http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/index.html http://media.miamiherald.com/images/logos/rss_sitelogo.gif http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/index.html 140 25 News, sports and entertainment from MiamiHerald.com en-us Copyright 2009 MiamiHerald.com Christine Dolen 60 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:04:41 EST http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss McClatchy Interactive's PubSys miamifeedback@miamiherald.com http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1341298.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1341298.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:00 EST Christopher Durang is at the height of his satirical powers in his newest play, Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. If you think the title is weird, consider the family at the play's center: Dad (Dave Corey) collects butterflies and may be working for a shadow government; daughter Felicity (Sharon Kremen) discovers she has married a possible terrorist (Nick Duckart) while she was drunk; and Mom (Barbara Bradshaw) frequents the theater in a vain search for normalcy. Durang's riff on America's love affair with violence opens at 8 p.m. Friday at Mosaic Theatre in the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through Dec. 13. Tickets are $37 ($31 for seniors 65 and older, $15 for students). Call 954-577-8243 or visit www.mosaictheatre.com. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1341685.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1341685.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:00 EST 26 Miles by Pulitzer Prize finalist Quiara Alegría Hudes. Artistic director Ricky J. Martinez is staging the play, about a Cuban-American mom, her long-estranged Jewish daughter, and the bonds they forge as they head west together. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday- Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday (additional shows at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 29, Dec. 6 and Dec. 13). The play runs through Dec. 20 at New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St. in Coral Gables. Tickets are $40 Friday-Saturday and Sunday matinee, $35 other shows (student rush tickets $15). Call 305-443-5909 or visit www.new-theatre.org. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1335578.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1335578.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:00 EST Beneath the elegant façade, obscured by the opulent trappings of wealth, a scandal is brewing. A respected, successful man known for his charitable works and his familial generosity has been using other people's money to buy a rich man's lifestyle. He has been found out by someone who trusted him, worked with him. And now the younger man, possessed of this ruinous knowledge, must decide whether to bring a carefully constructed house of cards tumbling down. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1334442.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1334442.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:00 EST Marco Ramirez is a wildly imaginative playwright whose writing acknowledges a fundamental reality: If you want to entice the under-30 crowd into experiencing theater, you'd better give 'em something exciting in a form that really speaks to them. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1329242.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1329242.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:00 EST Macon City: A Comic Book Play, a new work getting its first production by The Naked Stage. Jasmine Fluker and Hugh Murphy are in the play, along with Naja Corbett, Jason DeWitt and Giordan Diaz. David Hemphill, Scott Genn and Alyn Darnay round out the cast. They portray citizens of an American metropolis, folks just trying to survive after their decaying city is abandoned by its crime-fighting superheroes. The play opens Friday in the Pelican Theatre on the Barry University campus, 11300 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday (no Thanksgiving performance), and the play runs 'til Nov. 29. Tickets are $25 (seniors 60 and older pay $18, students $12). Call 866-811-4111 or visit www.nakedstage.org. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1328393.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1328393.html Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:00 EST How much you enjoy Legally Blonde the Musical -- and loads of people do -- will probably depend on your tolerance for things kitschy and adorable. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1324960.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1324960.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:00 EST Becky Gulsvig has been awash in pink, onstage anyway, since she began playing various roles in the cast of the musical Legally Blonde during its Broadway run from mid-2007 until the fall of 2008. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1322692.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1322692.html Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:00 EST David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a play of a certain era: early Mamet, post-sexual revolution, pre-AIDS.<p/> Written in 1974, the play flits from one short scene to the next, providing a snapshot of twentysomething big city ``romance'' and serving as a window into the younger Mamet's mind. This is a work that is funny, foul-mouthed and more than a little misogynistic; still enjoyable, but a harbinger of better things to come from a talented playwright. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1317465.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1317465.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:00 EST The Voysey Inheritance has its first preview performance at 2 p.m. Sunday. Mamet's version of Harley Granville-Barker's 1905 drama about a wealthy clan undone by the patriarch's Ponzi scheme (Bernie Madoff, anyone?) stars Peter Haig as the owner of the family-run investment firm. Also in the large cast are Terry Hardcastle, Lourlene Snedeker, Stephen G. Anthony, Kathryn Lee Johnston, Jim Ballard, Katherine Amadeo, Cliff Burgess, Dennis Creaghan, Marta Reiman, John Felix and Dan Leonard. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1318322.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1318322.html Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:00 EST For all that most American theater fans know, playwright Martin McDonagh is in a league of his own when it comes to spinning Irish tales wrapped in humor and terror. Think again. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1312747.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1312747.html Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:00 EST At first, The Walworth Farce looks like a routine the Three Stooges might have dreamed up -- if Larry, Curly and Moe had been Irish, that is. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1305915.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1305915.html Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT If Quentin Tarantino wrote a play for the Three Stooges, the result might look a lot like Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farce, a darkly comic play running Wednesday through Nov. 7 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Raymond Scannell and Tadhg Murphy, part of the cast from Ireland's Druid Theater Company, play sons who ritualistically act out a version of their family's story for their demanding, housebound father. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1304691.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1304691.html Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT The Color Purple took its time -- 27 years, to be exact -- making the journey from the pages of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the stage of Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Its fleeting run ends Sunday, but as the cheering crowd affirmed at Tuesday's opening, the musical is abundantly worth the wait. