A commonly heard complaint about awards programs is that theaters with more financial resources have an unfair advantage over those that are more impoverished. Well, that charge cannot be leveled against South Florida’s Carbonell Awards after Monday night’s results. Walking off with six Carbonell statues at the 38th annual event that celebrates professional theater in Palm … [Read more...]
Anderson and Roe, dancers brilliant in Stravinsky at CMSPB
Pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe brought a capacity crowd of 280 to their concert in the Grand Ballroom of Mar-a-Lago on March 20. The largest audience yet for this fledgling arts organization heard expert playing and superb dancing by students from the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The pianists met at the Julliard School in New York in … [Read more...]
Strong Brahms, radiant Chopin at PB Symphony
Under the 16 glittering chandeliers of Mar-a-Lago, the most tastefully decorated concert hall in America, Palm Beach Symphony played to the great, the good and the glamorous: scattered among the 600 guests were stand out beautiful young women in designer evening gowns — a coterie from Donald Trump’s Miss America pageant, perhaps? Thanking Trump for his hospitality, Symphony … [Read more...]
‘Hyper-theatricality’ on tap for PB Opera’s ‘Hoffmann’
Jacques Offenbach made and lost several fortunes in the course of turning out about 100 operettas for the French stage, but he wanted to write at least one serious grand opera that would show the world that he had more than frivolity up his sleeves. It was during the composition of that long hoped-for piece, Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) that he became … [Read more...]
T.D. Allman: Looking feistily at Florida, past and future
T. D. Allman, a raconteur of rare qualities, begins a telephone interview with a story about his dad. An officer in the Coast Guard sailing patrols out of Tampa during World War II, Allman’s father captured an Italian tanker on its way north from Venezuela. “Of course, the Italians were delighted to surrender,” Allman says. “He let them keep their sidearms, but he took the … [Read more...]
Strong lead performances lift Ballet Palm Beach’s ‘Romeo’
It was an interesting experience to see Romeo and Juliet at Ballet Palm Beach in the middle of the Winter Olympics at Sochi; if ice dancing is a somewhat clunky country cousin of the ballet, it has the same general wish to express profound emotion through the arc of the body. In its performance Feb. 15 at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, Colleen Smith’s … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s Young Artists score brave triumph in abridged ‘Alcina’
Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists brought off another astonishing coup Friday with their performances in Handel’s 1735 opera, Alcina, aided and abetted by music director Timothy Cheung and stage director Fenlon Lamb. Cheung’s grand piano was surrounded by a raised platform: it sat in the middle of the action, providing guidance and control in a staging that was put together in … [Read more...]
Violinist Lee gives Rinker audience Szymanowski, Ives to remember
The classical music world these days is replete with fine young female violinists, and one of the most promising ones I’ve heard visited the Rinker Playhouse on Feb. 17. Kristin Lee, a South Korea-born American of just 27 years who is a protégé of Itzhak Perlman, appeared in the Kravis Center’s Young Artists series, accompanied by the splendid pianist Kwan Yi. She chose a … [Read more...]
At Studio 18, a look at the secrets we keep, and don’t
By Colleen Dougher A Plexiglas house designed to hold secrets, a self-portrait based on a 30-year-old photograph, a powerful 20-chair installation, big drawings comprised of handwritten fears, insecurities and affirmations and a found mannequin with a hidden but beautiful world inside. These are among the treasures that can be found when Which Way Out: Personal Thoughts … [Read more...]
Sharp political edge drives subversive ‘RoboCop’ remake
If you’re looking for reasons to hate on director Jose Padilha’s RoboCop remake, I’m sure you can find them. It has its requisite number of head-shaking action-movie contrivances, where the bad guy can easily exterminate the good guy if he wouldn’t stop blabbering, and just as he’s finally about to pull the trigger, a second good guy materializes out of the ether to plant a … [Read more...]