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 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:09:35 EST http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss McClatchy Interactive's PubSys miamifeedback@miamiherald.com 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. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1237657.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1237657.html Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT The personal and the political intersect in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, the smartly engaging season opener at Mosaic Theatre. Laura Turnbull plays both the wife and the daughter of Gordon McConnell as Max, a Cambridge University professor who refuses to acknowledge that the Communist philosophy he so ardently supports is playing out badly in the real world. The play runs through Oct. 4 at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $37 ($31 for those 65 and older, $15 students). Call 954-577-8243 or visit www.mosaictheatre.com. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1232539.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1232539.html Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Rock and rebellion go hand-in-hand, whether it's a kid blasting music his parents hate or a band doing its own thing its own way, no matter the cost. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1225404.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1225404.html Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT From Broadway blockbusters to intimate plays meant to rock an audience's world, the many professional theaters in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties will present almost every genre of theater throughout this challenging season. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1226123.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1226123.html Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Tom Stoppard's smart, provocative plays are magnets for audiences who crave theater that sparks both thought and emotion -- and for artists who relish the bottomless challenge of bringing the playwright's rich worlds to life. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1215765.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1215765.html Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man was supposed to end its run at the Caldwell Theatre Company last weekend, but great reviews and strong demand won the intense, involving play a well-deserved extension. So this holiday weekend brings a final chance to catch the play about a gravely wounded Jewish Confederate soldier and two of his family's former slaves. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1213753.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/christine-dolen/story/1213753.html Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:00 EDT Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, winner of the best play Tony Award and a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, is an entertaining, artfully written play. Its premise -- a superstar baseball player casually comes out, and all hell breaks loose -- is, unfortunately, still all too believable.