Noel Coward would become one of Great Britain’s wittiest, most successful high-style playwrights, known for such enduring comedies of manners as Private Lives, Present Laughter and Design for Living. In 1925, though, at the age of 25, he wrote the less well-known, lesser Easy Virtue, a dark-toned tale of an American divorcee who marries into a well-heeled British family, most … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 9-10
Film: I have rarely recommended a horror film, but Ari Aster’s directing debut, Hereditary, is so creepy good, with a stunning central performance by Toni Collette, that it exceeds the genre. She plays a woman disturbed by the recent death of her mother, whose genes have apparently infected the family and set in motion a series of tragedies. When her stoner son reluctantly … [Read more...]
FAU Festival Rep’s ‘Sense’ and ‘Woods’ entertain and nourish
The best theater pieces involve characters who want something very badly. Perhaps that is what links Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical, Into the Woods, which are the cornerstones of this year’s Festival Rep on Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus. In the former, two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, yearn for … [Read more...]
Fine performances make for gripping ‘Anne Frank’ at FAU
By Dale King The Diary of Anne Frank – the powerfully told memoir of a young Jewish girl, her family and associates forced to hide for nearly two years to escape Nazi persecution during World War II – is one of the most famous and haunting stories to emerge from the horrific Holocaust years. Performed with great passion and depth by students from the Department of Theatre … [Read more...]