| 09 July 2010
Noomi Rapace in The Girl Who Played With Fire.
Film: Those who clamored about The Twilight Saga last week can now take in a far better, darker trilogy, now that they have that out of their system. It is the Swedish mystery novels by the late Stieg Larsson, whose introduction on film was the riveting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, about a Goth computer hacker named Lisbeth (the terrific, deadpan Noomi Rapace), who teams up with a disgraced journalist to solve enigmatic crimes. Now comes the second installment, The Girl Who Played With Fire, about an attempt to expose the sex traffic industry and the two freelance magazine authors who are killed for their crusading efforts. This second film is more conventional than the first, playing like a standard crime procedural, albeit a kinky one. Still, Lisbeth is a fascinating character and the movie is way above par for a summer release. In area theaters beginning today. – H. Erstein
Gordon McConnell and Nick Duckart in Secret Order.
Theater: Area theater companies usually lighten up in the summer, grabbing a popular comedy or a musical revue. Not Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre, which prefers to challenge its audience a bit with a drama about a young scientist who may have discovered a cure for cancer, the father-figure mentor for bankrolls the effort to bring this medical breakthrough to the marketplace, and the issues of ethics and commerce that stand in the way of their success.
The play is Bob Clyman’s Secret Order, which came very close to opening on Broadway in 2005, but has been kicking around in regional theaters since then. Tom Bloom, who was involved in the play’s earliest development almost 15 years ago, directs the Caldwell production, which features Nick Duckart as the naïve scientist and Gordon McConnell as the older, wiser lab administrator. Opening Friday and running through Aug. 1. Call (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432 for tickets. – H. Erstein
Composer Kenneth Frazelle, at Lynn in January.
Music: Back in January, composer Kenneth Frazelle was treated to a mini-festival of his music at Lynn University, and the closing concert, which included work from a wide arc of his career, presented music by a composer whose style has become more concentrated and simplified over the years, but which has gained in power by doing so. One of the pieces heard then was a world premiere, Gee’s Bend Pieces, a work for trumpet, piano and percussion inspired by the quilters of a rural Alabama town. Tonight, that piece will be heard again in Palm Beach County on the opening concert of the 19th season of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, which opens at Persson Hall on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach and runs for the next four weekends at three different venues in south, central and northern Palm Beach County.
This year, the festival will have concerts on Friday nights, Sunday afternoons and Monday nights (instead of Saturday nights) for four consecutive weekends ending Aug. 2. Also on the 8 p.m. concert tonight are the Schubert String Trio in B-flat, D. 581, Randall Thompson’s Suite for oboe, clarinet and viola, Handel’s Passacaglia, arranged for violin and cello by Johan Halvorsen, and the Nonet for string trio, wind quintet and bass by Bohuslav Martinů (H. 374). The same program can be heard at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, and at 8 p.m. Monday at the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens. In its nearly 20 years of existence, this festival has become one of the most durable, rewarding concert series in all of South Florida, and serious devotees of classical music never miss it. Tickets: $22; call 800-330-6874 or visit www.pbcmf.org. – G. Stepanich
Lorenzo Turchi-Floris.
James Brooks-Bruzzese’s Symphony of the Americas plays host starting tonight to the Mont Blanc Chamber Orchestra of France, based in the border region of France, Italy and Switzerland where the big white mountain holds sway over imagination and landscape. Founded in 1998 by conductor Lorenzo Turchi-Floris, the group plans three local concerts this week before heading to Panama for a week and then returning to South Florida for seven more concerts.
On the program are Turchi-Floris’ own one-movement piano concerto, played by himself, and a variety of Baroque works – pieces by Corelli, Vivaldi and Telemann – showpieces (Paganini’s Witch’s Dance and Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella, played and arranged by well-known area violinist Laszlo Pap, and Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, arranged for flute by Marilyn Maingart), and orchestral favorites by Elgar (Serenade for Strings) and Copland (Hoedown). Tonight’s concert is a free outdoor performance beginning at 7 p.m. on Deerfield Beach, Saturday it begins at 8 p.m. in Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine Cathedral, and at 4 p.m. Sunday, the orchestra can be heard at Florida Atlantic University’s University Theatre. For more information, call 954-545-0088 or visit www.sota.org. -- G. Stepanich
Last Cow, Last Light (2009), by Margena Burnett of Ponte Vedra Beach.
