Film: It is not exactly Martin Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio, or even the long-term collaboration between Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Kline, but emerging filmmaker Drake Doremus has made a second film with his muse, Felicity Jones. He follows up Like Crazy from a few years ago with the more accomplished Breathe In, the tale of an upstate New York family whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a British exchange student named Sophie (Jones) in its midst. She particularly unnerves the father (Guy Pearce), a high school music teacher in full bloom mid-life crisis. And while his fixation will bring to mind American Beauty, Doremus has more on his mind than a mere extramarital December-May affair. Now if we could only persuade him to use hand-held camera a bit less. Opening this weekend at the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton.
Theater: The economy moves in cycles and while Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate takes place a few downturns ago, it is bound to remind audiences of the monetary desperation many of us went through in the recent deep recession. Set in his fictional town of Harrison, Texas, the story centers on the Gordon family, a bunch of money-grubbers circling around their aged matriarch, most of them anxious to divvy up her dwindling wealth, even before she dies. OK, so it is another dysfunctional family play, but Foote is adept at injecting the dire situation with plenty of character-driven humor. William Hayes directs a sizeable cast, headed by Mary Stout as plump, iron-fisted Stella, with Elizabeth Dimon, Rob Donohoe and Kim Cozort as her grown offspring. At Palm Beach Dramaworks, continuing through April 27. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets.
Music: It’s a big season-wrapping kind of weekend for two area orchestras, beginning with The Symphonia Boca Raton, which brings back the great American conductor Gerard Schwarz to the podium after a highly successful first appearance last year. Schwarz, who led the Seattle Symphony to national prominence in his 26 years there, will lead an all-Mozart program featuring clarinetist Jon Manasse in the Clarinet Concerto on a program that also includes the Posthorn Serenade and the Jupiter Symphony. The concert is set for 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Theater in west Boca, followed Tuesday by a 7:30 p.m. concert at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens. Call 561-376-3848 for more information or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
Meanwhile, the Palm Beach Symphony closes its season at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Kravis Center in a retro-flavored concert featuring an all-workhorse program including the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 of Grieg, Sibelius’ Finlandia, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, and the Fifth Symphony of Tchaikovsky. (Call 832-7469 for ticket information.) Also at that same time, the Orchid City Brass Band plays a concert of music by Holst (Venus, from The Planets), Shostakovich (Festive Overture), Rimsky-Korsakov (Dance of the Tumblers, from The Snow Maiden), John Ireland (A Dowland Suite), Sousa (The Liberty Bell March) and Respighi (Pines of the Appian Way March, from The Pines of Rome). The band plays at the First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach; call 561-247-4078 or visit www.orchidcitybrass.org.
And if that’s not enough competition for your 3 p.m. Sunday slot, there’s the Amernet String Quartet, the veteran Miami-based foursome of violinists Misha Vitenson and Marcia Littley, violist Michael Klotz and cellist Jason Callaway, in concert at St. Paul’s in Delray Beach. They’ll play the Haydn Quartet No. 64 ( in D, Op. 76, No. 5), the rarely heard Quartet No. 2 of Grieg (in F, which the composer only wrote two movements of), and the Quartet No. 9 (in D minor, Op. 34) of Dvořák. Call 278-6003 or visit stpaulsdelray.org.
Dance: If you missed the Miami City Ballet version of Minkus’ classic Don Quixote, you can see a community version by Ballet Palm Beach tonight at the Eissey Campus Theatre, followed by performances at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Former Ballet Florida dancer Dan Harris is the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, with company regulars Lily Ojea as Kitri, Rogelio Corrales as Basilio and Eric Emerson, Megan Dunn, Emily Nichols, Marshall Levin and Joseph J. Bucheck III. Call 561-207-5900 or visit www.balletpalmbeach.org.
Art: A juried show is always a good way to see a snapshot of what’s happening in visual arts, and over at the Cornell Museum at Delray Beach’s Center for the Arts, a National Juried Exhibition has been running there since February. The exhibit, which lasts through May 11, features 99 works from across the country (including 13 associated with the center’s School for the Creative Arts) in pieces curated by Michael Monroe of the Bellevue (Wash.) Arts Museum. Artwork in multiple media are on display at the Cornell, which is a lovely venue in which to see a show. Call 243-7922 or visit www.delrayarts.org for more information.