It's a wild romp with elements of so many Alfred Hitchcock movies: the bewildered yet resourceful man on the run; the desirable, uncooperative blond; ruthless spies up to no good; the claustrophobia and happenstance of stranger danger on a train.
For its high-profile Black History Month slot, M Ensemble had planned to present a provocative recent play, but rights negotiations didn't work out. So, instead, the company has returned to Mahalia, a piece that it presented not quite four years ago.
The great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson gets the theater biography treatment when M Ensemble presents Mahalia: A Gospel Musical through Feb. 21. Christina Alexander stars as Jackson, with recording artists Johnny Sanders and Francine Ealey Murphy lending their voices to the story. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at M Ensemble Actors Studio, 12320 W. Dixie Hwy., North Miami. Tickets are $25 ($20 for students and seniors). Call 305-899-2217 or visit www.themensemble.com.
At Florida Stage in Manalapan, `Sins of the Mother' by Israel Horovitz is dynamic with keen observations about human nature.
Prolific playwright Israel Horovitz has also played director for the newest production of his Sins of the Mother, opening this weekend at Florida Stage.
As with the course of true love, the journey of a play from idea to fully staged world premiere seldom runs smoothly.
The Hour of the Tiger, an American woman in Japan tries to conquer her fears as she considers rescuing a geisha from her money-hungry master. Gwendolyn Lai plays the geisha in the world premiere piece by Riley, a South Florida playwright and author who has written a number of works on the Bahamas.
Del Shores' Sordid Lives has built up a cult following during its evolution from stage work to indie movie to TV series. A soap opera spoof with a Texas twang and a gay point of view, the show features a collection of deliberately out-sized good ol' boys (and gals), a semi-closeted hunk whose therapy sessions bridge the scenes, and an institutionalized transvestite who identifies deeply with the sorrowful trials of country queen Tammy Wynette.
Parading its raunchiness and redneck sensibilities as proudly as its gifted stripper wears her sky-high, see-through ''dancing'' shoes, The Great American Trailer Park Musical is bringing a heaping helping of yee-haw to lah-dee-dah Coral Gables.
He plays a Cuban father who sacrifices everything for the sake of his precious son. She's herself (as child, teen and woman), and everybody else in her Cuban-American family.
The Great American Trailer Park Musical is bringing a heaping helping of yee-haw to lah-dee-dah Coral Gables. Actors' Playhouse, which will next take on the far greater artistic challenge of Miss Saigon, approaches Trailer Park the way its raven-haired stripper treats her hootin', hollerin' audience -- put on an entertaining show that flirts with being trashy, rake in some cash, then do it all over again the next day.
A raunchy and raucous ode to folks whose homes are made of metal, The Great American Trailer Park Musical brings its redneck-glorifying attitude to the stage of Actors' Playhouse. Christopher A. Kent, Margot Moreland, Stephen G. Anthony and Kelli Atkins help stir up the R-rated action at `exclusive' Armadillo Acres in the Off-Broadway musical hit. The show runs through Feb. 7 at Actors', 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables. Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinee this Wednesday). Tickets are $48 Friday-Saturday, $40 other shows (10 percent senior discount, $15 student rush tickets available except Saturday-Sunday). Call 305-444-9293 or visit www.actorsplayhouse.org.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a novella published in 1886, has provided a creative spark for generations of artists. The story of a too-curious scientist who disastrously brings his evil side to life has spawned dozens of movies and theatrical interpretations, including Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde, the prolific composer's longest-running Broadway musical.
Liv Ullmann has played many roles: actor, director, activist, muse, writer, lover, wife, mother, grandmother. As the Miami-based National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts prepares to kick off its YoungArts Week honoring some of the country's most talented young performers, writers and artists, the Norwegian star with the luminous blue eyes will add yet another role -- master teacher -- to her arts-and-life resumé.
