A family of five travels down a single dirt road, endless desert on either side, toward a destination they must reach before dark. They don’t quite make it, a torrential storm batters their car, and they’re being followed by a mysterious stranger whose intentions are unknown to them. Both cars stop for a shelter at a remote shack, where raw meat hangs on hooks. If that doesn’t … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2014
Sheldon Harnick: At 90, legendary lyricist still looks forward
If Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick only wrote Fiddler on the Roof, he would have earned a major place in the annals of musical theater. In fact, he is credited with almost two dozen shows, often collaborating with composer Jerry Bock, on such titles as Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds. This is a milestone year for Harnick. Late last month, he … [Read more...]
FGO’s beautifully sung ‘Thaïs’ could use a little more heat
The operas of Jules Massenet are not as admired today as they once were in the last 20 years of the 19th century, when works such as Manon, Werther, Sapho and many others made the industrious French composer a wealthy and famous man. He has been much abused by history for his willingness to cater to the mass taste of his day and making no absolutely bones about it. “I don’t … [Read more...]
Sundays: The mother of us all
By Myles Ludwig I’m musing about motherhood. The great Momenator hovers above us all like a sacred but impenetrable meme: Mother Russia, mama grizzly, mother of all battles, mothers who eat their young, mother of dragons, Mother Teresa, tiger mom, Monica Lewinsky’s mom, the anguished mothers of the stolen Nigerian schoolgirls and, of course, the heroic American mom and her … [Read more...]
Ann Norton show seeks respect for Chilean surrealist
The first time I came across his name was a couple of years ago at the Boca Museum of Art. I was there to do a story, in which I ended up mentioning this one painting I had really liked. But I did not know then whose work it was, who was this Matta guy other that a Chilean artist whose name sounded like plant in Spanish. Ironically, this is what Roberto Matta tried hard to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 9-11
Art: The most recognizable art form the West knows from countries such as Iran and Afghanistan is what is generally still called the Oriental rug, a tapestry rich in symbolism, not just of design but of color, shape and size. An ancient tradition that still is alive today, the contemporary rugs of Afghanistan include motifs from that nation’s tumultuous recent history, … [Read more...]
‘Gigolo’ can’t settle on a story
As the fading gigolo in Fading Gigolo, John Turturro plays a convincing enough stud — gaunt, laconic and mysterious, with a magnetism that belies both his looks and age. His character, whose real name is never mentioned, is a worldly florist with a reputable track record as a lover who is talked into the world’s oldest profession by his strange old buddy Murray (Woody Allen), a … [Read more...]
Webber review moves, touches at Plaza
By Dale King Few modern composers have been packaged, repackaged, mixed, dubbed, overdubbed, worked and reworked more than Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can probably Google him in dozens of different incarnations. But none of that compares to hearing three dynamic vocalists perform 22 of Sir Andrew’s famous and lesser-known songs on a sparsely decorated stage with just a piano as … [Read more...]
Cellist to walk Camino de Santiago on pilgrimage for Bach
One of Dane Johansen’s paternal ancestors helped oversee the transition of Alaska from czarist Russia to the United States in the late 19th century, and having grown up in Fairbanks as a sixth-generation resident of the Last Frontier, Johansen has been looking for a way to marry his love and knowledge of the outdoors with his career as a cellist. He appears to have found it: … [Read more...]
No-holds-barred Mahler 7th ends NWS season in blaze of glory
Gustav Mahler is a composer whose vast constructs encourage interpretations that allow space for Mystery to inhabit some of his symphonies’ many rooms. For Michael Tilson Thomas, the surface perplexities of Mahler’s Seventh can be likened to the jump-cut film styles of the German expressionist filmmakers Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, who would follow Mahler in the cultural space … [Read more...]