Theater: Palm Beach Dramaworks opens its season this weekend with Talley’s Folly, Lanford Wilson’s 1979 two-person drama of disappointment, family history and desire. Brian Wallace stars as Matt Friedman, who has fallen in love with Sally Talley (Erin Joy Schmidt), and wants to make her his wife, despite objections from her Protestant family about an older Jewish suitor, and reservations from Sally herself. It’s a fine piece about second chances, and that’s something we all like to believe in. Through Nov. 11 at the Dan and Ann Brown Theatre, downtown West Palm Beach. Tickets are $55. Call 561-514-4042 or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.
Film: If the buzz got any bigger about Ben Affleck’s Argo, it’d be hard to hear anything else on the cultural party line. But the consensus is that the actor once better known for his romantic conquests has matured into a man who knows how to pace a movie. Argo, based on a true story, is about the rescue of six U.S. diplomats in revolutionary Tehran in 1979 who hid out in the Canadian Embassy, and then tried to escape by masquerading as film scouts for a science-fiction film. Affleck stars along with Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, and John Goodman. Playing now in area theaters.
Art: Tokyo has been Japan’s political, cultural and economic center for 400 years and in 23 Views of Tokyo, an exhibit at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens west of Delray Beach, artist Itsuo Kiritani seeks out hidden scenes of traditional Japan within the modern, sprawling city of Tokyo. Kiritani has been dismayed about how Tokyo’s growth has destroyed many of the older city’s features, and has tried to chronicle them before they disappear. The exhibition runs through Jan. 27, 2013. For more information, visit www.morikami.org.
Music: Journey, the San Francisco band whose music dominated the pop airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has never been held in high critical regard. But the music remains perennially popular, and has received revival cred from shows such as The Sopranos and Glee. Longtime frontman Steve Perry left the band years ago, but Philippines-born Arnel Pineda has handled the high-flying tenor duties since 2007, and the band continues to write new material, tour extensively and bring in the fans. Opening for Journey tonight at the Cruzan Amphitheatre are two other stalwarts of muscular, hooky pop from the period of Journey’s biggest fame: Pat Benatar and Loverboy. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets: $105-$145, available through Ticketmaster or LiveNation.
Delray Beach’s Arts Garage has swiftly become an important jazz spot in South Florida, and one aspect of that has been its introduction of Miami-area favorites to audiences in Palm Beach County. The silky-voiced vocalist LeNard Rutledge is a case in point. Often compared to Lou Rawls, Rutledge is a songwriter as well who began his career in the late 1990s working with Melton Mustafa. He appears tonight at 8 with a trio of pianist Jaui Schneider, bassist Paul Shewchuck and drummer Carlomagno Arroya. Tickets: $30-$40; call 561-450-6357 or visit www.artsgarage.org.
The Delray String Quartet gave an important premiere last season when it performed a piece written especially for the foursome, the String Quartet No. 5 (American) of the Broward-reared composer Kenneth Fuchs. It’s a wide-open work whose middle movements evoke Fuchs’ anguish over the Sept. 11 attacks, and the Delray has already recorded it for a Naxos disc due out soon. This Sunday, the Delray performs the piece again on a program with another quartet titled American: the No.12 of Antonin Dvorak (in F, Op. 96). The quartet appears at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s in Delray Beach; tickets are $15-$20. Call 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.