Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Week Ahead: May 3 to 9

What: Cypress Hill

Where: Revolution Live, 100 Nugent Ave., Fort Lauderdale

When: 7:30 p.m.

Cost: $27.50 advance, $29 day of show

Contact: 954/449-1025, jointherevolution.net

It’s been 25 years since Cypress Hill released its debut album, and the four-piece hip-hop group is celebrating this quarter-century milestone with a tour that draws heavily from its exciting freshman and sophomore albums. The band’s storied and ongoing career (its 10th album will be released this year) includes its distinction as the first Latino-American hip-hop artists to reach platinum status in album sales. Cypress Hill also helped blur the lines between rap and rock, with guitars and drums often assisting the group’s bass-heavy rhythms and unusual samples, all of it connected by vocalist B-real’s high nasal pitch. As for the lyrics, they continue to make artists as disparate as Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson proud: Cannabis is a favorite and repeated subject of discussion. Special guests Jelly Roll will open the show.

THURSDAY

What: Cinco de Mayo Brickell

Where: Mary Brickell Village, 901 S. Miami Ave., Miami

When: 2 to 11 p.m.

Cost: $10 general admission, $29 for “fiesta party pack”

Contact: cincodemayobrickell.com

Billing itself as Miami’s biggest Cinco de Mayo festival, this annual daylong celebration may be the closest experience South Floridians have to visiting Mexico without actually crossing the border … or at least visiting the Mexico of tourist brochures. Bring your favorite sombrero and slap on a moustache if you don’t already have one. There will be music at two DJ stages, live mariachi bands and Mexican dancers, authentic Mexican beer, tequila shots and premium margaritas. And when they say “premium,” they mean it: Deep-pocketed imbibers can partake in a $200 margarita called “The M,” which touts everything from Herradura Seleccion tequila to its Persian limes and ultra-pure bamboo salt.

FRIDAY

What: Opening night of “Short Cuts 6”

Where: Willow Theatre at Sugar Sand Park, 300 S. Military Trail, Boca Raton

When: 8 p.m.

Cost: $25 individual, $15 group rate

Contact: 561/347-3948, willowtheatre.org

When author and writing coach Joyce Sweeney launched an inaugural short-play collection “Short Cuts” at no cost to the public in 2010, she was “testing the waters” to see if there was an audience hungry for new work for local playwrights. When 150 attendees turned up at the show’s unorthodox theater space—The Loft, a Boca venue that hosts weddings and bar mitzvahs—she knew she was onto something. The following year, she incorporated as a theater company, The Playgroup LLC, and has since presented a new “Short Cuts” every year at various black box spaces. The sixth edition marks Sweeney’s first in its generously sized new home at the Willow Theatre. The outrageous and the absurd link several of this year’s selections of comedies and dramas. Among the eight plays: God and the Devil debate the relocation of a difficult soul in “Bob is Cast Out of Hell;” aliens named Sushi and Kale consider the merits of Earth in “Best Planets to Retire On;” and a suppertime rendezvous takes a turn for the strange in “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner.” It runs through May 15.

What: Opening night of “The Realistic Joneses”

Where: Thinking Cap Theatre at the Vanguard, 1501 S. Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale

When: 8 p.m.

Cost: $35

Contact: 813/220-1546, thinkingcaptheatre.com

The sort of effusive praise that New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lavished on the 2014 Broadway premiere of “The Realistic Joneses” doesn’t occur often—so expectations are high for the South Florida regional premiere of Will Eno’s award-nominated ensemble piece. The title refers to a pair of next-door neighbor couples, both bearing the last name “Jones” and both with their peculiar reasons for living in this particular community. The inability of educated, grown humans to communicate with each is central to this strange, darkly comic work, which often has the feel of connected “SNL” sketches, complete with blackout scene endings. Eno himself says that it reads like a “sitcom broadcast from a weirder, more melancholy world.” Margaret Ledford will direct Mark Duncan, Casey Dressler, Noah Levine and Gretchen Porro in Thinking Cap’s production, which runs through May 22.

