Review | 'Rachel Corrie': Political controversy obscures artistic flaws

My Name Is Rachel Corrie is a play that has caused the blood to boil of too many people who have neither seen it nor read it. If you actually see the new production by the Alliance Theatre Lab in Miami Lakes, you'll soon realize that although Corrie's pro-Palestinian point of view is clearly and unapologetically presented, the protests and censorship efforts aimed at the play have made it far more famous than its artistic quality would merit.

Corrie, an American activist killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, was deeply sympathetic toward the Palestinians whose homes she tried to save from an Israeli bulldozer. That fact, her work with the International Solidarity Movement and her written criticisms of Israel's treatment of the families she met in Rafah have sparked efforts to quash productions of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in a number of American cities.

It happened here in 2007 when Plantation's Mosaic Theatre announced its plans to produce the play. After a firestorm of criticism, the company canceled

Controversial play 'Rachel Corrie' opens in South Florida at last

Rachel Corrie was a passionate American activist, a young woman who had cared about the larger world since she was a child.

As a fifth-grader in Olympia, Wash., she said this in a speech about world hunger: ``We have got to understand that people in Third World countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they dream our dreams, and we dream theirs. We have to understand that they are us. We are them.''

The speech is part of My Name Is Rachel Corrie , a controversial play that culminates in the intersection of protest, politics and death in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003. This lightning-rod work about the short life and terrible death of Corrie -- whom some see as courageous, others as misguided -- is finally being staged in South Florida after an abortive attempt two years ago.

Review | 'Strange Snow' will warm your heart

Alliance Theatre Lab returns with a haunting production of a play about damaged souls finding hope.

Stephen Metcalfe's Strange Snow has a history in South Florida theater.

The powerful 1982 script about two damaged Vietnam veterans and a lonely woman was first staged here in 1990 by Acme Acting Company, then one of the region's edgiest small theater companies. When Acme's Juan F. Cejas became artistic director of the Florida Shakespeare Theatre (the company that evolved into GableStage), he opened the troupe's new space at the Biltmore Hotel with another production of Strange Snow in 1996.

Celebrity birthdays on Sept. 9

Actor Cliff Robertson is 86. Actor Topol ( Fiddler on the Roof) is 74. Singer Luther Simmons (The Main Ingredient) is 67. Actor Tom Wopat (The Dukes of Hazzard) is 58. Musician Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) is 57. Actor Hugh Grant is 49. Actor Adam Sandler is 43. Model Rachel Hunter is 40. Actor Goran Visnjic ( ER) is 37. Singer Michael Bublé is 34. Actress Michelle Williams ( Brokeback Mountain) is 29.

Surgery scheduled for Mine That Bird

Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird will undergo throat surgery on Tuesday for an entrapped epiglottis. The three- year-old gelding is still expected to start in the $1 million Travers Stakes on Saturday, August 29.

"After Mine That Bird's work this morning (Monday), we scoped him, and he's got an entrapment of the epiglottis," said trainer Chip Woolley. "It's enough that we're going to take him to the city (Elmont, NY) tonight and do surgery on him in the morning.

"The doctors think, there's no guarantees, but the doctors think he'll be good for Travers; he'll be here and ready to run in the Travers. But, it will be somewhat day-to-day. We will not run him if he's not 100 percent, so we're gonna see how things go with the deal tomorrow."