A few years ago, as same-sex marriage was becoming legal all across the nation thanks to the evolved support of the president, the once daring 1983 musical La Cage aux Folles – which features two gay main characters and Broadway’s first male-male kiss – was looking a little dated. But as MNM Productions correctly points out in its program notes for the show, its message of … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2017
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in dance
Devotees of dance this season can sample Miami City Ballet’s continued artistic honing by Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez, the ongoing successful dance programming at the Duncan Theatre or the breakthrough PEAK presentations at the Kravis Center, as well as decide to experience the continuity and strength in the local dance scene. Amid this strong lineup, this season it … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in jazz
A pleasant sense of unpredictability has crept into the 2017-2018 South Florida jazz season, as younger, rising singers and players (Gregory Porter, Jon Batiste) and gifted female vocalists and instrumentalists (Tierney Sutton, Anat Cohen) dot the landscape, especially south of Palm Beach County. And even some of the more recurrent acts, like the Marsalis brothers — … [Read more...]
Arts preview 2017-18: The season in opera
South Florida’s opera companies have made the transition from the model of opera companies that has obtained since the Roosevelts, Vanderbilts and Morgans helped found New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1880. Back then, opera was about society as much as it was the music. Twenty years ago in this area, opera-going was still in that Gilded Age mode: Anyone who was anyone … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 6-8
Art: If there’s a more important art exhibit in the area than Justin Brice Guariglia’s Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene, now at the Norton, we’d be hard-pressed to tell you what it is. Guariglia is a photographer who is accredited to NASA, which in 2015 and 2016 investigated the shrinking glaciers of Greenland. Guariglia turned his photos of what he saw into artworks that, … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in theater
Keith Garsson bounces back with a sexy season of Primal Forces, Palm Beach Dramaworks produces two world premieres, Slow Burn serves up its first non-musical and in case you haven’t had enough inclement weather this hurricane season, The Wick promises to make it rain inside its theater. All in all, it looks like a promising 2017-18 at area stages. Here’s a preview, in … [Read more...]
Dardennes’s ‘Unknown Girl’: Compelling social critique as noir mystery
Jenny Davin, the doctor at the heart of The Unknown Girl, is good at her job. Played by Adèle Haenel, she’s patient, flexible and agreeable. Her medical knowledge is vast as she deals with a comprehensive cross-section of Belgian society, from asthmatic seniors to wounded immigrant workers fearing deportation to pediatric cancer patients. She makes house calls, and seems to be … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in books
Not so long ago, Palm Beach County readers had no choice, if they wanted to enjoy a book festival, but to drive to Fort Lauderdale or Miami. That’s no longer true. While events like Miami Book Fair International or the Literary Feast in Fort Lauderdale remain powerhouse attractions, Palm Beach County has a pair of well-established book and events right here: the Palm Beach … [Read more...]
Director Garsson revives Primal Forces company with full season
“If you miss (theater at) Arts Garage, we’re back! We’re back with a vengeance.” So says Keith Garsson, who directed the theater program at the Delray Beach storefront performance complex for a season and a half, until the drama component was abruptly curtailed in December because of huge financial losses. And with the end of his quirky, sexy productions there, Garsson’s … [Read more...]
‘Mountain Between Us’ strands viewers on an Everest of romantic clichés
Boy meets girl in The Mountain Between Us, but they certainly don’t meet cute. Alex (Kate Winslet) and Ben (Idris Elba) are harried professionals making the best of a rotten situation. She’s a photojournalist for The Guardian set to be married 24 hours hence to boring, gray-haired Dermot Mulroney. He’s a tall, dark and brooding neurosurgeon with a dying patient awaiting his … [Read more...]