Director of commercials Lisa D’Apolito never intended to make a documentary about Gilda Radner, the winsome standout female star of the original ensemble cast of TV’s Saturday Night Live. She never met Radner, who died in 1989 from ovarian cancer, and barely knew of the comedian’s most enduring characters – Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella and Lisa Loopner – when … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2018
‘Fahrenheit 11/9’: No solutions, but deeply entertaining anger
Michael Moore’s voice-over during the prologue to Fahrenheit 11/9 adopts the tone of an enthusiastic parent reading a nation its bedtime story. And why shouldn’t it? It’s Nov. 7, 2016, and history is soon to be made: The future first female president is about to begin Election Day, and by all accounts will cruise to a landslide victory. Pollsters place her chances of … [Read more...]
Five concertos, Lynn Wind Ensemble open concert season winningly
By Dennis D. Rooney Lynn University’s music conservatory inaugurated its 2018-19 series of concerts Sept. 8 in it its usual fashion, with a concert by its wind ensemble. “Crossover Concerti” was the title of the program, entirely devoted to concertos for woodwind and brass. Five composers were represented, four of them born between 1946 and 1973. The fifth was Igor … [Read more...]
Theatre Lab’s ‘Ronia’ overlong, but captivates young and old
The Holy Grail of family theater is a play that speaks to both youngsters and adults. That is apparently also the quest of The Heckscher Foundation for Children, which is funding an annual production at FAU Theatre Lab. The program kicks off with the U.S. premiere of Allison Gregory’s whimsical Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter, based on the kid lit book by Astrid Lindgren … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s new venue outshines uneven ‘La Cage’
You want the good news first? The 26-year-old Stage Door Theatre has moved from Margate, across Broward County, to a gorgeous new $11.6 million playhouse, the 1,100-seat Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. With ample wings and fly space, plus all the bells, whistles and amenities that its former home lacked, the complex should be the envy of every other resident company in South … [Read more...]
Appreciation: Burt Reynolds, a great star who could have been an even greater actor
When I get asked about the difference between a film actor and a movie star, I usually bring up Burt Reynolds, who was the latter. By his own choice. As he demonstrated in 1972’s Deliverance, in which he gave the performance of his career as macho outdoorsman Lewis, Reynolds could have been a major actor. Instead, he steered in a more commercial direction, preferring to make … [Read more...]
From a South Florida condo, the blues reaches the world
Along with popular and country music, blues is now a booming, modern audiovisual industry. Particularly since the mid-1980s, when a young guitarist/vocalist from Texas named Stevie Ray Vaughan interrupted the decade’s synthesized, video-driven pop trends by blending rock swagger and blues rhythms to help create an ongoing roots music revival. A sizable, pre-existing subset … [Read more...]
Appreciation: The enduring wit of Neil Simon
The first time I met and interviewed Neil Simon he was not in any mood to be funny. It was January 1991, in Washington, D.C., where he was for the out-of-town premiere of Lost in Yonkers, a dark comedy about two brothers forced to live with their crotchety grandmother while their salesman father went on the road to make a living. The play went on to great acclaim … [Read more...]
‘The Wife’: Close brings novelistic depth to story of frustrated ambition
Swedish director Bjorn Runge’s The Wife is set in 1992, a time when people still used corded landlines and smoked cigarettes. When Glenn Close, as the title character, accepts a cigarette from an infatuated younger man, she smokes it romantically, like a classic movie star, which of course she is. Close’s character, Joan Castleman, is not a smoker, but she’s sitting in a hip … [Read more...]