Hediyeh Tehrani in Fireworks Wednesday. An interesting thing has happened to the career of Iran’s Asghar Farhadi: It is moving forward by moving backward, at least for Western audiences. Ever since his 2011 drama A Separation scored Oscar and Golden Globe gold, his previous features have been unearthed from dust heap of film history, feeding an international art-house … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Pasquale’ zany fun, but concept crowds out story
The finale of Don Pasquale, at Florida Grand Opera. (Photo by Lorne Grandison) Two of this area’s opera companies bookended the season with Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, with the Palm Beach Opera doing a 17th-century take on the early 19th-century setting in which this 1842 opera was initially set. The production of Don Pasquale now showing at Florida Grand Opera in … [Read more...]
Fine lead performances lift ‘Same Time, Next Year’ at Broward Stage Door
Jacqueline Laggy and Matthew Korinko star in Same Time, Next Year. (Photo by George Wentzler) By Dale King Same Time, Next Year is an engaging play with a fairly basic plot. Still, it is filled with intrigue that runs the gamut from humor to tragedy and guilt to glorious lessons learned. And while a number of people are mentioned in this play, Same Time, Next Year is … [Read more...]
Director McGrath found ‘Beautiful’ experience in shepherding King musical
Abby Mueller in Beautiful. Douglas McGrath, film director (Emma, Infamous), screenwriter (Bullets Over Broadway, Nicholas Nickleby) and occasional actor (The Insider, Small Time Crooks), was skeptical when first approached about writingBeautiful: The Carole King Musical. But then so was singer-songwriter King. “I didn’t want to do it,” he says bluntly, sitting on the … [Read more...]
Strong choral work, fine soloists make Master Chorale’s Haydn one to remember
Horatio, Lord Nelson (1758-1805), by Lemuel Abbott. The Master Chorale of South Florida closed its current season with a remarkably energetic and gritty Haydn mass that said positive things about the chorus and augured good things for its future. Joined by a chamber orchestra from the Lynn Philharmonia in its concert May 1 at Lynn’s Wold Center for the Performing Arts, … [Read more...]
First-ever Florida Jazz and Blues Jam packs Grammy prowess in headliners
Victor Wooten. It isn’t very often that a festival features a combined 13 Grammy Awards between four iconic headliners, and that’s what gives the First Annual Florida Jazz and Blues Jam on Saturday instant name recognition and potential staying power. Its opening act is only John Mayall, the 82-year-old British blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player whose … [Read more...]
Alabama Shakes outshines the fireworks at SunFest
SunFest 2016 offered an unpredictable mix of something old (Duran Duran on the Ford main stage) and something new (Meghan Trainor on the Tire Kingdom stage at the Meyer Ampitheater) with its April 27 opening night’s national acts, and continued the trend throughout its five days. Gifted area singer/songwriter Mike Mineo rocked the main stage before Train eventually … [Read more...]
Three world premieres make for fascinating New World outing
Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind at the New World Center on Saturday. (Photo by Gregory Reed) When the music had finished and the audience in the New World Center had risen to its collective feet, Michael Tilson Thomas knelt down on one knee and kissed the garment of his soloist, soprano Measha Brueggergosman. And well he might: … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 9: ‘Crucible’ still works, despite directorial mangling
Sophie Okonedo and Ben Whishaw in The Crucible. And so the week in New York ended with the 12th production, a love-it-or-hate-it revival of Arthur Miller’s historical epic, The Crucible, deconstructed by Dutch director Ivo van Hove. As you probably recall from studying the 1953 play in high school, Miller’s view of history is two-pronged. On the literal level, he is … [Read more...]
‘Evicted’: A numbing look at the nexus of housing and poverty
Matthew Desmond was in college when he learned that a bank had taken his boyhood home, forcing his parents to move. “I remember being deeply sad and embarrassed,” he writes. He began building houses with Habitat for Humanity, while studying poverty and visiting homeless people. In 2008 he moved into a trailer park in a poor Milwaukee neighborhood to learn more about … [Read more...]