There are plenty of interesting productions looming in the area this season, but the hottest ticket is unquestionably Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, at the Kravis Center in late January and then the Arsht Center the following month. Do what you have to to get tickets. You didn’t need that right arm anyway. A year ago, the Stage Door Theatre was readying a move to a larger, … [Read more...]
Broadway baby: ‘School of Rock’ cast member, 10, tells of life on the road
Like many a New Yorker, 10-year-old Alyssa Emily Marvin considers South Florida to be her second home. After all, her great-grandmother was a longtime volunteer at the Kravis Center until recently and her cousin is a rabbi at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton. And on Wednesday, Alyssa makes her Kravis debut as Marcy, one of the kid rocker back-up singers in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s … [Read more...]
At Kravis, ‘Waitress’ is a sweet helping of comfort food
As any geometry student knows, pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. But as the musical comedy Waitress demonstrates, pie can be shortest distance to happiness. Diner waitress Jenna Hunterson (Christine Dwyer) happens to also be an extraordinary baker of pies, which bring her customers much satisfaction — exactly the feeling that is absent … [Read more...]
PB Opera scores with stylish, fast-moving ‘Giovanni’
Mozart called his opera Don Giovanni an opera buffa, and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte called it a “dramma giocoso” (playful drama), but the work’s ending, with its protagonist being swallowed by the earth after the statue of a man he killed comes to dinner and implores him to repent, has seemed to many stage directors of the past two centuries to define the opera as a piece … [Read more...]
Israel Philharmonic, Levi splendid in Bruckner at Kravis
By Dennis D. Rooney Zubin Mehta, longtime music director of the Israel Philharmonic, was originally scheduled to conduct at the Kravis on Feb. 5, but withdrew due to illness. His place was taken by Yoel Levi, the IPO’s first Israeli music director. A frequent guest conductor in the U. S., Levi, 68, was from 1978 to 1984 at the Cleveland Orchestra, initially as assistant … [Read more...]
Energetic cast makes it happen for Estefan bio ‘On Your Feet!’
Add the names of Gloria and Emilio Estefan to those of Frankie Valli, Carole King, Donna Summer and Cher, singers and songwriters whose lives have been enshrined lately in biographical jukebox musicals. For the Estefans, the show is called On Your Feet!, which ran on Broadway for a more than respectable 746 performances – nearly two years – from 2015 to 2017. Soon after … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 4-6, 2019
Film: At 85, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is having a very good year at the movies. First came RBG, the documentary of her personal and professional life, which could tire out a person half her age. And now, opening this weekend at area theaters, is a feature film – On the Basis of Sex – which focuses on the Brooklyn-born glass ceiling buster as she challenges the … [Read more...]
For PB Opera, it was a grand night of youthful singing
Time was when the Palm Beach Opera held a singing contest in April, inviting young opera performers from around the world to be heard in front of an elite panel of judges and a full orchestra. The contest is gone (though it may someday return), and with it the chance to hear a wide variety of new voices and not incidentally a broad sampling of repertoire that one will surely … [Read more...]
Touring ‘Dolly!’ reminds us just how strong this show is
The year was 1964 when composer-lyricist Jerry Herman, playwright Michael Stewart and director-choreographer Gower Champion adapted Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker into one of the high points of what we now look back on as the golden age of the musical theater. The show, of course, was Hello, Dolly!, which became, for a while at least, the longest-running production … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony launches season with rich menu of “pops”
By Dennis D. Rooney The term “Pops Concert” suggests to some a program in some way inferior to the program of a symphony orchestra, which unfortunately sometimes has been true when an orchestra is asked to play arrangements of music not originally for orchestra. But the term also particularly applies to orchestral music of a lighter character that is not often programmed … [Read more...]