Art: The Boca Raton Museum of Art announced this week that it will be closing its galleries for renovations from Aug. 9 to Oct. 12 as it prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of its move to the building at Mizner Park. So this weekend might be a good one to see the three exhibits currently there: the 59th annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition, the biennial Boca Raton Museum Artists’ Guild exhibition, and a collection of 70 “tribal art” works from the museum’s collections called African, Oceanic and Meso-American Treasures. When the museum reopens Oct. 12, it will do so with exhibitions devoted to the work of Italian pop artist Valerio Adami, photorealist painter Robert Cottingham, and Romanticism to Modernism: Graphic Masterpieces from Piranesi to Picasso, a look at the evolution of the European Modernist style through graphic art. For more information, call 392-2500 or visit www.bocamuseum.org.
| 07 July 2010
Most civilians are unaware of the physical and psychic horrors endured by soldiers, according to this timely new book by Nancy Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University.
Sherman says up front that The Untold War “is not a political tract for or against a war.” Rather, it is about “the inner battles … the moral weight of war that individual soldiers carry on their shoulders and don’t usually talk about.”
Sherman interviewed numerous soldiers and officers who described their conflicted emotions on and off the battlefield. “They feel pride and patriotism tinged with shame, complicity, betrayal, and guilt,” she writes. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, with symptoms that can last for decades.
Soldiers should “not have to bear the moral burdens of war on their own,” Sherman writes. “We need to begin to cultivate the kind of empathy that will allow us to support our soldiers properly when they return home to our communities.”
One can’t help but feel sadness and anger when reading about the brutality and ugliness of war, the occasional resort to torture, the killing of civilians referred to as “collateral damage” and the heavy toll of smashed bodies and minds.
Sherman describes the work of one expert who tries “to turn reluctant-to-kill soldiers into ready-to-kill soldiers” who know the difference between “murder and justified, lawful killing in war.” One challenge, she says, is making sure that soldiers “preserve their humanity” in the midst of killing.
Soldiers must be encouraged to get in touch with their emotions, rather than bottle them up and pretend that everything is fine, the author says.
Because Sherman is a professor, philosopher and psychoanalyst, her writing sometimes has an off-putting academic tone. She calls this book a “philosophical ethnography” and quotes liberally from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud and others to make her points about war and ethics, which sometimes leads to dry prose.
Sherman is more compelling when she offers case histories based on her interviews. One poignant story involves Maj. Tony DeStefano, a married man in his 50s who was diagnosed with severe post-combat trauma and mild traumatic brain injury related to the war in Iraq, and is racked with guilt and shame about not being able to support his family because of his injuries. One of DeStefano’s teenage daughters told Sherman, “The second time he came home he was totally different. He wasn’t the dad I knew. He snapped a lot; he’d go 100 miles per hour in the car. It’s so scary.”
When DeStefano suffered a massive panic attack, his doctor suggested inpatient treatment at a Veterans Administration hospital. DeStefano balked, saying that if he sought such help, it would be “a disgrace to the officer class,” explaining later that “we’re taught to suck it up and truck on.”
Unfortunately, many of the profiles are too short and superficial to leave lasting impressions. Sherman talks in general terms, for example, about returning soldiers who engage in “risky and aggressive behavior: motorcycle accidents on bases, bar-room brawls, and domestic violence.”
Some officers and soldiers, according to Sherman, feel profound shame “that we have become a country that has morally and legally justified the use of torture. … The fact of torture has opened disturbing questions of identity – just what does the uniform stand for and what are the ideals that they have signed up to defend?”
Sherman also describes the moral ambiguity of various interrogation techniques that involve stress and deception, but fall short of torture, and she faults health professionals for their role in the mistreatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Detention Center.
An estimated 30 percent of soldiers return from Iraq with emotional problems. The number of those who need treatment for brain injuries, lost limbs and post-traumatic stress symptoms is growing.
Soldiers struggle with ambiguity. One soldier thought that his killing an enemy soldier was fine, until he approached the body and took out the wallet, which contained family pictures.
“The pictures were like those he carries in his wallet,” Sherman writes. “That empathic moment unleashed a torrent of guilt.”
Many people do not realize the extent of limb injuries and disfigurement in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We don’t see the wheelchairs, the canes, the stumps, the prosthetics, the burns, the empty eye sockets.” Soldiers often are scarred by the memory of collecting the body parts of comrades killed in roadside bombings, sometimes having to retrieve limbs from tree branches.
