Carbonell Award-winning director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge never shrinks from a challenge. In fact, she is drawn to the risks of re-conceiving the musicals of the great stagers, like her acclaimed take on Gower Champion’s Hello, Dolly! at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre two years ago and her current look at Jerome Robbins’ work on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, … [Read more...]
Gallery Crawl No. 1: Exhibits showcase county’s contemporary bent
New work by heavyweight pop artist Robert Indiana can be seen at Rosenbaum Contemporary in Boca Raton. The octogenarian is the father of the iconic LOVE image, which he created initially as a sculpture in 1966, and has appeared around the world in various high- and low-brow incarnations. Now, he brings us a show entirely focused on another essential word: HOPE. “It’s like the … [Read more...]
Director Seidelman’s ‘Musical Chairs’ launches in SoFla, NYC
As with her previous feature, 2006’s Boynton Beach Club, director Susan Seidelman has opted to use South Florida as a test market for the release of Musical Chairs, her new movie about wheelchair ballroom dance. Well-meaning but overly sentimental, it can expect a similar spotty critical and popular reception. Still, talent from the film arrived in the area earlier this week … [Read more...]
PB Symphony’s music-in-the-round a great success
What could top an all-Bach program? I’ll tell you: The arrangement of the orchestra in the octagonal DeSantis Chapel at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Seating for the Feb. 27 concert was in a great circle with orchestra and soloists in the center. “Switch seats after the intermission, and look into the conductor’s eyes,’’ suggested the symphony’s new executive director, … [Read more...]
Director Kennedy brings new energy to Master Chorale
Leaving a place where your colleagues in academia went boogie-boarding in the Pacific Ocean every Friday morning can’t be an easy thing to do. And so it was for Karen Kennedy, who left her job at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and directorship of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus to come back to the mainland, first to Baltimore, and then to Miami. “It was very hard for me to … [Read more...]
Director Montiel draws on his tough early life for film
Director-screenwriter Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fighting) grew up in the low-income housing projects of Queens, N.Y. Many of the guys that he grew up with are now either in prison or dead, yet through sheer determination he avoided both and became a filmmaker. How did he beat the odds and avoid the violence that he recreates in his latest feature, The … [Read more...]
‘Color Purple’ director always believed in story’s power
Eight-time Jefferson Award-winning director Gary Griffin made his Broadway debut six years ago with the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved epistolary novel, The Color Purple, a runaway hit now on its second national tour, completing a week’s run at the Kravis Center on Sunday. Although this story of Celie, a young black girl raped and impregnated by her father and … [Read more...]
Music roundup: Lyrical Haydn, revelatory Korngold, daring Links
Boca Raton Symphonia (Sunday, Jan. 23, St. Andrew’s School, Boca Raton) The eminent American composer and educator Gunther Schuller was joined by a very young cellist Sunday afternoon in a concert by the Boca Raton Symphonia that was one of the most polished this group has offered in some time. From the tightness of the Cosi fan Tutte overture that opened the concert at St. … [Read more...]
The View From Home 17: New releases on DVD
Kobayashi Four (Facets) Standard list price: $71.99 Release date: Nov. 23 Facets celebrates its new release of Masahiro Kobayashi’s 2001 film Man Walking on Snow by repackaging three of the director’s previously available releases into a box set titled Kobayashi Four. Watching these four titles from the criminally neglected Japanese auteur reveals a bracing talent with a … [Read more...]
‘Secret Order’ director has faith in it, but play needs more work
Tom Bloom does not give up on a play easily. The New York actor-turned-director began helping to develop Bob Clyman’s Secret Order, a drama of ideas about a cure for cancer that runs into a buzzsaw of research politics, some 15 years ago. He not only directs the production that opened at the Caldwell Theatre this weekend, but when featured actor Gordon McConnell was … [Read more...]