Theater: It is not easy getting attention for a play when the mainstream media will not even print the title, but Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat (C’mon, Wheel of Fortune fans, you can figure it out) managed to eke out a respectable run on Broadway last season and be nominated for Best Play.
It is described as a high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery, the story of a former drug dealer who gets released from prison, returns to his girlfriend’s apartment, discovers a hat there and flies into a rage accusing her of being unfaithful to him. Yes, it sounds right up director Joseph Adler’s alley. It opens this weekend at GableStage in Coral Gables, running through Feb. 5. Call (305) 445-1119 for tickets. – H. Erstein
Film: Ian Fleming’s James Bond led the pack among gadget-toting, sexually active secret agents since the early 1960s, but if you wanted a more authentic look at the British spy game, you gravitated to the novels of John Le Carré and his understated MI-6 agent, George Smiley.
In 1979, the BBC brought Smiley to the small screen with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a six-hour miniseries starring Alec Guinness, about rooting out a mole — a double agent — at spy headquarters. Now comes the same story, compressed into a two-hour feature film, starring the equally remarkable Gary Oldman (The Contender, Hannibal), a chameleon-like actor usually relegated to supporting roles.
Like the book, the film is slow, methodical and cerebral, so lean in and concentrate, but how refreshing to encounter a movie that dares to be smart instead of purposely dumbed down. Opening in area theaters today. – H. Erstein
Music: This is a big weekend, and coming week, for classical music, and it begins tonight with the first of Palm Beach Opera’s One Opera in One Hour workshop productions populated by the company’s Young Artist crew. The abridged opera tonight is Semele, George Frideric Handel’s oratorio-turned-opera about Semele, daughter of King Cadmus, who’s having a passionate affair with a married god, Jupiter, who happens to be the boss of all of them. The score is full of invention, with great tunes like Myself I Shall Adore, Endless Pleasure, Endless Love, and Where’er You Walk. Canadian soprano Emily Duncan-Brown sings Semele, and the Mexican tenor Evanivaldo Correa is Jupiter. Canadian mezzo Shirin Eskandani, who sang Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly last month, sings Juno, Jupiter’s wife. Admission to the 8 p.m. show at CityPlace’s Harriet Himmel Theater is free, with $15 reserved seats also available. Call 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org for more information.
Lindsay Garritson is most drawn to the composers and performers of the Russian school, but she still has room on her dance card for a concerto by a Frenchman. “The second movement of the concerto is really light and happy, and it’s a lot of fun to play and to listen to,” said Garritson, who’s playing the solo part of the Piano Concerto No. 2 (in G minor, Op. 22) of Camille Saint-Saens with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre this afternoon and evening.
“The first movement sounds almost as if it were inspired the organ. It’s got a grandiose feeling to it,” she added. The Saint-Saens concerto is on a program with the Mendelssohn Italian Symphony (No. 4 in A, Op. 90), and a rarely heard symphony by a teenage Mozart (No. 28 in C, K. 200). Stewart Robertson, music director of the ACO, will conduct.
Garritson, 24, who’s just completed her master’s degree at the Yale School of Music, is sticking around in New Haven as a staff accompanist for the music school. Raised in St. Louis, she attended Principia College in Illinois before heading east to Yale, where she studied with Boris Berman. She now considers Stuart home, her mother having moved to Martin County in 2003.
Also a violinist, Garritson has won numerous prizes and competitions, including a first-place win in 2010 at the summer Chopin Competition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and this past June, a second-place win at the Montreal International Music Competition, where she tackled another big Concerto No. 2 (also in G minor), this one by Sergei Prokofiev. “It’s really great to be around other pianists your age who are so accomplished and at such a high level,” Garritson said. “It was an intense experience.”
The ACO concerts are set for 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. today at the Lyric. Tickets are $55 (4 p.m.) and $60 (8 p.m.); call 772-286-7827. – G. Stepanich
Also, two chamber music series get under way in the next few days. At the Four Arts on Sunday, the Brentano String Quartet, now celebrating its 20th year, will play the String Quartet of Debussy, Schubert’s Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703), and the Quartet No. 13 (in B-flat, Op. 130) of Beethoven. 3 p.m. at the Society’s Gubelmann Auditorium. Tickets: $15. Call 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.
And the Flagler Museum opens its five-concert chamber music series this coming Tuesday night with the Adaskin String Trio. The Canadian threesome will play string trios by Miklos Rosza (the future film composer; this is his Op. 1), Erno von Dohnanyi (Serenade, Op. 10), Haydn (one of the many trios for the obsolete baryton he was obliged to write; this one is No. 65 in G), and a young Beethoven (No. 4 in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3). The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets are $60. Call 655-2833 or visit www.flaglermuseum.us.
Meanwhile, Sunday also brings the American Brass Quintet to Lynn University, where it plays music by Josquin des Prez, Erasmus Widmann, Ludwig Maurer, Osvaldo Lacerda and Joan Tower. They’ll also play American composer Trevor Gureckis’s Fixated Nights, which was written for the group. 4 p.m., Wold Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $20-$35. Call 237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, in tandem with the Miami Bach Society brings Trefoil, countertenor Drew Minter’s medieval-music trio, to the church on Sunday for a special last look at the Christmas season. The group will perform Christo e Nato (Christ Is Born), a collection of mostly anonymous music gathered in Florence from the 13th through the 15th centuries. The recent cold snap has reminded us that this is still the season, and here’s a good way to finally let go of a time of year we all cherish. 3 p.m., St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Tickets: $15-$20, call 278-6003.