Film: I have rarely recommended a horror film, but Ari Aster’s directing debut, Hereditary, is so creepy good, with a stunning central performance by Toni Collette, that it exceeds the genre. She plays a woman disturbed by the recent death of her mother, whose genes have apparently infected the family and set in motion a series of tragedies. When her stoner son reluctantly … [Read more...]
#MeToo and the young actress: Three FAU thespians view the road ahead
By Janis Fontaine The #MeToo movement that exploded onto the cultural scene in 2017 with allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein – who was indicted this week on rape charges in New York – has upended the careers of major figures in entertainment, media and government, among other professions. Palm Beach ArtsPaper sat down in April with … [Read more...]
Gogol it: FAU’s ‘Government Inspector’ shows good satire never really dates
By Dale King Student actors in Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance have finally been loosed from a hurricane-prompted delay that postponed the opening of their 2017-2018 season from October to the period just before Thanksgiving. As a result, the political satire, The Government Inspector, written by Nikolai Gogol in the mid-1830s and adapted … [Read more...]
FAU’s Wayzgoose celebration ‘makes book’ in Boca
By Myles Ludwig John Cutrone is a tireless cheerleader for the hand printed and the art of the book. He heads FAU’s Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for the Book Arts (JCBA) located in the school’s Wimberly Library, a treasure chest of the book as an art; i.e. the container, rather than necessarily the contents. I am a fan. On Oct. 29, John put together the first edition of … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in theater
Keith Garsson bounces back with a sexy season of Primal Forces, Palm Beach Dramaworks produces two world premieres, Slow Burn serves up its first non-musical and in case you haven’t had enough inclement weather this hurricane season, The Wick promises to make it rain inside its theater. All in all, it looks like a promising 2017-18 at area stages. Here’s a preview, in … [Read more...]
FAU Theatre Lab launches New Play Festival this month
Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab ends its second full season – its first with a slate of fully produced plays – with a New Play Festival, May 10-14, in Parliament Hall on FAU’s Boca Raton campus. The festival kicks off with an evening of short plays selected from submissions by participants in the master classes of the Playwrights Forum, led by associate artistic … [Read more...]
FAU grad students offer gripping ‘Judas Iscariot’
By Dale King Grad students in the Master of Fine Arts program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton wrap up their 2016-2017 season this weekend with an intensely dramatic retelling of a 2,000-year-old-story with critical contemporary consequences. In fact, the play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, is steeped in passion, and unfolds at a slow, often painful pace, … [Read more...]
Pianist Biegel clowns, shines in P.D.Q. Bach at SoFla Symphony
The American composer Peter Schickele has had a remarkable career in which he has managed to have his own compositional triumphs and an entirely separate career in musical parody, in which his compositional triumphs have been much more dubious. But that’s the sort of thing you’d expect me to say when we’re talking about Schickele’s creation, P.D.Q. Bach, whose scattered … [Read more...]
FAU’s ‘Spitfire Grill’ finds winning balm in Gilead
By Dale King The Spitfire Grill, the lively contemporary musical that completes its two-weekend run at the Studio One Theatre on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton on Sunday, is not a humorous show, despite the up-tempo, often knee-slapping rhythm of its score and an aw-shucks ending that drops on the audience like the plummeting temperature of a … [Read more...]
Chekhov meets Beckett in Laufer’s provocative ‘Three Sisters of Weehawken’
What do you get when you cross an iconic play by Anton Chekhov with those of Samuel Beckett, by way of Christopher Durang and his puckish touch? Such a stew would probably resemble Deborah Zoe Laufer’s The Three Sisters of Weehawken, an amiably nutty and ultimately touching new work now receiving its world premiere at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab. As her title … [Read more...]