By Dale King Boca Ballet Theatre wrapped up its 24th season with two memorable performances Aug. 1 and 2 that brought a diversity of talent, elegance and comedy to the stage of the University Theatre at Florida Atlantic University. It featured some top-notch professional dancers along with the 32 aspiring performers from the United States and Canada who were finishing up … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2015
Theater roundup: ‘110 in the Shade’; ‘Shorts Gone Wild 3’
The musical team of composer Harvey Schmidt and lyricist Tom Jones hit the jackpot their first time out with an intimate, endearing love story, off-Broadway’s The Fantasticks. But they wanted Broadway success, so they next adapted N. Richard Nash’s The Rainmaker on a larger scale, with a full, though essentially superfluous, chorus of townfolk, dramatic Agnes de Mille … [Read more...]
‘Watchman’ a letdown, not least for Scout
Go Set a Watchman recently became an overnight blockbuster, selling more than 1 million copies in the first week. Book critics understandably sought to compare the storyline in Watchman with the theme in Harper Lee’s first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960 and won a Pulitzer Prize. Some expressed surprise that Atticus Finch, the lovable hero in … [Read more...]
‘No Escape’: Not-so-innocents abroad in manipulative dreck
I’m disgusted to report this, because it tends to give the film some visceral credit, but there are scenes in No Escape that made me squirm like few other films in recent memory. Director John Erick Dowdle films his story of a family under siege in Southeast Asia with the kind of gut-wrenching, intestine-squeezing terror more often associated with underground horror flicks. It … [Read more...]
Letter from Bard: Powerful production makes good case for ‘The Wreckers’
The Bard (College) Summerscape Festival at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., has gained fame for digging up old operas and breathing new life into them. Dame Ethel Smyth’s 1906 opera, The Wreckers, ended its five-performance run in the magnificent Frank Gehry Theatre on Aug. 2, selling out to full houses. Leon Botstein, the artistic director and conductor of Summerscape, revived … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 14-16
Theater: Every generation has an image of Peter Pan, either Mary Martin, who originated the role in the 1954 Broadway musical, or such subsequent high fliers as Sandy Duncan or Cathy Rigby. We can now add Shanon Mari Mills to that list, for her energetic, athletic and full-voiced performance at The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton. She heads a lavish production directed by Michael … [Read more...]
‘The End of the Tour’: The writer’s life, absorbingly examined
No spoiler here: In the very first scene of The End of the Tour, set in 2008, writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) receives a phone call, informing him that, “according to an unconfirmed report, David Wallace is dead.” I’m ashamed to reveal that the suicide of David Foster Wallace meant nothing to me at the time, if I even knew who he was. Even at the time of this writing, … [Read more...]
Cultural Council launches Musicians Services program
As emails go, one from May 28 proved unusual enough that it needed to be re-read. It was from Kathleen Alex, chief financial officer at the not-for-profit Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, inviting area musicians and music biz types to a June 15 meeting at the organization’s Lake Worth headquarters. And while the underlying purpose may have been to get some in … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Waist Watchers’ sparkles at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Waist Watchers, the Musical is a delightful bit of tune-filled satiric comedy that pokes good-natured fun at women as they try to stave off the rigors of aging, weight gain, the loss of sexual appeal and other foibles of advancing years. The show that’s been bouncing around South Florida for some time is now playing at Broward Stage Door Theatre in Margate. The … [Read more...]
At GableStage: A career on the skids, told with triumph
GableStage produces plays year round, so it is often hard to tell where one season ends and the next one begins. Still, it is currently easy to sense that the summer is upon us by the lightweight, albeit entertaining, fare on view at the Coral Gables playhouse through the end of the month. The Carbonell Award-laden company usually goes in for hard-hitting, often political … [Read more...]