Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in The Lobster. Film: Summer movies are supposed to be a vacation from challenging fare, but The Lobster challenges that assumption. It is a satirical slice of science fiction with as loopy a premise as you could ask for. Set in the near future, it offers a society where marriage is compulsory and the unattached have 45 days to find a life mate. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 19-21
`Opera: The Palm Beach Opera opens its second mainstage production tonight with Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, one of the bel canto’s most charming and radiant scores. Janai Brugger is Norina, David Portillo is Ernesto, Lucas Meachem is Dr. Malatesta, and Carlo Lepore sings Pasquale in a production directed by Fenlon Lamb and conducted by Antonino Fogliani. The plot of this 1843 … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 14-16
Theater: Every generation has an image of Peter Pan, either Mary Martin, who originated the role in the 1954 Broadway musical, or such subsequent high fliers as Sandy Duncan or Cathy Rigby. We can now add Shanon Mari Mills to that list, for her energetic, athletic and full-voiced performance at The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton. She heads a lavish production directed by Michael … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 27-29
Music: The Argentine-born violinist Tomás Cotik has had a busy career in South Florida since earning his doctorate at the University of Miami, including sitting second-chair violin in the Delray String Quartet. Among his fields of study is the music of Franz Schubert, and he and pianist Tao Lin have just released a second disc of the composer’s music for violin and piano, … [Read more...]
Weekend picks: March 21-22
Theater: The Maltz Jupiter Theatre, it seems, keeps getting better as the challenges it selects increase. There is perhaps no more difficult a musical for a theater of the Maltz’s size to carry off than Les Misérables, but director Mark Martino makes it look easy. He gives the epic show a cinematic sweep, without resorting to the show’s original turntable staging. Yes, he … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 7-8
Film: Uruguay’s official submission for the foreign-language Oscar this year and an audience favorite at the recent Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, Mr. Kaplan, has returned for a commercial run at Boca Raton’s Living Room Theaters and other venues in the area. It is that tricky commodity — a dark comedy with a Holocaust theme — but it works, largely because of the assured work … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 16-18
Theater: The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton does not go in for fresh directorial concepts in its musicals like the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, but it has recently taken to injecting Broadway veterans into its productions, like Walter Charles and Lee Roy Reams as nightclub owner Georges and his gay partner and drag queen headliner Albin in La Cage aux Folles. That is reason enough to see … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 10-12
Theater: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you,” says Emily Webb in one of the more famous speeches from Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town. While current taste might find it too sentimental, Wilder’s play has never gone out of fashion, and it remains a classic of the American stage. Its story of nothing simpler than days in the life of a fictional New … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 16-17
Film: Writer-director John Michael McDonagh gives us a present called Calvary, the second installment in a projected trilogy after the considerably lighter The Guard of a few years ago. Both star the impeccable Brendan Gleeson, seen here as the priest of a small, destitute Irish village. He is having trouble herding his flock, a challenge that is intensified by his own crisis … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 13-15
Film: Bicycling with Molière is a French film about two actors with large egos — if that is not redundant — rivals who are envious of each other to a fault. Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a television star who plays a brain surgeon on a popular French series, while the other has quit the business and moved to a small, remote village. Unsatisfied with his success, the TV actor … [Read more...]