Music: Just as you can’t escape the Nutcracker at dance concerts at this time of year, you’re not going to be able to get through the season with encountering part of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, an oratorio written originally for a children’s hospital benefit in Dublin for Easter in 1742. It was a great success, and has been a regular feature of concert programs ever … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2017
Sagal’s ‘Most Wanted’ a triumph at FAU Theatre Lab
Welcome back, Peter Sagal. True, the host of National Public Radio’s current events quiz show, Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, has hardly been out of the public eye lately. Wait, wait, make that “out of the public ear.” But when he began the show 20 years ago, he stopped writing plays, and if you want to measure the size of that loss, head to Florida Atlantic University … [Read more...]
Mute Hawkins speaks volumes in creaky ‘Shape of Water’
“That’s the future now — green!” With this correction, about 40 minutes into The Shape of Water, struggling commercial illustrator Giles (Richard Jenkins), proudly toting his commissioned portrait of a nuclear American family huddled around a red gelatin mold, is sent back to the drawing board. Green is the hue of progress, not red. Green is certainly the warmest color in … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire adds richness, variety to sounds of Christmas
There have to be as many ways of exploring the music of the Christmas season as there are ways to celebrate the holiday, from indulging in the sounds of choirboys from a centuries-old English college to using Spotify or YouTube to find brand-new music for the year’s end. In the case of Seraphic Fire, you start with 13 expert singers and an adventurous approach, and you end … [Read more...]
Maltz makes first-rate show out of second-rate ‘Newsies’
The Maltz Jupiter Theatre has demonstrated many, many times that it can produce a superlative show when it has worthy material. The harder task is to succeed with second-rate goods, but that is exactly what it is doing currently with its explosive, high-energy take on a so-so musical, Disney’s Newsies. Yes, adaptor Harvey Fierstein made some substantial improvements to … [Read more...]
Mørk, Orpheus CO masterful in Shostakovich concerto
By Dennis D. Rooney The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra played the same program here Tuesday at the Kravis Center as it had in New York’s Carnegie Hall the previous Saturday evening; Handel’s Water Music Suite opened it and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite concluded it. In between came the local premiere of Out Came the Sun by Shuying Li, an Orpheus commission that was its … [Read more...]
Well-cast ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ sparkles at Rinker
In 1982, long before movies became the source of most stage musicals, the puckish songwriting team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken took as their inspiration a schlocky sci-fi flick from the low-budget factory of Roger Corman. To them, Little Shop of Horrors, the tale of a man-eating plant from outer space that changes the life of a nebbishy flower shop clerk, had doo-wop … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ enlivens Delray Playhouse
By Dale King Delray Beach Playhouse steps back to the 19th and early 20th centuries to revisit an American icon, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, in its presentation of the Broadway favorite, Annie Get Your Gun, which boosted singer Ethel Merman’s status and gave composer extraordinaire Irving Berlin a chance to notch what many consider to be his best show score. Director Helen … [Read more...]
Ballet Palm Beach’s ‘Nutcracker’ blossoms in new Kravis staging
Not all that long ago, Ballet Florida had established a tradition of an elaborate and beautiful production of The Nutcracker that audiences here looked forward to each Christmas season. That company is long gone, and along with it the Marie Hale version of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, which had a wonderful bit of stage business at the end with Marie and The Nutcracker Prince … [Read more...]
‘Billy and Me’ at Dramaworks: The plays weren’t the only thing
Located at the thematic intersection of sexual attraction and professional jealousy is Billy and Me, a new play by Terry Teachout (Satchmo at the Waldorf) about the uneasy friendship of playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge. As the title implies, Williams is the narrator of the tale, “a memory play about a memory play,” whose first act is set in 1944 Chicago, as … [Read more...]