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THEATER CRITIC

Christine Dolen
Christine Dolen has been The Herald's theater critic since 1979. She has been a fellow at the National Critics' Institute and at Stanford University, and in 1999 was a Senior Fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. She has served as a Pulitzer Prize drama juror and has won first place in arts writing in the Missouri Lifestyles Journalism Awards.
cdolen@herald.com.

Top Story

  • Shows, from left, Margot Moreland, Wayne Steadman, Allan Baker, Maribeth Graham, Barry J. Tarallo and Lourelene Snedeker in <em>Mid Life! The Crisis Musical</em> at Actors' Playhouse.

    Critic's Pick | 'Mid Life! The Crisis Musical'

    That knowing laughter you'll hear through mid-August at Actors' Playhouse is coming from Baby Boomers who are going through the catharsis of seeing their lives onstage. Not their lives, precisely, but actors Margot Moreland, Wayne Steadman, Allan Baker, Maribeth Graham, Barry J. Tarallo and Lourelene Snedeker get close enough to universal truths that Mid Life! The Crisis Musical should seem very familiar to those between 40 and 60 -- or to anyone who loves them. The show runs through Aug. 10 at the...

MORE STORIES

  • THEATER REVIEW | LOS INTERESES CREADOS

    Smart treatment for comedy of buffoons

    Just over a century ago, Jacinto Benavente surprised audiences in Madrid with the premiere of Los intereses creados (The Bonds of Interest), a ''comedy of buffoons'' that pays homage to Italian Commedia dell'Arte and playwrights such as Carlo Goldoni, as a mocking satire of society at the time.

  • THEATER REVIEW | THE HATE U GAVE: THE TUPAC SHAKUR STORY

    Not quite something 2 die 4 yet, but . . .

    Tupac Shakur's 25 short years of life were a study in extremes. On the one hand, as a prodigiously talented teenager of modest means, he attended a performing arts high school and appeared in everything from Shakespeare to The Nutcracker. Though he dropped out of school, he was a voracious reader, a young man with wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and a poet.

  • Language no barrier in stirring festival opener

    The XXIII International Hispanic Theatre Festival is up and running through the end of July at the Carnival Studio Theater in the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Prometeo's space on Miami Dade College's Wolfson campus and several other locations throughout Miami-Dade County.

  • Critic's Pick | 'Why We Have a Body'

    In Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body, Erynn Dalton, left, plays a private investigator whose specialty is catching cheating husbands. But her most ardent mission is to capture the attention and heart of Monica Garcia's Renee, right, a paleontologist who is, rather inconveniently, married. With its run extended to Aug. 9, the poetic and funny play is packing 'em in at the Sol Theatre Project, 1140 N. Flagler Dr., Fort Lauderdale. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, with tickets priced...

  • THEATER REVIEW

    Lauderdale stage gets a fresh, strong revival

    Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body isn't a new play (it premiered at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in 1993), but as the new production by Fort Lauderdale's Sol Theatre Project so amply demonstrates, the laughs it generates are fresh and genuine.

  • THEATER

    Channeling Tupac: Miami actor-playwright portrays human side of slain rapper

    n the surface, slain rapper Tupac Shakur and the deeply alive actor Meshaun Labrone Arnold would seem to have little in common. Shakur's mother was a member of the Black Panthers when he was born in 1971, later becoming a crack addict and welfare mom as she struggled to raise her son. Arnold's father, Elder Frazier Arnold Jr., is pastor of Miami's Mt. Olive Primitive Baptist Church; his mother Ruby is the former director of a Head Start center. Audio Available Video Available

  • Dramatic mission: Hispanic Theatre Festival is his life's work

    When Mario Ernesto Sánchez thinks about putting together another International Hispanic Theatre Festival -- this year's edition is his 23rd -- he thinks back to the mule that hauled garbage to the town dump in the years before he left Cuba at 15 on a Pedro Pan flight. Photo Gallery Available

  • Critic's Pick | 'Souvenir'

    Elizabeth Dimon is a fine actor and singer; Florence Foster Jenkins was not. But sometimes it takes a person of great talent to portray someone whose ''gifts'' were modest in the extreme. Dimon, above as Jenkins, will portray the delusional coloratura soprano in Souvenir, Stephen Temperley's play-with-music opening Saturday at Palm Beach Dramaworks, 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach. Tom Kenaston is featured as Jenkins' long-suffering accompanist. The show runs through Aug. 2, with performances at...

  • THEATER REVIEW

    Rights activist comes to life in solo show

    Those without a deep knowledge of the civil rights movement might not recognize the name Fannie Lou Hamer. The granddaughter of slaves, Hamer was both a leader and a soldier in the push for voting rights, a woman who inspired her fellow 1960s activists through both word and song.

  • THEATER REVIEW | PETE 'N' KEELY

    Terrific singing derailed by a witless script

    Showbiz history is littered with the ghosts of partner acts that sizzled, then splintered. Think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence, Sonny and Cher.

  • Critic's Pick | 'Dream a Little Dream'

    Florida Stage turns musical in the summer, and this year's offering is, well, groovy. Dream a Little Dream, The Nearly True Story of the Mamas and the Papas, cowritten by original ''Papa'' Denny Doherty and Paul Ledoux, charts the success and disintegration of the famous 1960s folk-rock group. The actors playing the famous singers are, clockwise from left, Michael Sample as John Phillips, Alisa Schiff as Cass Elliot, Kyle Harris as the young Doherty and Christine Hope as Michelle Phillips; Stephen...

  • ARTS REVIEW

    'Celia' swings musically, drama falls short

    Celia Cruz was such an enthralling and beloved musical icon that it was natural to want to know more about her. But her very private life, whose great drama was being separated from Cuba, made her an elusive figure. What we got from Celia was music and energy.

