Having compiled my ten favorite films of 2015 — and therefore, by subjective definition, the best of the year — I realized a decided bias towards films about writers, writing and filmmaking. My number one film centers on the investigative reporting team for The Boston Globe and, in addition, I have great affection for one about a prominent blacklisted screenwriter, an aged film … [Read more...]
The year in review: The theater’s top 12
Several theater companies went out of business in 2015, while others moved to more comfortable digs, hoping their audiences would follow. Of those that stayed put, many pushed themselves by producing challenging works, particularly mega-musicals and powerful new dramas. There was too much quality happening to contain the year in 10 productions, so here instead (in my … [Read more...]
First-rate cast makes Dramaworks’s ‘History Boys’ one for the books
England’s Alan Bennett first came to prominence in the early ’60s, as one of the four collegiate satirists who wrote and performed an evening of sketch comedy called Beyond the Fringe. It was fairly cerebral as revues go, but it did not suggest the major playwright Bennett would become, penning such thought-provoking, yet still entertaining scripts as The History Boys, on the … [Read more...]
At the Four Arts: The lost glory of a Southern capital, recaptured
An ongoing exhibition at the Society of the Four Arts tells the story of how the golden era of Charleston, S.C., came and left, while its fruits went everywhere. An Eye for Opulence: Charleston through the Lens of the Rivers Collection consists of more than 200 mahogany furniture pieces, silver objects and fine art representing the city’s enviable prosperity during the … [Read more...]
How ‘The Grinch’ came to the theater
Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was very stingy, almost Grinch-like, with the performance rights to his popular children’s books. But after the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre Company had a big success with a musical version of his 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, written by its resident playwright Tim Mason, in 1994 the Geisel estate allowed the stage company to adapt his How … [Read more...]
Take Heed Theater Co. finds new home, seeks funding
Lake Worth’s Take Heed Theater Company, a nomadic and sporadic professional performance troupe, has found a permanent home. Now all the company needs is to raise enough money to turn the former storefront church on Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach into a habitable playhouse. “For about twelve years, it was some sort of a church,” says artistic director Dave Hyland, an … [Read more...]
Amid the fields of Wellington, a serious recording studio springs up
Anyone who’s looked for a recording studio with world-class equipment in Palm Beach County knows that they’re hard to find. Until now. Liberated Studios (liberatedstudio.com) opened in Wellington late this summer to fill that world-class equipment void. Finding it, however, can still be a bit of a challenge. That’s partially by design. The 1,500-square-foot facility is … [Read more...]
Andrew Kato: In the driver’s seat at the Maltz
Back in the 1980s, a young, eager theater intern named Andrew Kato worked as a waiter at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter. Today, he runs the multi-million dollar regional theater on that site, having in November been named producing artistic director and chief executive of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. With that promotion comes a 10-year contract to oversee the … [Read more...]
The empire returns: New ‘Star Wars’ film set to renew cultural touchstone
Palm Beach ArtsPaper Staff A mass-market cultural phenomenon is set to take place Dec. 18, with the release of the highly anticipated new Star Wars film The Force Awakens, the first in a new trilogy of the durable space operas, now directed by J.J. Abrams. While newcomers such as John Boyega and Daisy Ridley are on board, many of the original characters and actors are … [Read more...]
The View From Home 74: Precocious poets, tranny hookers, corrupt baseballers and more
The Kindergarten Teacher: There’s a lot to uncrate in Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s implacably disturbing The Kindergarten Teacher (Kino, $22.99 Blu-ray, $19.99 DVD), so let’s start with the pupil. Yoav Pollak (Avi Shnaidman) is a 5-year-old student in a Tel Aviv kindergarten who possesses the soul of a great poet. Most of the time, Yoav is a normal tyke, playing in the … [Read more...]