TUESDAY
What: Mia Farrow
Where: Society of the Four Arts, 2 Four Arts Plaza, Palm Beach
When: 3 p.m.
Cost: $15-$35
Contact: 561/655-7226, fourarts.org
Last fall, when the Society of the Four Arts booked Mia Farrow for its 2014 lecture series, it could not have foreseen the firestorm of controversy surrounding Woody Allen and his personal life. But you can’t blame his ex-wife if the relationship with her creatively brilliant, personally reprehensible ex-husband is the last thing she wants to talk about in a lecture tour. Instead, expect Farrow to focus on her own distinguished career, which has included roles ranging from Peter Pan to Daisy Buchanan. In addition to the string of classics she made with Allen, Farrow has worked with directors such as Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, Claude Chabrol and Michel Gondry, and her willowy, fragile and unassumingly comic on-screen persona helped establish a Hollywood archetype. Outside of the screen, Farrow is admired for her humanitarian activism in African apartheid states, winning an international award for her service in 2009.
What: Black Angels and Roky Erickson
Where: Grand Central, 697 N. Miami Ave., Miami
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $22
Contact: 305/377-2277, grandcentralmiami.com
With his pioneering garage band The 13th Floor Elevators, vocalist and guitarist Roky Erickson contributed one of the most searing, rollicking psych-rock hits of the 1960s with “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” whose staggered opening set the tone over the credits to the film “High Fidelity” decades later. A lot happened to Erickson in between these touchstones, including bouts with mental illness that led to forced electroconvulsive therapy. But he has survived his demons to remain a cult music icon, a songwriter specializing in the macabre and fantastic. His new band, the Hounds of Baskerville, will back him up tonight at Grand Central, where he’ll open for the Black Angels, a terrific Austin psych quintet in the storied tradition of the 13th Floor Elevators.
WEDNESDAY
What: Audra McDonald
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: Starting at $25
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
When Audra McDonald visited the Mizner Park Amphitheater last March for Festival of the Arts BOCA, she promised that she’d come back. I didn’t expect a return date so soon, but I’m certainly not complaining. Witty, charming and lovely to look at, McDonald brings the total package to her solo cabaret-style performances, with a repertoire as eclectic as it is unconventional. At the Boca festival, she sang numbers from “The Scottsboro Boys,” “Ordinary Days” and “Steel Pier;” who knows what forgotten Broadway delicacies she’ll re-invigorate this time?
FRIDAY
What: Opening night of “Fighting Over Beverley”
Where: Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $30-$45
Contact: 561/450-6357, artsgarage.org
A year after producing Israel Horovitz’s “Gloucester Blue,” the Theatre at Arts Garage continues the long-running relationship between the playwright and local artistic director Lou Tyrrell, a relationship that extends beyond Tyrrell’s previous company, Florida Stage. “Fighting Over Beverley,” Horovitz’s latest, is a romantic triangle, set in his beloved Gloucester, among three 70-plus-year-olds: An English war bride from the Second World War, her current fisherman-husband, and the Brit whose heart she broke 53 years earlier. Though Beverley now has two romantic options and decades’ worth of stirred-up emotional cobwebs, Tyrrell says the play “is about her taking control of her own life, and not being subject to a man and a husband. So the issues of independence and life and love, especially from that point of view, are going to land very specifically for theatergoers that are that age.” The play runs through March 23.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Miami City Ballet Program III
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $20-$65
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
The current season continues to be a boundary-pushing one for Miami City Ballet, whose Program III is headlined by a company premiere, Jerome Robbins’ “West Side Story Suite.” Transformed into a ballet nearly 40 years after Robbins’ choreography helped make the “West Side Story” film such a success, this 1995 suite not only improves on his original choreography but it requires its actors to sing many of the musical’s cherished numbers, a double duty that has pushed its dancers to new limits. Also on this docket: George Balanchine’s bold two-part ballet “Episodes,” another company premiere; and another Balanchine classic, the eight-minute “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.”
SATURDAY
What: Health and Wellness Experience
Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: Free
Contact: thewellnessexperience.org
The lines at McDonald’s may still be depressingly long, but proper fitness and dieting are no longer the domain of a niche contingent of the population. These days, even Wal-Mart carries some organic food by popular demand, albeit begrudgingly. Just about every major city has responded to this upward trend with an annual health and wellness fair, with Boca Raton finally following suit. This debut event will include multiple health screenings, healthy cooking demonstrations, presentations on healthy lifestyle choices, children’s activities and dozens of vendors, including Florida Dairy Farmers, Fit Foodz Café and Whole Foods Market. Visitors can also meet their favorite personalities from CBS 12 News.
What: Opening night of “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins”
Where: The Willow Theatre at Sugar Sand Park, 300 S. Military Trail, Boca Raton
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $25
Contact: 561/347-3948, womenstheatreproject.com
Fourteen-time Carbonell Award-nominated actor Barbara Bradshaw has played an innumerable number of roles since her entrée into the South Florida theater scene nearly four decades ago. But she’s never taken on the theater’s most arduous endurance test—the solo show—until now. She’ll tackle this daunting feat in a long-awaited production from the Women’s Theatre Project. In a role that Kathleen Turner portrayed on Broadway, Bradshaw will immerse herself into the wardrobe, wit and razor-sharp mind of Molly Ivins, the liberal Lone Star State firebrand who courted controversy with her pointed critiques of politics in both Texas and the national stage. Bradshaw, who spoke to Boca Raton last year for a story in our February issue, told me, “I keep falling down all these rabbit holes with Molly Ivins, and each rabbit hole I fall down just wants to make me know her more. I feel like I’m getting to know somebody who’s going to be my best friend.” The play runs through March 16.
What: Stephanie Miller
Where: Parker Playhouse, 707 N.E. Eighth St., Fort Lauderdale
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $42.74-$76.50
Contact: 954/462-0222, parkerplayhouse.com
And speaking of powerful liberal women with microphones, radio talk show host Stephanie Miller will bring her award-winning “Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour” back to Fort Lauderdale more than two years after it sold out the Parker Playhouse. The irreverent morning broadcaster still doesn’t have a local affiliate in the South Florida market, but expect another strong turnout for this tour, which brings along some heavy hitters in left-leaning comedy, including Biblical scholar John Fugelsang and the offbeat accordionist Judy Tenuta. Word has it that Alan Grayson, the Florida congressman most loathed by conservatives and most worshipped by libs, will join these comedians on a panel after their standup sets.
