It was a good Sunday afternoon for Vanessa Isiguen. The young soprano who made her debut in the role that day with Florida Grand Opera showed herself well up to the task of bringing to vivid vocal life the character of Cio-Cio-San, the doomed heroine of one of the world’s most popular and beloved operas, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. A North Carolinian who made her … [Read more...]
Footnotes: A night with The Dancers’ Space
Editor’s note: This is the first of an occasional series of short notes on local dance by dance writer Tara Mitton Catao. By Tara Mitton Catao Saturday night, in support of the local dance scene, I went to the Duncan Theatre to see create.Dance.florida. Eight works were presented by 45 dance artists. Although there was a great variety in the caliber of the performers and the … [Read more...]
Chamber fest returns this week with second fall festival
The second-ever winter series of the long-running Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival opens this week for a set of three programs over three months that will include a world premiere, a further exploration of two off-the-beaten path composers, and the appearance of a masterwork the festival is tackling for the first time in its two-decade history. Launched last year, the PBCMF … [Read more...]
FAU Summer Rep: A powerful, draining ‘August: Osage County’
By Dale King It took no small act of courage for Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance to kick off Festival Rep 2014 with the attention-demanding black comedy, August: Osage County. It’s also courageous for university dramatists to present the Tracy Letts play so soon after the 2013 release of the film version that starred Meryl Streep and Julia … [Read more...]
‘Le Chef’ a moderately amusing dish
So let’s recap: Jon Favreau’s Chef is about an egotistical, professionally embattled toque (Favreau himself) who feuds with his restaurant’s owner and is forced to forge a new culinary path while repairing a broken relationship with his only child. Daniel Cohen’s Le Chef, meanwhile, is about an egotistical, professionally embattled toque (Jean Reno) who feuds with his … [Read more...]
‘The Life’ makes a gritty return at Delray Square
By Dale King The sad and sorry lives of Times Square’s sordid population of hookers, drug- and crime-dealers during the 1980s are brought to the stage with excellent grittiness and striking realism in the musical/drama, The Life, now playing at the Delray Square Performing Arts Center. It’s quite the occasion for Gary Waldman and Jamison Troutman of Florida Theater … [Read more...]
Sheldon Harnick: At 90, legendary lyricist still looks forward
If Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick only wrote Fiddler on the Roof, he would have earned a major place in the annals of musical theater. In fact, he is credited with almost two dozen shows, often collaborating with composer Jerry Bock, on such titles as Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds. This is a milestone year for Harnick. Late last month, he … [Read more...]
Postcard from Broadway No. 1: Eight days, 12 shows, and 42 degrees
I’m up in New York, where the temperature when my plane landed was a brisk 42 degrees, up considerably from the previous few days. Good thing I brought my winter coat. Over the next eight days, I'll be seeing 12 shows. That means I’ll be in the theater whenever there is a performance, including a rare Tuesday matinee of that perennial favorite, the Easter Bonnet Competition. … [Read more...]
‘King and I’ brilliantly reimagined at Maltz
Unlike most audience members, reviewers yearn to be surprised. If civilian theatergoers take comfort in the familiar, critics crave an encounter with the unexpected, particularly in a show they have viewed countless times before. Not that director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge makes novel staging choices for the sake of being different, but nor does she settle for the … [Read more...]
Oliveira powerful in Beethoven with Judd and Symphonia
The American violinist Elmar Oliveira, gold medal winner at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia in 1978, has been assiduously working on raising his local profile in the past several years, having made a mark for himself on the national and international scenes since then. A part-time resident of Jensen Beach and a teacher at Lynn University in Boca Raton, he has made … [Read more...]