Choosing unusual repertoire is something that many listeners and critics desperately want the performing organizations they follow to try now and again, but it sometimes comes with a price. Often, things seem to be chosen because they are particular favorites of a conductor or soloist, or perhaps something less well-known than a composer’s other, really famous work. But … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2015
Brilliant ‘About Elly’ keeps viewers guessing
When considering Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller About Elly, a word pretzel from that (in)famous 21st-century philosopher Donald Rumsfeld comes to mind: “There are known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” To follow along with this knotty and riveting study of humans in crisis is to rewire old paradigms when unknowns become known, to accept … [Read more...]
Tony nominations show it’s been a good season for Broadway
Want to know how you can tell it was a good season on Broadway? In most years, the nominators have to struggle to find shows, performers and designers to fill all the categories. This season, there was enough quantity — and even quality — to afford a surfeit of snubs. Significantly absent from the nominations list announced this morning were Finding Neverland, the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 9: “Hand to God”
Hand to God, the wickedly irreverent new comedy by Robert Askins, will likely not win the Tony Award for best play (though I do think it will be nominated). But if there were a category for best advertising campaign, it would win “hands” down. You see, in most of the Playbills for other shows, Hand to God has an ad specifically commenting on that show. For instance, in the … [Read more...]
Leading dancers to star in Boca Ballet’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’
Two major ballet dancers will be starring with the Boca Ballet Theatre this month in the company’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s 1890 classic drawn from Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose tales. Dancing the lead role of Aurora will be Bridgett Zehr, a Sarasota-born, Harid-trained dancer who has been a principal dancer with the National Ballet of … [Read more...]
A starlet at 93: ‘Iris’ profiles fashion icon Apfel on film
Palm Beach fashion icon Iris Apfel, 93, has been a businesswoman, an interior designer and a university professor. She now adds to her résumé “documentary subject,” as Magnolia Pictures prepares to release the last movie by the late acclaimed non-fiction filmmaker, Albert Maysles, titled simply Iris. The film almost did not happen. “At first, I wasn’t interested at all. I … [Read more...]
Pictures of Cuba: Before all is lost
It has begun. The sense of urgency in all things Cuba related. The pressure is on to taste the real cuisine, before the fast-food plague arrives, and to enjoy the beaches before a Private Property sign claims the water, the seashells, the sand… For photographers, the rush is to capture a land before it undergoes drastic changes and becomes like everywhere else: modern and … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart Festival launches 22nd season splendidly
It is a maxim of South Florida life that when it begins to rain, all residents are commanded to forget everything they ever knew about driving in it. And so Saturday afternoon as I made my way south to Gusman Hall at the University of Miami, a rainstorm in Broward County caused me to spend an hour making my way down a bumper-to-bumper interstate as hapless auto pilots around … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 8: ‘Wolf Hall’
I spent the day with King Henry VIII and his chief henchman Thomas Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s epic — as in very long — Wolf Hall. I’ll tell you a little about it, but first a shameless plug for a new CD of demo tapes by Broadway composer Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, Little Me, City of Angels) called You Fascinate Me So. Coleman sings many of the numbers along … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 7: “It Shoulda Been You”
I have now seen nine shows on this trip and the main thing they have in common is that they all received standing ovations. And the proof that a Broadway audience will give a standing O to anything is the new musical I saw Thursday night, It Shoulda Been You. Its story, such as it is, concerns a wedding between a Jewish girl and a gentile guy who tries to endear himself by … [Read more...]