Although this book has weaknesses, it nevertheless sheds light on an important topic that has received too little attention from the general public – the crushing burden carried by soldiers who return home broken by the terrors they have experienced or witnessed.
Bill Williams is a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., and a former editorial writer for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers, by Nancy Sherman; Norton; 338 pp.; $27.95
| 02 July 2010
Marisa Berenson, Pippo Delbono, Tilda Swinton, Alba Rohrwacher, Mattia Zaccaro, Flavio Parenti and Maria Paiato, in I Am Love.
Film: There is an alternative to the vampires and werewolves of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and the sci-fi fantasy of The Last Airbender. It’s I Am Love, a sensuous film from debuting Italian director Luca Guadagnino with a starring performance by Oscar winner Tilda Swinton that is her best work yet on celluloid. She plays the Russian-born wife of a Milanese businessman who has just inherited the family textile and clothing business, but the film turns on her sexual awakening with the chef friend of her son. Guadagnino has clearly studied former Italian master filmmakers and is not afraid of over-the-top passions. That includes a passion for sex as well as food. Catch this one quickly, before it gets crowded out by Hollywood summer fare, or at least add it to your Netflix queue. Opening this weekend at area theaters. – H. Erstein
Theater: Former Broward Stage Door artistic director Dan Kelley has long wanted to stage and star in the Tony Award-winning musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone and, from all reports, he handles both assignments well. The show is a Canadian import about a guy called simply Man in Chair, who is nostalgic for the golden era of musicals and disdainful of what has happened to the genre. Breaking the fourth wall, he invites us to listen along with him to a ’30s-era show called The Drowsy Chaperone, a frothy confection, and as we hear the record he plays on his phonograph -- yes, he is that retro -- the show comes alive in his tiny apartment.
I was headed to see the production Thursday night, but the performance was called off because of a medical emergency suffered by the title actress, Eileen Faxas, but the show is expected to resume this weekend. Broward Stage Door in Coral Springs, (954) 344-7765. – H. Erstein
Sting.
Music: The English singer and songwriter Gordon Sumner, better known by his uni-moniker Sting, has compiled a large and impressive catalog of attractive music in the more than 30 years since Roxanne enlivened the airwaves of 1978. The chief of The Police is a writer of remarkable range as well, bringing to a wide variety of styles a body of well-crafted, humane lyrics and a gift for melody without which no songwriter can truly be popular. Tonight at the Cruzan, Sting appears in concert with a vigorous ensemble called the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, led by Steven Mercurio; if you saw them on one of the late-night shows backing Next to You a couple weeks ago, shimmying in their seats while playing their violins, violas and cellos, you’re in for something distinctly un-stuffy. 8 p.m. at the Cruzan. Tickets: $27-$157, available through Live Nation. – G. Stepanich
Misha Dacic.
The music of Frederic Chopin is so much a part of the daily classical repertoire that celebrations of his 200th anniversary this year (he was born in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, on March 1, 1810) don’t look all that different from a regular year in which his music is routinely played. But on Saturday, the Serbian-born pianist Misha Dacic will perform the master’s Preludes (Op. 28), an extraordinary body of miniatures that include beautiful inspirations such as Nos. 4 in E minor and No. 15 in D-flat major, the grace of No. 7 in A and the fire of No. 12 in G-sharp minor, the astounding harmonies of No. 2 in A minor (so bold for 1839), and the immensity and grandeur of No. 24 in D minor. Dacic, a regular guest of Abram Kreeger’s Piano Lovers series, is a graduate of the University of Miami and a formidable pianist in the grand Romantic tradition. 5 p.m. Saturday, at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door. For more information, call 929-6633 or visit www.pianolovers.org. – G. Stepanich
| 01 July 2010
The bed (2010), by Carolyn Schlam.
I have never been a fan of having artists explain their work with their own words, but with a show as diverse as the 59th Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition it might just prove useful.
The competition, the oldest of its kind, gives new and established artists residing in the state a chance to expose their work. Of about 1,400 entries submitted this year, 92 works by 81 artists were selected. Juror Linda Norden, who has taught at Yale University and Columbia and served as the first curator of contemporary art at the Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, did the picking. The works, representing painting, photography, sculpture and video, are now showing on the ground floor of the Boca Raton Museum of Art until Aug. 8.
On opening night, four awards were given to the four artists behind the most intriguing pieces, such as a 24-minute video of an orange being sewn back together after being peeled (the end result looking like an orange baseball) and an installation of various kinds of chairs in front of the museum.
