Many of my friends recently opened their mailboxes to discover something more hideous than notification of an IRS audit, more depressing than an ex-lover’s wedding invitation, and more frightening than a postcard proclaiming the impending arrival of freeloading friends: a class reunion announcement. At age 44, playwright Benjie Aerenson can…
In the spring of 1977, Broadway fell in love with Little Orphan Annie and her cheery, the-sun-will-come-out-tomorrow philosophy. Had the comic strip inspiration for Annie been able to stroll the eight blocks downtown from the Alvin Theatre to take a seat in the Belasco, she would have had the pupils…
Although the ancient Egyptians probably had some form of theater as early as 4000 B.C., most of our information about drama’s origins comes from the Greeks. I once knew an uproarious stage manager who, disillusioned by countless tours with theatrical turkeys, insisted that an important part of theater history had…
My earliest impressions of the American judicial system came from listening to earnest civics teachers and from watching reruns of Perry Mason; combined, they convinced me that courtrooms hold more drama than any Broadway stage, with lawyers playing for life-and-death stakes as they heroically defended the nation’s civil liberties (this…
Humorist Russell Baker once wrote that he wished he could travel through time whenever he slogs through a Henry James novel — that way he could determine if the book offered any plot development that would make it worth finishing. Having waded through several of James’s 112 short stories and…
The title track of Jimmy Buffett’s 1980 Coconut Telegraph album busts gossips who “can’t keep nothin’ under their hat/You can hear ’em on the coconut telegraph sayin’ who did dis and dat.” Last September when Coconut Grove Playhouse producing artistic director Arnold Mittelman announced that he would present a world…
When I was a teenager, my widowed grandmother left Vermont to live with my family in Florida, where, separated from her friends and other family, she turned to television for companionship. Unfathomable to me, her favorite hour each week was spent watching Lawrence Welk and his clean-cut cast stroll down…
From P.T. Barnum hustling naive ticket holders out of his New York City museum with exit signs that promised “This Way to the Egress” to trailers for upcoming summer movies, misrepresentation stands as one of show business’s few enduring traditions. Proud of their command of illusion, theater folk have been…
Not long after the MGM lion roars, the camera pans over a group of young Broadway hopefuls. Sure of their talent, these would-be stars nonetheless worry they’ll never get their big break. “Gosh, if they’d just give us a chance,” one begins, only to be drowned out by the swelling…
One of the biggest recent stories on the entertainment scene concerns the biographical portrayal of a historical enigma: a woman whose life was clouded by controversy, a woman whom millions of adoring followers elevated from obscure nobody to near goddess. Fueling the buzz is the starring actress, a charismatic performer…
It doesn’t require great acting to get a laugh from a Neil Simon comedy or to touch emotions while performing Tennessee Williams. On the other hand, a few extraordinary actors have the innate ability to combine talent, stage presence, and exceptional skills to create spellbinding performances regardless of the quality…
Since 1986, when it was founded, Coral Gables’s New Theatre has presented Southeast and world premieres, filling its eclectic seasons with local rarities — classics by Ibsen, Chekhov, O’Neill, and Williams — as well as signature works by Mamet, Gurney, McNally, and other contemporary playwrights, including Manhattan-based Tina Howe. Now,…
The audience for the original opening night of Brigadoon — March 13, 1947 — passed by glittering Broadway marquees beckoning everyone to see Oklahoma!, Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Mister, Street Scene, and Finian’s Rainbow. Entering its golden age, the American musical theater offered postwar crowds intoxicating experiences…
Originally opened in 1956 as a lavish restaurant, the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s Encore Room was reborn in the early Eighties as a jazz hot spot with its own house band, attracting the young and the hip to the Grove years before CocoWalk was built. Converted into a 130-seat cabaret theater…
Smallpox, cholera, and polio — diseases that a century ago killed or disabled hundreds of thousands of people — have all but been eliminated from the Western world by virtue of vaccinations, antibiotics, and improved sanitation. Such eradication has created an illusory sense of immunity among people in the First…
Move over, Medea. Drama’s quintessential bad mother, who killed her children to take revenge on her husband, has some serious competition in the title character of Nicholas Wright’s Mrs. Klein. Closely based on the controversial therapist known for her theories about child psychology, Wright’s Melanie Klein did not actually murder…
Neil Simon has written 30 plays and numerous screenplays since 1960. Undeniably one of America’s most prolific writers, he is also one of the most abundantly produced. Four of his comedies ran simultaneously on Broadway during the 1966-67 season. Since last January six have been produced in South Florida alone…
In Jon Robin Baitz’s drama Three Hotels, the wife of a corporate executive delivers a speech to wives who are about to move to the Third World for the first time. Barbara Hoyle, whose husband’s company markets baby formula to mothers in developing nations, titles her talk “Be Careful.” She…
Since the early 1980s, Jane Martin has been offering the world well-received comedies and dramas such as Talking With …, a series of monologues by diverse women, and Keely and Du, an absurdist twist on the pro-choice debate in which a pregnant woman seeking an abortion is kidnapped by right-to-life…
Comedian Rob Becker, creator and star of Defending the Caveman, the longest running nonmusical solo show in the history of Broadway, has a little secret. He discovered it during the first year of his marriage and he let me in on it during a recent telephone interview from New York…
Dry as a martini, smooth as a smoking jacket, pointed as the end of a cigarette holder — Noël Coward’s wit has been synonymous with jaded sophistication for almost three-quarters of a century. Personally and professionally, the Master, as the English writer has been called, cut a stylish swath across…
Since its inception in May 1995, South Beach’s intimate EDGE/Theatre has garnered a reputation for venturing where no other local small theater dares to tread. Tucked away on the top floor of an Espanola Way gallery, the company has resurrected, with varying degrees of success, neglected work by Tennessee Williams…
