Film: For those obsessing over growing old, Swedish director Felix Herngren serves up a puckish comedy, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, starring a renowned comic actor from his country, Robert Gustafsson, as a man who makes his escape from his nursing home just as he approaches his century mark. He does indeed slip out a window and relives his … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 15-17
Theater: Opening this weekend at Palm Beach Dramaworks is Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, a play with music depicting a solo club act by jazz and blues legend Billie Holiday at a rundown Philadelphia lounge, just months before her death in 1959. Hooked on heroin, she is coaxed through a dozen of her iconic musical numbers by her longtime pianist. Tracey Conyer Lee, who had … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 8-10
Theater: Douglas Carter Beane’s sly comedy on the intersection of show business, the art of negotiation and sexual orientation, The Little Dog Laughed, is receiving a savvy and sexy production by Island City Stage at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale, through May 17. This is due largely to Chris Crawford as a sexually confused television star trying to make the leap to the movies … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 2-3
Music: It’s been a remarkably un-rainy SunFest down on the waterfront in West Palm Beach, and as the five-day music extravaganza winds down this weekend, the word has been good about the quality of the musicmaking. Still to come tonight are breakout bands such as Hozier and Dreamers, with the Pixies, Fall Out Boy, and for the old boomers in the crowd, Boston. Check out the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: April 10-12
Books: For some reason, Palm Beach County has never had a books festival all its own, despite examples to the south in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West, but that changes Saturday. At the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, the one-day festival will include talks from a number of prominent writers and a little bit of celebrity juice. Actor Alan Cumming, whose searing … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: April 3-7
Art: Those of us who have lived in South Florida a long time know the power of the Everglades, a mysterious savanna that can instantly take you away from the life of the built urban environment and even today, provide some sense of raw origins in a state seemingly determined to destroy every last acre of its irreplaceable natural heritage. Photographers have been bewitched by … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 27-29
Music: The Argentine-born violinist Tomás Cotik has had a busy career in South Florida since earning his doctorate at the University of Miami, including sitting second-chair violin in the Delray String Quartet. Among his fields of study is the music of Franz Schubert, and he and pianist Tao Lin have just released a second disc of the composer’s music for violin and piano, … [Read more...]
Weekend picks: March 21-22
Theater: The Maltz Jupiter Theatre, it seems, keeps getting better as the challenges it selects increase. There is perhaps no more difficult a musical for a theater of the Maltz’s size to carry off than Les Misérables, but director Mark Martino makes it look easy. He gives the epic show a cinematic sweep, without resorting to the show’s original turntable staging. Yes, he … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 14-15
Theater: Cole Porter’s 1934 shipboard farce, Anything Goes, contains a score of hits that remain standards of the American Songbook 80 years later. The script — dusted off and freshened up by two contemporary wags, Timothy Crouse and John Weidman — is a string of groan-worthy jokes, but at least it delivers the songs efficiently. Now playing the Kravis Center through Sunday is … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 7-8
Film: Uruguay’s official submission for the foreign-language Oscar this year and an audience favorite at the recent Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, Mr. Kaplan, has returned for a commercial run at Boca Raton’s Living Room Theaters and other venues in the area. It is that tricky commodity — a dark comedy with a Holocaust theme — but it works, largely because of the assured work … [Read more...]