This is the summer of commercially unsuccessful musicals revived and reexamined on South Florida stages. There was High Fidelity at Slow Burn Theatre, and now the Johnny Cash revue Ring of Fire at Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach, followed by Frank Wildhorn’s Bonnie and Clyde at Florida Atlantic University. Each show ran headlong into the brick wall of Broadway … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 13-15
Film: Bicycling with Molière is a French film about two actors with large egos — if that is not redundant — rivals who are envious of each other to a fault. Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a television star who plays a brain surgeon on a popular French series, while the other has quit the business and moved to a small, remote village. Unsatisfied with his success, the TV actor … [Read more...]
Pompano’s Bailey Contemporary Arts offers first look
In its cultural arts master plan, the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Authority (CRA) writes: “Something wonderful is about to happen.” The something they had in mind – a cultural arts district and destination in a formerly underused area of east Atlantic Avenue — kicked off its soft opening tonight with ArtHall, a monthly art exhibit, and a street party with live music … [Read more...]
News briefs: Arts Garage team to manage 2 Pompano venues
The Delray Beach-based cultural arts management group that opened the Arts Garage in 2011 and presented hundreds of events there has been tapped to develop programming and manage two new cultural venues in Pompano Beach. The Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) in Pompano approved a contract with Creative City Collaborative (CCC) to come up with cultural programming for … [Read more...]
Grosvenor brilliant at Four Arts
By Donald Waxman Benjamin Grosvenor, the much-heralded young British pianist, is only 21, but he began performing in public and winning awards at the age of 10 and hasn’t stopped since. His current concert itinerary shows him playing two or three solo or orchestral concerts a week worldwide for the entirety of the concert season. For his recital at the Society of the Four … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 28-29
Art: No matter what its other attractions, the basic fact of the state of Florida is the water: Most of it is a sandbar in the sea, so it’s only fitting that so many artists of the state have turned or aqueous reality for inspiration. At the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s art gallery in its converted movie theater on Lake Street in Lake Worth, The Deep and the Shallow … [Read more...]
News briefs: Four Arts’ Duggan to retire; FAU prof wins Knight grant
Ervin Duggan, president of The Society of the Four Arts since 2000, announced Friday he will retire after the current season. Duggan will remain with the Four Arts through June, after which he and his wife, Julia, will retire to North Carolina. Former president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting System, Duggan is credited with recognizing the potential for the Society to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 13-15
Art: Was there any artist so indelibly associated with the late 1960s as Peter Max? The Art Students League-trained painter’s bright colors and quirky figures did as much to define the look of the age as hippiedom did. Max has continued working since those high-profile days, and has recently been painting portraits of singer Taylor Swift, which will be on sale Saturday when the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 7-8
Theater: With the comic strip musical Annie, director Mark Martino does not pull off the sort of new look reconceiving that he did with The Music Man at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre a couple of seasons ago, but he renders the show with plenty of heart and pizzazz. He doubles as the musical’s choreographer and stops the show twice with a raucous, bump-and-grind Easy Street and a … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 16-17
Film: By a quirk of release patterns, you can now see two recent films starring Naomi Watts on area theater screens. The two roles she plays in Diana and Sunlight Jr. are a real display of her acting range, portraying two vastly different women separated by an ocean and by the gulf of their financial circumstances. Diana is, of course, about Princess Diana, and her love affair … [Read more...]