It’s been a season of firsts since the opening of the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. On the heels of the Miami debut of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, one of the finest stagings of Swan Lake in the world will have its local premiere. While the Merce in…
Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway: Showman Neil Berg’s salute to the Great White Way’s top-drawer musicals takes the stage for a performance that has been dedicated to the memory of local educator Zelda Glazer. The rip-roaring revue features veteran Broadway actors belting out memorable numbers from Showboat, Chicago, Cabaret,…
I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given To Me By a Young Lady From Rwanda is a play about a young lady from Rwanda who is trying to write a remarkable document. Good for her! Literature is a high and noble pursuit, and I hope this young Rwandan succeeds…
He’s been at this for a while, but even after more than 50 years before the public, there remains something weird and wonderful about Merce Cunningham’s dance pieces. His troupe rehearses without music. And whatever music ends up being made for the works — everything from John Cage’s still-shocking sonic…
Early in the day on February 3, 2004, Jaime Rodrigo Gough was murdered in a bathroom on the second floor of Southwood Middle School in Palmetto Bay. Though he’s still awaiting trial, it is almost certain that then-eighth grader Michael Hernandez was responsible for the slaying. The events of that…
Florida Grand Opera’s new production of Bellini’s La Sonnambula is not to be missed. One of the most demanding and beautiful of all operas now emerges as what can only be called a sublime musical landmark for this company, for this city, and for music lovers everywhere. Running here through…
Alice Does Wonderland: The Sol Theatre is a dirty place filled with dirty people. In Alice Does Wonderland, you will see a puppet give a man analingus. You will see Alice going down on the Cheshire Cat. You will see the Red Queen deep-throat a light saber, which is dangerous…
Sin Full Heaven: The third installment of Ricky J. Martinez’s Island Trilogy is a good example of everything that can go wrong with homegrown, indie theater. The writing is a mess of clichés and hideously tortured sentence structures (Q: “Haven’t you kissed women before?” A: “Never the lips of an…
Puccini was not alone in loving this woman. The public first fell for her as the heroine of the sexy novel The Tale of the Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. It was the saga of a fast girl’s rise and fall that was turned into operas…
Sin Full Heaven: The third installment of Ricky J. Martinez’s Island Trilogy is a good example of everything that can go wrong with homegrown, indie theater. The writing is a mess of clichés and hideously tortured sentence structures (Q: “Haven’t you kissed women before?” A: “Never the lips of an…
Ricky J. Martinez does not deserve the following review. Martinez is a nice guy, all comfy pats-on-the-back and easy laughter, and he’s obviously passionate about his work. He gets giddy while discussing it, and that’s fine. I wish his work would provoke some giddiness in me. It doesn’t. Sin Full…
Romance: A filthy, filthy courtroom farce in the grand Mametian tradition of filthy farces, Romance contains moments when the Jew jokes, pedophilia jokes, and gay jokes make even the hip audiences at GableStage gasp instead of chuckle. This is all to the good: Although the story seems like an afterthought…
If you’re a tiny little theater with a tiny little budget, there is no better play to tackle than Three Angels Dancing on a Needle, by exiled Iranian playwright Assurbanipal Babilla. You need no sets, no props, no costumes. All that’s required is a director as perverse as Square Peg…
It’s asinine to think any human being can truly know the heart or mind of any other, but I’ve got a theory about David Mamet anyway: He thinks all human beings are deaf-mutes. At first glance, Romance appears to be a play about peace; either that or it’s about nothing…
Dear New Times Reader: You are hip and young, or so we tell the advertisers. In 2006 you turned the entertainment culture on its ear with your bloggings and YouTubings. You whipped Congress like it was an obstinate mule and burned America in effigy at the altar of Sacha Baron…
City Beneath the Sea: The story of a young girl who saves an underwater metropolis from the powers of evil, played out through sparkling marionette sea creatures, is Pablo Cano’s ninth marionette production at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This musical production consists of hand-crafted puppets made from cookie cutters,…
When a theater is packed with children instead of adults, it becomes a site not of high culture but of mass fidgeting. On a recent Wednesday morning, the Shores Performing Arts Theater was filled with an audience whose heads barely topped the backs of their seats. The crowd was neatly…
Down the Road: To blame society’s problems on celebrity culture is shallow beyond contempt, but it will always appeal to those more interested in bitching than thinking. The same can be said for Lee Blessing’s Down the Road. It’s the story of Iris and Dan Henniman (Margie Elias Eisenberg and…
Don’t be fooled. Although Lee Blessing’s usual eloquence gives Down the Road the look and feel of Devastating Cultural Analysis, its heart is pure pop psychology. The subject under discussion is that old canard, The Commodification of The Individual and The Ascendance of Celebrity Culture, but Blessing can’t seem to…
Just a Kiss: In Catherine Bush’s new play, making its world premiere, two beautiful but struggling actresses are excited to land costarring roles in an off-Broadway play. The enthusiasm of Zee Scott (Caroline Edelen), a guarded, eccentric loner; and Annie Howard (Elise Girardin), one half of a conservative cohabitating couple,…
Up Wake: The stage is set: three blank walls, one actor, and no script. For this performance be prepared to go on a sensory journey. Natasha Tsakos’s show synchronizes the disciplines of animation, music, and acting, exploring a completely original style of theater that integrates technology and performance. As the…
I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love. On the surface, the Caldwell’s decision to house the production seemed like the most awesomely cynical move imaginable, coolly calculated to pacify the antediluvian nostalgia junkies who pay the theater’s bills. I thought the show would be theatrical comfort food,…
