Theater: Opening this weekend at Palm Beach Dramaworks is Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, a play with music depicting a solo club act by jazz and blues legend Billie Holiday at a rundown Philadelphia lounge, just months before her death in 1959. Hooked on heroin, she is coaxed through a dozen of her iconic musical numbers by her longtime pianist. Tracey Conyer Lee, who had … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2015
‘Sophie, Totie and Belle’ brings back iconic trio in fine fashion
By Dale King The Delray Square Performing Arts Center has apparently saved its best of the 2014-2015 season for last. Sophie, Totie and Belle, a combination revue and musical featuring the “reincarnations” of Sophie Tucker, Totie Fields and Belle Barth, is playing through May 31. It’s a production well worth carving out some time to attend. Three exceptionally talented … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Pops cancels its concert series; Arts Garage gets new theater team
PALM BEACH GARDENS — The Palm Beach Pops, which has been entertaining South Florida audiences since 1991, is halting its concert series, the orchestra said Monday. “It is my sad duty today to announce that The Palm Beach Pops Board of Directors has decided to cease concert series operations at this time,” said Jon Lappin, president of The Palm Beach Pops, in a prepared … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Consul’ revives worthy 20th-century work expertly
Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Consul was a Broadway sensation in 1950, but in the decades since it’s dropped below the operatic radar. The current production by Florida Grand Opera of this Cold War work is as good an argument as can be made that the opera deserves to be restored to the mainstream, if not so much for the greatness of its score as its sheer effectiveness as theater. … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire, Piffaro offer absorbing evening of’ ‘Vespers’
The merging of a Renaissance wind band with 21st-century American choral music is an idea that may sound odd on the surface, but composer Kile Smith showed it could work, and work beautifully, when he composed his Vespers in 2007. The original-instrument band that commissioned the work, Philadelphia-based Piffaro, joined Patrick Dupré Quigley and his Seraphic Fire concert … [Read more...]
The View From Home 70: Great Truffaut and Sturges, strong Mitchum and Newman, iffy ‘Fantasticks’
The Story of Adèle H: This haunting biopic from 1975 easily ranks as one of Francois Truffaut’s best films of the ’70s, and Twilight Time’s uber-limited, 3,000-copy Blu-ray transfer is a treasure to behold ($29.95). A 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani became the youngest actress at the time to earn an Academy Award nomination for her role as the title character, the damaged daughter … [Read more...]
The ageless Everglades, old and new, at the Norton
No landscape carries the beauty and the beast within it better than the Florida Everglades. More than 200 images capturing its changing habitants and moods compose an ongoing exhibition titled Imaging Eden: Photographers Discover the Everglades. I know what you are thinking. Shouldn’t this read Imagining Eden? No. The photography exhibit organized by the Norton Museum has … [Read more...]
For legendary songwriter Webb, life still heading up, up and away
For composers to have songs that are more recognized than their own names is a rare phenomenon — yet, at the same time, a definition of success. But to have a slate of recognizable hits over 50 years while staying comparatively under the radar involves rare air breathed by few other than 68-year-old vocalist, pianist and Oklahoma native Jimmy Webb. At his forthcoming solo … [Read more...]
Zehr brings standout Aurora to Boca Ballet
A leading Florida-born, Boca Raton-trained ballerina made a three-show stop at Boca Ballet Theatre for the company’s mounting of The Sleeping Beauty this past weekend, and demonstrated how to put the “prima” in prima ballerina. But even though Bridgett Zehr’s performance as Aurora in Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet was nothing short of sensational Sunday afternoon, there were … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 8-10
Theater: Douglas Carter Beane’s sly comedy on the intersection of show business, the art of negotiation and sexual orientation, The Little Dog Laughed, is receiving a savvy and sexy production by Island City Stage at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale, through May 17. This is due largely to Chris Crawford as a sexually confused television star trying to make the leap to the movies … [Read more...]