The cast of Shuffle Along performs “Broadway Blues.” (Photo by Julieta Cervantes) The only suspense at this year’s Tony Awards was over whether Hamilton would set a new record for winning the most statuettes. (It fell short of The Producers’ 12-Tony total by one.) Still, it has sucked most of the air out of the Broadway season, so here is a look at some of the also-rans: … [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...]
Brilliant FGO production lets ‘Mourning’ shine
Marvin David Levy’s opera Mourning Becomes Electra made a big impression when it was first launched at the Metropolitan Opera in 1967, helped by the star turns of its leading ladies, Evelyn Lear and Marie Collier, and a young baritone named Sherrill Milnes. It had to wait 30 years for its next performance, at Chicago’s Lyric Opera, and its current production at Florida Grand … [Read more...]