The very appealing, refreshingly inventive (500) Days of Summer announces its intentions from the opening moments. A sober-voiced narrator intones that what we are about to see “is not a love story.” Implied is the suggestion that we not get involved in the on-again-off-again relationship between greeting card writer Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his … [Read more...]
‘Company’ sparkles at FAU Festival Rep
Whose plays would you say are more difficult to produce well, Shakespeare’s or Sondheim's?This summer’s Festival Rep at Florida Atlantic University features works by both stage giants, and Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 urban musical on relationships and marriage, Company, fares far better than the Bard’s Twelfth Night, the gender-bending comedy on similar themes.Although Company is … [Read more...]
ArtsBuzz: Hoffman makes last-ditch appeal to save New Vista Theatre
The ghoulish among us -- yeah, you know who you are -- insist that deaths come in threes. So there was Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and, while it’s not exactly parallel, maybe the third is New Vista Theatre Company.That is the impression left by an gang e-mail sent out late yesterday afternoon by artistic director Avi Hoffman, who announced “with enormous regret and sadness” … [Read more...]
‘Whatever Works’ slight, but at least it’s funny
You would not need to know that Woody Allen first wrote the screenplay for his latest film, Whatever Works, more than 30 years ago to recognize it as a refreshing throwback.To say that the past decade or so have been artistically fallow for Allen, despite the arrival of at least one movie a year, would be an understatement. To those of us who feel Allen has made some great … [Read more...]
‘Food, Inc.’ a disturbing look at the industry of eating
Movies are a very effective medium for entertainment, but can they fundamentally change the way we think about the food that we eat?That is the task that director Robert Kenner gives himself in Food Inc., a look at what has happened to the livestock, poultry and produce we consume ever since the corporate world took over farming and turned it into big business.This documentary … [Read more...]
Lake Worth’s Tomé brings ‘Babylon’ home, then Off-Broadway
Actor-writer Gregg Tomé is nothing if not persistent. For over a decade he has been writing, revising and performing his one-man show, Back to Babylon, his memory play of growing up in the Long Island town that draws tongue-in-cheek parallels to the Biblical city of the same name.Although many of the nine characters he becomes -- including a bong-smoking stoner, a pep … [Read more...]