By Dale King Disco isn’t dead. At least not at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Margate, where increasing numbers of disco divas and down-to-earth denizens are flocking to experience Saturday Night Fever, the musical that turned normal 1970s evenings into disco nights and sent millions to apparel stores to buy satin shirts and boogie shoes. The musical adaptation based … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2017
‘Stronger’ a compelling tale of a reluctant hero
Patriots Day took the macro view of the devastating 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, concentrating on the manhunt for the perpetrators and the city’s resilience in the face of violent terrorism. Stronger takes an entirely different approach to the same event, focusing on a single victim of the explosions, and his personal struggle to stand tall in the aftermath. Jake … [Read more...]
New American violin concerto satisfies at Lynn Philharmonia opener
By Dennis D. Rooney In its initial concert of the current academic year, the Lynn Philharmonia and its conductor, Guillermo Figueroa, offered a satisfyingly meaty program of standard repertoire and a novelty. The latter was a violin concerto by American composer Richard Sortomme (b. 1948). Elmar Oliveira commissioned the work and premiered it in Savannah last year. In … [Read more...]
New opera salutes Tesla, tragic scientific hero
The Serbian-born American inventor and electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla has become a hot property over the past couple decades, regaining something of the national recognition he enjoyed in his prime in the early 20th century, but this time as a counterculture hero. In addition to physics units, rock bands and electric cars being named for him, Tesla’s alternating-current … [Read more...]
Arts Buzz: Local arts news in brief, Sept. 22-28
PNC Foundation awards $125,000 in grants LAKE WORTH — The PNC Foundation’s Arts Alive program Thursday awarded $125,000 in grants and sponsorships to eight arts organizations in the Palm Beaches to increase access to visual and performing arts activities for children. Arts Alive is a multi-year initiative of the PNC Foundation dedicated to supporting visual and performing … [Read more...]
Bloated ‘Kingsman’ retread hits highest point with its villain
Excised from its hulking 141-minute running time, the opening sequence of Kingsman: The Golden Circle would make a dynamite audition tape for director Matthew Vaughn, if not an award-winning music video. We’re not yet acclimated into the film’s space-time, but its lead character, millennial super-spy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) nearly dies about 20 times. He’s just getting off … [Read more...]
Broward Stage Door’s ‘Sunshine Boys’ a late-summer gem
By Dale King Broward Stage Door Theater has plucked a gem from the Neil Simon vault – the playwright’s paean to vaudeville, The Sunshine Boys – and presents it like a shiny, late-summer gift to welcoming audiences at the Margate performance venue. Director Michael Leeds, who has helmed an arm’s length list of shows at the theater on Sample Road, taps a couple of veteran … [Read more...]
‘Polina’ makes poetry of the physically brutal world of dance
Great dancers, like great actors, escape into the skins of others. Unlike (most) actors, those skins may be lower mammalian in nature. Polina (Anastasia Shevtsova), the title character in Valérie Müller and Angelin Preljocaj’s affecting coming-of-age story, dances through a sundry animal kingdom. A close-up sequence of her pointe shoes mid-rehearsal conjures a horse kicking, … [Read more...]
‘I Do … Until I Don’t’ a step back for triple threat Bell
It’s worth remembering that triple-threat writer-director-actor Lake Bell’s first feature, the justly lauded In a World …, was essentially an antique polished with a contemporary sheen. As smart and original as the film was, it conjured a culture of competitive movie-trailer voice-over artists that no longer exists, as the business of film promotion has long jettisoned this … [Read more...]