Robert Louis Stevenson penned a horror classic in his 19th century novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Playwright Lauren Wilson takes the familiar split personality story and remakes it into a Grand Guignol farce in Chemical Imbalance: A Jekyll and Hyde Play, now at the Caldwell Theatre Company. Tom Wahl plays the good doctor and his bad alterego; Lindsey Forgey, left, and Laura Turnbull (pictured above) are two of the many Londoners scared out of their wits. Chemical Imbalance is at the Caldwell, 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton, through Feb. 7. Performances are 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday. Tickets are $34-$55. Call 877-245-7432 or visit www.caldwelltheatre.com.
Onstage, children and dogs often turn out to be scene stealers. Just ask any adult actor who has appeared in a production of Annie.
In Beau Willimon's Off-Broadway hit Farragut North, a young press secretary for a candidate involved a tight presidential primary race finds himself sinking under many sorts of manipulation. Nick Duckart and Betsy Graver are part of a GableStage cast that also includes David Hemphill, Robert Strain, Gregg Weiner and Deborah L. Sherman.
The famous musical has run longer than any show in Broadway history, more than 9,100 performances and counting. Its director has been honored with 21 Tony Awards, way more than any other individual.
Just before actor-artistic director Avi Hoffman pulled the plug on Boca Raton's New Vista Theatre Company, the leaders of two of the region's most celebrated companies revealed plans to relocate. Joseph Adler will move GableStage into the to-be-rebuilt Coconut Grove Playhouse, and Louis Tyrrell will take Florida Stage north to West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.
Michael Frayn's Copenhagen has nothing to do with the climate summit that winds up Friday in that Danish capital. Rather, it's an intricate, intellectually challenging consideration of a 1941 meeting between physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr at Bohr's home in Nazi-occupied Denmark -- a meeting that forever altered the scientists' long friendship.
Arnold Mittelman, who ran Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse from 1985 until the theater abruptly shut down in 2006, is headed back to Broadway.
Mittelman is planning the first Broadway revival of The Rothschilds, a 1970 musical by composer Jerry Bock, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and book writer Sherman Yellen.
Arnold Mittelman, who ran Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse from 1985 until the theater abruptly shut down in 2006, is headed back to Broadway.
The journey to that musical-theater pinnacle known as Broadway is full of obstacles, detours and delights, at least as many as Lewis Carroll's young heroine Alice encountered on her famous trip to Wonderland.
Prodigious talent, creativity and a hefty budget have helped transform Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure from a collection of ideas into an often-dazzling, world-premiere musical at Tampa's Straz Center for the Performing Arts.
Florida Stage has become an artistic home away from home for a number of fine American playwrights, including St. Louis-based Carter W. Lewis, who has just watched his fifth play brought to life by the Manalapan theater.
Billy Crystal shares stories -- sad, hilarious, touching -- about his childhood and extended family in 700 Sundays, his Tony Award-winning solo show in the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd. in Miami, through Sunday. Crystal channels everyone from Billie Holiday to his own parents in the tender theater piece. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $45 to $85. 305-949-6722 or www.arshtcenter.org.
A young teacher matches wits with smart teens trying to figure out where they belong in the world premiere of Carter W. Lewis' The Storytelling Ability of a Boy. Laura Carbonell plays the teacher, Bethany Mendenhall and Marshall Pailet the students in the dark yet funny play. Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday at Florida Stage, 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan, where the play runs through Jan. 17. Tickets are $48 Friday-Sunday evening, $40 other shows. 800-514-3837 or www.floridastage.org.
700 Sundays is a hilarious yet unexpectedly poignant exploration of how the past helped shape the man who became a famous entertainer.
Though Rent is still a musical of its time, arguing for embracing life in the face of the then-deadly menace of AIDS, it remains an exhilarating and vital theater experience. And these days, its themes of community and caring in the face of deprivation seem more relevant than ever.
Ask Billy Crystal what he holds most dear in a long, varied career -- a career that really started when he was a 5-year-old trying to make a room full of great jazz musicians laugh -- and he'll tell you it's 700 Sundays. ''This show,'' he says simply, ''is very cathartic for me.''
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