The richness of Mozart’s oeuvre can’t be fully appreciated unless you’re able to hear good performances of every part of it, from his church sonatas to his first attempts at opera. That applies, too, to his chamber music. While performances of the later string quartets and quintets are frequent, and the Clarinet Quintet always gets an airing when a good enough clarinetist is … [Read more...]
Sundays: The era of alt-delete
By Myles Ludwig Erase thyself. This might very well turn out to be the 11th Commandment of the early 21st century. It could be the Holy Grail of semi-privacy or just a cure for the bewildering, often incapacitating condition of Kardashiana, popularly known as TMI. Like most cures (the off-label uses of moldy bread, for example), this one was discovered by accident. Thanks … [Read more...]
The View From Home 61: Friedkin, Kiarostami, Romanian New Wave, vintage Cagney, and a lame actioner
The People Vs. Paul Crump: Made in 1962 for Chicago public television but considered too controversial to air, the prescient documentary The People Vs. Paul Crump finally sees the light of day courtesy of Facets ($27.98 DVD). It is essentially an hour-long interview with Crump, a professedly innocent African-American death-row inmate convicted of murdering in a white security … [Read more...]
Community theater: Fine ensemble delivers powerful ‘Doubt’ at Delray Playhouse
By Dale King Delray Beach Playhouse wraps up its 67th season with a presentation of Doubt, the taut, bare-knuckle drama that rivets audience members for the duration of its 90-minute, one-act story ripped from contemporary headlines. It runs through Sunday. Penned by John Patrick Shanley, Doubt examines the tense interplay between a tough, iron-willed nun who strongly … [Read more...]
Preview to the Tonys, No. 3: ‘Bullets Over Broadway,’ ‘Aladdin’
For the runup to the Tony Awards on Sunday, ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein takes a series of looks at the shows up for Broadway’s highest honors: Bullets Over Broadway — Susan Stroman (The Producers, Contact) must surely be the reigning director-choreographer of Broadway, but her stock has fallen substantially this season. It began with the musical Big Fish, which, by most … [Read more...]
Preview to the Tonys No. 2: ‘Act One,’ ‘Mothers and Sons,’ ‘Casa Valentina’
For the runup to the Tony Awards on Sunday, ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein takes a series of looks at the shows up for Broadway’s highest honors: Act One — Just as marijuana is thought of as a gateway drug to harder stuff, Moss Hart’s autobiography Act One is surely responsible for getting many a young would-be theater artist hooked on the stage. The memoir of an impoverished kid … [Read more...]
Preview to the Tonys, No. 1: ‘Gentleman’s Guide,’ ‘Beautiful,’ ‘If/Then’
For the runup to the Tony Awards on Sunday, ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein takes a series of looks at the shows up for Broadway’s highest honors: Here are three of this season's Broadway musicals, vying for a box office boost from the Tony Awards broadcast Sunday: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder — Romance is the motor of most musical comedies, but a team of writers, designers … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 30-June 1
Theater: Broadway plays rarely tour anymore, so even last year’s Tony Award winner, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, became available to regional theaters like GableStage to produce and give their own spin to. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov hovers over the lives of three contemporary siblings — the offspring of lit professors with a penchant for … [Read more...]
The big noise from Naples: Bob Stone’s jazz band plays Delray
Bob Stone, the founder, musical director and drummer for the Naples Jazz Orchestra (www.thenjo.com), gained renown by leading his popular self-titled big band from 1976-1989 in Chicago. Yet he didn’t exactly move to the west coast of Florida 25 years ago intending to do the same thing. “I was hitting the road with some major artists then, and flying out of O’Hare International … [Read more...]
Sundays: On the cutting-room floor
By Myles Ludwig Imagine this: a sea of screens with waves of 70-inch flat TVs breaking on the shore; riptides of wall-mounted Vizios trailing their HDMI cables like the sperm we used to see projected on the roll-up screen in our high school hygiene classes, before the storm surrounding sex education; a beach of upturned satellite TV dishes curling in on themselves in the … [Read more...]