By Dale King George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a frightening piece of prose, a literary admonition warning of a perverse future world in which an omniscient state machine, Big Brother, exerts total control over society. To deviate in thought, word or deed could lead to torture or, more likely, death by hanging in a location where audiences gather to watch gleefully. Or, Big … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 22-23
Film: As Variety puts it, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is the first slam-dunk of the year for a best picture Oscar nomination. Possibly so, but certainly in a summer season crowded with comic book-based superhero epics, Nolan’s tale of the crucial World War II battle in Northern France sticks out as a serious history lesson aimed at an adult audience. That is not to say there … [Read more...]
PB Chamber Music Festival 2: An attractive buffet of small plates
By Dennis D. Rooney I described the PBCMF’s inaugural concert of its 26th season as a “feast.” The second program, which I heard Sunday at Delray Beach's Crest Theatre, seemed more like a tasting menu with a few amuse-bouches. An interesting Trio in C, Op. 33 No. 2 for bassoon, violin and cello by François-René Gebauer opened the program. The composer (1773-1845) was a … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘Minnie’s Boys’ supplies plenty of love and laughter
By Dale King A wise, frequently used phrase in the English lexicon observes: "Behind every great man is a great woman.” The woman in question is usually a wife or a mother, underscoring the assumption that no man gets to be “great” without a feminine guiding hand. Some woman, somewhere, had to provide that regulatory element for the man to achieve success. Minnie’s Boys, … [Read more...]
‘Swing, Swing, Swing’ still sharp in Broward Stage Door encore
By Dale King The musical revue Swing, Swing, Swing, is back for an encore at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Margate. This year’s version packs virtually the same tunes, dance steps and energetic moves seen and heard in 2016, when so many people filled the seats the show had to be held over again and again. Eventually, it ran from June to September. This year’s … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 14-16
Art: Allons, enfants, to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach on Saturday for a celebration of all things French (for Bastille Day, which is today). Beginning at noon Saturday and running until 5 p.m., the free festival offers French-language instruction from Natacha Koblova of the Multilingual Language and Cultural Society, classic French film (The Red Balloon), music … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival I: A rich, inventive program, excellently played
By Dennis D. Rooney The program of the inaugural concert of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 26th season (which I heard Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach) was opened by the organization’s three founders: flutist Karen Fuller Dixon; clarinetist Michael Forte; and bassoonist Michael Ellert, who performed a Divertimento in B-flat (Op. 12a) by Joachim Kötschau, … [Read more...]
MNM readies Sondheim’s ‘Company’ for Rinker
By Dale King MNM Productions is a small but driven contemporary theater company that’s latched on to the black-box-style, 300-seat Rinker Playhouse at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, and intends to stay a while. Its two producing partners, Michael Lifshitz and Marcie Gorman-Althof, have given wing to risk by announcing plans to present one of the best-loved and … [Read more...]
A charming, colorful ‘Vixen’ at Miami Music Festival
By Dennis D. Rooney Leoš Janáček’s operas, particularly Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová, have now become established repertory works, albeit still at the fringes. The Cunning Little Vixen, from 1924, is one of his most accessible. The composer based the libretto on a story first told in comic strip form in Lidové noviny, his hometown newspaper in Brno, the Moravian capital. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 30-July 2
Theater: This weekend, the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine fairy tale mash-up, Into the Woods, joins a stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, in repertory at Boca Raton’s Florida Atlantic University for its 2017 Festival Rep, the 20th annual showcase of the drama department’s graduate student pool. Bruce Linser, a local Sondheim maven, directs the sophisticated … [Read more...]