Music: The British have a great classical music tradition, but their jazz chops are just as strong. The latest example is chanteuse Polly Gibbons, who makes her American debut tonight at the Arts Garage before continuing on to New York and Boston. She’s got one of those husky, dark singing voices that wraps nicely around a standard like “After Hours,” and it’s worth noting that she won a BBC Jazz Award purely on the strength of gigs, having at that time no recording to her credit. She’ll be accompanied tonight by at trio led by Shelly Berg, the splendid jazz pianist who also happens to be a crack administrator, running the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Gibbons takes the stage at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $25. Call 450-6357 or visit artsgarage.org.
Film: Novelist-turned-screenwriter Dennis Lehane specializes in gritty crime yarns set in the Boston area (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone). His latest film, The Drop, moves the locale to Brooklyn but it is another powerful, plot-dense, character-rich tale of society’s underbelly. Playing against type, Tom Hardy is a soft-hearted, gentle bartender at the neighborhood tavern once owned and now managed by his cousin, Big Marv (James Gandolfini, in his final screen role). When Hardy rescues an abused pit bull puppy, that launches a relationship with a young woman with a dark past (Noomi Rapace, the title character in the original Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The story climaxes with an attempted robbery at the bar on Super Bowl Sunday, and that is about all you need to know to be drawn in. Opening this weekend at area theaters.
Theater: Boca Raton’s Evening Star Productions, the adult offshoot of Sol Children’s Theatre, opens this weekend with Frank D. Gilroy’s 1964 kitchen table family drama, The Subject Was Roses, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning story of the homecoming of a World War II veteran whose return triggers a tug-of-war over him by his combative parents. Busy area actor Jeffrey Bruce turns director, casting former WPEC-TV anchor Alan Gerstel and his real-life son Evan, along with Elli Murray. Continuing through Sept. 28 at 3333 N. Federal Highway. Call (561) 447-8829 for tickets.
Art: The Perez Art Museum, formerly the Miami Art Museum and now ensconced in a new building, has just opened an exhibit of prints of post-1960 American art loaned by the Holding Capital Group. Beyond the Limited Life of Painting runs through March 1 of next year and includes works such as Jasper Johns’ The Seasons, and pieces by Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Noguchi and Warhol, among others. You could hardly do better to get a quick survey of this particular genre of art by creators who rejected Abstract Expressionism and returned to representation. If you catch it this weekend, the Scholl Lecture Series debuts this Saturday at 2 p.m. with a talk by British artist Simon Starling, who will discuss his installation Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a Songbird). Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays. Admission is $12; the museum can be found at 1103 Biscayne Blvd. in downtown Miami. Call 305-375-3000 or visit www.pamm.org for more information.