If playwright Stan Lachow could have seen the set that the Hollywood Playhouse was going to construct for the world premiere of Harry and Thelma in the Woods, he would have edited out the “in the woods.” Walking into the small, residentially located theater, you are so assaulted by the…
Where were Howard Fast, Joe Adler, and Bob Rogerson when Mr. Nelson, my high school history teacher/wrestling coach, sidled up to the lectern to teach the American Revolution? That war, as I remember it, was a series of lively anecdotes about converting Boston Harbor into a giant cup of Earl…
Classic noir is the color this season in West Palm Beach. The Cuillo Centre for the Arts’ current production, The Betrayal of Nora Blake, is a musical comedy billed as “musical noir.” This spoof of the film-noir classics of the Thirties and Forties takes all the late-night B-movies you’ve ever…
At best the revival of a classic stirs our sensibilities much like a remarkable piece of music. A chord is struck that reverberates from antiquity to the present, reuniting us with the universality of our most human emotions. At its worst a classic only manages to transport us as far…
If Robert Johnson made a deal with the Devil, then Bessie Smith drank gin with him — and put him under the table. As soon as she steps onto the set of Florida Stage’s production of The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, Smith (Miche Braden) sets…
When one thinks of William Shakespeare, great cities such as London come to mind. That’s why much ado is being made about the 29th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, which will be held April 12 through April 14 in Miami. Each year a different city is chosen…
To drink green beer. To vomit green beer. To pinch fellow green-beer drinkers who are not wearing an article of green clothing. Let’s face it, this is the stuff of Saint Patrick’s Day. But that’s in the rest of the nation. In Miami there are about two bars that attract…
Violet represents the quintessentially American spiritual journey: the road trip. Set in 1964, it is the story of a young woman named Violet (Jennifer Hughes) who travels by Greyhound bus, her late mother’s confessional in hand, from her mountaintop home in rural North Carolina to the Hope and Glory Building…
There’s a myth that the right person saw the right starlet slinging hash at the local diner and poof! Metro Goldwyn Mayer and 20th Century Fox popped up out of nowhere. Derek Elley’s 1998 documentary, Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies, and the American Dream, debunks this myth by revealing a more fascinating…
The strife between the lead characters in Caldwell Theatre’s production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane goes way beyond the typical mother-daughter friction. Early in the play, while Maureen Folan (Cary Anne Spear) slams cabinet doors and slings pans around the kitchen of their little cottage, her aged mother, Mag…
Legend has it Robert Johnson became a blues guitar master in an amazingly short time; hence the myth that he made a deal with the Devil. Johnson didn’t achieve fame during his lifetime, but his signature sound and lexicon of powerful tunes have lived on through the work of rock…
If translation is treason, as Argentine author Jorge Borges said, then adaptation might be considered assassination — especially when it comes to reviving a Tennessee Williams work, which more often than not results in catastrophe. Not in the case of the attempt by Cuban-born director Rolando Moreno, whose sensitivity to…
Winter Shorts 2001: Best of the Fest! is a collection of the best scripts from the festival of one-acts that began in 1996 and is reproduced in a two-hour performance that is both lively and entertaining. City Theatre has found its niche and a strong troupe of actors to carry…
But God rattled on in his holy language about all kinds of important stuff, life-and-death stuff, and Moses just sat there like a Grade A number one goof, not understanding a single word. Well, you know what he felt like? He felt like some miserable little twelve-year-old kid from West…
If the British have a love-hate relationship with the French, it could be said that Americans have a laugh-hate relationship with the Brits. What we find riotously funny in them is what we abhor in ourselves: repressed sexuality, sniveling impishness, and hostility behind a thin veneer of civility. Words like…
Most modern dramas about marriage and infidelity dwell on the clandestine nature of extramarital affairs and the havoc they wreak on everyone involved. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing picks up where most such tales leave off, delving into what happens after the cheaters have sloughed off their former spouses and…
How can you not be leery of a play staged in an attic? The ominous mahogany furniture, the curled yellowed pages of old newspapers and photo albums, and the inevitable sepia-tone photos hark back to a time only remarkable to the people who own the clutter. Most attic settings are…
The small-town setting of The Laramie Project has been compared to Thornton Wilder’s Grover’s Corners in the classic play Our Town, and rightfully so. Both plays forage the archetypal American town and uncover truths that are disturbing, moving, and in the case of the more recent work, brutal. The bare…
Buffalo soldier, dreadlock Rasta There was a buffalo soldier In the heart of America Stolen from Africa, brought to America Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival — Bob Marley Made famous by the Jamaican singing legend, “buffalo soldiers” was the name given to the African-American U.S. Army troops that patrolled…
As The Music Lesson opens, the houselights are dimmed, and a subtle illumination spotlights the hand of Irena (Jessica K. Peterson), a pianist and music teacher from Sarajevo. As she sits center stage on a white piano bench, her hand slowly begins to play an invisible keyboard one chord at…
When American poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “The personal is political,” she reminded us that political acts cannot be separated from the circumstances of individual lives. Too often drama that attempts to convey a political message does so by striving to be universal, at the expense of the characters’ discrete choices…
The word juggernaut means “an overpowering force,” and appropriately the artistic director of Juggerknot Theatre Company, Tanya Bravo, is tapping into the powerful force of theater by pushing limits — both artistic and geographic. On the 67th block of Biscayne Boulevard, there’s more than one craft being fine-tuned: The area…
