sustained moment of uncharacteristic kindness, McPherson wrote his Christmas story as an ode to unconquerable fraternal love — a love that remains strong even when battered senseless by (literally) the forces of hell. It would be difficult to imagine McPherson's script brought off more beautifully than it was at Mosaic Theatre last fall. If you went, you experienced mirth, dread, joy, sorrow, and a kind of moral clarity that you might call "enlightenment" — a stuffed-stocking bounty of thoughts and feelings greater than any piece of art is obliged to supply and which Mosaic nevertheless graciously proffered.

There is no doubt about it: Palm Beach Dramaworks' patrons are old. This year, there have been a few evenings when the second-youngest person in attendance was our theater critic's mother. But really, who cares? Because unlike some theaters with aged audiences, Dramaworks refuses to get by on showbiz nostalgia. When the theater did produce something old, it was something daring: Eugene O'Neill's shattering A Moon for the Misbegotten or Eugene Ionesco's freaky The Chairs. And its newer stuff — Edward Albee's updated Zoo Story or Conor McPherson's The Weir — was hip, edgy, and bottomless. It was all performed masterfully too. Dramaworks is the real deal, and theater lovers ought to be grabbing young people off the street and dragging them there.

Tiny Sol Theatre got a major face-lift about two years ago. Its funky little lobby was overseen by a giant sun-themed mosaic of mirrored glass, and painted tile covered one wall from top to bottom, filling the place with a mystical orange glow. Above the ticket booth was a pot-smoking Mona Lisa. Nearby was a refrigerator with a glass door, from which you could buy sodas and water for a buck. Next to that was a table full of complimentary wine, which you were encouraged to take with you into Sol's multitiered auditorium. Auditorium is probably too grand a word for Sol's performance space. It was more like a slightly larger-than-average living room, what with all the couches and barstools across which patrons could casually drape themselves. Sol's doors closed forever this summer. And for many, it felt like losing a second home. RIP.

Diehard Ramones fans will readily admit that it doesn't take a lot of technical skill to faithfully reproduce the New York punk rockers' power-chord assault. What it takes, though, is a kind of scrappy joy that revels in that simplicity and harnesses it into a slap-happy party. South Florida's Rockit to Russia has plenty of that, as well as a near-obsessive devotion to the Ramones oeuvre. Not only have the members renamed themselves, individually, as Ramones (i.e., Nicky Ramone), those Ramones then, uh, play the real Ramones (i.e., Nicky Ramone as Joey Ramone). Heck, the guys of Rockit to Russia have even commented on New Times music blogs in "character" (think, typing a lot of "Gabba gabba hey!"). You've got to admire that kind of dedication and also the musicians' equal-opportunity spirit. They're quick to point out on their MySpace page that, among them, they speak Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese — perfect for all your multiculti Ramones booking needs. Hey, ho, vamonos?

"Somebody Put Something in My Drink" by Rockit to Russia

It's hard to keep track of Janet Gold, which is part of what makes her one of the most compelling presences on the South Florida art scene. One day, you may catch her at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, where she has taught courses ranging from illustration to creative thinking. Another day, you might find her squeezing in a museum visit. Or hauling a friend off to discover a new gallery. Or taking in an art lecture. Or putting in an appearance at an opening, either for herself or in support of another artist friend. And yet she still finds time to spend in her studio on the fringes of downtown Fort Lauderdale, where she shares a space with fellow artist Tobey Archer and from time to time even takes on nonartist collaborators. There she has long engaged in her equally varied work, which includes pastel paintings, abstract photography, and, most recently, delicate collages. Given such scope, you never know where her work will turn up either. In the past year alone, she has taken part in a faculty exhibition at the Art Institute, the latest round of the South Florida Cultural Consortium for Visual and Media Artists (a fellowship she has won twice), an exhibition of triptychs at a gallery specializing in lowbrow art, and a show focusing on handmade books (another current interest) at the Broward County Main Library. You get the picture. She's all over, in a good way.

As the title of this crowd-pleasing exhibition indicates, the pairing is a natural. But this is the first time the work of these two 20th-century titans has been presented side by side. It includes more than 40 O'Keeffe paintings and more than 50 Adams photographs, covering the scope of their careers but emphasizing comparisons and contrasts of works completed in the desert Southwest, where both traveled extensively and where O'Keeffe eventually settled for much of her long life. Some of the show's juxtapositions are startling — slightly different views of the same subjects, for instance, or uncannily similar takes on very different subjects, captured by two virtuosos of their respective media. It's an extraordinary, not-to-be-missed exhibition.

Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz are not the type to gingerly test the depths of mythology. Instead, the Miami-based pair has plunged headfirst into the unknown, seeking to fathom the common lore that binds humanity in an Ariadne's thread across the globe. At the Carol Jazzar Gallery in El Portal, the conceptual duo has conjured a realm of enchantment by creating iconic imagery of fantastic creatures lost to time yet that appeared very much alive to the bygone civilizations that venerated them.

Landscapes From the Age of Impressionism

Through May 10 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach. Call 561-832-5196, or visit norton.org.

This small but satisfying show includes just over three dozen French and American paintings that form a sort of encapsulated history of the subject, drawn from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. There are some big names here — Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, and Courbet among the Frenchmen; Childe Hassam, William Glackens, and John Singer Sargent among the Americans. And there's a handful of to-the-point wall panels to provide context, tracing the movement from its mid-19th-century beginnings in France through its evolution and on to its American manifestations in the early 20th Century. Be warned, though: If you're among those for whom one landscape looks pretty much like the next, there's nothing here likely to convert you. If you're already a believer, however, you'll find plenty of sustenance.

Through May 3 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach. Call 561-832-5196, or visit norton.org.

As the title indicates, the pairing of Adams and O'Keeffe is a natural. But this is the first time the work of these two 20th-century titans has been presented side by side. It includes more than 40 O'Keeffe paintings and more than 50 Adams photographs. It's an extraordinary, not-to-be-missed exhibition.