By Lucy Lazarony Stop by Cloud House Pottery in Artists Alley in Delray Beach and you’ll find Ian Levinson and his mother Ellen “Starr” Levinson creating pots and paintings and sculptures. Ian, 46, has been a ceramic artist for 32 years. On his potter’s wheel, he creates functional pieces such as bowls, cups and mugs and one-of-a-kind art pieces. In her studio, Ellen paints … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2013
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 17-18
Film: So many films claim to be “based on a true story,” and Lee Daniels’ The Butler is one that bases itself very loosely on the biography of Eugene Allen, an African-American who served presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan. From his lofty perch in the White House, he had a unique view of the evolving civil rights situation in the country, and that is the heart of this … [Read more...]
Opera on the Road: An astonishing rarity at Bard Summerscape
Forget Kirov, forget Bolshoi: We may one day have our own Russian opera company in New York state. Bard Summerscape, now in its 10th year delivered a magnificent performance of Sergey Taneyev’s Oresteia, premiered in 1895, which I saw on Aug. 4. The Annandale-on-Hudson festival is fast becoming a rival to Wagner’s Bayreuth as the place to be. Production values are very … [Read more...]
County artists make summer richer at Cultural Council show
Those of us who thought the summer was a dead time for exhibits and good only for surfing shows have at least one reason to revise this opinion: the County Contemporary All Media Juried Show. Unveiled by the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County in June, this modest but inclusive exhibit features a total of 44 works by 36 Palm Beach County professional artists. One of them … [Read more...]
A bounty of premieres at Reach/O Dance summer show
The world of dance is famously tough on physiques, not just in the sheer wear and tear on bones and ligaments incurred by practitioners of this most athletic of the arts, but perhaps even more so in psychological ways. The pressure to be thin and to be in top physical shape is rarely relenting, and a new work of dance that tackles this idea head-on had its premiere Sunday … [Read more...]
Dramaworks offers ‘Company’ worth keeping
There’s good news and bad news at Palm Beach Dramaworks. The good news is a confident, polished concert of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, now playing through Sunday. The bad news? After this very satisfying evening and the previous, even better semi-staged Man of La Mancha, we may never see a fully produced musical at this West Palm Beach playhouse again. Company was not even … [Read more...]
Sundays: Let the Cord Wars begin
By Myles Ludwig My guess is the Home Shopping Network fills a critical niche in the lives of others, particularly those rubes living 50 miles or more from the nearest Wal-Mart or the lost chic of Park Avenue, women on Ambien who roam the late night channels, surprised to find a dozen Tanzanite tennis bracelets, a couple of über-blenders, a few NuWave cooktops and a cache of … [Read more...]
Physician takes alternative medicine to task, witheringly
In 1977, Joey Hofbauer, age 7, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. Doctors said that chemotherapy and radiation would give the boy an excellent chance of survival. But the parents decided, instead, to treat their son with laetrile, an unproven natural remedy made from apricot pits. Three years later Joey was dead. In 1987 the Food and Drug … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 9-11
Theater: Director Clive Cholerton has a way with staged readings of musicals, and especially with shows by the great composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, as he demonstrated several times at the Caldwell Theatre and now at Palm Beach Dramaworks with 1970’s Company. This look at the nature of marriage and relationships is said to be the first “concept musical,” full of … [Read more...]
Blanchett brilliant as woman unhinged in ‘Blue Jasmine’
Eschewing the surrealist whimsy and chic travel-porn of Midnight in Paris and To Rome With Love, Woody Allen is back on firmer and more unforgiving ground with Blue Jasmine, and it might just be one of his most affecting character studies. If those last two features were like European vacations themselves – fantasies vastly removed from Americans’ real problems, where the … [Read more...]