By Dale King Larry Shue’s play The Foreigner is a hilarious sum of its frequently farcical parts. The current Lake Worth Playhouse production, which combines touches of Forrest Gump, The Beverly Hillbillies and Mork and Mindy, continues through March 17. The heart, soul and funny bone of this show is the character Charlie Baker, played with over-the-top comic zeal by Jason … [Read more...]
PB Symphony beautifully evokes intimacy of Viennese chamber society
Monday night’s Palm Beach Symphony Orchestra program was a tribute to the chamber music concert series founded by Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna in 1919, in which the enfant terrible modernist of his day established a way to try out new music in private, and hear large orchestral works in chamber arrangements. Thus it was Monday night, as a small band of just 11 players played … [Read more...]
Sundays: Asking the really big question
By Myles Ludwig Once upon a time, I thought there was a secret key to unlock the meaning of life. A metaphoric key, but an actual secret, hidden away in a Holy Ark or sequestered in a reliquary. I believed then, that once I reached the age of 30, someone would shake my hand in a peculiar way ― like a Masonic ritual salute ― and induct me into the club which kept the secret … [Read more...]
West Delray gets a cineplex with a lot of extras
It can’t really promise that the movies will be any good, but Frank Theatres has thought of every other way to make your evening out at its new CineBowl & Grille at Delray Marketplace a peak entertainment experience. “West is best,” offers corporate CEO Bruce Frank in response to why he is betting that South Florida moviegoers will trek west of the turnpike, at Lyons Road and … [Read more...]
Walter Gay at the Flagler: Empty rooms, inhabited
In a time calling for simplicity and scaling back, portraits of the complete opposite score well. Only hours into their first day at the Flagler Museum, freshly hanged paintings of European and American extravagant interiors already were having an impact. The first visitors found them gorgeous, informative; even inspirational. Impressions of Interiors: Gilded Age Paintings … [Read more...]
The View From Home 45: New releases on DVD and Blu-ray
Movies such as Found Memories (Film Movement, $22.46) are the reason the cinematic arts exist, accumulating its poetry, power and poignancy the way no other medium can. Borrowing from the structuralist playbook of Chantal Akerman, Brazilian director Julia Murat depicts every banal movement of Madalena (Sonia Guedes), an elderly widow whose primary purpose in life is to bake the … [Read more...]
Boynton celebrates art in motion
Standing 9 feet tall and weighing in at 350 lbs., Ralfonso Gschwend’s Dance With the Wind kinetic sculpture sits in front of downtown Boynton Beach’s Civic Center as part of the first-in-the-nation international “kinetic art” exhibit and symposium. A larger 33-foot version, commissioned by China for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, remains in a permanent installation next to … [Read more...]
Sundays: Save the last touchdown for me
By Myles Ludwig I’ll watch the game even though the Superdome could very well be the graveyard of the Super Bowl. The last touchdown, the last time, America’s Big Game, as CNN calls it, crushes every demographic ― gender, class, age, household income ― beneath its cleats. But I’m well aware that the Super Bowl Backlash has begun. Maybe that’s because America’s Big Game is … [Read more...]
JP Soars, Boca Raton’s rising bluesman
For centuries, blues has been one of the few musical genres to succeed through purposeful simplicity, grit, and an innate sense of Southern musical feel. Ironically, one of the artists on the leading edge of new blues, singing South Florida guitarist JP Soars (www.jpsoars.com), resides among the shopping centers and pink office buildings of the decidedly non-bluesy Boca … [Read more...]
Conductor Schwarz advocates for American music, cellist son
You can forgive Gerard Schwarz some special fatherly pride when he talks about his youngest son, Julian. They are, after all, in the same business. “He’s got tremendous gifts, and he’s had quite a bit of success already,” said Schwarz, an eminent American conductor who led the Seattle Symphony to major-league status over a 26-year directorship before stepping down in 2011. … [Read more...]