Theater: Daniel Maté, whose song cycle The Longing and the Short of It kicked off the season at The Theatre at Arts Garage, now returns with a long gestating project, The Trouble with Doug, a contemporary, comic take on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. In it, a 27-year-old computer wonk from Brooklyn suddenly transforms into a garden slug, much to the chagrin of his family and fiancée. Co-writers Maté and Will Aronson unfortunately keep their intended metaphor ambiguous, but the cast — headed by a rubber-limbed Clay Cartland — gives terrific, energetic performances that are anything but sluggish. At The Arts Garage in downtown Delray Beach through May 11.
Film: A popular documentary at this year’s Palm Beach International Film Festival, Dancing at Jaffa, returns to the area this weekend for a commercial run. It follows retired dancer/choreographer Pierre Dulaine as he returns to Israel, the nation of his birth, to teach youngsters there the art and social graces of ballroom dance. The catch is that his students are Jewish and Palestinian, with an ingrained distrust of each other. The goal seems insurmountable, but Dulaine remains stubbornly persistent. The lessons culminate in a dance competition, where Dancing at Jaffa starts looking like an ethnic Mad Hot Ballroom. Now playing at the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton.
Dance: Boca Ballet Theatre closes out the season this weekend with a mixed-repertory event featuring guest dancers from the Louisville Ballet (Erica De La O and Kristopher Wojtera). Dance Fest will feature the work of Balanchine, Petipa and company skipper Dan Guin, among others. The works will range from classical to contemporary, and include pieces such as Valse-Fantaisie, Balanchine’s setting of a piece by Glinka, and Boca Baroque, a new work by Guin set to the music of Telemann. As its Nutcracker showed this season, Boca Ballet Theatre has a large number of impressive student dancers and a healthy, serious attitude to its artistic mission. You may very well catch a rising star there. Performances are 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Olympic Heights High School theater; tickets range from $10-$35. Call 561-995-0709 or visit www.bocaballet.org.
Music: SunFest has evolved from a community-style event into a honest-to-God music festival, and the reports this week about the annual West Palm Beach riverfront concert series (during which it always rains) have been good. Some older-crowd entertainers are on the bill tonight, including Goo Goo Dolls and jazz guitar master Bobby Lee Rodgers. Saturday’s lineup has a reggae-dub flavor (Afrobeta, Rebelution, Spred the Dub), but also features New Orleans favorite Trombone Shorty, and of all people, 1980s radio staple The Bangles; the biggest enthusiasm might be shown for the Saturday night’s appearance by Daughtry, everyone’s favorite American Idol also-ran. Sunday’s lineup include Boston’s own Dropkick Murphys, British singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding, and perhaps the greatest of all grunge bands, Alice in Chains (with William DuVall in the lead singer role once held by the late Layne Staley). It’s a good mix, the weather’s getting hotter and more like what us year-rounders are used to, and the place to be to kick off summer is down by the Intracoastal (catch the fireworks on Sunday night after the festival ends). For more information, visit www.sunfest.com.