Film: There are so many major award-worthy movies playing now that a better-than-average film with a strong ensemble cast of box office names gets relegated to our digital art houses. I refer to A Late Quartet, a first feature from documentary maker Yaron Zilberman about an internationally known string quartet facing a threat to its survival when one of the group is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Christopher Walken, who usually plays psychopaths (See the recent 7 Psychopaths, in fact), gives a quite touching performance as the cellist with the crippling medical condition. He’s well matched by the always superb Philip Seymour Hoffman, indie fixture Catherine Keener and a Uhranian newcomer, Mark Ivanir. The film can veer towards soap opera and its comic moments are often too broad, but if you let it, A Late Quartet will get under your skin. Continuing at the Living Room Theatres in Boca Raton, where it’s developing a following.
Theater: I completely concur with the view that A Delicate Balance earned the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Edward Albee as a consolation prize for the snub given to his earlier masterwork, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but Balance is still the playwright’s second-best play and that is saying something. Palm Beach Dramaworks’ artistic director William Hayes has long shown an affinity for Albee’s output, so there is every reason to think that this tale of a patrician New England couple who are visited one night by their best friends who have been frightened by an unexplained threat, and by their grown daughter returning home after another marriage break-up, will be worth a look. Especially when it has a first-rate cast headed by Maureen Anderman, Dennis Creaghan, Angie Radosh and Laura Turnbull. Opening Friday evening and running through Jan. 6. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets.
Music: The Palm Beach Symphony has undergone a personnel makeover, and while local schoolchildren heard the result last week at the Eissey Campus Theatre, this Sunday the orchestra performs its first concert of the season at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Conductor Ramon Tebar is making a nervy opening with the Five Dance Preludes of Witold Lutoslawski (with clarinetist Paul Green), surely the first time that eminent Polish modernist has opened any concert hereabouts in many a day. The rest of the program, called “Little Symphonies,” is equally fresh: the sinfoniettas of Francis Poulenc and Astor Piazzolla, and the Divertissement of France’s Jacques Ibert. This all-20th century concert ends with the best-known work on the bill of fare, the Classical Symphony (No. 1 in D) of Sergei Prokofiev. The concert begins at 3 p.m. For tickets, which are $15, visit palmbeachsymphony.org or call 655-7226.
Art: If you’re not catching the last frenzied days of Art Basel in Miami Beach this weekend, you might want to head over to the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach for a look at how the wealthy set pursued fun and glory on the water. Capturing the Cup, on display until Jan. 6, features paintings, film, and trophies, including a replica of the America’s Cup, for a comprehensive view of yacht racing in the Gilded Age. This coming Tuesday night, journalist Michael D’Antonio gives a lecture about Sir Thomas Lipton, founder of the teabag empire, who raced five times in the America’s Cup contests but never won. Tuesday night’s talk is $20; the exhibit at the museum is free with admission, which is $18. Whitehall is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and from noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Call 655-2833 for more information, or visit flaglermuseum.us.