Tickets for the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s upcoming season are now on sale. The 2011-12 season, the theatre’s ninth, is titled The Best of Broadway, and opens with The 39 Steps (Nov. 1-13), a fast-paced thriller made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film adaptation. Following this will be Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Nov. 29-Dec. 18), Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2011
Charming ‘Names’ charts unusual path to lasting love
A “political whore” with a noble cause and a shy Jewish scientist who worries too much about the avian flu meet, and last, in the French comedy The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens), which is playing through Thursday at the Lake Worth Playhouse, Mos’Art Theatre and other area art houses. The buzz about these two eccentric characters, Baya Benmahmoud and Arthur Martin (played by … [Read more...]
Spare novella of Japanese-American brides haunts
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, U.S. authorities rounded up thousands of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast and shipped them to internment camps, fearing they might be traitors. In her compelling new novella, The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka captures in spare prose the paranoia of that period. She opens by describing the arduous voyage by ship … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 27-30
Film: Those who fell victim to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme probably do not have the stomach to sit through Chasing Madoff, Canadian director Jeff Prosserman surprisingly involving analysis of how the former Palm Beacher duped the investment system and how the Securities and Exchange Commission was asleep at the switch, despite investigative reporters blowing the whistle. … [Read more...]
Only thing to be afraid of here is story, direction, acting
One of the great things about Wes Craven’s Scream was its pop-culture savvy. Its characters couldn’t make very easy marks if they’d seen every important horror movie ever made and, conversely, the psycho killer was an even more cunning villain because he’d seen all of those movies. It was a smart film because Craven, his characters and his audience were on an even keel: They … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 19-21
Art: As the summer winds down (though not heat-wise) and students return to the classroom, the Norton Museum offers a little exhibit put together by its five summer interns. Drawing from the museum’s own collections, the interns – who include college and high schools students – chose 16 European prints from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including works by Mary Cassatt and … [Read more...]
‘Six Years’ too shallow, soapy to make strong impact
In case you have bought the way World War II’s “greatest generation” has been idealized, playwright Sharr White now asks theatergoers to see those noble souls in a new, darker light. His melodramatic play Six Years considers the plight of that generation through the microcosm of shattered war veteran Phil Granger and his anguished wife, Meredith. We observe them in five … [Read more...]
Schubert recital admirable, but needed more drama
It takes some kind of pluck and courage to play a serious chamber music recital with the kind of piano that was available Saturday afternoon to violinist Tomas Cotik and pianist Tao Lin: a much-used brown Baldwin upright. But the two musicians soldiered on regardless, though the sound quality would have been much different with a concert instrument, and managed to make a large … [Read more...]
Norton to close Sept.12-30 for reinstallations
The Norton Museum of Art will close from Sept. 12 to Sept. 30 while it reinstalls several of its galleries, museum officials said earlier this month. The goal for this project is to provide a more engaging experience for visitors, officials with the West Palm Beach museum said in a news release. Normal operating hours will resume Saturday, Oct. 1. Palm Beach County residents … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 12-14
Film: As Andy Warhol once said, we will all be famous for 15 minutes, and the corollary to that seems to be that most of us will become the subject of a documentary. At the moment, it is late night comic Conan O’Brien’s turn, featured in a breezy bio-flick called Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, which understandably focuses on the shabby way he was treated by impatient NBC executives … [Read more...]