Is Teen Spirit a legitimate feature film? Or is it 92 minutes of glistening YouTube content masquerading as one? If ever there was a movie that asked to be played on shuffle, it’s this milquetoast product predictably charting the stumbles and triumphs of the Darwinian world of competition television. It’s presented as a celebration of the hollow, plastic style of pop music … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2019
Beautiful, visually lavish ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ ends MCB season
The visually lavish production of George Balanchine’s evening-length ballet A Midsummer Night’s Dream closed out Miami City Ballet’s 2018-19 season in the Palm Beaches last week. This revisit of the $2.1 million reimagining of the original work was something to behold. The spectacular set and costumes were by artist Michele Oka Doner, who looked to the Miami waterways for … [Read more...]
Cellist Schwarz impressive in Shostakovich with ACO
By Dennis D. Rooney The Atlantic Classical Orchestra, led by David Amado, presented the final subscription concerts of its 29th season last week. The three works on the program, which I heard April 4 at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardenms, were attractively varied, and also bore witness to the noticeable improvement in the quality of the ACO’s playing that I … [Read more...]
‘Diane’: Wise and lyrical, with a star turn from Place
Kent Jones is far from the first writer to make the transition from critic to filmmaker, from outsider to insider, from lobber of bromides to defender of craft. James Agee directed a short, and penned The African Queen and Night of the Hunter; Roger Ebert wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; the French New Wave was a cottage industry of trailblazing … [Read more...]
April 2019 calendar of events
(Note: Events are listed through May 3, 2019, and were current as of March 27. Please check with the presenting agency for any changes. Ticket prices are single sales. Most of the presenting organizations offer subscription plans.) Art Exhibits Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens: Through May 5: An Eye for Nature: Paintings and Prints by Morton Kaish, works by the American … [Read more...]
The art fair that changed Miami: New doc explores coming of Art Basel
By Sandra Schulman Miami had one main art museum and a few scattered galleries in the 1990s. A scrappy group called Artifacts held court underground, but most artists left town for dealers in New York City or Los Angeles. I should know, as I was the arts writer for the Sun-Sentinel and XS Magazine for a decade during those years. It was a colorful scene but strictly … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor troupe sublime in late master’s dances
At last, Esplanade. The Paul Taylor Dance Company performed an exuberant version of what is generally considered Taylor’s most popular work to a very enthusiastic audience March 23 in Lake Worth. To finally see Esplanade performed on the Duncan Theatre stage was like eating the cherry on top of a long-awaited ice cream sundae. The company has participated in Palm Beach … [Read more...]
Financial woes force Broward Stage Door Theatre to shut down
By Dale King About a year ago, the Broward Stage Door Theatre celebrated the fact that it was moving from its run-down, two-stage, bunker-style cement building at the rear of a shopping plaza on West Sample Road in Margate to a new, more modern, state-of-the-art theater, the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center a dozen or so miles south of the old site. The nearly … [Read more...]
Soggy, sluggish ‘Harlowe’ disappoints at FAU Theatre Lab
“Yes, it really rains onstage!” That was the promotional tagline for the stage adaptation of Singin’ in the Rain and the most interesting thing about Jennifer Lane’s Harlowe, a listless little play about healing, currently receiving a watery world premiere production at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab. As the audience enters the intimate Lab space, a … [Read more...]
‘Transit’: Waiting for a visa from a city dreamed by Kafka
We hear the sirens before anything else, wailing against a black screen. Emergency vehicles glide through the streets of Paris, and authority figures in riot gear patrol the streets, but nobody seems to notice. They’re shopping, eating at cafes, willfully blind that fascism is creeping up on them, more and more each day. They’re content that for the moment, at least, … [Read more...]