A rocket ship, a sentinel, and mirror-faced sculptures are among the artworks composing a deeply personal and vocal exhibition born out of camaraderie and moral support. If it says anything, it’s that injustice benefits from silence and shadows. On view through October 23 at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Lux et Veritas highlights 21 artists of color who bonded over their … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2022
Where ‘Officer and a Gentleman, The Musical’ belongs: Not on stage
Opting for pre-sold familiarity, so many musicals these days are based on popular movies. But not all of them justify the insertion of songs into the story line, serving more as filler than increased emotional impact. Take An Officer and a Gentleman, The Musical, or rather, don’t bother to take it. Based on the 1982 Richard Gere-Debra Winger flick about the Naval Officer … [Read more...]
Black Pumas close SunFest with a set and sound to remember
For many of the SunFest performers, 2022 turned into RainFest between its first three days of April 28-30. Yet hope was kept alive on day four. Following a country music-heavy opening night, plus additional headliners then attempting to deliver whining pop, forced glam, and frat-boy rock between the raindrops, the Austin, Texas-based soul group Black Pumas … [Read more...]
Maltz gets underway in new house; companies announce 22-23 season
After two postponed productions and a third delayed by a week, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre opened in late March with critical acclaim for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and for its renovated and expanded playhouse. With much of the stress of construction deadlines over, producing artistic director Andrew Kato paused long enough to discuss the new, improved theater and the upcoming first … [Read more...]
ProgJect brings titans of prog rock to Boca, all too briefly
Tribute acts are the latest acid for the masses, especially in South Florida. Most of the artists being paid tribute to have either died or are still touring past age 50 --- meaning they're often popular enough to charge exorbitant fees for concert tickets to compensate for their lost recording royalties in the musical streaming era. So consumers who either can't, or … [Read more...]
Words matter, and are the matter, in Boca Stage two-hander ‘The Sound Inside’
It is no accident that Bella Baird, the central figure in Adam Rapp’s compelling, though arch, play The Sound Inside, is a professor of creative writing at Yale University. For Rapp, himself a former novelist, needed a character obsessed with literature, meticulous with words, someone whose self-conscious dialogue sounds carefully composed, as if written down before it is … [Read more...]
At Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, Bradley Theodore’s cheerful memento mori
Think of a thermal imaging camera illuminating areas of high body temperature in a black canvas and you would begin to get a sense of Bradley Theodore’s painting The Last Supper. Indiscernible features, bold tones, and broad strokes delivered in rapid fashion shape this familiar scene of 13 dinners against a wall. The colors clearly missed the memo that three is a crowd and … [Read more...]
Poetry in motion: Steady action, score make for captivating ‘Fellow Travelers’ at FGO
By Rosie Rogers Florida Grand Opera’s production of Gregory Spears’s 2016 opera Fellow Travelers told a Lavender Scare love story with a sweetly melancholic score. With direction from Peter Rothstein, the smooth set changes produced a constant motion well-matched to the minimalism of the orchestra. Starring Hadleigh Adams and Andres Acosta as the two romantic leads, … [Read more...]
‘The Automat’: Affectionate documentary sings praises of Horn & Hardart
As an American on the blurry border between Gen X and millennial, when I hear the term automat, I think of a car wash. To previous generations, especially those who grew up in Philadelphia and New York, the automat was a culinary phenomenon. Established in 1888 by entrepreneurs Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, who adapted the idea from similar institutions in Europe, the … [Read more...]