From front to back: Chevi Marquise Hill, Jessica Farr and David Nail in The Flick. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama used to go to the giants of the American theater – the Eugene O’Neills, the Arthur Millers, the Edward Albees – for their towering masterworks – the Long Day’s Journey into Nights, the Death of a Salesmans, the Delicate Balances. These days – 2014, to be specific – … [Read more...]
Arts preview 2015-16: The season in classical music
The classical music season for 2015-16 will be its usual overstuffed self, especially if you’re keen to travel outside Palm Beach County. Inside the county, things incline to the tried and true, but further south, they’re edgier. Nevertheless, it’s a rich and bountiful season, and the first three months of the new year will present concertgoers with a huge menu of possible … [Read more...]
PB Opera Young Artist ready for Donizetti main role
When she got the word, Bridgette Gan was ready to go. As a member of the Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists Program, Gan was preparing to cover the central role of Marie in the company’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, which opens Friday. But Erin Morley, the soprano scheduled to sing the role in two of its performances, had come down with a cold, and it … [Read more...]
Jazzman Fred Hersch survived ‘coma dreams’ for a comeback
If any musician gets chesty enough to think their work approaches impressionistic art, that they’ve overcome insurmountable obstacles to reach that plateau, and become a cultural icon in the process, you can bring them down to earth by matching their life against that of pianist Fred Hersch. The 57-year-old native of Cincinnati was writing symphonies before high school, and … [Read more...]
Dying author faced the end by insisting on happiness
As medical director of Dean Ornish’s Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California, Lee Lipsenthal regularly helped patients overcome their fear of pain and death. But just short of his 52nd birthday in 2009, Lipsenthal was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and told he had at most only a few years to live. Enjoy Every Sandwich is the author’s upbeat account of how he … [Read more...]
‘God of Carnage’ exposes the beasts within
There is a lot more carnage then there are signs of God in Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony Award-winning best play, God of Carnage, which opens this evening at the Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton. As she did with her earlier acclaimed comedy Art, Reza enjoys conjuring up adults moved by circumstances to act childishly. In that earlier play, it was three men, long-time friends … [Read more...]
This year, Oscars have 10 best pictures worthy of the category
Going into today’s release of Academy Awards nominations, it looked like a two-horse race between The Social Network and The King’s Speech -- both superior pictures -- and nothing about the announcements from Hollywood changes that. Both movies, of course, made it into the field of 10 for Best Picture and they will also be competing head-on for Best Director (David Fincher … [Read more...]
Cellist deMaine to play all Beethoven’s cello works in two Boca concerts
The cultural-event marathon is one of the most absorbing pleasures in the world of the arts, a chance for fans of a genre or a specific body of work to immerse themselves and give themselves wholly over to the featured creations. Pianists have milestones such as the complete Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach or all 32 of the Beethoven sonatas, for instance, and cellists also have … [Read more...]
New Vista’s ‘Enter Laughing’ worth a few giggles
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008 In 1976, Carl Reiner’s affectionate memoir of his earliest efforts to break into show business, Enter Laughing, was turned into a Broadway musical, redubbed So Long, 174th Street. Perennially boyish Robert Morse, then in his mid-40s, was miscast as teenage David Kolowitz — the Reiner character — and he became the scapegoat when the show closed two weeks … [Read more...]