Theater: What, you still haven’t seen Karen Stephens in the one-woman multiple-character tour de force Bridge & Tunnel? The show, built around the denizens of an urban poetry slam café, allows the West Palm Beach actress the opportunity to flex her performance muscles and demonstrate her chameleon-like abilities. The show brought her a Carbonell Award nomination earlier this … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2011
The 2011-12 season in theater: A trove of premieres, new ventures
Looking at the upcoming theater season in South Florida, you would never know that we were in the midst of a sluggish economy. Palm Beach Dramaworks is pouring millions into the renovation and purchase of its new performance space which will nearly triple the group’s seating capacity, and recently received a $2 million donation for the project. A completely new company, … [Read more...]
For Anna Kendrick, odds of stardom are better than 50/50
You could never accuse Anna Kendrick of avoiding offbeat projects. She copped an Oscar nomination two years ago as the cold-blooded tech geek in Up in the Air, a comedy about corporate downsizing. In 2007, she co-starred in a high school debate team tale with the off-putting title of Rocket Science. And this Friday she plays a novice therapist in the cancer comedy, 50/50. … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in jazz: A feast for discerning listeners
A struggling economy won’t impact a jazz concert season as much as it does pop music. That’s because jazz is used to struggling more than pop to succeed. Sure, it’s a case of supply and demand -- if you charged three figures for even marquee jazz artists, you’d be lucky to get three figures in attendance -- but there’s more to it. A jazz performer will usually have more in … [Read more...]
‘Side Effects,’ ‘The Brothers Size’: Two area premieres
The estimable Michael Weller, who began his career with sprawling, large-cast dramas (Moonchildren, The Ballad of Soapy Smith), has lately taken to writing two-character plays that put disintegrating marriages under the microscope. His Side Effects, which opened this spring in New York and now has its South Florida premiere at Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre, is linked to his … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in dance: New work for MCB highlight of rich season
The coming dance season couldn’t open any hotter: The world premiere of a new work for the Miami City Ballet by a rising young British star. But there are also plenty of other good things in the local dance world for 2011-12, including the State Ballet of Russia’s Swan Lake, the frenzy of champion ballroom dancers in Burn the Floor, and fresh work from local companies … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in books: PB Poetry Fest now a prestige draw
It’s amusing now to think that a mere generation ago South Florida was considered a cultural wasteland were people did not read. Today the region is blessed with several of the most influential – and fun! – book festivals in the nation, if not the world. Take the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, for example. The youngest of the region’s literary events, in only eight years it has … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 23-25
Film: Like the hummingbird that should not be able to fly, the movie Moneyball should not be as involving and widely accessible as it is. After all, it is the story of how baseball’s Oakland A’s leveled the playing field, so to speak, against much richer teams like the Yankees by employing obscure statistics to choose a winning team of players. That sounds like a formula for … [Read more...]
‘Margueritte’ sweet and sentimental, but not much else
From its title to the age-defying friendship at its core, the French import My Afternoons With Margueritte has the Chicken Soup odor of Tuesdays With Morrie. Directed by movie-of-the-week sentimentalist Jean Becker (Conversations With My Gardener), it follows a similar emotional journey as Mitch Albom’s breakthrough, charting the developing relationship between a lonely, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 16-18
Film: Do you remember what you were doing on July 24, 2010? Well, neither do we, but that was the day that 80,000 anonymous filmmakers from around the world recorded their activities for a collaborative documentary called Life in a Day. The result was 4,500 hours of film, or at least digital material, which was boiled down to 95 minutes in a masterful task of editing. Of course … [Read more...]