By Dale King If you’ve never seen the musical Cabaret, you still have time to catch the show at Lake Worth Playhouse before this well-tooled performance about sordid pre-war Berlin closes with a matinee Sunday. And if you’re already seen Cabaret, you are strongly advised — no, make that urged — to return. The Lake Avenue venue wraps up its 2014-2015 season with a production … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2015
Brilliant Mozart, engaging Greenwood from Australian Chamber Orchestra
By Robert Croan Water, a new classical work by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is the centerpiece of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s current tour program, which reached Broward Center’s Au-Rene Theater on Wednesday for a rewarding, if sparsely attended, event. This versatile rock group guitarist has written classical music before this, as well as film scores and a … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 6: “The Audience”
New York is not a very good city for shopping malls, but I learned Thursday that it has a couple of first-rate upscale food courts. Next time you’re here, check out Chelsea Market (9th Avenue, between 15th and 16th St.), full of gourmet food shops, like Lobster Place, which sells great looking seafood and — I can report from first-hand knowledge — first-rate sushi. If that … [Read more...]
‘Adaline’ absurd and corny, but honest about it
One deus ex machina contrivance, at the beginning of a fantasy movie, is acceptable. It gets the wheels of imagination rolling. But a second one, less than two hours later? That’s sheer dramaturgical laziness, and the crutch of your genre can only protect you for so long. But that’s what you have to accept in The Age of Adaline. This is a movie so proudly, self-consciously … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 5: “Fun Home,” “On the 20th Century”
Before the rains came Wednesday afternoon, the weather in New York was beautiful. And with a little time to kill in Chelsea before an interview with composer-lyricist-orchestrator Jason Robert Brown (Bridges of Madison County), I went up on the High Line, an elevated park/promenade that runs from 34th Street to Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District, along the far Westside. A … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No.4: The Bonnet show, ‘The Curious Incident’
I come to New York at this time of year to catch the shows that open just before the Tonys eligibility deadline, but this week specifically to see the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet Competition. For the past 29 years, the Broadway community has celebrated the end of the fundraising season with a two-day pop-up production of skits written and performed by the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 3: “Something Rotten!”
So many musicals these days come from popular movies that a truly original, based on no previous material, show is extremely rare. So when an upstart new original show announced that it would open on Broadway without any out-of-town tryout, it seemed like the height of chutzpah. What was worse, the show is called Something Rotten!, which is ammunition one should never hand to … [Read more...]
Rarely heard chamber masterpieces end Chameleon’s 13th season
In her concert programming and her recording, the Dutch-born cellist Iris van Eck has championed the music of repertory outsiders such as Max Reger and female composers in particular, such as her countrywoman Henriette Bosmans. On Sunday afternoon at Fort Lauderdale’s Leiser Opera Center, van Eck and her Chameleon Musicians chamber group closed their 13th season of concerts … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 2: ‘Finding Neverland’
Arrived in New York on Saturday, to gorgeous, crisp, sunny weather. But Sunday turned downright cold and rain is expected today. Sunday evening I saw Finding Neverland, the new musical based on the 2004 movie that starred Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, and Kate Winslet as the widow whose four kids inspired the timeless fable of the boy who never grew up. … [Read more...]
Comic Griffin to bring edgy outlook to Kravis
March was a month in which comedian Kathy Griffin generated a lot of headlines. “I say things I regret constantly, and I just can’t help it,” she says. This time, it was over her departure from the E! Network series Fashion Police, where she had been brought in to replace the late Joan Rivers: “Kathy Griffin Describes Her ‘Fashion Police’ Experience as a ‘Dog Pile,’” “Kathy … [Read more...]