A scene from the Limón Dance Company’s The Moor’s Pavane. (Photo by Bill Hebert) By Tara Mitton Catao While out on its 70th anniversary national tour, the Limón Dance Company made a stop here in South Florida as part of the Duncan Theatre’s Modern Dance Series. The program celebrated the creative essence of its founder/creator José Limón and gave us the opportunity to see … [Read more...]
Clash of the trite ones: ‘Batman vs. Superman’ a soulless, empty exercise
Of all of the craven, deceptive teases in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, none is perhaps more flagrant than the film’s title. The two barrel-chested superheroes may face off in the movie’s grimacing poster, but they’re pitted against each other for all of five minutes of Zach Snyder’s two-and-a-half hours of pandering claptrap. There are more fireworks in an early … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘What’s New, Pussycat’ revives 1960s pop winningly
By Dale King What’s New Pussycat? The Soundtrack of an Era is about to finish its second run in less than two years at the Broward Stage Door Theatre. Created by Broadway-trained director Michael Leeds and collaborator/choreographer Kevin Black in the manner of a jukebox musical, the show pulls together about 50 songs — full tunes and medley versions — and segments them into … [Read more...]
Art Boca Raton unveils some gems amid the dross, overcrowding
Hummingbirds on Yellow, by Laura Tan. By Myles Ludwig Although there was more than sufficient visual jokery, snap, crackle, pop and cupcake conceptualism on display at Art Boca Raton to jolt even the most somnolent, there was just enough original work to capture my interest and provide a frisson of satisfaction. ArtBoca was abuzz at noon on Saturday when I arrived at the … [Read more...]
Stellar Field anchors charming ‘Doris’
Sally Field never went away. Her performance as Mary Todd Lincoln in Spielberg’s Oscar winner still lingers these years later. So why does her virtuosic work in Hello, My Name Is Doris feel like such a resounding comeback? I suppose it’s because, like Lily Tomlin in the similarly gracious dramedy Grandma, meaty roles for women of a certain age remain endangered properties on … [Read more...]
Ballet Palm Beach creates dance take on ‘Great Gatsby’
Just before Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby in his big mansion on West Egg, the party his neighbor is throwing for a large number of people is in full Roaring Twenties swing. And inevitably, that means dancing, from “old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles” to “a great number of single girls dancing individualistically,” all of it part of the … [Read more...]
The war that never ends: Historian Winter to discuss WWI at Festival of the Arts Boca
French soldiers in the trenches during World War I. Imagine a world in which Great Britain and Germany are the major powers, and the United States and Russia are only minor players on the global scene. It’s a world of relatively conservative politics, where there was no World War II, no Holocaust, and no one but their families had ever heard of Adolf Hitler or Vladimir … [Read more...]
At Festival of the Arts Boca: Alpert, ‘Raiders’ wow big crowds
Herb Alpert and Lani Hall. By Dale King Herb Alpert’s still got it. At age 80 — 81 as of March 31 — Herb Alpert, the legendary master of trumpet, has been a performer, composer, arranger, songwriter, singer, record producer, record executive, record company co-founder, painter and sculptor. But the audience that took up nearly every seat at the Mizner Park Amphitheater in … [Read more...]
The View From Home 76: Pietrangeli and Winterbottom, BFFs and the death penalty, and a hilarious Guest
Stefania Sandrelli in I Knew Her Well. (1965) I Knew Her Well: The merciless, soul-crushing world of celebrity aspiration is at the core of director Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 inverse/repudiation of La Dolce Vita (Criterion, $26.19 Blu-ray, $19.69 DVD), which alternates between the blackly comic and beautifully dolorous. Stefania Sandrelli, still riding the box-office … [Read more...]
Community theater: Compelling ‘Inherit the Wind’ at LW Playhouse
By Dale King Those planning to see Inherit the Wind at Lake Worth Playhouse are admonished not to believe everything they see on stage. Even the play’s co-authors, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, say the drama is a “fictionalized” retelling of the famous 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial that made a criminal out of a high school teacher bent on teaching evolution according to … [Read more...]