There has never been, and in all likelihood will never be, an American playwright as commercially successful as the late Neil Simon. From his Broadway debut in 1961 with Come Blow Your Horn, he has convulsed audiences in laughter season after season. But it wasn’t until 22 years later, with Brighton Beach Memoirs, that he eased up on his joke reflex, explored his own … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2020
‘Invisible Man’: The misogynist’s revenge
Elisabeth Moss is still fleeing Gilead. In The Invisible Man, Leigh Wannell’s psychodramatic remake of H.G. Wells’ science-fiction classic, she plays Cecilia Kass, wife/prisoner in a sleek fortress owned by a tech billionaire on a secluded cliffside in Northern California. He controls every aspect of her life — what she wears, eats and says, and increasingly what she thinks — … [Read more...]
Forget your troubles at NSU Museum’s ‘Happy!’
If you are happy and you know it, you won’t mind putting that feeling to the test of an exhibition parking balloons, cartoons, and smiles right next to depression, trauma and loss. The subject of many onward and inward expeditions has everyone looking for universal driving directions. There’s one location we are likely to find it – at least temporarily. The relentless … [Read more...]
ACO, soloist get mixed Beethoven results; Stravinsky, Higdon sparkle
By Dennis D. Rooney Dance music dominated the first half of the second Masterworks Series program of the Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s 30th season Wednesday at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens. Dance Card by Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) was the opener. Written in 2016, the five-movement work, for string orchestra, explores different aspects of dance rhythms. … [Read more...]
Splendid ‘Acis and Galatea’ closes Seraphic Fire’s Enlightenment Festival
By Robert Croan “Happy we!”/”Wretched lovers!”/”Galatea, dry they tears!” That’s the plot, in a nutshell, of Acis and Galatea, Handel’s pastorale opera, first performed in London in 1718, given a rare (and splendidly realized) revival by Seraphic Fire to conclude the group’s two-week Enlightenment Festival in South Florida. The shepherd Acis and the sea nymph … [Read more...]
Lead performances lift iffy ‘Funny Thing’ at Primal Forces
When you grow up the daughter of cartoonist-playwright Jules Feiffer, the purveyor of comic urban neuroses, some of that has to rub off on you. So it has for Halley Feiffer, who juggled humor and anger in I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard (seen two seasons back at GableStage) and, to a lesser extent in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at … [Read more...]
Norton opens a fresh look at Rauschenberg
By Sandra Schulman Bicycles, T-shirts, tin cans – everything was fodder for art materials for Robert Rauschenberg, the radical 1950s artist who used the beauty and detritus of the world as his aesthetic. For the next major show in its newly expanded gallery space, the Norton Museum of Art is presenting a large survey of the work of Rauschenberg (1925-2008), tracing the … [Read more...]
Area guitarist Telesca tells of struggle with cancer in new book
With a new recording, a new book, and a new lease on life, Boynton Beach-based blues vocalist, bassist and guitarist Mark Telesca (marktelesca.com) has hit a figurative trifecta. Higher Vibrations is his first recording of solo acoustic blues as a singer and guitarist, and that new lease on life is chronicled in Telesca’s debut as an author. Available in online and … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Show offers floors full of riches
By Myles Ludwig The shiny story is at the Convention Center, where the Palm Beach Show of glittering jewelry, particularly fine antiques, interesting artifacts and wonderful paintings is on display. Opening night was a grand affair with an invitation-only VIP vernissage benefitting the Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope followed by a special preview opening party. The … [Read more...]
Dorrance Dance electrifies at Duncan with tap ‘Double Down’
What do you get when you cross America’s original art form with today’s technology? A reinvigorating artistic experience that wows everyone in the audience. Dorrance Dance is an award-winning New York-based dance company that both honors tap dance’s history and propels it into the new age of technology. The company returned to the Duncan Theatre on Feb. 7-8 as part of its … [Read more...]