When a historical play has done its work, one can expect to hear one of two exclamations from audience members as they file out: the ever-popular “My, how times have changed!” or the unforgettable “Oh, how history repeats itself!” GableStage’s production of Russell Lees’s Nixon’s Nixon might inspire both utterances…
Country music may bring a tear to the eye when a lady with big hair belts out a song about how her man left her for a floozy who tempted him away from her and his kids, pickup truck, and dog. And these days, the cheek that tear runs down…
The response by Mango Festival organizers to the violent and unruly end to last year’s festivities is to pass out fliers asking participants to go home peacefully after the festival ends. What isn’t clear is if that edict will be carried out by the festival-goers themselves or by the Broward…
The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead, we’re offered tangible explanations), free of the gaping plot holes that swallow confused viewers, and absent the cynical machinations of filmmakers who believe that to entertain, it’s necessary also to bamboozle. This adaptation of Robert…
The “one thing” at the heart of Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing may not have one name. But as you wend your way through this intricate meditation on urban solitude and the nature of fate, you’ll likely discover for yourself whether it’s called happiness, hope, domestic tranquility, or…
Five years ago, this interview would have been such the big deal–the coup of the year, the elusive great white at last wriggling on the hook. At least, that’s how she was treated back then, when she still took her meals in that velvet closet. She attracted the spotlight (some…
Don’t go into “María Martínez-Cañas: A Retrospective,” now at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, expecting anything remotely resembling what we ordinarily regard as photography. Martínez-Cañas is usually characterized as a photographer, and she uses the medium of photography and the tools associated with it, but the results she…
Beware of backhanded compliments. If you heed the critics and the advance press, you might have heard that the Stage Door Theatre’s Our Sinatra, the long-running musical imported from New York City, is a stylish cabaret revue. This is true, and that’s good, and it’s also not so good. Our…
Back in 1993, Franni Howe-Southern, a woman who had dedicated the past decade or so to promoting local roots music, decided to have a little party. She got a few bands to come to her back yard, threw down some barbecue, and 50 people showed up. Each year, more and…
In a 1973 interview, French literary critic/semiotician/essayist Roland Barthes asserted, “In the end I always come back to fountain pens. The important thing is that they can ensure the graceful handwriting I care so much about.” Barthes went on to confess his obsession with collecting such pens. “I have too…
It’s no surprise that Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into 18 languages, with no fewer than 6 million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis, and mischievous charm into stories that deftly…
So this is what it’s come to: another week, another terrorist-with-a-suitcase-nuke movie. Last Friday, it was up to Ben Affleck to save the world from nuclear annihilation, an unsavory proposition. He succeeded, but not before the Super Bowl disappeared in a holocaust flash. This Friday, it’s Chris Rock’s turn to…
In the end is a beginning, as the saying goes. And so it is with Apartment 3A, a romantic comedy with a Hollywood ending that marks a Hollywood beginning: the Acting Studio Stage Company’s new space on Hollywood Boulevard. While there are certain drawbacks to this production, plenty of encouraging…
He’s got the rapper moves and grooves, he can rhyme like crazy, and he’s white and Jewish. But that’s not all. Unlike other Jewish rappers such as the Beastie Boys, who don’t make much of their heritage, or 2 Live Jews, who continue to explore new boundaries of kitsch, Remedy…
Everyone has an opportunity to spend many hours in the hallowed halls of the Design Center of the Americas (DCOTA) this Saturday, checking out the upscale showrooms usually open only to those accompanied by their interior designer. DCOTA Daze, a free, daylong event, inspires amateur designers to throw away their…
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon “Algy” Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Earnest (Colin…
There has always been something infuriating, if not appalling, about killing thousands of people in the name of blockbuster entertainment. Before September 11, no one thought much about it. Audiences accepted wholesale slaughter on the big screen because they knew there would be some sort of payoff — revenge, redemption,…
Two older couples — fairly typical South Floridians — were making their way through “Richard Pousette-Dart: The Living Edge” at the Boca Raton Museum of Art on a recent Sunday afternoon. As they paused before a wall of several gleefully messy abstracts from the 1940s, when Pousette-Dart was deeply immersed…
When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids’ stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents’ basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form…
Big is sometimes better. For instance, South Florida has become home to the largest Hispanic theater festival in the United States, which this year will host eleven companies from seven other countries (Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Slovenia, and Spain). Almost all the companies have been presenting theater on…
Ah, nothing like riding down the roads on your hog. You’ve got your nothing-but-leather-and-denim wardrobe on, a beard down to your chest, and the wind in your face. Maybe you have one of those teeny little black helmets, but if you are one of the lucky ones with $10,000 in…
Joe “Queer” King is a Toys R Us kid: He never grows up. The band he fronts, the Queers, has now been around for 20 years, and yet its junior-high-school sense of humor has continued unabated for all that time. “I just hang out with retards, and it helps me,”…
