The superhero origin story is the most durably familiar of the comic-book tent pole narratives. Even the best ones spin off the same formula: The naïve title character discovers her powers, trains exhaustively, learns the power-hungry ways of mortals, and grows virtually indestructible until she finally meets her match against an arch-villain bent on world domination. The final … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2017
Actor Cox takes on the daunting mantle of ‘Churchill’
What do Albert Finney, Rod Taylor, Timothy Spall, Richard Burton, John Lithgow and now Brian Cox have in common? They have all played British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on film. In Cox’s case, he is in a new film called simply Churchill, opening in South Florida this Friday. The classically trained, Scottish-born actor looks a great deal like the pudgy politician who … [Read more...]
Solid cast gives ‘Vanya and Sonia’ sparkle at Delray Playhouse
By Dale King Christopher Durang's comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike – the season finale playing two more weekends at the Delray Beach Playhouse – covers a lot of outlandish and humorous territory in a 2½-hour block of time. The show actually taxes the audience’s mental capabilities more than it does their capacity to follow a plot. Author Durang – whose … [Read more...]
MNM makes something tasty out of slender ‘Spamalot’
It’s a backhanded compliment, but one sign of a theater company’s strength is when it can succeed with lackluster material. Consider how far MNM Productions has come in its three years of existence – it now manages to almost hide the deficiencies in the flimsy comic romp, Monty Python’s Spamalot, now playing at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse through June 4. Yes, the … [Read more...]
Punches in pedestrian ‘Chuck’ rarely land
The road of the almost famous is paved with frustration, resentment, anxiety and, for a certain type of self-destructive personality, awfully bad behavior. That’s the lasting takeaway of Chuck, an otherwise pedestrian biopic of the former heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner. A New Jersey pugilist known around his community for his “dirty” style in the ring and his loose blood … [Read more...]
10-piano tribute to Rand impressive but underwhelming
Interpreting a piece of writing through music without going through the medium of the theater is a tricky thing to do: How do you get across what the book said to you? And maybe it’s even trickier if you try to express it with 10 pianos. Then again, maybe not. At the New World Center on May 13, pianist and entrepreneur Mia Vassilev and nine of her fellow Miami Piano … [Read more...]
New Fort Lauderdale opera company launches Saturday
By Robert Croan It isn’t every day that three friends get together over a glass of wine and decide to start a new opera company in Broward County. Even less often do they go through with the project, apply for funding and get some excellent young singers to follow through with them. But that’s what happened one evening in the summer of 2016, when Jack Gardner, a … [Read more...]
Powerful acting brings quirky souls of ‘Inishmaan’ to vivid life
On the tiny, isolated island of Inishmaan, off the western coast of Ireland, either there is something peculiar in the water or the residents are genetically predisposed to quirkiness. Either way, few ever escape from their homeland. But at least Billy Claven, the so-called Cripple of Inishmaan, a 17-year-old orphan with a body mangled since birth, can dream of leaving his … [Read more...]
Muse brings powerful set to Perfect Vodka
British trio Muse has been a rarity since emerging from Teignmouth, England, in 1994 — and not just because they’ve kept the same personnel for 23 years. That country’s creative popular music influence from the 1960s and 1970s (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, The Police, etc.) had previously been … [Read more...]
‘Cripple of Inishmaan’ leavens bleakness with dark humor
Palm Beach Dramaworks’ audiences can relax a little after the cerebral workout of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. The West Palm Beach stage company ends its 17th season with the less heady, but perhaps more emotionally involving, dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan by acclaimed Irish playwright – and occasional screenwriter – Martin McDonagh. “This is a narrative story in the Irish … [Read more...]