Aces Wild

SAT 3/27 The opening weekend of the Nasdaq 100 Open Tennis Tournament is always a frenetic and oddly fashionable happening. Droves of tennis fans saunter in leisurewear ranging from ghetto chic to rest-home bland. They rush from court to court trying to get a look at their favorite players. (Beware…

Women on Top

SAT 3/27 March is Women’s History Month. In celebration of females and their accomplishments in the creative arts, St. John’s Church in Miami Beach is hosting the second annual Women and Culture Festival, with offerings in nearly every genre. This year’s all-day affair is heavy on international dance, featuring a…

Risky Business

TUE 3/30 “He is exactly what he says he is: He does it for the money and he gets ’em off,” quips actor Tom Wopat (above) about dastardly lawyer Billy Flynn, a part he just stepped into for a road tour of the hit musical Chicago. (At 8:00 tonight the…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 3/25 Four days of sun, fun, and fitness, that’s what the organizers of the Miami Beach Fitness Festival promise today through Monday, March 28, on the beach at 800 Ocean Dr. If you’re inclined to sweat, you might want to participate in some of the events, which include a…

O! Iago, the Pity of It

The Caldwell Theatre’s new show, Iago, certainly offers the promise of blood-pumping drama. James McLure’s play is set backstage during a mid-twentieth-century production of Shakespeare’s Othello and takes its inspiration from the tempestuous real-life relationship between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, and Leigh’s adulterous affair with the young Peter Finch…

Current Shows

Blind Date: Last year the New Theatre scored an incredible coup when it commissioned Nilo Cruz’s surprise Pulitzer winner Anna in the Tropics. This year lightning may have struck a second time as the New Theatre has delivered another masterpiece of a play. Mario Diament’s stunning, brilliant world premiere tracks…

From Exuberance to Meditation

Painting is being revived, and the word in art circles is that 34-year-old Los Angeles artist Laura Owens is giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When attempting to breathe new life into an entire art form, it helps to have other artists on hand to administer CPR, one of whom is David…

Current Shows

Enrique Campuzano: During a moment of identity crisis, modern art created “appropriation,” the depiction of a well-known image in a different visual context — as distinguished from outright plagiarism. This is what Enrique Campuzano does with one of the giants of art history: Diego Velazquez. He’s not the first to…

Punk Monk

It’s a bit unorthodox to ladle superlatives all over a film in the opening paragraph, but The Reckoning deserves them. Moving, gripping, and powerful; suspenseful, stylish, and literate, this exploration of justice and art may be set in 1390s England, but its resonance is fully relatable and significant today. This…

Dammit, Mamet!

The problem with Spartan isn’t so much that it’s mediocre, but that it could be a whole lot better. Unlike writer-director David Mamet’s last movie, Heist, a film with such a generic plot and predictable Gene Hackman performance that it never had a chance, Spartan has a reasonably compelling story…

Affecting Amy

“I’ve been a mod housewife since 1993 when I decided I was not going to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the bathroom floor unless I could get up on stage and sing about it,” says the illuminating first sentence of the liner notes on singer/songwriter Amy…

Green Piece

The Prada/Armani-clad speaker grew up in San Diego, graduated Brown, earned an M.B.A. at Duke, worked ten years as a junior vice president at a firm in Chicago. After fifteen years in South Florida, she (or he) was, after developing a successful insurance agency, elected councilperson for one of Miami-Dade’s…

In Good Time

NOW 24/7 Croaking in a public place. Can there be anything more annoying (or mortifying)? With a poverty level highest in the nation, refugees periodically washing up on our shores, traffic congestion and road rage increasing on a daily basis, life in Miami is stressful enough without having to think…

Spring Escape

WED 3/24 Reschedule your appointments. Forward your calls to voice mail. Call in sick. It’s Wednesday and the Florida Marlins Spring Training Camp is in full swing. What better reason, especially after the World Series championship, to take the day off and see for yourself what to look forward to…

Dance Fever

MON 3/22 Partnership Dance, now there’s a concept. Could that refer to a couple dancing together in the old-fashioned way or just a cynical business venture? Whatever it is, promoting it is the mission of a group that calls itself Miami Dance Machine. In the ambitious show Baile on the…

Asian Exploration

THU 3/18 It’s a diaspora out there, as in the spread of Asians from the Old World to the New. Several North and South American artists of Asian descent will investigate their cultural roots within a Western context in the Tigertail Asian Diaspora of the Americas. Dancer Mabel Dai Chee…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 3/18 We know from his criticism that art collector and developer Martin Margulies doesn’t support plans for the Miami Art Museum to build a new structure at Bicentennial Park. Last year the art-loving Margulies began hosting regular art discussions with invited guests to address issues regarding museum building. Today…

Forking Paths

Sometimes life really does imitate art. In a parallel universe, the New Theatre’s artistic director, Rafael de Acha, could be a world-famous Hollywood studio chief, renowned for his skill at ferreting out new works of genius. In our own less-judicious universe, de Acha isn’t well-known outside of South Florida. But…

Mamet’s Revenge

Gay marriage is at the top of the news these days, so the Trap Door Theatre’s decision to produce David Mamet’s bitter comedy Boston Marriage could not be more timely. Mamet’s tale is a faux-Victorian intrigue about two nineteenth-century lesbians whose live-in relationship is considered by society to be platonic…

Current Shows

Blind Date: Reviewed in this issue. Through April 4. New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St., Coral Gables. 305-443-5909. Boston Marriage: Reviewed in this issue. Through March 20. Trap Door Theatre at the Black Box Theatre, Miami Dade College North Campus, Building #5, 11380 NW 27th Ave. 305-237-1438. The Bris, the Bar-Mitzvah,…

Porous by Design

Zaha Hadid is arguably the hottest living architect. After graduating from the American University in Beirut in 1971, the Iraqi-born Hadid moved to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). She was awarded a Diploma Prize in 1977 and became a member of the Office for…

Current Shows

Enrique Campuzano: During a moment of identity crisis, modern art created “appropriation,” the depiction of a well-known image in a different visual context — as distinguished from outright plagiarism. This is what Enrique Campuzano does with one of the giants of art history: Diego Velazquez. He’s not the first to…