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1302124.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1302124.html Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT You know those joke-filled chain e-mails everyone gets? Maybe the one that uses bits of Jesus' biography to explain why the son of God was Mexican or Jewish or Irish, or the one that tries to make you laugh as it explores how older women's body parts start to resemble Jell-O. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1300093.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1300093.html Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT The battle between Neil LaBute's boy-men and the women who put up with them rages on in Reasons To Be Pretty, the playwright's first script to hit Broadway -- and, for GableStage, the first resounding success of the new South Florida theater season. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1296950.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1296950.html Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Celie, the central character in Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, lives a life most folks would consider unendurable. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1299056.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1299056.html Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Seth Rozin's Two Jews Walk Into a War, a new comedy now launching a premiere-filled season at Florida Stage, has been likened by folks at the Manalapan theater to earlier plays by Neil Simon (The Odd Couple or The Sunshine Boys, take your pick) and Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot). http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1294790.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1294790.html Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Neil LaBute returns to familiar themes -- the premium society puts on appearance, the ways in which men and women drive each other crazy -- in Reasons To Be Pretty, his Tony Award-nominated Broadway play opening Saturday at GableStage. Erin Joy Schmidt and Ricky Waugh portray at-odds lovers in the show, which runs through Nov. 22. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1292842.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1292842.html Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Neil LaBute didn't set out to create a trilogy of plays about our obsession with appearance when he wrote his twist-filled Pygmalion tale, The Shape of Things, in 2001. But then he came up with another play on the subject, 2004's Fat Pig. And in 2008, a third one, Reasons To Be Pretty. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1289242.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1289242.html Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT It was the show that introduced Liza Minnelli to the Broadway stage, winning her a Tony Award at 19. It marked the first musical comedy pairing of John Kander and Fred Ebb, the composer-lyricist team that would soon join Broadway's titans. Its initial run was short, just a couple of months in 1965, maybe because a musical poking fun at American Communists didn't seem too amusing barely more than a decade after the infamous McCarthy hearings. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1283669.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1283669.html Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT In Seth Rozin's new play Two Jews Walk Into a War, Gordon McConnell, and Avi Hoffman play characters based on two men who were really characters. Isaac Levin and Zebulon Simentov were discovered by NATO forces living inside a synagogue in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2001; though they were preparing to celebrate Hanukkah together, the men also clearly loathed each other. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1281947.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1281947.html Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT For three decades, the most notable coming together of South Florida's far-flung theater community happened at the annual Carbonell Awards, where polished productions and performances are honored. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1280624.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1280624.html Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT One of the great dramaturgical cheats is explaining away a piece's illogic -- or incoherence -- by revealing that everything an audience has just seen was actually a dream or some other flight of fancy. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1274609.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1274609.html Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Andie Arthur, Christopher Demos-Brown, Elena Maria Garcia, Lucas Leyva, Michael McKeever, Andrew Rosendorf, Juan C. Sanchez and Mark Swaner are getting ready to pull an all-nighter. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1272178.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1272178.html Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT In Development, a new work by former Miamian David Caudle, kicks off a world premiere-filled season at New Theatre this weekend. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1263521.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1263521.html Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:00 EDT Chaim Topol does, as you see, have a first name. But professionally, the Tel Aviv-born actor is best known simply as Topol. And though his eclectic resumé includes everything from Othello to the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, his signature role is a character dreamed up by Sholom Aleichem decades before Topol was born: Tevye, the Russian-Jewish dairyman who became the central character in the 1964 Broadway musical smash Fiddler on the Roof. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1247396.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1247396.html Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Generally when we go to Broadway, it's to savor the work of stage stars, escape into the world of lavish musicals, maybe take in the odd pithy British play. But sometimes, when the celestial stars align just right, we get a bonus, as a Hollywood hunk or two decides it's time to try theater again. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1250656.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1250656.html Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT When Cuban playwright Abel González Melo's Chamaco (Boy at Vanishing Point) opens Saturday at Coral Gables' Teatro Trail (in Spanish with English supertitles), it will be the first time in seven years that director and scholar Alberto Sarraín has presented a play in Miami. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1249053.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1249053.html Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Nostalgia as big as the cast's petticoat-plumped skirts is on the bill as Actors' Playhouse kicks off its season with the current Off-Broadway show The Marvelous Wonderettes. Julie Kleiner, Tiana Checchia, Lisa Manuli and Amy Miller Brennan play members of a girl group who sing at their 1958 high school prom, then gather for the 10-year reunion, older and arguably a bit wiser. Dream Lover, Rescue Me, Respect and a host of golden oldies are on the show's playlist. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1236029.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1236029.html Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Sarasota is an arts-crazy place, a Florida Gulf Coast city justifiably proud of its cultural riches.