An energized and muscular Symphonia Boca Raton opened its new season Sunday afternoon with a spirited appearance by a guest conductor and violin soloist who made the most of a mostly meat-and-potatoes program. Alastair Willis, who is closing his tenure this coming year as the conductor of the young Illinois Symphony (which plays in Springfield and Bloomington), led the … [Read more...]
Tyrrell’s Theatre Lab gets moving at FAU
When F. Scott Fitzgerald declared that “there are no second acts in American lives,” he surely was not referring to Lou Tyrrell. The founder of Florida Stage (formerly known as The Pope Theatre, formerly known as Theatre Club of the Palm Beaches) has recently begun his third act, opening yet another theater organization. After an ill-advised move to the Kravis Center in … [Read more...]
‘Shenandoah’ gets rare, satisfying staging at Delray Square
By Dale King The Delray Square Performing Arts Center has been no stranger to taking risks. It had no qualms about presenting The Life, a gritty, gutsy tale of life on the streets in Times Square circa the 1980s. Ditto for Piaf, the just-concluded story of the famed French chanteuse whose morality was questionable, and taste for booze and pills obvious. Now Shenandoah is … [Read more...]
‘Butterflies’ gets its groovy on at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King The comedy Butterflies are Free, which opens the 2014-2015 season at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs, is not a musical. But music is key to the flow of the action and the meaning of the characters’ lives, particularly Don Baker (Britt Michael Gordon), the central figure in this quirky, slightly dated, but certainly entertaining and worthwhile … [Read more...]
‘Gentleman’s Guide’ gets Tony love, but no front-runner emerges in nominations
The Tony Awards nominating committee showed a lot of love this morning to A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, the small, clever musical about mercenary homicide, which will compete for best musical and nine other categories honoring the just completed Broadway season. A Gentleman’s Guide was the top nominations-getter, but the awards remain up for grabs with no clear … [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...]
Maltz gets puckish charm of ‘Joseph’ just right
The name Andrew Lloyd Webber does not bring to mind light comic romps as much as it does overblown musicals with operatic pretensions. But back in 1968, as an exercise for a prep school, he and lyricist Tim Rice devised a frothy entertainment from an Old Testament yarn, built of tongue-in-cheek songs in anachronistic pop styles. The show is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor … [Read more...]
Dramaworks gets $2 million donation; PB Opera cancels all Monday shows
WEST PALM BEACH -- A retired Washington, D.C., power couple has donated $2 million to Palm Beach Dramaworks, the largest contribution in the history of the theater company. The donation by Donald and Ann Brown of Palm Beach Gardens will bring with it the renaming of the former Cuillo Theatre in West Palm Beach as the Donald and Ann Brown Theatre, the company said this morning. … [Read more...]
PB County gets new dance company; FAU gets cache of rare recorded Judaica
Ex-Ballet Florida workshop chief founds dance company Palm Beach County has a new dance company, and it will make its debut in early February at the Duncan Theatre, on the Lake Worth campus of what will soon be Palm Beach State College. O Dance was founded by and is named after Jerry Opdenaker, most recently director of the now-defunct Ballet Florida’s STEP Ahead … [Read more...]
Dutch group gets Delray Baroque off to vigorous start
It's useful to remember that no matter how far we've come from the Baroque era, good music of whatever age will engage interested young performers and be reborn anew. The time to really notice that Saturday night was in the ensemble selections of a concert by the Netherlands-based Haagsche Hofmuzieck, a young trio (joined by a guest violinist to make a foursome) that opened … [Read more...]