By Dennis D. Rooney The Palm Beach Symphony closed its 44th season April 17 at the Kravis Center with a most ambitious program. Too ambitious, as it happened. American cellist Zuill Bailey was the soloist in Edward Elgar’s 1919 Cello Concerto (in E minor, Op. 85), taking the place of the previously announced Romanian cellist, Răzvan Suma. Playing the “ex-Schneider” … [Read more...]
Lovely, lustrous ‘Jewels’ opens MCB’s season
Seeing the Miami City Ballet’s opening program of the season Nov. 18, which featured George Balanchine’s Jewels, was very much like opening a box and finding an array of precious gems inside, beautifully crafted in elegant and intricate settings. Each section of Balanchine’s acclaimed triptych was distinctly different but all were polished, multi-faceted and brought to … [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...]
MNM makes something tasty out of slender ‘Spamalot’
It’s a backhanded compliment, but one sign of a theater company’s strength is when it can succeed with lackluster material. Consider how far MNM Productions has come in its three years of existence – it now manages to almost hide the deficiencies in the flimsy comic romp, Monty Python’s Spamalot, now playing at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse through June 4. Yes, the … [Read more...]
Reimagined ‘Phantom’ at Kravis will win you over, actor Craig says
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, now in its 30th year on Broadway — by far the longest-running show in Broadway history — has an estimated worldwide box office of over $5.6 billion, making it the most financially successful entertainment event ever. In case you have never seen it before — there must be someone who hasn’t, right? — or if you never miss an … [Read more...]
‘Curious Incident’ another unlikely triumph for Britain’s National Theatre
Conventional wisdom says that plays cannot make money these days touring the United States. But the National Theatre of Great Britain does not listen to conventional wisdom. Two seasons ago, it had astonishing artistic and commercial success on the road with War Horse, its five-time Tony Award-winning World War I drama about a boy and his equine pal. Now theatrical lightning … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 12-14
Dance: Tonight at the Kravis Center, two local dance leaders, Maria Konrad and Jerry Opdenaker, will be joined by the Koresh Dance Company of Philadelphia for an evening of new work called Inside Out. Two Florida premieres by Roni Koresh, and world premieres from Konrad (who runs Reach Dance Co.) and Opdenaker (who runs O Dance), teaming here with Sarah Walston of Florida Dance … [Read more...]
Even the revue is beautiful: Songs of Kander and Ebb at the Rinker
Busy as an adjunct theater professor at Florida Atlantic University, Lynn University and Broward College during the school year, Bruce Linser has to confine his freelance directing to the summer months. No sooner had he opened his production of Once Upon a Mattress at FAU’s Festival Rep, then he began rehearsals for The World Goes ’Round, MNM Productions’ revue of songs … [Read more...]
‘Mamma Mia!’ is a hit – and a miss
That much-maligned theater stepchild, the jukebox musical, is built from used parts, involving the meticulous selection and insertion of existing songs into a story line to make a cohesive whole. But if a careless mess like Mamma Mia! can run for years on Broadway, generate road companies all over the globe as well as spawn a wildly successful movie version, why would anyone … [Read more...]