Film: Filmed in exquisite, though bleak black-and-white by Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski, Ida is a curious hybrid of Holocaust tale, road trip movie and odd couple drama. The title teenage character is a nun-in-training who is ordered to meet her only living relative, a distant aunt named Wanda, before she can take her vows. So Ida treks to meet Wanda and from her she learns that her family is Jewish and her parents were murdered by the Nazis. This leads her to a farmhouse in the countryside of Poland where her family was hidden away, but ultimately discovered and exterminated. Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) knows little of the outside world, while her aunt (Agata Kulesza) is a smoker and drinker who knows how to assert herself. It is a study of extremes and both actresses are remarkable. Opening this weekend at area theaters.
Theater: In its short two-season history, Boca Raton’s Outré Theatre Company has occasionally overreached with material that was too ambitious — as in too large. But when the show is a good fit, like the two-character chamber musical Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story, the results are impressive. The two young men of privilege take to crime out if sheer boredom, eventually escalating from petty theft to murder. The musical, with music, lyrics and script by newcomer Stephen Dolginoff, is told in flashback by Leopold (Mike Westrich), from the vantage point if his fifth parole hearing, in 1958. The real-life story follows closely on such classic works as Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rope, Ira Levin’s novel Compulsion and John Logan’s play, Never the Sinner. Dolginoff’s dark, creepy musical uses the genre to deepen the emotional impact of the horrifying tale, and Conor Walton as Loeb adds a layer of the macabre, though both performers sing sweetly and powerfully. At the Mizner Park Cultural Center in Boca through Sunday.
Music: Violinist Tomas Cotik, an Argentinian-born musician, has been concertizing frequently with Chinese-born pianist Tao Lin, and the two have released excellent recordings of music by Schubert and Piazzolla. Now the two have signed a contract with Centaur Records to record all 26 of the violin sonatas of Mozart on four discs. These sonatas range the gamut from his earliest publication, in 1764, when the composer was 9 years old, of four sonatas (K. 6-9) to works such as the beautiful A major sonata (K. 526) of 1787. Tonight at Fort Lauderdale’s All Saints Episcopal Church, Cotik and Lin perform the six Kurfürstin sonatas of 1778 (K. 301-306), so-called because they were dedicated to Maria Elisabeth, Electress of the Palatinate. The free concert, which begins at 7:30, is a fundraiser to support the recording of these works, which seems like a most worthy project for lovers of Mozart to get behind.
The art song recital is a form that has been somewhat neglected in recent decades, but there is no other way to hear some of the most profound music in the repertoire (indeed, composers such as Hugo Wolf or Henri Duparc are known almost entirely by their art songs). On Sunday, mezzo-soprano Maria Heslop Ward teams up with pianist Roberta Rust for a duo recital of piano music by Mozart and songs by Mahler, Brahms, Falla, and Granados. Brahms, whose vocal music is a huge part of his output but scandalously overlooked, is his Gypsy Songs (Op. 103), while Mahler is featured in two songs, Erinnerung and Das irdische Leben. The three-part La maja dolorosa, from Granados’ Tonadillas, is followed by Falla’s much-admired Seven Popular Spanish Songs, which are often encountered in instrumental arrangements. Rust will also play three brilliant late works of Mozart: The Rondo (K. 511), Adagio (in B minor, K. 540) and the Little Gigue (K. 574). Ward and Rust can be heard at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach; tickets are $15-$20. Call 278-6003 for more information.