By 1957, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were the reigning kings of musical theater, but had never written a show for television. That changed when they were commissioned to adapt the enduring fairy tale Cinderella for the small screen, as a star vehicle for Julie Andrews, everyone’s fair lady since a year earlier. With other casts and some tinkering with the score, … [Read more...]
Two rarities charm in second week of PB Chamber Festival
They buried Ernst von Dohnányi in Tallahassee back in 1960, and for some time afterward, it seemed like his compositions went with him. But the great Hungarian pianist, estimable composer and Florida State University professor is enjoying more attention these days from performers. His neo-Brahmsian aesthetic was out of fashion until very recently, but audiences enjoying the … [Read more...]
Uneven, but ado-worthy ‘Much Ado’
If you are going to wage war onstage, it might as well be the “skirmish of wit” of Much Ado About Nothing, the audience-friendly romantic comedy often produced by Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival in its 24-year history. This year’s return to the play is a tribute to the company’s founding member, recent artistic director and frequent leading man, Kevin Crawford, who died last … [Read more...]
Strong singing stands out at fine FGO ‘Tosca’
Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is, with the exception of the one-act Il Tabarro, the most veristic of the Italian composer’s works, and it needs a lot of good red blood to make it work. I don’t mean literal blood, of course, though there could have been some in several spots in the opera Saturday night at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, but the figurative kind: A … [Read more...]
DuoSF musically dazzling, but needs more show biz
Christopher Mallett and Robert Miller, who call themselves DuoSF, are no ordinary self-taught hotshot young guitar players. Appearing in the Young Artists Series at the Rinker Playhouse of Kravis Center on April 7, they brought their gentlemanly and highly cultured approach to this string strumming art we all associate with Spain. Andres Segovia was the leader, Miller and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: April 11-13
Film: OK, it’s not a great weekend for film releases, but if you are still going through withdrawal after the football season, you can get a fictional look at the Cleveland Browns’ front office in Draft Day, opening wide this weekend. Kevin Costner gets his best role in years as the team’s general manager, Sonny Weaver Jr., wheeling and dealing in preparation for the crucial … [Read more...]
The fever for modernity: Italian Futurists, at Boca Museum
We wish our world would slow down, unplug, take a breather, but to a group of Italian artists, this world would have been paradise with no sound more soothing than incoming text messages, microwaves and alarms. Known as Futurists, these artists emerging before and during World War I wished to delete the obsolete past and fast-forward their country into modernity. To do so, … [Read more...]
The View From Home 57: Films by Ray, Tarkovsky and Godard, plus a tribute to VHS
Late Ray: Satyajit Ray, India’s greatest world-cinema export, is most known for the flurry of raw but beautiful films he made in the ’50s and ’60s, such documentary-like rebukes to glossy Bollywood formula as Pather Panchali, The Music Room and Charulata. But he continued to direct films well up to his death in 1992, contributing new pieces to his humanist puzzle of Indian life … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor show competent but earthbound
By Tara Mitton Catao The Paul Taylor Company returned to the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth on Friday night, presenting three works that encompassed the range and variety of the great master choreographer who founded the troupe. From dark to light, from humorous interpretation to pure dance movement, the program was drawn from Taylor’s repertory of the 139 dances he has created … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 4-5, 2014
Theater: Opening on Tuesday evening at West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center is that great folk opera, Porgy and Bess, reclaimed from elitist opera houses and reconceived as a Broadway-scale musical by director Diane Paulus, who has owned the Best Revival Tony Award for the past three seasons (Hair, Porgy, Pippin). In this case, the DuBose Heyward script has been shaken up by … [Read more...]