The two faces of theater, as most everyone knows, are the masks of tragedy and comedy. But perhaps a better bifurcation would be between the theater of challenge and that of tradition. The theater of tradition promotes cultural assumptions. The best of this celebrates enduring values and communities; the worst…
Ah, it seems like only yesterday, but it was 15 years ago that downtown West Palm Beach first found a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respectable Street Cafe has evolved over the past decade and a half into the finest venue for local live music in Palm Beach County. Where else you gonna…
It was a conversation between Nunsense playwright Dan Goggin and Hollywood Playhouse’s artistic director, Andy Rogow, that gestated Meshuggah-Nuns! Rogow recommended adding a Jewish character to increase the already sizable audience for the play, but Goggin, schooled by nuns in Michigan parochial schools, thought he didn’t have the Judaic background…
It’s doubtful Robert Louis Stevenson imagined his Treasure Island populated by cyborgs and scored to Goo Goo Dolls outtakes. And one has to wonder what the author would have made of his characters being turned into talking and walking dogs and cats who (gulp!) copulate and reproduce mangy hybrids. Far…
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Still, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone tried to make…
When I arrived at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in North Miami to see “YES YOKO ONO,” there was already a contingent of security guards in the lobby gearing up for duty. I was surprised only by the number of guards present first thing on a Saturday morning. MoCA…
Broadway musicals and rodeo bull riding are more similar than you might think. Trying to ride a rodeo bull basically means two things. First, you have to stay on for eight full seconds to succeed, with no second chance. Second, the bull doesn’t care whether you’re a pro or a…
“Everybody hits on me,” declares Maureen “Mo” Fischer, the pretty bisexual woman behind the brazen, blue-eyed drag king Mo B. Dick. “Everyone from gay men to bisexual men to straight women to, of course, lesbians,” But let Fischer switch into full Dick mode and things get raunchy. “I’m not homosexual,…
Although it has yet to be nominated as an Olympic event, cow-chip tossing nonetheless has mushroomed in popularity in the past 30 years, worming its way onto the schedule of nearly every county and state fair in the nation, snug between time-honored Americana such as the baby-beautiful competition and the…
Ah, Halle’s berries. Don’t care much for them personally, as they’re components of an actress (bane of the thinking man), but those golden globes are shifting loads of Hollywood product these days, the latest dose being Die Another Day, the 20th official entry in the 40-year-old James Bond franchise. As…
The advantage of making a Christmas movie is that, no matter how mediocre your final product is, it’s all but guaranteed to show up on at least one TV station, at least once a year, in perpetuity; even such woeful losers as the Nicolas Cage-Dana Carvey comedy Trapped in Paradise…
When a play by Neil LaBute hits town, any town, the specifics of the production usually take a back seat to the force of the writer’s personality. LaBute’s plays and films are biting, challenging, often cruel. His debut film, In the Company of Men, which he adapted and directed from…
Circuses seem to come through South Florida more often than most places, particularly in the winter months. Sure, it’s probably just due to the weather more than any love of Florida audiences, but that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t take advantage of the thrills under the big top. And, in this…
With time spent as Duane Allman’s replacement in the Allman Brothers Band and as lead guitarist for Phil Lesh and Friends, Warren Haynes has become a hero to the jam-band set. And rightly so. Haynes has combined blues and psychedelia more effectively than anyone this side of the 1960s, when…
So, you wish to know whether Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is as good as the first Harry Potter movie. Is it as charming, visually gratifying, faithful to filthy rich author J.K. Rowling’s inescapable books? Well, that’d be yep times four, as it’s definitely an enchanting spectacular for…
Let’s begin at the end: “Fat Painting,” the small but excellent show now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, culminates in a short video that perfectly captures the spirit of the exhibition that precedes it. The video chronicles the creation of a piece by Rosaria Pugliese — one…
Picture this: You have been invited to a party on a dark night in a strange neighborhood, and you have no idea how to get there. The host offers to meet you and lead the way. But he drives so fast, it’s hard to keep up with him. He makes…
The question “All right?” is asked of every character, on many occasions, throughout Mike Leigh’s latest film All or Nothing. That no one ever seems to stop and ask or answer the question in any serious, meaningful way is the heart of the issue in this portrait of three neighboring…
As the 17th-annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival nears its end — oh, wait a minute! Just because the “closing-night film” screens on Saturday, November 9, that doesn’t mean the festival is really over. That would be too easy — and too sensible. No, “the world’s longest film festival,” as…
Ah, the dysfunctional family. We all have one or know one, and playwrights seem to know a lot of them. Feuding families have been with us at least as long as drama has existed. The Greeks had the house of Atreus. Shakespeare had King Lear and his daughters. Then there…
If the heat’s got you down and you long for a hypothermic winter, this weekend is your last chance to experience one for only $3. Irma Hale’s ice-blue images of Antarctica should do the trick — there isn’t a single photograph that doesn’t feature snow, sleet, glaze, snowdrifts, ice floes,…
If it ain’t pure jazz, don’t expect to see it at the Hollywood Jazz Festival. Now in its 20th year, the signature event of the South Florida Friends of Jazz and the City of Hollywood has moved indoors, to the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center. It will feature legendary pianist…