What: Bill Burr

Where: Hard Rock Live, 1 Seminole Way, Hollywood

When: 8 p.m.

Cost: $40-$85

Contact: 800/745-3000, myhrl.com

Nothing is off limits for this decidedly un-P.C. Massachusetts comedian with nearly 25 years in the standup biz. All races, sexes, genders, creeds, faiths and body types are fair game for this incendiary comedic voice, who, like fellow provocateurs Louis CK, Bill Hicks and George Carlin, has a an ability to hold a grimy mirror up to society—especially the parts we don’t want to look at. As his career has graduated from brick-and-mic clubs to theaters and concert halls, so has his acting work, with roles ranging from “Breaking Bad” to “Maron” and “The Heat” to his credit. He also hosts one of the funniest podcasts on the Net. But for Burr at his rawest and most unhinged, his tours are where it’s at. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY

What: Joel McHale

Where: Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., Suite 250, West Palm Beach

When: 7:30 and 10 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday

Cost: $35 with a two-drink minimum

Contact: 561/833-1812, palmbeachimprov.com

For 11 years, E! Network’s “The Soup” provided a half-hour of weekly sanity amid a television landscape populated by celebutants, simpering competition-show losers, raging housewives and brain cell-killing teenybopper programming. Which is why its finale, in December of last year, was a sad day for TV—an institution which now has one less opportunity to laugh at itself. But at least its snarky, sarcastic host is still roaming the countryside, if not the weekly airwaves. Joel McHale remains a subversive, pop-culture skewering voice who, when not touring his reference-heavy standup act, tends to appear in the most unexpected places: the “X-Files” reboot, for instance, where he played a poker-faced parody of conspiracy radio host Alex Jones, and “Deliver Us From Evil,” a big-budget supernatural thriller. This weekend’s four shows only at the Palm Beach Improv provide an unusually intimate opportunity to see him at a distance that’s as close as, well … your home television.

SATURDAY

What: The Tenderloins

Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

When: 7 p.m.

Cost: $53.75-$250

Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org

The four-piece comedy troupe known as the Tenderloins are adept at making strangers—and themselves—outrageously uncomfortable. It is, in fact, their day jobs, as the stars of the hit truTV series “Impractical Jokers.” The hidden camera comedy follows the Tenderloins—aka Joe, Murr, Q and Sal—as they perform public pranks that even they have no knowledge of prior to the beginning of the stunt. Which means spontaneity always trumps rehearsed action, and that improvisation, a major element of the comedians’ backgrounds, plays into the success or failure of each prank. In recent weeks, one Tenderloin embedded himself into a feminist panel only to disagree with everything the activists said; another volunteered for an invasive medical procedure during a health seminar. The guys are often the butts of their own jokes, and this self-effacement has helped elevate “Impractical Jokers” over most hidden-camera schadenfreude. At their live tour, the Tenderloins will present a multimedia showcase of live comedy and videos, much of it never seen before.

What: Opening night of “Don Pasquale”

Where: Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

When: 7 p.m.

Cost: $21-$225

Contact: 800/741-1010, fgo.org

Following the fiery tragedy and historical drama of its previous two productions (“Norma” and “The Passenger”), Florida Grand Opera has decided to let us exhale and share a few laughs with its season closer. Gaetano Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale,” considered the apex of the 19th century opera buffamovement, is also one of the great Italian comic operas of all time. Charting the machinations of a miserly, reclusive bachelor with a penchant for cats; his scheming nephew; and the nephew’s lower-caste paramour; “Pasquale” has entered the standard repertoire, but you probably haven’t seen a version like this: Updated by Scottish Opera in 2014, this production is set in Rome at the cusp of the Swingin’ Sixties, and its lurid cartoon sets evoke Looney Tunes as much as “La Dolce Vita.” It runs through May 14.

John Thomason
John Thomason
As the A&E editor of bocamag.com, I offer reviews, previews, interviews, news reports and musings on all things arty and entertainment-y in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

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