  • Critic's Pick | 'Shining City'

    In Conor McPherson's mysterious Shining City, grief mingles with hope as several residents of Dublin try to cope with shattered lives and the aftermath of death. Deborah L. Sherman and Ricky Waugh are featured, along with John Bixler and Gregg Weiner in GableStage's new production of the play, which opens Saturday and runs through July 20. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday at the theater's space in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.

  • THEATER REVIEW

    Gimmicky payoff spoils one-man play

    Edward Carr, new to being a widower, has always been a driven man. Raised in a series of foster homes, he forged a solid family. When he found his dream woman, he made her his own, even though she was 15 years older and inconveniently married to his boss. Science and statistics be damned, he revels in the pleasure he gets from the cigarettes he smokes during every waking hour.

  • TONY AWARDS

    Tony Awards show a plug for Broadway

    Tony winner-turned-View star Whoopi Goldberg hosted the Tony ceremony and CBS telecast from Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall. After the show's stirring start -- the thrilling Circle of Life animal procession from The Lion King -- Goldberg ambled out dressed as the crab from Disney's current-season critical flop, The Little Mermaid.

  • High hopes: A skinny Latino dreamer, with an assist from Miami's deep theater talent pool, creates a Tony Awards heavyweight

    At the start of another scorching July day, the guy who runs the corner bodega perfumes the air with the scent of café con leche. Hip-hop begins percolating, too, one ingredient in a musical stew flavored with salsa, merengue, bachata, mambo, Reggaeton. Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans breathe to these beats, some getting ahead, others just getting by. Audio Available Video Available

  • 3 names familiar to South Florida will be heard at Tonys

    One man is a Broadway star whose parents fled Cuba, an actor who may well find that the third time as a Tony Award nominee will be the charm. Another is a producer with endless drive and a fondness for musicals that make people happy. The third, also the son of Cuban immigrants, is an orchestrator, arranger and musical director who has achieved Broadway acclaim despite a hearing loss that goes back to childhood.

  • Tony Awards ballot

    The 62nd annual Tony Awards will be presented from 8 to 11 p.m. Sunday at New York's Radio City Music Hall and televised on WFOR-CBS 4. Miami Herald theater critic Christine Dolen's predicted winners are starred.

  • THEATER

    'Shorts' festival gets more festive

    City Theatre's popular Summer Shorts Festival has always been complex, especially considering that it is built around the pleasures of little comedies and brief dramas. Lots of plays, many actors and interns, a number of directors and designers: The challenges (and stresses) of putting together a program as successful and satisfying as City's current Signature Shorts lineup are major. Audio Available

  • Critic's Pick | Neil LaBute's 'Wrecks'

    A man (Gordon McConnell) has just lost his wife of 30 years. At her funeral, he reminisces about their enduring love. Yet gradually, as the memories tumble out, he reveals a major secret. Neil LaBute's Wrecks, a 2005 solo show, gets its South Florida premiere this weekend at Plantation's Mosaic Theatre, with the Carbonell Award-winning McConnell as the widower. The play runs through June 29 in Mosaic's space at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000. Performances...

  • THEATER

    Musicals, revivals and a family drama are in the Tony mix

    Good plays found a home on Broadway this season, though on this Sunday before the 62nd annual Tony Awards, not so many of them are still open for business.

  • Critic's Pick | Undershorts

    For years, conservative Summer Shorts Festival patrons have buzzed about the content of some of the plays. Too raunchy. Too sexy. Too edgy. The powers that be at City Theatre listened, and this year put together a separate festival of nothing but such raunchy-sexy-edgy plays.

  • 'Summer Shorts' theater long on excitement

    Though it happens only once a year, for a month at the start of each summer, City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival is on any true South Florida arts aficionado's short list of must-see theater.

  • FREE PERFORMANCE

    Talented youth showcase the arts

    More than 400 arts-loving kids will get the opportunity to perform on a high-profile stage when Growing Up With the Arts, a free program presented by The Children's Trust, takes over the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts at 4 p.m. Sunday. Audio Available

  • Summer Shorts: Popular theater fest hits a growth spurt

    When it comes to City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival, the numbers have always been impressive. A company of 10 actors (give or take a few) tackles 17 short plays (again, give or take a few) grouped into two programs. Then the thing runs for five weeks, playing to thousands of theatergoers hooked on the variety and sheer fun of it all.

  • Critic's Pick | Douglas Carter Beane

    Tony Award nominee Douglas Carter Beane will find out on June 15 whether he'll take home a Tony for the deliciously tongue-in-cheek script he wrote for the musical Xanadu. But this weekend, Beane will be in South Florida, where he'll be honored with the first Ovation Award given during the annual Lavender Footlights Festival. Celebrating work with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes, the two-day festival begins at 6 p.m. Saturday with a reading of Ted Sod's The Lost Art of Conversation...

  • Critic's Pick | Summer Shorts Festival

    As if you couldn't tell from the scorching weather, it's time for City Theatre to crank up its Summer Shorts Festival, the popular annual event that demonstrates good plays come in all sizes. Steve Trovillion, aka 'Mr. Summer Shorts,' returns to the acting company in a number of roles -- including the title one in the world premiere of Paul Rudnick's Sheepish, about the world's first openly gay sheep.

  • THEATER REVIEW | MAKEOVER

    New musical's definitely a cut below

    Sure, it's just a publicist's pre-opening hype, but when you read ''reminiscent of early Sondheim'' in the description of a new musical, it sets up expectations, you know?

  • Latino musical leads Tony Awards nominations

    In the Heights, a tender-hearted musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, leads an eclectic crop of Broadway productions in the race for the 62nd annual Tony Awards, which will be presented June 15.

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