By Sharon Geltner Palm Beach Dramaworks is achieving a lot of significant firsts. It is emphasizing new plays. And it just staged (it ran Dec. 8-24) the world premiere of The Messenger, scripted by its first residential writer, Jenny Connell Davis. The four-character, 100-minute play is about a Hungarian Holocaust survivor teaching math in Southern California who is … [Read more...]
New MCB principal approaches art with authenticity
By Hannah Deadman From the time she was 8 years old, Dawn Atkins knew she wanted to dance ballet. Now at age 29, she’s one of Miami City Ballet’s newest principal dancers — the highest rank a dancer can earn in a professional company. Atkins grew up in small-town Vermont. Although her early childhood in Middletown Springs wasn’t filled with the arts, her parents … [Read more...]
‘Fireworks Every Night’: A vivid, gritty fiction set in Palm Beach County
By Sharon Geltner She had me at Palm Beach Mall. Fireworks Every Night is a vivid, authentic story set in Palm Beach County. Author Beth Raymer labels the book as “fiction,” but she writes from her own lived experience. And what an experience that was. Similar to her protagonist, C.C. Borkoski (named for her father’s favorite Canadian Club whiskey), Raymer grew up … [Read more...]
New World, conductor Grams impress in Mahler’s Sixth
By Márcio Bezerra If Thomas Mann thought that Wagner’s art was “dilettantism raised to the level of genius,” what would he have made of Gustav Mahler’s symphonic output? Mahler, one of the more important conductors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (in both Europe and New York City), had a limited compositional output as he wrote his symphonies mostly during his … [Read more...]
Palm Beach’s new Balcos Gallery showcases French artist Herlédan
By Sandra Schulman A new gallery in the growing Palm Beach scene, Jennifer Balcos Gallery is debuting with an exhibit of paintings and sculpture by Aude Herlédan, the French artist’s first showing in Palm Beach. “We find most of our artists during our travels,” Balcos told Palm Beach ArtsPaper. ”I make it a point to visit every gallery, working artists’ studios and … [Read more...]
Director’s smart touches refresh FGO’s well-sung ‘Traviata’
By Robert Croan Verdi’s La Traviata, as staged for Florida Grand Opera by Chía Patiño [seen at the Broward Center, Nov. 30], contained many original and unusual touches while retaining the opera’s original 19th-century milieu. Early on, in retelling Alexandre Dumas fils’ story of the courtesan who sacrifices her one chance of true love, the consumptive heroine --- … [Read more...]
Delray Playhouse’s ‘She Loves Me’ shines with stellar cast
By Dale King A lyric in theme song for the 1970s TV comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show tells us that “Love is all around.” That short, but sweet and sentimental, assertion could easily apply to the Hungarian perfume store where She Loves Me, the serene and romantic musical that packages amour in various situations, takes place. The production, now being presented on the … [Read more...]
Don’t be a Scrooge: LWP’s ‘Christmas Carol’ is delightful
By Dale King Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the author’s legendary tale of a wretched money-hoarding soul who finds lifesaving redemption with help from ghostly apparitions who appear to him on a fateful Christmas Eve in 1840s London, is back in Palm Beach County, offering a spirited lift to folks looking forward to the arriving holiday season. The famed fable opened … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire renders French Baroque superbly
By Robert Croan Welcome to Paris in the 1730s, during the reign of Louis XV. To open its 2023-24 season, Seraphic Fire, directed by Patrick Dupré Quigley, presented two rarely heard works from the period --- a sacred motet followed by extracts from an opera, each evoking the alleged splendors of the French court while providing a tantalizing glimpse into music that was … [Read more...]
Mexico’s Minería orchestra, pianist Montero get Kravis classical season off to fine start
By Márcio Bezerra The Classical Concert Series at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach opened its season Monday with a concert by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería of Mexico. Founded in 1978, the OSM is unusual as its main season runs in the summer in Mexico City (for the rest of the year, the orchestra, according to its website, “performs special … [Read more...]