Theater: Since the vacuum created by the demise of Florida Stage, the Caldwell Theatre has become the place to go for cutting edge theater in Palm Beach County. Artistic director Clive Cholerton has shaken the cobwebs off this Boca Raton playhouse while still bringing its audience locally produced versions of plays acclaimed in New York. But who else would bring area theatergoers a thought-provoking, bone-crunching work like Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a recent Pulitzer Prize finalist which speaks to America’s place in global politics, as seem through the metaphoric prism of professional wrestling. If this bold choice succeeds, the Caldwell could gain a new young audience, without losing too many of its longtime subscribers. Opening this weekend and continuing through Feb. 12. Call (561) 241-7432 for tickets.
Film: The word of the week is ‘‘uncanny,” and it refers to the performance of Meryl Streep as England’s Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of that nation. Just when we were convinced that the actress was a dead ringer for chef Julia Child (in Julie & Julia), she completely changes her voice, her look and her mannerisms and nails the persona of the steel-hided Maggie in The Iron Lady. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd (who has zoomed up the filmmaking learning curve since working with Streep on Mamma Mia!), the movie begins with Thatcher in dementia-riddled old age, then flashes back to her entry into politics and her rise to the top, incurring the wrath of the left along the way. The film falls into the biopic trap of trying to cover too much and spreading itself too thin, but Streep is a marvel. Opening in area theaters today.
Music: Classical music fans have a wealth of premieres to consider this weekend, all three by composers with strong local ties.
Kenneth Fuchs, who teaches at the University of Connecticut and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, introduces his String Quartet No. 5 (American) with the Delray String Quartet this Sunday afternoon. The Delray, which played Fuchs’ Fourth Quartet last season, will record the new piece for a Naxos disc of Fuchs’ chamber music to be released later this year. The score shows the work to be a kind of populist-minimalist piece, with outer movements in A major and the inner ones suggesting D minor. Everything is built out of what Fuchs calls the “American theme,” which appears at the very beginning and can be heard in various forms throughout the half-hour work.
Having premiered the Third Quartet of Thomas Sleeper a few seasons back, it’s good to see the Delrays staying in the business of performing brand-new music. This promises to be a significant premiere of a strong piece of music, and it will be heard three times, beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach (the other performances are on Jan. 20 in Fort Lauderdale and Jan. 22 in Coconut Grove). Other works on the program include the Quartet No. 52 (in E-flat, Op. 64, No. 6) of Haydn, the Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703) of Schubert, and music from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Tickets are $35. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.org.
The Boca Symphonia introduces its first of two Saturday night concerts this weekend, and gives the world premiere of Five Essays on One Theme, by Marshall Turkin, a former orchestra executive who helped found the Symphonia. Turkin, 85, returned to composing only in 2010, after a 50-year hiatus while he headed the Pittsburgh and Detroit orchestras and ran the Blossom (Cleveland) and Ravinia (Chicago) summer music festivals. Inspired by a visit to a retired composer, the Northwestern-trained ex-U.S. Navy arranger unearthed a theme from a 1954 piano piece for his Essays, which are written in a tonal Americanist style from the mid-20th century. Turkin plans to keep writing, and his Boca Fest Overture, also newly composed, debuts March 14 with the Lynn Philharmonia at the Festival of the Arts Boca.
Arthur Fagen leads this weekend’s concerts, which feature the Russian-born pianist Alex Kobrin, a Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist, in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto (in G, Op. 58). The orchestra also will play the Scottish Symphony (No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56) of Mendelssohn. Concerts are 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton. Tickets: $30-$50. Call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
Finally, there is Duncan Celebration, a brief fanfare for brass quintet by David Gibble, longtime professor of music and jazz band director at Palm Beach State College. Gibble wrote it at the request of the Boston Brass, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary by commissioning 25 fanfares in some of the cities where it is concertizing. Gibble, 52, a trumpeter and graduate of the renowned jazz studies program at what is now the University of North Texas, said he drew on the fanfare in Paul Dukas’ La Peri for a model, and named the work in honor of the Duncan Theatre, which also is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
Boston Brass also has programmed pieces by Ginastera, Kabalevsky, Piazzolla and de Falla for this Saturday night’s concert, as well as a collection of jazz and theater songs including Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band and Benny Golson’s I Remember Clifford. The concert is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at the Duncan Theatre. Tickets are $25. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.
Also this weekend, the very fine Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker is in residence at Lynn University. Parker has had a long and distinguished career, and this weekend he’s conducting master classes at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday at the Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall and giving a recital of Russian music Sunday afternoon. The master classes, which are free and open to the public, will feature students in music including the Second Sonatas of Shostakovich and Scriabin, and the odd but lovely Sonata No. 24 (in F-sharp, Op. 78) of Beethoven.
For his recital program, Parker will play the Pictures at an Exhibition of Mussorgsky, and his own arrangement of the Petrouchka ballet suite by Stravinsky. Also on the program are the celebrated Prelude in G minor (Op. 23, No. 5) of Rachmaninov and the Sonata No. 3 (in A minor, Op. 29, From Old Notebooks) by Prokofiev. He’ll play all these on a special Yamaha concert grand being brought in for the performance by Kretzer Pianos of Jupiter. Tickets for the 4 p.m. recital at Lynn’s Wold Performing Arts Center range from $20-$35. Call 237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.
And in addition, Japanese-born violinist Junko Ohtsu presents a program devoted to music of women composers Sunday afternoon at the Norton Gallery of Art. Ohtsu’s program features music by the French composer Lili Boulanger, English composer Rebecca Clarke (Three Irish Songs for soprano and violin), and the Boston Classicist Amy Beach (Romance, for violin and piano). Music by three living women composers also is on the program, including the Piano Trio of 2010 Pulitzer winner Jennifer Higdon, three of the Songs of No Return by the Russian-born pianist and composer Lera Auerbach, and the Romance for violin and piano of Miami’s own Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, also a Pulitzer winner and a part-time resident of Pompano Beach.
Ohtsu said the program was compiled at the Norton’s request as a companion to its current exhibition of paintings by the young British artist Jenny Saville. “This is the first time I’ve planned a concert with all-women composers,” Ohtsu said. “In general, I don’t like the idea of gender as a subject. But I looked into it, and I found so many wonderful, talented composers.” Ohtsu will be joined by pianist Colette Valentine, cellist Evelyn Elsing and soprano Sarah Moulton Faux for the concert, which is set for 3 p.m. Tickets are $5, and available at the visitor’s desk. Call 832-5196 for more information.