Miles Wilkin. Call it PACE Theatrical, SFX Entertainment, Clear Channel, Key Brand or its current corporate moniker, the John Gore Organization. Whatever you call it, for the past 35 years, through mergers, acquisitions and just plain name changes, Miles Wilkin has been helming the largest organization in North America dedicated to growing and protecting the network of stage … [Read more...]
Violinist Schmidt electrifies ACO audience in Tchaikovsky
Giora Schmidt. (Photo by Dave Getzchman) The fourth and last conductor to meet the public in the Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s search for a permanent music director was David Handel, who on Wednesday led the most ecstatic evening so far in terms of audience response with violinist Giora Schmidt, who received a long standing ovation after completing the first movement of the … [Read more...]
Contentious ‘Other Desert Cities’ gripping at Delray Playhouse
By Dale King The Delray Beach Playhouse doesn’t often delve into heavy drama. But its latest offering, Other Desert Cities, certainly pushes the confrontational envelope, pitting family member against family member in a challenge that seems hell-bent on destroying already tenuous relations. Director Randolph DelLago calls on three DBP veterans and a couple of theatrical … [Read more...]
Mezzo Shaham brings ‘Carmen’ to vivid life in PB Opera opener
Georges Bizet’s Carmen is a box-office lock, as Sunday afternoon’s performance at the jam-packed Kravis Center amply demonstrated. But because of that, opera companies have been known to take it easy production-wise and let the music do most of the communicating. Thankfully, Palm Beach Opera’s presentation of this tremendously popular work (it last presented the piece in 2010) … [Read more...]
You’re looking swell, Lee Roy: ‘Dolly’ in drag is a triumph
Certain roles are simply owned by their originators, whose memorable performances cast a shadow over all those who dare attempt to fill their shoes. Like, say, Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! But at The Wick Theatre, as reverent as Lee Roy Reams is to the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical and to those who walked down that red velvet staircase before him, he will have you … [Read more...]
Lively, fast-moving ‘Newsies’ solid entertainment for all
There is irony in a major media conglomerate such as Walt Disney producing a musical like Newsies, which celebrates the triumph of a bunch of ragamuffin newsboys over a publishing empire. The message, of course, is that the story line doesn’t matter as long as it brings in a few bucks. Newsies, as you might recall, was a 1992 movie musical that flopped at the box office, but … [Read more...]
Maltz leads PB County theaters with Carbonell nods
The Maltz Jupiter Theatre led all Palm Beach County professional theaters with 14 nominations for the 39th annual Carbonell Awards, recognizing production excellence throughout South Florida. Nine of those nominations were for the Jupiter company’s new look at the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I. The other five were for its season opener, Larry Shue’s … [Read more...]
‘Two Days, One Night’ an exquisite look at a moral dilemma
A cruel and sweeping movement of capitalism’s chilly hand leaves a damaged woman in its wake in Two Days, One Night, the Dardenne brothers’ latest quietly gripping moral inquiry into the human condition. In the great Belgian directors’ first feature since 2011’s extraordinary The Kid with a Bike, they’ve cast a bona fide international star, Marion Cotillard, whose combination … [Read more...]
Conductor Schwarz, cellist son shine for Boca’s Symphonia
The eminent American conductor Gerard Schwarz, who has done so much for orchestra building and for American music of the 20th century, made a return appearance to Boca Raton on Sunday in the company of another returnee, his cellist son Julian. Schwarz led the Symphonia Boca Raton in the second concert of its current season, and he demonstrated not only his excellence as a … [Read more...]
Composer, lead performers triumph in ‘Bridges,’ closing too soon
Increasingly, the Broadway stage has turned into a theme park, full of lightweight musicals anchored by spectacle and special effects. That is fine, when appropriate for the material — you wouldn’t want to see Aladdin without its magical bells and whistles, would you? — but the problem is that these shows crowd out the simpler, more artful, adult musicals. Musicals such as The … [Read more...]