A top-tier comedian brings stoner insights to West Palm Beach, a preeminent Queen tribute rocks the Culture Room, and the South Florida Science Center makes stuff explode. Plus, comic Jodi Miller, an Art Night Out in Northwood, hip-hop dance and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: Screening of “The Third Murder”
Where: Movies of Delray, 7421 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $12 (includes popcorn and beverage)
Contact: 561/638-0020, moviesofdelray.com
Thanks to Shelly Isaacs’ “Café Cinematheque” foreign film series, art-house movie enthusiasts have the opportunity to see this latest film from celebrated Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda weeks before its premiere in New York and Los Angeles. It’s about the increasingly complicated relationship between a high-profile defense attorney and his latest client, a man accused of robbery and murder who served time for another sentence 30 years earlier. The suspect freely admits his guilt, but his lawyer’s research leads him to doubt that he could have committed the crime after all. Using the generic trappings of a classic courtroom thriller, “The Third Murder” is Kore-eda’s latest thoughtful attempt to understand the human condition, a career-long quest that has included such masterpieces as “Still Walking” and “Like Father, Like Son.”
FRIDAY
What: Opening day of “A Kid Like Jake”
Where: Lake Worth Playhouse’s Stonzek Theatre, 709 Lake Ave., Lake Worth
When: 2 and 6 p.m.
Cost: $6-$9
Contact: 561/296-9382, lakeworthplayhouse.org
Navigating New York City’s hyper-competitive private school admissions system is a challenge for any parent, but it’s especially daunting to Alex and Greg, the characters played by Claire Danes and Jim Parsons in this timely drama from Silas Howard. Their precocious 4-year-old boy, Jake, has begun to exhibit “gender-expansive”—in the words of a counselor hip to these things—behavior, gravitating toward dresses and Disney princesses instead of the usual boyish trappings. The thought that they may be raising a transgender child—and that this aspect of Jake’s identity might be a boon for private schools seeking diversity—strains Alex and Greg’s relationship, and asks us to question how soon we should put labels on our children. Ann Dowd and Octavia Spencer co-star in this IFC Films release, which runs through July 5.
What: Art Night Out
Where: Northwood Village, 400 Northwood Road, West Palm Beach
When: 6 to 9 p.m.
Cost: Free
Contact: northwoodvillage.com
Have you visited Northwood Village, West Palm Beach’s semi-hidden gem of a neighborhood, yet? If not, this Friday marks a great opportunity to discover what is arguably this artsiest, hippest little enclave in the Palm Beaches. (OK, downtown Lake Worth and Delray may object, but let them!) With eight galleries and two dozen restaurants—including the recently opened Petanque, a French garden-style eatery—Northwood is a walkable cluster of culture that especially comes to life on the last Friday of month during Art Night Out. Live music and a marketplace of local craft vendors supplement the everyday atmosphere of this quaint and lively region.
What: Nights at the Museum: “Bubble Pop Fizz”
Where: South Florida Science Center, 4801 Dreher Trail N., West Palm Beach
When: 6 to 9 p.m.
Cost: $9.95-$13.95
Contact: 561/832-2026, sfsciencecenter.org
As anyone who’s passed grade-school chemistry knows, there’s nothing that engages kids with science quite like watching stuff explode. To that end, the South Florida Science Center’s monthly family program is focusing this weekend on things that bubble, pop and fizz: Think an “Elephant Toothpaste Lab”—not sure what that is, but I’m intrigued—demonstrations of Mentos “Geysers,” a bubble art craft activity and “Fizzy Cloud Dough Experiments.” The evening also includes aquatic animal encounters, sky viewing with the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches and, for a few dollars more, the planetarium show “Dynamic Earth.”
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
What: Sean’s Dance Factory: “Big Bang XXII”
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 7 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday
Cost: $25-$30
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Sean Green, the founder of this “Factory,” is kind of a big deal in hip-hop dance. He trained under Justin Timberlake and has moved on to work with artists such as Lil Wayne, Cee-Lo Green and Ja Rule. He developed choreography for Prince’s Super Bowl XXIX halftime show, and his routines for the Miami Heat and Miami Dolphins cheerleaders continue to energize fans. But it’s his dedication to fostering the dancers of tomorrow that most consumes him. He has taught workshops and master classes in hip-hop in places as far-flung as France, Thailand and Australia, and his pupils at West Palm Beach’s Dance Factory won the World of Dance competition in New York this past December. This annual “Big Bang” production is the culmination of his students’ work, showcasing their exciting interpretations of Green’s own challenging choreography.
What: T.J. Miller
Where: Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., Suite 250, West Palm Beach
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday
Cost: $27
Contact: 561/833-1812, palmbeachimprov.com
Part of the stoner school of stand-up comedy whose graduates include Doug Benson and Dave Chappelle, T.J. Miller is awfully hardworking for a pothead. In his early days in the cutthroat alternative-comedy scene in New York, he would play 10 sets a night, honing his craft until HBO came a-callin’, in the form of his 2017 comedy special “Meticulously Ridiculous.” A familiar face in movies such as “Deadpool” and “Ready Player One,” along with the first four seasons of the tech-nerd sitcom “Silicon Valley,” this self-described nihilist and absurdist is at his most authentic when he’s unscripted. His acceptance speech at the 2015 Critics’ Choice Awards, in which he insulted the concept of awards shows, has become legendary—along with the time he tickled Stephen Colbert’s cheek with skeleton hands, and showed up on “Conan” shirtless and wielding an axe. As he told Colbert in one of his more lucid moments, “Since tragedy permeates our everyday life, comedy is the opiate I offer, as a drug dealer, to you.”
SATURDAY
What: Jodi Miller
Where: Mizner Park Cultural Center, 201 Plaza Real
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $20-$40
Contact: 844/672-2849, miznerparkculturalcenter.com
This comedian was delivering groceries for a living when she appeared on “America’s Got Talent” in 2014, winning over the esteemed judging panel with a classic riff on how, contrary to the cultural consensus, men in fact resemble cats, and women resemble dogs. She didn’t win that year, but her national profile received a boost: She’s since recorded her debut comedy CD, No Child Left Behind, which plays on her cultivated “cougar” status. Unafraid to tackle sensitive bedroom topics with a rapier wit and plenty of relatable insights, Miller’s act is more adult than her national TV appearances suggest, bringing new life into comedy chestnuts like aging and gender differences. Catch her for one night only as part of the Mizner Park Comedy Club’s monthly “Comic Cure” series.
What: Killer Queen
Where: Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $25
Contact: 954/564-1075, cultureroom.net
Queen is especially in fashion this year, not that the band’s popularity ever wavered: It received a long-overdue Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent Grammys, and a much-anticipated biopic about Freddie Mercury hits movie theaters nationwide in November, aiming to bring a new fan base to the U.K. legends. So what better time to experience what has been called the United Kingdom’s preeminent Queen tribute act, the only such band to sell out the same venues as the Real McCoy in its prime. Killer Queen has performed its detail-driven re-creation of classic Queen concerts since 1993, and its charismatic frontman, Patrick Myers, is a worthy filler of Mercury’s enormous shoes. His approximation of the late vocalist’s range and persona has been called “scarily real” and “almost frightening” by critics.
