Theater: What does a theater company do when it loses its prime asset? To find out, head to Jupiter’s Carlin Park this weekend and next to see a Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival production of Much Ado About Nothing, dedicated to its co-founder, longtime artistic director and leading man, Kevin Crawford, who died suddenly at the end of 2013. Crawford had edited the text in preparation for this summer’s production, and now the other co-founder and producer, Kermit Christman, takes up the director’s riding crop and megaphone. He sets this romantic comedy between two confirmed singles in Venice, promising lots of color and atmosphere and a bunch or prowling alley cats. And who knows, maybe even some Shakespeare. Through Sunday, July 20, at Seabreeze Amphitheatre, at Indiantown Rd. and A1A. Admission is free, but $5 a head “donation” is suggested.
Film: Remember that wry comedic television series, Northern Exposure? The closest thing we’ve seen to it is a drily humorous French-Canadian movie called The Grand Seduction. No, don’t start thinking of sex, because this film takes place in Newfoundland. In fact, in a small impoverished coastal port that needs to attract businesses and jobs to save itself from going broke. And a petrochemical firm shows interest in relocating there, but it has a condition — that the town has a full-time doctor in residence. So mayor Brendan Gleeson has to reel in a doctor and when young, promising Taylor Kitsch arrives on the scene, the town knocks itself out to make over the village into the place of his dreams. Hollywood could have turned this notion into something highly formulaic, but the French-Canadians know better. Opening this weekend at the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton.
Art: Opening Sunday at Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art is an exhibit paying homage to an important 1983 show at the former Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture in which a group of Cuban exile artists presented their work, changing the national perception of what the art of Miami was all about. The Miami Generation Revisited now offers paintings by the original nine artists from that 1983 show, including Humberto Calzada and Maria Brito, giving arts aficionados a chance to see how the work of these creators has changed and grown over the years. In some ways, South Florida’s most important and distinctive cultural activity is its visual art scene, and that there is enough strong work to support a retrospective that looks back 30 years to an earlier time here, when the pre-Art Basel scene was far smaller, says something about well that profile has endured. There’s an opening reception tonight at 7 with guest host Belkys Nerey, familiar from her many years at WSVN, and the exhibit runs through Sept. 21. For more information, call 954-525-5500.
Music: The South Florida Symphony, as it has grown, began adding chamber music performances two years ago with the founding of the Blue Door String Quartet. That foursome — violinists Whitney La Grange and Funda Cizmecloglu, violist Yukio Kamakari and cellist Arthur Cook — performs Monday night at the Josephine Leiser Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and its program includes American composer Amy Beach’s one-movement String Quartet, Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade and the String Quartet No. 1 (in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1) of Johannes Brahms. It’s an interesting mix of late 19th-century and early 20th-century music in the German tradition, and the Beach and Wolf works are heard far too rarely hereabouts, so their inclusion is most welcome. The 7:30 p.m. concert is preceded by a 7 p.m. catered reception. Tickets are $30; call 954-522-8445 or visit www.southfloridasymphony.org for more information.