Performing Arts

City Theatre’s 2010 Summer Shorts festival picks lame plays

This week in theater: Offstage violence and sweaty predators

Unreasonable Doubt in the Gables needs work

David Mamet’s Oleanna, when treated with even half of the passion and smarts evident in Max Pearl’s blistering Pinecrest Rep production, is an exhilarating play. It’s chock full of big ideas that hurtle across the stage, fueled by the audience’s contempt — nay, hatred — of a student named Carol,…

This week in theater: A schizo romp through a schizo world in Distracted

This week in theater: Two quarreling Jews and a deadly showerhead

Marco Ramirez’s pulpy supernatural thriller Broadsword gets a glam workover at the Arsht Center

GableStage and the New Theatre on plucking your eyes out

The “straw man” fallacy is pernicious, and it goes something like this: You say, for example, that drug laws ought to be relaxed. I accuse you of promoting the intoxication of children. “But that’s not what I’ve said!” you respond, and indeed it’s not — but I’d rather argue against…

The Bartered Bride By Bedrich Smetana. April 9 and 10. New World School of the Arts, College Opera Theatre, Gusman Center, 174 E. Flagler St., Miami; 305-374-2444; gusmancenter.org You probably haven’t seen The Bartered Bride before, and you probably shouldn’t let this opportunity slip by. Bedrich Smetana is an overlooked…

Alliance Theatre Lab’s Orphans gets loving treatment

SoBe Arts kills Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Horses, sexual angst, and first-rate acting in New Theatre’s thrilling Equus

Sarah Kane’s Blasted at GableStage explores how power corrupts

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Through March 14. By Gabriel García Márquez; adapted by Nilo Cruz. The Playground Theatre, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores; 305-751-9556, theplaygroundtheatre.com Nilo Cruz does Gabriel García Márquez! The Cuban-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright adapted Márquez’s short story for a kids’ production at the…

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Through March 14. By Gabriel García Márquez; adapted by Nilo Cruz. The Playground Theatre, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores; 305-751-9556, theplaygroundtheatre.com Nilo Cruz does Gabriel García Márquez! The Cuban-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright adapted Márquez’s short story for a kids’ production at the…

Melt at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables attempts to identify Miami

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Through March 14. By Gabriel García Márquez; adapted by Nilo Cruz. The Playground Theatre, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores; 305-751-9556, theplaygroundtheatre.com Nilo Cruz does Gabriel García Márquez! The Cuban-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright adapted Márquez’s short story for a kids’ production at the…

The Hour of the Tiger at New Theatre misses the mark on Japan and its geisha culture

The Great American Trailer Park Musical goes slumming at Actors’ Playhouse

Farragut North By Beau Willimon. Through January 24. GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables; 305-445-1119; gablestage.org GableStage’s obligatory annual politics play combines a stellar cast — David Hemphill! Nick Duckart! Deborah Sherman! The irrepressibly sexy Gregg Weiner! — with a plot that recalls Primary Colors. Witness how the camaraderie of…

The fast and frothy Farragut North hits Joseph Adler’s GableStage