As a musician, I've come to the conclusion that playing music in a live setting works best when it parallels, well, life. There will be some of the inherent up moments, like harmony among the vocals and the instruments, and conversations both with and without words, plus some of the downs like mistakes that you have to recover and learn from. But being a veteran musician … [Read more...]
‘The Tree’: A lyrical, understated portrait of family and grief
We’ve barely been introduced to Peter O’Neill (Aden Young), the patriarch of a family of six in rural Australia, before a heart attack strikes him dead behind the wheel of his truck. With his daughter playfully atop the vessel, and assuming her father is simply having some fun, the truck careens slowly off the road and teeters, with an anticlimactic thump, into the enormous … [Read more...]
‘Six Years’ too shallow, soapy to make strong impact
In case you have bought the way World War II’s “greatest generation” has been idealized, playwright Sharr White now asks theatergoers to see those noble souls in a new, darker light. His melodramatic play Six Years considers the plight of that generation through the microcosm of shattered war veteran Phil Granger and his anguished wife, Meredith. We observe them in five … [Read more...]
‘Six Years’ explores dark side of the Greatest Generation
Ever since Tom Brokaw wrote about the men who went off to fight World War II and the women who sacrificed on the home front awaiting their return, they have been known as “The Greatest Generation.” But in the way his grandfather’s contemporaries had been idealized, playwright Sharr White sensed that the full story had yet to be told. That led him to write Six Years, the … [Read more...]
‘Journal Keeper’ a compelling meditation on life, love and death
Phyllis Theroux offers readers a gift by letting us peek into the journals she kept during six years of her life beginning at age 61. The Journal Keeper excels on several levels – for the pure enjoyment of Theroux’s evocative writing, as a tribute to the art of journal writing, and as a meditation on life, love and death. Aspiring writers would do well to study Theroux. Her … [Read more...]
State funding for arts ‘an embarrassment,’ cultural leaders say
This is about money, or rather, about the absence of it. That’s what 80 executives representing cultural organizations from Palm Beach County heard at the State of the Arts meeting Monday at the Armory Art Center. Turns out they are part of the problem and the solution. Last fiscal year, Palm Beach County received $150,000 in arts money from the state in the form of six … [Read more...]