Having already tackled and triumphed with such mega-musicals as Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, Coral Gables Actors’ Playhouse could hardly be accused of avoiding a challenge. Still, you would be excused if you had doubts that the Miracle Mile company could pull off the towering, demanding Ragtime, arguably the finest stage musical of the past 20 years. But succeed director … [Read more...]
‘Railway Man’ too manipulative to earn redemption
The Railway Man is a few things: a war movie (mostly), a love story (nominally) and one of those myopic Liam Neeson-style revenge thrillers that seems to coalesce in a bloody catharsis between hero and villain. This adaptation of a best-selling memoir by British Army POW Eric Lomax is the sort of the hybrid that we’d decry as head-shakingly implausible if it weren’t kinda, … [Read more...]
PBO Young Artists deftly take on Rorem’s ‘Our Town’
First, let wide acclaim go forth to this crop of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists, who took Ned Rorem’s difficult music for Our Town and made it palatable. Each and every one of them sang splendidly in librettist J.D. McClatchy’s adaptation of one of America’s most popular plays by Thornton Wilder. Brilliant direction by Fenlon Lamb gave real meaning to this excerpted and … [Read more...]
Pianist Han makes bravura impression at Symphonia
The Third Piano Concerto of Beethoven is an indelible masterpiece, but it’s not the first choice a pianist would make for bravura display. And yet the young South Korean pianist Yoonie Han, simply by turning up the heat here and there Sunday afternoon, gave the work a bit more of the fire it must have had when it was new. And that made the Boca Raton Symphonia concert for … [Read more...]
Artist Cervetti brings color, spirituality to her work
By Tom Tracy If you were to stroll past Talia Cervetti’s studio on Lucerne Avenue in artsy downtown Lake Worth earlier this year, you might have found her seated low to the floor, listening to an old Sade CD while stitching a design into one of her acrylic paintings. Or she might have been drawing one of her abstract figurative series in black-and-white using pencil, graphite … [Read more...]
‘That Used to Be Us’ an urgent call to recover American primacy
Three years ago, Thomas L. Friedman sounded alarm bells about global warming in his best-selling book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, but predicted that America would wake up before it was too late. Now Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum in their new book, That Used To Be Us, say they are frustrated, but still optimistic, about a range of issues, including global warming, … [Read more...]
‘The Ides of March’: Political treachery, but without togas
During the Bush administration, people would sigh and say they wished Martin Sheen’s character on The West Wing were really the president. Expect a similar response to the new political intrigue drama, The Ides of March, with its iconic liberal candidate played with cunning charm by George Clooney. Clooney not only stars as Democratic Gov. Mike Morris, with perfectly polished … [Read more...]