Diners at the Islamorada Fish Company in Dania Beach — at least those seated on the deck overlooking the man-made lagoon — are occasionally reminded how the succulent, scaly critters on their plates ended up there. A fishing trawler periodically cruises the small, landlocked waterway, with its rigging and nets…
Comedian Steven Wright is known for his molasses-slow delivery of wry, observational humor, but the aching gap between every word, every syllable, is no act. The meter of his speech remains consistent no matter to whom he’s talking. And the way the comedian talks mirrors the way he lives. “I…
Insomniacs, rejoice! During the first several decades of Sydney Pollack’s bloated, interminable Random Hearts, your eyelids will droop, your pulse and respiration will slow, and you’ll get that $8 nap you’ve been craving. Once the credits roll and the lights come up, you’ll awaken refreshed, undisturbed by vague dreams about…
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! The repressed Irish Catholic schoolgirl who Molly Shannon plays on Saturday Night Live is certainly not everyone’s cup of glee. But there’s no denying the tug she exerts on anyone whose past is littered with the dry husks of Latin verbs and memories of nuns swinging…
The road signs are blurry but the way is clear in the New Theatre’s intimate production of How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that’s wrapped up in automobile metaphors. Set in rural Maryland and unfolding over three decades, the play tells the story of a…
Brilliant and tragic, Coalhouse Walker, Jr. is one of the most compelling musical theater roles of the last decade, probably the most complex one written for a black actor in the last 50 years. A character in the multiple Tony-winning show Ragtime, based on the best-selling novel by E.L. Doctorow,…
If the four members of the percussion ensemble Rivers of Time appear to be just milling around in the audience before one of their shows begins, don’t be deceived. Although an array of drums, shakers, gongs, and cymbals awaits the group on stage, the performance is likely to begin before…
There is something fairy tale-like but also deeply human about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature-film debut of identical twin brothers Mark Polish and Michael Polish. Mark Polish wrote the script, Michael Polish cowrote and directed it, and both brothers…
The premise is preposterous, the final score inevitable, and the record reading on the feel-good-ometer is totally predictable. But Mystery, Alaska comes furnished with some winning quirks and charms — including a very funny bit concerning premature ejaculation at 20 degrees below zero. So even if you don’t really believe…
Any actor will admit that the audience can become a character in a live performance, in part because of the chemistry that wafts back and forth across the proverbial fourth wall. That’s never more true than with improv comedy, in which actors are force-fed random lines, situations, and emotions, often…
After circulating several times through the art on display at Gallery 421 in downtown Fort Lauderdale, I began to feel a little like the matriarch in the lavish Martin Scorsese adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Taking to her bed in a swoon, she declares: “A stroke? Ridiculous…
The three guides have already told us how to paddle our kayaks and have given a safety talk. But as we sit in the sand on Hollywood beach before launching our boats, they conduct one more bit of pre-paddle protocol: a glow-stick check. That’s right, the iridescent plastic wands popular…
A comfy rocking chair is a good place to sit and think, but San Francisco artist Bernie Lubell wants viewers to think about the chair. Not only that, he wants them to sit in his minimalist pine rocker in order to get their cognitive juices flowing. When someone rocks in…
Grownups, take heart. Even if you misspent your summer at the movies pigging out on reheated space adventure, slob humor, and stubborn old ball players who won’t hang up their spikes, all is not lost. A powerful and intelligent film called American Beauty has volumes to say about the way…
The joke that opens Jakob the Liar, the new Holocaust comedy (talk about an oxymoron) starring Robin Williams, captures the bittersweet quality — the grim reality mixed with laughter — that the rest of the movie tries and fails to embody. The story takes place in an unidentified Jewish ghetto…
In his hilarious stage memoir, Charles Nelson Reilly talks about his days as a Broadway understudy, his death-obsessed uncle, and his memories of Ruth Draper, “the best actor who ever lived.” But the story that captures the comedy-spiked bathos at the heart of the show is the anecdote he tells…
Earlier this month actor and director John Fionte could have used a couple of clones. Through mid-September he starred in the musical revue Side by Side by Sondheim at the Broward Stage Door while directing another show, Scotland Road, at the Academy Theatre, while also rehearsing for his lead in…
Throwing keggers is a rite of passage for most high-school students. But for Jason Donovan of Plantation, party planning was vocational training. Donovan, age 25, began lining up venues, DJs, and bands for underground parties when he was just 16. By the time he was a Broward Community College student,…
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder…
Word processing has made life easier for screenwriters. No need to retype some old classic with your own little changes, nowadays you can just download the screenplay for, let’s say, The Exorcist, search for adolescent girl, replace with twentysomething single woman, and — voilà! — you have a brand new…
Last year’s faculty exhibition at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale got mixed but generally promising grades. Although some of the instructors represented in the show seemed to be working at less than their full potentials, several were producing above-average work, the kind we might reasonably expect from people in…
James McLure’s one-act Pvt. Wars made a neat splash back in 1979 when it appeared at the celebrated New Playwrights Festival at the Actors Theatre in Louisville. But between that time and now, the work has run aground, having hit many of the metaphorical icebergs that are apt to sink…
