Art: Elwa Productions, a New York-based contemporary art company with roots in West Palm Beach, returns to the city tonight to open A Connection That Binds, a show featuring work by Swedish sculptor Chris Vicini and American painter Devin Powers, at Elayne and Marvin Mordes’ Whitespace gallery on Australian Avenue.
Vicini is noted for his extravagant porcelain creatures, which are nevertheless delicately modeled, and his work will take up an entire wall in the White Box area of Whitespace, which is in the Mordes’ lakefront home. Powers’ focus is on geometric shapes, and include installations as well as paintings.
The opening reception for the show is from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. today at Whitespace, which is at 2805 N. Australian Ave. Tickets are $7. The show will be on view on alternate Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon, Jan. 22, Feb. 5, Feb. 19, Feb. 26 and March 12. Admission is $12. Call 842-4131 or visit www.whitespacecollection.com.
Film: Curiously, this has been a big year at the movies for convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. First came an exhaustive documentary of his rise to power as a Washington influence peddler and his subsequent downward spiral. Now, opening this weekend is a feature film, Casino Jack, which covers similar ground, but is transformed by a galvanizing performance by the smarmy Kevin Spacey. If you go, do not go late, because the film opens with a great mood-setter of Abramoff brushing his teeth and giving himself a profane pep talk in the bathroom mirror. If the film had any traction at the box office, Spacey might be up again for an Oscar. In area theaters beginning this weekend.
Theater: The Caldwell Theatre’s Clive Cholerton continues to find provocative new works for his Boca Raton playhouse, like Bruce Norris’s acclaimed, edgy comedy, Clybourne Park. Theater fans may recognize the title as the fictional Chicago neighborhood of Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 civil rights drama, which Norris turns inside out, showing us the previously unseen sellers of the house that the African-American Younger family is trying to get into. Then, in the second act, the play leaps forward 50 years, to a time when the neighborhood has run downhill and a white couple tries to buy the home and re-gentrify the area. Expect pointed satire and some bad-taste racial jokes. Opening tonight. Tickets range from $25 to $75. Call (561) 241-7432.
Music: The Palm Beach Opera opens its new season of Opera in One Hour performances tonight at CityPlace’s Harriet Himmel Theater with an abridged version of Handel’s Ariodante, first performed in 1735. It’s a story of true love thwarted through deception, then regained at the end, though not without a dead body. Mezzo Brandy Lynn Hawkins sings the trouser role of Prince Ariodante, with soprano Greta Ball as Ariodante’s betrothed, Ginevra. Soprano Alison Bates is Dalinda, a lady of the court, and baritone Kenneth Stavert sings Polinesso, the Duke of Albany, who causes all the trouble. These mini-performances offer audiences a chance to check out the members of the Young Artists program and see interestingly staged versions of repertoire in a stripped-down setting (last year’s Cosi fan Tutte in a Starbucks, and Orfeo ed Euridice that began with couples watching an art-house showing of City Lights). And if you can’t make it, the show, which begins at 9 p.m. and ends about an hour later, is streamed live on the Web. Admission is free. Call 833-7888 for more information.
The Atlantic Classical Orchestra has been performing since 1991 on the Treasure Coast, and this afternoon and tonight in Stuart, the group offers an all-English program under the guidance of conductor Stewart Robertson. On the program are a suite from Purcell’s Abdelazer, the Introduction and Allegro of Edward Elgar, three Nocturnes by Richard Rodney Bennett, and the Sinfonietta of E. J. Moeran. Robertson, who’s also well-known hereabouts for his decade of work at Florida Grand Opera, has been leading the ACO since 2005, and is an assiduous pursuer of good but unfamiliar repertoire, and the Moeran in particular offers a chance to hear a composer whose work is too little-known on this side of the Atlantic. The concerts begin at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. today at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Stuart. Tickets are $40 for the 4 p.m. show and $45 for the 8 p.m. show. For more information, call 772-460-0850 or visit www.acomusic.org.
Tuesday: The Enso Quartet opens the music series at the Flagler Museum on Tuesday night with music by Beethoven (No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2), the Second Quartet of Shostakovich (in A, Op. 68), and the Six Bagatelles (Op. 9) of Anton Webern. Also planned is the set of Five Pieces, written in 1923 by Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech composer now best-known as one of the several fine composers lost to the Nazi regime: he died in 1942, of tuberculosis, in a Bavarian concentration camp. Tickets for the concert are $60, and can be had by calling the museum at 655-2833 or visiting www.flagler.us.
Wednesday: Also getting under way this coming week is the Classical Café series at Stage West at the Duncan Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. First up is The Links, a new trio featuring violinist Yuki Numata, who appeared last season in a fine recital in the Duncan series. The group – which includes cellist Joshua Roman and clarinetist Bill Kalinkos – will play the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello as well as Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto a Tre, as well as five contemporary pieces by American composers David Stock (Night), Derek Bermel (Coming Together), Matthew Schreibies (Noticing), John Orfe (Barcarolle) and the Canadian Sydney Hodkinson (Rogatio Gravis). The group also will play an Orfe arrangement of a lovely, mournful piano prelude (Op. 103, No. 6), by Gabriel Fauré. Tickets for the 3 p.m. concert in Stage West are $25. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.