Listen: if you don’t know who Tina Turner is, let me bring you up to speed. The “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was born into poverty in rural Tennessee, famously sung about in her hit record “Nutbush City Limits.” Gifted with a powerful, irreplaceable voice, Tina (born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939) was noticed by one Ike Turner; they formed the band known as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. The band is great because Tina is great, which makes Tina grow bigger than the band, and she goes on to have the most successful solo career for a woman rock ‘n’ roll singer. Insert the best musical I’ve ever seen.

20 years later Anna in the Tropics is as impactful and important as it was when it first premiered.  Nilo Cruz now takes the play that earned him the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a Latino  playwright and gives it a new life with his directorial vision in focus.  

Miami New Drama’s anniversary production breathes new life into this poetic work with  aesthetics to match the language itself. Originally premiering at New Theatre in Coral Gables,  Miami New Drama brings the play back to a familiar home of South Florida with Cruz at the  helm, filling each moment on stage with the lyrical nature of his words. 

“I see America as an epic poem… volumes long.”

With this singular line, Michael McKeever, the playwright of American Rhapsody opens and summarizes the entirety of the play. In Zoetic Stages current world premiere production, directed by Stuart Meltzer, America is observed through the lens of one family spanning 63 years. This family is a representation of the country as a whole as you go from decade to decade, historical event after historical event…

In other words, it is a story of epic proportions. The task of touching on so many things can be daunting to most artists and yet McKeever tackles it head on. With Meltzer at the wheel the play is given a poetic life that compliments the epic poem it is so modeled after, taking us on an ambitious journey.

It’s hard to believe that Charity Hope Valentine’s slightly skewed, slice-of-life musical story – Sweet Charity — has passed the half-century mark.  But the unlucky-in-love New York City dance hall worker whose well-intentioned intentions often go sliding off the rails is back in a perked-up presentation that uses lots of the newly installed techno-glitz at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.  

The production that taps Jennifer Sanchez – an actress whose quirky traits and powerful voice make her a top-notch choice for the title role – heads a stellar troupe of singers and dancers in a delightful production that continues through Jan. 29.

Unconventional may be an understatement when it comes to trying to describe Alternative Canon: A Sacrilegious Romp. This new play by Erin Proctor is running for only three more performances next weekend, courtesy of fledgling theatre company LakeHouseRanchDotPng and creative collective Artistic Vibes. 

And, if you hadn’t guessed from the title, which Alternative Canon: A Sacrilegious Romp very much lives up to, you know you’ll be in for something out-of-the-norm when you enter the “theatre,” which is a room equipped with two sets of folding chairs arranged in rows on either side of the stage as opposed to a more traditional playing space. 

Comedian Jackie Mason’s daughter Sheba stars in a musical about the relationship between her mother and father in The Jackie Mason Musical running now through January 22 at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale.

The late comedian, who died in 2021 at age 93, never publicly acknowledged that he had a daughter until he was forced by a judge to pay child support for Sheba until she was 18. 

Written by: Mindy Leaf

I often wistfully recall living in NYC in the 1980s and attending specially priced pre-show dinners at restaurants around Broadway that guaranteed you’d be served and out the door a half hour before showtime. It was always nice to join friends, or even just your partner, for a meal before seeing a play. But this was something I figured simply could not happen in South Florida — what with unpredictable traffic, searching and paying for parking at two locations, not to mention our current restaurant staffing crisis sinking the best-laid timing plans. Who needs all that stress?  

Gablestage scores again with a haunting production of We Will Not Be Silent, which tells the true story of Sophie Scholl. In 1943, Scholl was a young college student in Germany who stood against the horrors of the time by becoming a leader of the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group opposed to Hitler’s regime. 

And, indeed, it doesn’t take long for the high stakes to set in after Scholl and her brother are arrested for distributing protest pamphlets. Thus, we meet her in the care of interrogator Kurt Grunwald, who tries to convince her first to betray her co-conspirators and later to confess and renounce her actions. 

Written By Christine Dolen

Originally published on artburstmiami.com 

The stunning play that altered the course of Nilo Cruz’s life began with a commission from the 104-seat New Theatre in Coral Gables.  Supported by a national grant, the company led by Rafael de Acha asked the Cuban-American playwright, whose work was being produced by significant regional theaters throughout the country, for a new play.

Cruz delivered “Anna in the Tropics.”

Boca Stage kicks open the 2023 segment of its current season with one of its best performances – if not the best – an intense, mind-probing examination of two people trapped in solitary confinement – one by choice, the other by circumstance – and whose lives become increasingly difficult to bear. As they spiral toward a loss of self-existence, a totally unexpected event brings a measure of solace and newfound relief to their painful realities.