Connie Fernandez and Clay Cartland in Smoke. Sexual attraction can be benign, but more often than not — at least onstage — it is a prelude to a tug-of-war power skirmish. That is how it plays out in Kim Davies’ sadomasochistic Smoke, a kinky two-character tango which fittingly bookends a season that began with Sex with Strangers. We are starting to wonder about the personal … [Read more...]
Pictures of Cuba: Before all is lost
It has begun. The sense of urgency in all things Cuba related. The pressure is on to taste the real cuisine, before the fast-food plague arrives, and to enjoy the beaches before a Private Property sign claims the water, the seashells, the sand… For photographers, the rush is to capture a land before it undergoes drastic changes and becomes like everywhere else: modern and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 20-22
Music: It’s the last weekend before Christmas, and if you haven’t had enough of the usual seasonal ear-tide, here’s your chance for a little bit more semi-sacred Gemütlichkeit before it’s on to the homefront. Tonight, Seraphic Fire comes to St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton for its annual reading of Messiah, George Frideric Handel’s hit from 1742 that is as much a … [Read more...]
‘Before Midnight’: A threequel worth waiting for
Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight opens on a scene to which any divorced parent who received the short end of the custody stick can relate: the desire to stretch out precious time with one’s children before they inevitably vanish into the arms of that other person you used to love. In Before Sunset, the second film in what has become a trilogy shot in nine-year, real-time … [Read more...]
Chita Rivera: At the cabaret with a real Broadway Baby
Before we can even mentally ask the question, Chita Rivera answers it in song, launching her cabaret act at the Colony Hotel’s Royal Room with the Kern-Hammerstein standard, I Won’t Dance. Oh, it’s not that the 79-year-old musical theater legend who hoofed her way through such Broadway original casts as West Side Story, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman cannot dance … [Read more...]
‘That Used to Be Us’ an urgent call to recover American primacy
Three years ago, Thomas L. Friedman sounded alarm bells about global warming in his best-selling book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, but predicted that America would wake up before it was too late. Now Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum in their new book, That Used To Be Us, say they are frustrated, but still optimistic, about a range of issues, including global warming, … [Read more...]
Take it from Mel: ‘Young Frankenstein’ is a ‘damn good’ show
If he does say so himself, and he does, Mel Brooks considers Young Frankenstein to be the best of the 12 films he has directed. “I’m not saying it’s my funniest, I’m saying it’s my best. In terms of my art, let’s say, as a filmmaker,” he explains by phone from his production offices in Culver City, Calif. “It’s certainly my best work as a filmmaker, because it captures the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 11-13
Stage: There’s a new theater company in the area, Entr’Acte Theatrix, a professional offshoot of the 10-year-old Palm Beach Principal Players, which hangs out its shingle for the first time with a worthy production of Hair, the “tribal love-rock musical” from 1968, the previous time we were mired in a protracted, unsinkable war. The youthful cast fills out the hippie garb well, … [Read more...]