Remember when Canadians and Americans treated each other like close family and the best of friends? It wasn’t all that long ago when communities along both sides of our longest border and any vacationers could just show ID and be cheerfully waived through. The last time I visited Canada, several decades ago, was when we rented an out-of-season ski cabin for the summer in Jay Peak, Vermont. Ironically, other than our first night (when we got to enjoy the fireplace) that summer proved to be one of the hottest on record in Vermont, and the coolest in South Florida! So, we spent a lot of time in not-so-freezing local lakes and exploring the neighborhood, including an impulsive drive across the nearby Canadian border. 

We’d come from a park music festival featuring, of all things, a Klezmer (traditional Yiddish music) band, and a local farmers’ market where we’d bought some fresh produce. The Canadian border guard believed us when we said we’d leave these in the trunk as they were just for our personal consumption when we returned. He was however bemused when we explained we were heading to Canada for lunch, insisting there was nothing out there but farmland. But he let us through. And after miles of circular haystacks, we found a quaint local farm museum that signed us up for an annual family membership (at a very low rate, and cheaper than two single-day passes).

Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Twas the Night Before…, presented as part of the Kravis on Broadway series, arrives with all the trimmings one expects from a holiday spectacle. It is festive, colorful, family friendly, and polished in a quintessential one would expect from a world-renowned troupe like Cirque. Yet beneath the glitter, the show’s story is loosely sketched that, if you were to strip away every bauble related to Christmas, replace it with Alice in Wonderland or any other whimsical world, and very little would change. Whether this is a virtue or a missed opportunity depends entirely on what you want from your holiday outing.

On Halloween night, a perfectly spooky occasion for a family of delightful misfits, South Florida Theater caught the opening performance of The Addams Family at the Kravis Center. It was a truncated run, but the enthusiasm of the audience, with the charisma of the cast, made the evening worthwhile. The show, directed by Antoinette DiPietropolo, and featuring Rodrigo Aragón as Gomez and Renee Kathleen Koher as Morticia, found its stride in moments of humor and physical play but faltered in its true resonance, at no fault of the director or actors.

Twenty year old actress Dana Cimone was captivating as the lead character “Dorothy” in the 2025 national tour of “The Wiz”, an energetic show that featured joyous singing and dancing in the two act, two hour and 30 minute musical that is running now through Sunday, October 12 at Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami.

 Playwright Peter Quilter’s one act comedy “Step By Step”, a tale about how three women honor their friend who died recently by climbing a mountain, is running now through August 10 at Actors Playhouse in Coral Gables.

Sometimes you just need to laugh. And laugh…and laugh. No matter how silly and, well, “corny” the humor. Even at puns, lots of puns – outrageously bawdy ones, at that. It was only a few years ago that SHUCKED: A New Musical Comedy created a gee-whiz stir on Broadway for being so unprecedentedly silly yet sweet, lewd but not offensive, and always absolutely hilarious! The musical received nine Tony nominations in 2023 and won an award for Best Actor.