Like Tracy and Hepburn, or Charlie Sheen and blow, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston are the most unsurprising of pairings. They are the master and mistress of middlebrow mirth, for whom the three-star review is an unattainable plateau. In fact, it’s hard to believe these two forces of rom-com mediocrity haven’t met-cute over some 15 years of shepherding penis jokes and … [Read more...]
Splendid Shostakovich as Enso Quartet plays Flagler
One of the joys of seeing small concerts that are part of a good music series is that you get to hear not just the venerable players but the rising stars. Surely Tuesday night’s performance at Palm Beach’s Flagler Museum by the Enso String Quartet was a case of seeing a young ensemble on the cusp of something really big, and its performance justified the wisdom of Grammy … [Read more...]
MCB marks 25th anniversary with sparkling opener
The Miami City Ballet is nothing if not synonymous with the name Edward Villella, the founder and artistic director. Villella’s second act, after a long and distinguished career dancing with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, was the creation of Miami’s world-class ballet troupe, which he has grown and nourished over the past 25 years. His philosophy, like … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘Chaperone’ delivers the daffy goods
Broward Stage Door Theatre has a tendency to overreach with its musicals, biting off a beloved, not-quite elaborate show and not quite delivering on the pleasures we once enjoyed with it. Now, however, it is presenting a modest little show, the intermission-less The Drowsy Chaperone, a multiple Tony Award winner from 2006 that is bound to be new to most of its audience, and … [Read more...]
Bulletin from Broadway No. 1: ‘Red,’ ‘Promises, Promises’
Oh, the sacrifices I make for you, my readers. I am currently in New York City, enduring a week of theater, to fill you in on the season here, either as a guide for your future visits to Broadway or to whet your appetites for potential touring editions to South Florida. Or, OK, just because I craved an immersion into good theater for my own sake. So I will be seeing 10 shows … [Read more...]
A very Tony day with Chita and Faith
For fans of Tony Award-winning musical theater stars, Palm Beach County was a great place to be Tuesday. At 2 p.m., at the Kravis Center, I caught the tireless Chita Rivera and her one-woman concert, My Broadway. That evening, still on a high from her performance, I headed to the Colony Hotel’s Royal Room and saw Faith Prince’s tour de force cabaret act, which she is recording … [Read more...]
Playwright Laufer thrilled with reponse to ‘Sirens’
She has had three of her plays premiere at Florida Stage and one of them -- the apocalyptic comedy, End Days -- had an off-Broadway run last spring. But with her latest work, Sirens, showcased at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., last month, Deborah Zoe Laufer landed on the radar of the nation’s regional non-profit theaters and commercial … [Read more...]
With Oscar nominations, Academy goes the populist route
The first results of the Academy Awards’ grand experiment to cheapen -- uh, I mean widen -- the Best Picture nominations were announced this morning, and predictably, there were a couple of films that made the cut that would not have come close in past years. Let’s just call it the Blind Side Effect, named for the sentimental white-family-aids-the-illiterate-black-athlete … [Read more...]
Caldwell stumbles with unfunny take on Jekyll and Hyde
After a string of recent successes, Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre has stumbled badly with its current production, Chemical Imbalance, a spoof of Victorian theater conventions in general and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde specifically. Artistic director Clive Cholerton’s introductory remarks make it clear that there is nothing serious going on in the show and its only reason for … [Read more...]
Segal sculpted with compassionate eye, Norton exhibit shows
Four tractor-trailers hauled thousands of pounds of George Segal’s sculptures from Dallas to West Palm Beach. This is worth noting because an exhibition of his work, now at the Norton Museum of Art, presents 16 installations in a modest corner gallery of the museum’s first floor. For all of its physical weight, George Segal: Street Scenes is not a sprawling sort of show, the … [Read more...]