Michael McKeever and Nickolas Richberg in Stuff.Editor’s note: This story, was was to be posted Friday, was delayed by technical difficulties. It has been posted since Friday on www.palmbeachartspaper.com.Theater: OK, you’ve procrastinated long enough. This is the final weekend for the world premiere production of Stuff at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre. This … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 15-21
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in The Trip. Film: Fans of director Michael Winterbottom’s Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story are likely to get a kick out of the ad lib road comedy The Trip, for he has again enlisted the duo of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in a sly verbal romp. As in the earlier film, the two British actors play themselves, or at least a comic … [Read more...]
Theater feature/review: McKeever’s ‘Stuff’ brings empathy to hoarders’ tale
From left: Michael McKeever, Nicholas Richberg and Angie Radosh, in Stuff.By Hap ErsteinProlific and eclectic. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get with a Michael McKeever play. But if you don’t like one, don’t worry, there will be another along in six months.As it happens, the Davie-based playwright-performer is serving up a winner currently with his … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 1-6
J.K. Simmons and Lou Taylor Pucci in The Music Never Stopped.Film: The British neurologist Oliver Sacks’ popular case studies have made good fodder for Hollywood (1990’s Awakenings), and in The Music Never Stopped, one of Sacks’ essays (The Last Hippie) is the source of the story. Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci), long estranged from his father … [Read more...]
Theater review: Asner’s ‘FDR’ is a date that will live in boredom
Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.By Hap ErsteinLet’s start with the stipulation that I really do not care for one-person shows, which are almost invariably undramatic recitations of facts, delivered to unseen characters in a series of phone calls, often with no theatrical context.There are a few exceptions -- Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain, Vincent Price’s Oscar … [Read more...]
Theater feature: Asner as FDR: From one liberal icon to another
Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.By Hap ErsteinHe has played a slave ship captain in Roots, Pope John XXIII, adventurer Carl Fredericksen in Pixar’s Up and, of course, Lou Grant, the role that earned him five of his seven Emmy Awards. But for Ed Asner, 81, the opportunity to become Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a couple of hours each night was too good to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 27-June 1
Ed Asner as the 32nd president of the United States.Theater: Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is one liberal icon playing another liberal icon in the one-man show FDR, opening a brief five-day run at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton beginning Wednesday evening. The play, written by Roosevelt scholar Dore Schary (Sunrise at Campobello), looks at the … [Read more...]
Theater review: Young thespian’s strong debut makes ‘Secret Garden’ worth cultivating
By Hap ErsteinMore interested in spiritual rebirth than the usual romance that fuels musicals, with a score more attuned to British folk melodies than Tin Pan Alley hits, you can understand why 1991’s underrated The Secret Garden is rarely revived these days.And then there is the casting challenge of its main character, 12-year-old Mary Lennox, the suddenly … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 20-22
Reece Thompson and Hilary Duff in Bloodworth.Film: If you crave a good, character-driven Southern coming-of-age, family reunion, eccentricity excess yarn, check out this weekend’s indie release, Bloodworth, fresh from the festival circuit and into a local Palm Beach Gardens theater on a market test basis. Having survived a medical scare, patriarch E.F. … [Read more...]
Theater review: ‘Carnage’ shows parents behaving badly, but still getting laughs
Nick Santa Maria, Kim Ostrenko,Kim Cozort and Michael Serratore in God of Carnage.By Hap ErsteinLike her earlier Tony Award-winning comedy Art, playwright Yasmina Reza again explores adults behaving childishly in God of Carnage, which took Broadway by storm in 2009 and looks likely to meet a similarly appreciative audience at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre. … [Read more...]