By Dale King Lake Worth Playhouse goes all out for its first show of 2016, High Society, the tale of a Long Island socialite who waxes blasé on the night before her wedding when two suitors try to nudge her away from the groom-to-be. It’s an interesting mix of highbrow banter and scatterbrained hijinks that is well worth seeing. Jodie Dixon-Mears, the artist boss at the … [Read more...]
Marvelous lead performances stand out in powerful ‘Room’
There’s something inherently limiting about the movie screen that makes cinema a more claustrophobic medium than theatre. In theatrical sets, doors suggest a world beyond the confined drama, providing an escape from the demons, the embarrassments, the high jinks. Even if the characters don’t use them, it’s comforting to know they’re there. Movie screens, on the other hand are … [Read more...]
Fun staging, excellent singing mark Miami Summer Music Festival’s closing ‘Don Giovanni’
The Miami Summer Music Festival closed its second season on Sunday afternoon with a remarkable performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, epic and uncut, and featuring several standout singers in the festival’s Opera Institute program. Smartly and snarkily staged by Jeffrey Marc Buchman, who updated the opera to contemporary times in a gambling resort, this Don Giovanni lost only … [Read more...]
Stravinsky hommage stands out at PBCMF’s first concert
A young American composer’s tribute to Igor Stravinsky made a remarkable impression during the opening concert last weekend of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 24th summer season. San Francisco-based Stefan Cwik, not yet 30 years old, composed his Eight Miniatures for the Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition in 2010, and it was easy to hear Sunday afternoon at … [Read more...]
Figueroa reaching ahead and reaching out at Lynn Philharmonia
When the student orchestra at New York’s Juilliard School gives concerts, audiences have to line up beforehand to get a ticket. But with free admission, it’s a pretty good deal. So when Guillermo Figueroa, who studied the violin at Juilliard, came to Lynn University to take over the conservatory orchestra, he was astounded and pleased to discover that its audiences in Boca … [Read more...]
Onslow, Stephenson stand out in PBCMF Concert 3
If the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival musicians went looking for a trove of unfamiliar but worthwhile music they could draw on year after year, they could do worse than the works of Georges (or George) Onslow. Onslow (1784-1853), the French offspring of an English lord’s wayward younger son, was the only substantial French composer of chamber music in his day, writing no … [Read more...]
Music roundup: Morris delightful at Four Arts; Han and trio shine at Flagler
Tenor Jay Hunter Morris would have you believe he’s one of the good old boys: A good-looking, sweet-talkin’ Southern Baptist boy from Paris, Texas, where Mom was choir director at church. At 40 years old, down on his luck after 20 years of singing roles like Alfredo (Traviata), Calaf (Turandot) and Cavaradossi (Tosca) in American regional opera houses, Mom suggested a choir … [Read more...]
Little area golfers in documentary think big
Although Palm Beach County has plenty of celebrities, it is rare for a movie to feature prominently two local residents. But that is the case with The Short Game, a new documentary opening this weekend at the Muvico Parisian complex, about 7-year-old golfers from 54 countries around the globe competing in the World Championship of Junior Golf at North Carolina’s manicured … [Read more...]
Mizner Park crowd turns out for the Monkees
By Dale King Monkee-mania gripped Boca Raton for a couple of hours last Saturday night. The surviving three members of the Monkees — the put-together pop quartet assembled by NBC executives in the mid-1960s for a TV show designed to capitalize on the success of the Beatles flick, A Hard Day’s Night, are still performing 47 years later. The Mizner Park Amphitheater concert … [Read more...]
At the cabaret: A Georgia firecracker lights up the Colony
By Dale King During summer in the Palm Beaches, hot entertainment in cool locations is de rigueur. The Colony Hotel has again picked up that vibe and is offering a season-long set of cabaret shows in the hotel’s celebrated Royal Room -- a short hop from the famous “Avenue” in downtown Palm Beach. Performing Fridays and Saturdays through July 20 is Carole J. Bufford, a … [Read more...]