But more awards should have been handed out. After all, an art show derived from a competition should praise not only the shocking and the beautiful but also the childish, the absurd and the meaningful, along with the new and the old.
Dagwood (2009), by John Pack.
And so it is that here we get the traditional self-portrait, the striking landscape, the photographed orchid, the window sweating with raindrops and the incomprehensible sculpture, which here comes in the form of a dirty mirror and flag mount titled Err, by Tom Scicluna of Miami. An error would be a nice way to describe it. Less sympathetic viewers might call it a joke, an insult.
There are also humorous pieces that don’t pretend to be serious, such as Dagwood, a tall hamburger that greets us at the beginning. It is by John Pack, an artist from Fort Lauderdale currently busy with creating sculptures of food from materials collected from Florida beaches. Here, seashells, coral debris and minerals give the illusion of lettuce, tomato, meat and bread.
Fashion Evolution I (2010), by Jean Hutchison.
The fun continues as you go on, toward the left, and two primate ladies strike a pose. Both are wearing floral dresses, black gloves and fashionable hats. They have that mean/serious look models usually adopt for the runway. The one to the right, also the tallest one, is wearing lipstick. She nails the feminine look that her friend, on the left, can’t pull off despite the ornaments. This is Fashion Evolution I, by Delray Beach artist Jean Hutchison. Having seen it, I now can’t think of fashion seriously.
The first photographs of the show appear on the opposite wall facing the primate ladies. There are four of them on the wall, and yet Cypress Harvest-Reaching Out seems to me to be the only one. Wellington photographer Allison Parssi has chosen to depict only a part of the subjects, and not the face, or the eyes or the legs. We see hands, in action, and not a violent one for a change, but rather performing the natural instinctive act of reaching out. The hands seem to perform this motion so easily, and in the abstract sense, it reminds us that asking for help, coming closer, reaching out, saying a word, is only human.
Cypress Harvest – Reaching Out (2008), by Allison Parssi.
Another photo that, again, asks more than answers is Dream Walking, by photographer Jim LaRocco of Highland Beach. Imagine typing “girl” into a Google image search and getting in return a really bad result. That’s what this is: a blurry image not even of an entire figure, just a segment of a girl. LaRocco’s wears a black short skirt, black shoes and black socks up to right below the knee. We are right behind her although we don’t know where she is heading. We are not even sure she knows she is being followed. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but the image retains our attention longer than the real version of the event would. This is the power of photography: to give mundane every-day acts a second chance at being noticed and considered even beautiful.
But as much as I like LaRocco’s photo, it is My Father, by Kim Kuhn of Port Orange that is my personal favorite of the show. Humble in size, this piece is like a secret: unique and yet universal, like one’s individual story of discovering the truth about Santa Claus or having sex for the first time. It depicts Kuhn’s father in a dark hotel room. He is sitting on the end of the bed facing a closed curtain from where a shirt hangs. We can’t see his face. Shoes rest under the bed and a roll of paper towels is on the table.
My Father (2009), by Kim Kuhn.
The man is either meditating or watching television. It’s not sad because it shows a sad father. It’s sad because it’s a reduced father, a human one, and it’s real. This is Kuhn’s father after “the divorce,” reads the description, and it goes on to say that “there comes a point at which the perception of a parent transitions from unsurpassable being to mere mortal. Inevitably, I’ve learned to accept the fact that parents are not devoid of flaws.” His photo is whispering: Parents are fragile beings, but shhh … don’t tell anyone.
When it comes to painting, small is sometimes better, as in the case of Hamptons Room, a 14-by-11-inch oil with lots of emotion and energy. The lack of action is compensated for by the impulsive/aggressive strokes taking over the bed and suitcase depicted. In this painting, by Natalya Laskis of Miami, it’s not color that gives life to the canvas, but the thick visible strokes.
Close by, on another bed, sits a nude woman. She is refined, slender and beautiful. One wonders if her brain is as sharp as her jaw. The colored, stripped bedsheets reflect on her pale skin. The bed looks done. It’s not certain whether she is going or coming. And the fact that both of her hands concentrate on her right ear doesn’t explain anything, except that the task of putting on/taking off an earring is a tricky one. The bed is by Carolyn Schlam of Miami Shores, and should have gotten a prize just for creating something that feels new with traditional materials and approach.
War (2009), by Roberta Schofield of Tampa.
