By a recent count, more than 300 theatrical productions are staged each year in South Florida — just about one new show a day. Of course, it doesn’t work out so neatly — most shows open on or near the weekends and go up against an array of competing openings…
One of the maddening aspects of theater is how uncertainty plays havoc with the best-laid plans. Gather the best actors and directors to work on the best scripts and you still can end up with a misfire. That’s the end result of The Countess, now in production at the Caldwell…
In American theater, there’s a long hard road that most successful plays take. At its very start, a playwright gets a script produced somehow, and, with luck, it’s a hit. With some restaging and rewrites and more luck, it moves on to New York City. More luck, more rewrites, and…
In Tin Box Boomerang, Ivonne Azurdia’s new play now in production by the Mad Cat Theatre at the Miami Light Project, you will meet a passel of ordinary, flawed characters who seem very real and familiar. Two Mexican-American sisters struggle to make ends meet, living in a beat-up trailer. Their…
Time was, the great repertoire of classical drama was the mainstay of established New York City and regional theaters. But take a quick look at the season lineups at the nation’s major theaters, and you’ll be hard pressed to spot even a smattering of classics. What happened to the great…
If English mysteries are your cup of tea, you might want to sample Sherlock’s Last Case, now being served up at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. Charles Marowitz’s script, a revisionist take on the legendary detective character Sherlock Holmes, borrows both characters and situations from the classic series of…
Some plays don’t just offer food for thought; they serve up fresh ideas, then eat them raw. One such carnivore is Nicky Silver’s The Food Chain, now on display in a tasty production at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation. Silver’s scabrous wit slices and dices a number of human foibles,…
In some ways schlock is similar to pornography: You may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it, and there’s a lot of it to be seen on South Florida stages this season. The Coconut Grove Playhouse seems particularly interested in schlock musicals. Earlier…
Everyone has remembrances of flings past, especially that once-in-a-lifetime first time. Playwright Richard Nelson’s take on that oft-told subject is Madame Melville, an intriguing wisp of a tale now playing at the New Theatre in Coral Gables. In it, Nelson depicts the coming of age of an awkward American fifteen-year-old…
“Nothing is inevitable,” goes the old saying, “except death and taxes.” In Park Your Car In Harvard Yard, playwright Israel Horovitz begs to differ, or at least, amend: Add “regret” to that short list. In the freezing gloom of a New England winter, an imperious old man, Jacob Brackish, shuffles…
Sometimes a good idea for a play doesn’t spin out into good theater. One such conundrum is Bach at Leipzig, a well-produced but dramatically inert talkfest now on colorful display at Florida Stage. Itamar Moses’s new play, a Florida premiere, has to do with a historical event in 1722, when…
This season has seen its share of family dramas that playwrights keep reinventing to good theatrical effect. One recent incarnation is Charles Randolph-Wright’s moody, engaging comedy/drama Blue, a semi-autobiographical account of one wealthy black family’s domestic disturbances, a tale that spans several decades. The story is narrated by Reuben Clark…
Theater has always had a rabble-rousing role at the margins of society. Plato mistrusted poets and art in general. Aeschylus got himself exiled when his plays criticized the Athenian politicos. The Puritans tried to ban the Elizabethan theaters, and Hitler burned down a number of them. Henry Fielding, the great…
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…
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…
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 — and by comparison, most other scripts seem bland and polite. His debut film…
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…
Ahh, 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’s…
When you go to a Mad Cat show, ya rolls yer dice and ya takes yer chances. The risk-taking theater ensemble in downtown Miami makes sure that the audience takes some risk just to get in the door. Company policy establishes a “$12 plus the roll of one die” policy…
As any wine lover can tell you, an excellent vintage is really two wines in one. When first opened, it may have a lovely, fresh bouquet and a satisfying taste. But allowed to breathe, a great wine will develop subtle complexities, new depth, and lingering flavors. That’s an apt analogy…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the so-called Law of Unintended Consequences: that any course of action will produce an array of surprise results. I can’t be certain exactly what the Actors Playhouse in Coral Gables was intending with its season-opener Comic Potential, but the results are…
One of the fascinating oddities of theater in South Florida is the offbeat locations where it turns up. Local companies are found in some of the least likely places: The Caldwell Theatre and Florida Stage are in strip malls, the Broward Stage Door sits behind an IHOP. The Mosaic is…
