By Dale King Breaking up is hard to do, opined pop music legend Neil Sedaka in a hit tune he released in 1962, then re-issued in slower ballad style in 1975. The Broward Stage Door Theatre is not breaking up, but it is breaking away from the cement-walled, bunker-style, two-stage, former movie house behind a shopping plaza on West Sample Road in Margate that it has … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2018
‘I Love You, You’re Perfect …,’ no better in update, but MNM performers make it work
A lot has changed in the past 22 years, and much has remained the same. Take, for instance, a modest musical revue about relationships, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which opened off-Broadway in 1996 and ran 5,003 performances. Along the way, the show became an international hit too, translated into at least 17 languages and entertaining audiences in dozens … [Read more...]
Pumpkins rise to the occasion even as Corgan snubs audience
Bands that formed in the mid-1960s and beyond capitalize on nostalgia tours, and Chicago-spawned alt-rock icons The Smashing Pumpkins reached their commercial and critical peak a full 30 years beyond that time frame. When lead vocalist, guitarist, keyboardist and band leader Billy Corgan was able to rein in original members James Iha (guitar, vocals) and Jimmy Chamberlin … [Read more...]
PBCMF III: All-American program features promising new nonet
By Dennis D. Rooney The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s third concert of its current summer series, seen July 22 at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, was an “all-American” program. Works by three American composers, two of them living, and the American String Quartet (No. 12 in F, Op. 96) by Dvořák. Music by Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) opened it. Mosaics, for flute, … [Read more...]
‘Eighth Grade’ gets real with the digital generation
If, like me, you have no unearthly idea what’s going through the mind of the average representative of Generation Z at any given time — heck, I don’t even understand millennials, and I am one — then Eighth Grade is sure to provide some answers. This illuminating coming-of-age film is set during the last week of middle school, a three-year purgatory of anonymity and … [Read more...]
Even with faults, Miami Music Fest’s double dose of Wagner enchants
By Dennis D. Rooney For its public concert July 14, the Miami Music Festival’s Wagner Institute presented the second acts of two of Richard Wagner’s operas: Lohengrin (1850) and Die Walküre (1870), providing a generous portion of contrasting music. The singers, chorus and orchestra, all drawn from the participants in this year’s institute, were conducted by its artistic … [Read more...]
PBCMF, Program II: Prodigy’s quartet shines in Latin-flavored program
By Dennis D. Rooney “Latin Flavors” was the theme of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival group’s second program of its 27th season. It opened and closed with wind quintets, one original, the other a transcription. Belle Epoque en Sud-America, by the Brazilian composer and conductor Júlio Medaglia (b. 1938), is a suite composed for the Berlin Philharmonic Winds Quintet, … [Read more...]
‘Eating Animals’ shocks, depresses, but is unlikely to bring change
In the opening minutes of Eating Animals, as a car drives through miles of unspoiled farmland, plaintive music plants us firmly in the fertile breadbasket of America —land of opportunity, land of natural beauty, land of plenty. Ah, but what a false promise it is. Look a little deeper, and that pink-hued body of water isn’t a natural spring; it’s a pool of hog urine and fecal … [Read more...]
At Dramaworks, a sparkling tour of Woody Guthrie’s America
Oklahoma-born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, champion of the underclass and the union movement, was a genuine poet, though he was never comfortable with that label. He wrote simple, hummable songs that celebrated this nation, but as the Great Depression consumed the country and exposed economic inequities, his tunes took on a tone of angry protest and confrontation. That … [Read more...]
PB Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ entertains, falls shy of tragic depths
For 28 years, The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival has operated on the theory that its namesake playwright needed some assistance to entertain a contemporary audience. So, in addition to drastic editing of each script, the company frequently relocates the action to a different time and/or place. In the case of PBSF’s current show, Antony and Cleopatra, it also adds a … [Read more...]