Theater: Broadway plays rarely tour anymore, so even last year’s Tony Award winner, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, became available to regional theaters like GableStage to produce and give their own spin to. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov hovers over the lives of three contemporary siblings — the offspring of lit professors with a penchant for … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2014
In ‘Chinese Puzzle,’ style is everything
Cédric Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle is all about the relationship struggles of beautiful, basically well-off Europeans. Their lives remain enviable even when they’re screwed up, romantically charmed even when their futures may seem hopeless. That said, this multicultural, multi-lingual flight of fancy is an effortlessly enjoyable comedy. The story is the third in Klapisch’s … [Read more...]
The big noise from Naples: Bob Stone’s jazz band plays Delray
Bob Stone, the founder, musical director and drummer for the Naples Jazz Orchestra (www.thenjo.com), gained renown by leading his popular self-titled big band from 1976-1989 in Chicago. Yet he didn’t exactly move to the west coast of Florida 25 years ago intending to do the same thing. “I was hitting the road with some major artists then, and flying out of O’Hare International … [Read more...]
Sundays: On the cutting-room floor
By Myles Ludwig Imagine this: a sea of screens with waves of 70-inch flat TVs breaking on the shore; riptides of wall-mounted Vizios trailing their HDMI cables like the sperm we used to see projected on the roll-up screen in our high school hygiene classes, before the storm surrounding sex education; a beach of upturned satellite TV dishes curling in on themselves in the … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’, ‘Tryst,’ and ‘Vanya and Sonia…’
“Erratic” is the word that comes to mind to describe the inaugural season of Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre. But when it is good, the eight-month old company can compete with any troupe in South Florida, as it proves with its current production of the Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. The 1978 Tony Award winner set the gold standard for composer tribute songfests and by … [Read more...]
Sundays: The man who turned a hubcap into a hat
By Myles Ludwig My pal Tony Palladino passed into another dimension this week. He was – still is — my friend and mentor for some 40 years and one of America’s premier graphic designers, illustrators and adventurers in art. TP, as he called himself, grew up in Manhattan. His family spoke Italian, not English, so to communicate he taught himself a way of drawing that could … [Read more...]
Remembering Corey Dwyer, gone before long strange trip was over
In early April, I received what I thought was a casual inquiry on Facebook that turned into a snowballing tragedy. Renee Solis, vocalist and guitarist for the progressive local band Equinox, asked if I knew how to get in touch with Corey Dwyer, the Boynton Beach-based musician who sang and played nearly every instrument, who was a longtime owner, operator and engineer at the … [Read more...]
In ‘Locke,’ Bluetooth proves another circle of Hell
Ever since I could get behind the wheel of a car, I’ve had an affinity for long drives. Especially long drives at night, with the glittering beacons of the closest metropolis poetically coloring blankets of highway darkness. For lovers of, to paraphrase a Modest Mouse album title, “long drives for someone with nothing to think about,” the experience of a lengthy, solo p.m. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 16-18
Theater: The Wick Theatre has been anything but consistent in its debut season, but when it is good, it is very, very good. That describes its final show on the season, the Tony Award-winning Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. It helps considerably that director-choreographer Ron Hutchins gathered a company of seasoned veterans of the show, then stuck closely to the original … [Read more...]
Composer, lead performers triumph in ‘Bridges,’ closing too soon
Increasingly, the Broadway stage has turned into a theme park, full of lightweight musicals anchored by spectacle and special effects. That is fine, when appropriate for the material — you wouldn’t want to see Aladdin without its magical bells and whistles, would you? — but the problem is that these shows crowd out the simpler, more artful, adult musicals. Musicals such as The … [Read more...]