Angie Radosh in Curtains. (Photo by Amy Pasquantonio) There are multiple murders in the backstage mystery musical Curtains, yet it is one of the most light-hearted shows ever written by the long-running collaboration between composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. The team that gave us such milestone, dark-toned materials as Cabaret, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman … [Read more...]
The View From Home 76: Pietrangeli and Winterbottom, BFFs and the death penalty, and a hilarious Guest
Stefania Sandrelli in I Knew Her Well. (1965) I Knew Her Well: The merciless, soul-crushing world of celebrity aspiration is at the core of director Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 inverse/repudiation of La Dolce Vita (Criterion, $26.19 Blu-ray, $19.69 DVD), which alternates between the blackly comic and beautifully dolorous. Stefania Sandrelli, still riding the box-office … [Read more...]
Seattle’s streetwise and New York’s street-style: Two sets of armors
Tiny, Halloween, Seattle (1983) by Mary Ellen Mark. Not if, but when you visit the ongoing photography exhibitions at the Norton Museum of Art and the Society of the Four Arts, look for beauty in expected and unexpected places. The subject of the photographs that make up Norton’s Tiny: Streetwise Revisited does not want us to pity her, but it can’t be helped. A teen should … [Read more...]
Brutal and deep, ‘A War’ engages on fields of suspense, ethics
We’re just minutes into Tobias Lindholm’s A War when the first IED explodes in a heretofore tranquil stretch of desert in Afghanistan. The 21-year-old soldier struck by the device dies moments later, leaving his fellow-troops shaken, grieving and enraged — questioning the direction of their mission, fighting a deluge of tears and snot, asserting that they’re not cut out for … [Read more...]
Wick revives Kander and Ebb’s ‘Curtains’
In the out-of-town tryout within the musical 42nd Street, the leading lady merely breaks her ankle. In the tryout depicted in Curtains, a so-so show from 2007 by the renowned composer-lyricist team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, the leading lady is murdered offstage during the curtain calls. That fictional leading lady, Jessica Cranshaw, is a classic triple threat — she can’t … [Read more...]
Neave Trio proves ‘bright, radiant’ at Flagler
The Neave Trio: Mikhail Veselov, Eri Nakamura and Anna Williams. By Kevin Wilt On Feb. 9, the Neave Trio played an historic concert at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum as part of the museum’s 2016 Music Series. The occasion was marked by the return of the original Steinway grand piano Flagler bought for his wife, after it had been sold in the 1920s when the Whitehall estate … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 6-8
George Clooney in “Hail, Caesar!” Film: Ever since they burst onto the scene in 1984 with their idiosyncratic take on film noir, Blood Simple, a new film by Joel and Ethan Coen has been a much anticipated event. Certainly that is true for the incessantly promoted Hail, Caesar, opening this weekend at area theaters, and it does not disappoint. This snarky valentine to the days … [Read more...]
‘Closed Season’: Desire among the human ruins
Closed Season is a spartan movie for a spartan time. It opens in a dusty kibbutz in Israel in 1970, where a young entomologist in a pressed shirt aims to question a stoic farmer named Albert about his past. He finally does, and the next 100 minutes or so re-create that past, in a secluded farm on the border of Germany and Switzerland. It’s 1942, and Albert (Christian Friedel), … [Read more...]
Escher Quartet remarkable in Bartok, Beethoven at Four Arts
The Escher String Quartet came to the Society of the Four Arts on Sunday, and everything about its performance was spotless and perfect. So spotless and so perfect, that at times it became bloodless, even while the foursome was demonstrating an astonishing display of musical excellence that was a triumph of instrumental wizardry and interpretive subtlety. This was a bigger … [Read more...]
Chamber Music Society adds three-concert series at Eissey
For three seasons now, the Mar-a-Lago Club has been home to more than a presidential candidate’s ambitions. The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, which debuted in November 2013 in a 193-seat room at Donald Trump’s island mansion, has welcomed an impressive series of musicians to its series, many of them rising stars of the classical music world such as guitarist Miloš … [Read more...]