Florida Stage ends its residency in Manalapan on a high note, with the world premiere of a smart, verbally adroit political play by a new writer with a natural affinity for the theater. Unclear is what lies ahead for the company when it moves into the uncomfortable quarters of the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse beginning this summer, but if it can keep serving up scripts of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 5-8
Music: Earlier this year, the Chopin Foundation of Miami held its quinquennial competition, which was won by the American pianist Claire Huangci. But that February event wasn’t the last in the foundation’s series of concerts, and this weekend, the young Canadian pianist Leonard Gilbert offers an all-Chopin program in performances in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables. Gilbert, … [Read more...]
The View From Home 7: New releases on DVD
Stagecoach (Criterion) Release date: May 25 Standard list price: $30.99 As the legend goes, John Ford’s Stagecoach established the Western as an A picture, reviving it from its creatively moribund inception as disposable, one-dimensional nickelodeon fare and elevating it to the lofty standards of Whitmanesque poetry and pre-Wellesian compositional virtuosity that all of our … [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...]
The View From Home 6: New releases on DVD
Tokyo Sonata (E1) Release date: May 4 Standard list price: $21.49 Tokyo Sonata, the latest from Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is seemingly a departure from the director’s preferred forte of cerebral horror and science fiction. At least that’s how it begins, with a focus on the lives of a middle-class Japanese family of four that echoes Yasujiro Ozu’s gentle domestic … [Read more...]
‘Three Tall Women’ shows off Albee in top form
He has never actually been to Palm Beach Dramaworks’ West Palm Beach theater, but with five of his plays produced there, Edward Albee is the company’s unofficial resident playwright. It might have been more in keeping with the troupe’s mission of presenting worthy, but neglected scripts had Dramaworks reached back for a less-seen Albee play like Tiny Alice or All Over, but in … [Read more...]
‘White People’ examines dispiriting history of racial constructs
The spectacle of Americans choking with rage at Tea Parties, or tossing around racist epithets at Sarah Palin rallies, has our European friends worried. Recently, French journalist Jean-Sebastien Stehli, writing in Le Figaro, bemoaned the “climate of violence” in American politics, which he identifies as white fear and resentment at the rise of a black president. Nativist … [Read more...]
Bulletin from Broadway No. 6: ‘Come Fly Away’
Eight years ago, Twyla Tharp won the Tony Award for choreography, using the music of Billy Joel for her quirky, alternately graceful and clumsy leaps and lifts in a show called Movin’ Out. The Playbill program for it contained a three-paragraph synopsis of the plot -- something about couples drifting apart as the guys went off to the war in Vietnam and then eventually coming … [Read more...]
The View From Home 5: New releases on DVD
Surviving Desire, Possible Films: Vol. 2 (Microcinema) Release date: April 27 Standard list price: $22.49 each It’s not hyperbole to suggest that my cinephilia in general and my specific interest in writing about films are the result of one director’s work: Hal Hartley. Known for his insightful, quirky movies about hyper-literate drifters and outcasts who converge on Long … [Read more...]
The View From Home 4: New releases on DVD
The Italian Straw Hat (Flicker Alley) Release date: April 6 Standard list price: $23.99 In the movies and the theater, the institution of marriage is not often a melodious tradition, with infidelity and domestic strife serving as effective dramatic devices for more than a century. But day-to-day wedlock is downright harmonious compared to the ceremony leading up to it. … [Read more...]