Theater: This weekend, the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine fairy tale mash-up, Into the Woods, joins a stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, in repertory at Boca Raton’s Florida Atlantic University for its 2017 Festival Rep, the 20th annual showcase of the drama department’s graduate student pool. Bruce Linser, a local Sondheim maven, directs the sophisticated … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 17-19
Music: Jazz vocalist Zoë Fromer has been making the rounds of South Florida for years along with her studies at the University of Miami, building a reputation as a fine stylist (here she is singing in chanson mode singing Charles Trenet’s “Menilmontant”). A native of Delray Beach, she’s making her last appearance in her hometown on Sunday night at Arts Garage before relocating … [Read more...]
New Arts Garage CEO promises theater will return this year
"I like fixing things. I’m drawn generally to things that need my help. I like the process and I love small nonprofits.” So says Marjorie Waldo, who has found a small nonprofit that needs her help and has jumped head-first into the fray as president and CEO of Delray Beach’s beleaguered storefront performance complex, The Arts Garage. Waldo, on the job since Nov. 1, has … [Read more...]
Organist Smith heals his audience at Arts Garage
At age 74, Hammond organist Dr. Lonnie Smith still looks like a kid in the candy store every time he gets behind his keyboard. On Saturday, the kid from Lackawanna, N.Y., fed off of the energy of a sold-out crowd at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach. Those attending included some old friends from the 1990s, when the turban-topped keyboardist was part of the house band at … [Read more...]
Arts buzz: Arts Garage cancels theater season; violin competitors named
The Arts Garage in Delray Beach said Monday it has canceled the remainder of its theater season. CEO Marjorie Waldo and Board President Chuck Halberg said in a joint statement that the venue’s losses from the first two shows had been substantial. “After an intensive five-week review of the varied programs we offer, it has become apparent that the losses we have suffered … [Read more...]
Vampire two-hander ‘Cuddles’ leaves us without much to feed on
Pale-skinned teen Eve not only believes in vampires, she in convinced that she is one. After all, her parental older sister Tabby has told her so, keeping her confined in a dark, dank, cave-like room, away from the deadly rays of sunlight. The two women inhabit a contemporary play by Joseph Wilde with the ironically benign title of Cuddles, the latest kinky theater piece … [Read more...]
With ‘Mystery of Love & Sex,’ Arts Garage launches quirky new theater season
By all measures, the theater program at Delray Beach’s Art Garage had a very good season, the first one guided by Keith Garsson and his resident director, Genie Croft. Their edgy slate of plays was critically well received, two of the four productions had extended runs and overall the season turned a profit. The question now is can they continue their success or will they fall … [Read more...]
2016-17 Season Preview: Theater
“You can’t keep a good man down,” goes the saying, and Lou Tyrrell is the proof. After championing new work at Florida Stage, he moved his operation to Delray Beach with Theatre at Arts Garage, a smaller version of the company he ran for almost 25 years. Last season, he moved a little further south to the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, still introducing … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 16-18
Theater: Many a musical has made fun of the process of making musicals. Think The Producers or Something Rotten! Now, from off-Broadway in 2007 comes the improbable Gutenberg! The Musical!, a two-man spoof of a pair of over-zealous, but alas untalented, musical theater writers. Yes, they have written a show about the inventor of the printing press and movable type, which, let’s … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 3-5
Film: Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti was making his 2011 comedy Habemus Papam when his mother became seriously ill, and now the filmmaker returns with one of the best films to be released here this year, Mia Madre, that draws on that experience. Margherita Buy plays a filmmaker trying to make a movie about a strike who has to deal with a number of crises including the hack … [Read more...]