The idea of arriving at “new” through “old” ways brings us to another piece in the right side of the room. It’s easy to distinguish because of its contrasting dark colors: red and blue. To touch a rising hero, by Maria Sonia Martin of Miami, has a certain innocence to it. It seems to have escaped the laws and principles of art to give us a simple, child-like piece in which subtle variations of blue are the only signs of sophistication. A child reaches up to touch a creature, a dog or a horse, above him. Half of his body is red. The other half is blue. Same goes for the animal. One will fade faster into the background. Will it be the creature that loses its dreamer? Or is the child who will lose its dream?
The darkest of the pieces is right by the end of the show, and like rising hero, it’s more concerned with expression. Sight, by Cecilia Bedin of Weston, is mostly a dance of blacks and white that inevitably turns gray at times, and surprises with a touch of purple and green and orange lines. I personally call these types of pieces “unafraid abstraction.” You can tell them apart from the “afraid” ones because they contain and project lots of emotion as opposed to feeling flat.
Florida Gator Fairy (2008), by Pamela Fessel.
Going after the M.C. Escher effect was Pamela Fessel of Vero Beach, with Florida Gator Fairy, a fine piece with an incredible amount of detail that really pushes the artistic abilities of that old friend of civilization: the pencil. In Fessel’s piece, a thin brunette fairy sits by the gator’s nostrils and caresses or heals its thick skin. They blend in with the dense vegetation so well that, if we are not careful, they might disappear right before our eyes.
The good news about the show is that there is no right or wrong way to go about seeing it. The works being shown are in no particular order, which makes it more exciting, less predictable. Photography appears next to oil painting, small pieces share the same wall with huge ones, and self-portraits are followed by abstractions. One thing seems common among the pieces. They are more about what the artists feel and see rather than what they do and how they do it.
I found plenty of likable and relatable pieces, good creations that are not necessarily unique, and unique ideas that could have had better execution. But even those lacking skill don’t suffer, if we keep in mind that this is a show about purity of feeling, which can’t be taught, and not so much about technique, which can.
Chairs, Found and Fixed (2010), by Kerry Phillips of Miami.
| 28 June 2010
Jackie Rivera, David Dearstyne and Ryan Didato in Speech and Debate. (Photo by George Schiavone)
Although he must have been absent in playwriting class the day they covered creating enticing titles, Stephen Karam demonstrates his skill with contemporary dialogue and the angst of today’s youth in the breezy, comic Speech and Debate.
While more lightweight than GableStage’s usual fare, the production demonstrates the company’s continued interest in new talent -- introducing Karam to South Florida as well as three fresh-faced performers who have recently graduated from Miami’s New World School of the Arts.
They play unpopular misfits in a Salem, Ore. High school, geeks who have gravitated to the debate club and taken it over by default. The club and the school newspaper become forums for their crusades, particularly against Salem’s conservative mayor, who opposes gay adoption but apparently has homosexual designs on underage boys himself.
Then there is Mr. Healey, the school’s drama teacher, who has made sexual advances on both male characters -- online chat-obsessed, openly gay Howie (David Dearstyne) and Solomon (Ryan Didato), an investigative reporter wannabe. The female apex of the debate club triangle, a little dynamo named Diwata (Jackie Rivera), also has it in for Healey. Not for his unprofessional indiscretions, but because he cannot see that she deserves to be given the leading role in the school play.
Healey may not see it, but GableStage theatergoers will. Rivera has genuine star quality, a charismatic bundle of energy with terrific comic timing and an underlying vulnerability. These qualities are particularly evident in Diwata’s hyperactive rendition of her musical version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and a nude (well, with flesh-colored leotard) interpretive dance. Karam certainly has some offbeat comic notions, but it is the way Rivera puts them across that is most memorable.
By comparison, Dearstyne and Didato come off far blander than desirable. In the only two visible adult roles, a put-upon teacher and a clueless reporter, Patti Gardner manages to make something of the sketchy assignments. In a rare sidestep, artistic director Joe Adler hands over the staging chores to Amy London, who makes some headway in giving the episodic tale some dramatic shape.
The play’s focus is on awkward teens, but the script is more disjointed and awkward than necessary. The alienation of youth is a common theme of young writers, and Speech and Debate does update the topic with references to texting, Google and podcasts. The script feels up to the minute, but it seems likely to become dated soon.
Still, Karam is a writer to keep an eye on and Rivera is the reason to see the production at GableStage.
SPEECH AND DEBATE, GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Through July 18. Tickets: $37.50 - $45. Call: (305) 445-1119.
