By Myles Ludwig Ukraine and basketball were the stories dominating the mainstream media this week, elbowing aside the tragedies of the sinking ferry in South Korea (“This is the end of me” was the heart-rending headline in the New York Times); the so-far failed search for the lost Malaysian airplane and apparent callousness of expelling the grieving families of those lost … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2014
Theater roundup: ‘Ghost, the Musical,’ ‘Million Dollar Quartet,’ ‘The Trouble With Doug’
You want proof that Broadway tours across the nation are starving for product? Head to the Broward Center during the next week and get a look at Ghost, the Musical, as muddled and lifeless as any show that someone thought warranted a national showcase. In 2012, this movie-to-stage transfer eked out almost a five-month run in New York after garnering a dismissive set of … [Read more...]
Letter From Paris: The accidental flâneuse
By Chloe Elder In 21st-century society, the onetime symbol of Paris, the flâneur, is nearly extinct. In its native city, the numbers are dangerously low. Conservation efforts have done little to protect those who remain in the wild and all attempts to breed in captivity have been futile. And awkward. The flâneur is one who strolls, wanders, and traverses the city streets … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 2-4
Theater: Daniel Maté, whose song cycle The Longing and the Short of It kicked off the season at The Theatre at Arts Garage, now returns with a long gestating project, The Trouble with Doug, a contemporary, comic take on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. In it, a 27-year-old computer wonk from Brooklyn suddenly transforms into a garden slug, much to the chagrin of his family and … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Over the River’ delights at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Joe DiPietro’s play Over the River and Through the Woods is comfort food for the soul. It’s delightfully funny, but comes with a helping of drama and a garnish of pathos. The concoction shows how the elders in a closely knit Italian-American family in New Jersey deal with a “crisis.” And, of course, a crisis could be anything that doesn’t fit into their … [Read more...]
‘Pencil’ full of itself, but recounts an admirable idea
Growing up in wealthy Greenwich, Conn., Adam Braun developed an “obsession” with Wall Street and dreamed of “becoming a billionaire. While in college he traveled abroad in the Semester at Sea program, which introduces students to different cultures. Braun decided to ask children he encountered in each nation what they would choose if they could have anything in the world. In … [Read more...]
The View From Home 60: Chabrol’s gumshoe, Risi’s road picture, a father’s vengeance, and the devil baby
The Inspector Lavardin Collection: Back in 1984, Claude Chabrol, one of the French New Wave’s darkest chroniclers of the human condition, emerged from a period of artistic infertility to introduce one of the most underrated detective protagonists of modern times. That’s when he directed his first film with Inspector Jean Lavardin, played by the French comic actor Jean Poiret, … [Read more...]