Your Week Ahead: June 7 to 13, 2022

A modern artist immerses us in color, a Go-Gos musical gets the beat, and faux U2 plays Mizner Park Amphitheater. Plus, Tears for Fears, “The Mystery of Irma Vep” and more in your week ahead.

THURSDAY

What: Tears For Fears with Garbage

Where: iTHINk Financial Amphitheatre, 601-7 Sansburys Way, West Palm Beach

When: 7:30 p.m.

Cost: $53-$305

Contact: 561/795-8883, westpalmbeachamphitheatre.com

Tears For Fears didn’t need to produce a comeback album. Once the most titanic band in England, and the most enduring exemplars of the “second British invasion” of 1980s new wave, Curt Smith and Ronald Orzobal’s synth-pop giants could have filled stadiums solely as a legacy act. Their hits—“Shout,” “Head Over Heels,” “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”—are tailor-made for amphitheaters: As enormous as caverns, and just as easy to get lost inside. But this pioneering duo, despite creative friction that permeated even this latest recording session, have gifted us with a new album, The Tipping Point, its first release in 17 years. It brims with hooks, wisdom, insights and reflections on everything from deaths in the family to political unrest, finding its writers grappling with a new “Mad World.”

What: Opening night of “The Mystery of Irma Vep”

Where: Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors

When: 8 p.m.

Cost: $35

Contact: 954/928-9800, islandcitystage.org

There was a time, in 1991, when this three-act romp through the rich history of gothic and paranormal fiction was the most-produced play in the United States. It’s not staged quite as often anymore, but its inclusion is always welcome, especially for devotees of the many literary, theatrical and cinematic benchmarks it satirizes, from Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” to the farce, Victorian melodrama and penny dreadful. Ghosts, werewolves, mummies and vampires (“Irma Vep” being an anagram for the blood-drinker of legend) all play into the gonzo plot, which involves an Egyptologist living in a sequestered estate, his allegedly dead first wife, his much disliked second wife, and a certain significant sarcophagus. Just two cross-dressing actors play eight characters, and with 35 costume changes, Island City Stage’s intrepid backstage crewmembers have their work cut out for them. “The Mystery of Irma Vep” runs through July 10.

FRIDAY

What: Opening day of Carlos Cruz-Diez: “Chromosaturation”

Where: Perez Art Museum, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

When: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Cost: $12-$16 museum admission

Contact: 305/375-3000, pamm.org

Few artists loved color—or experimented with its inherent properties—as much as Venezuela’s Carlos Cruz-Diez. In his vivid installations, many of them seminal in the 1960s Op Art and kinetic art movements, he sought to shape color as “a reality which acts on the human being with the same intensity as cold, heat, sound, and so on,” he said, in 1975. His public works are seen everyone from a Parisian railway platform to Caracas’ international airport to here in Miami: He designed the optically adventurous walkway leading to the entrance of Marlins Park. “Chromosaturation,” conceived in 1965, is a signature Cruz-Diez work: an immersive environment in which viewers enter three chambers, each lit with a single saturated hue (red, green and blue). The goal is to scrambles our retinas and allow us to feel color as a bodily phenomenon.

What: Opening night of “Happening”

Where: Living Room Theaters at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton

When: Show times pending

Cost: $7-$10

Contact: 561/549-2600, fau.livingroomtheaters.com

In a sobering coincidences, this French film set in the pre-abortion-rights dark ages of 1963 France is being released during a time when the curtailment of this right seemingly is imminent in the United States. Anne, a diligent student from a working-class family, finds herself surprisingly pregnant, and with no alternative options at her disposal. Multiple doctors advise her that she must have the child regardless of the consequences, but the determined protagonist is willing to do whatever it takes, including self “care” and underground providers, to regain control of her reproductive health. A social-problem film that plays out like a horror movie, “Happening” is scripted, directed and acted with such raw urgency that it’s easy to accept it as a documentary. It runs at least through June 16.

What: Opening night of “Head Over Heels”

Where: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

When: 7:30 p.m.

Cost: $49-$65

Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org

Let the Go-Gos revival continue! Fans of the ‘80s pop-punk pioneers celebrated when the group finally landed its place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, culminating in a rousing performance in Cleveland last November. So the timing couldn’t be better for Slow Burn Theatre’s summer musical “Head Over Heels,” a jukebox show entirely conceived with music by Belinda Carlisle, Kathy Valentine and company. The setting, though, is very not ‘80s, with characters’ names and situations closer to “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” than anything from the New Wave era. It’s set in the kingdom of Arcadia in the 16th century, where citizens’ lives are governed by an ethereal “Beat” that must be preserved at all times. This means a deceptive king must outrun the four prophesies of the community oracle, while trying to secure futures for his two marriageable daughters. But if you’re like me, the music, not the plot, is the hook here, and “Head Over Heels” features all the hits creatively repurposed: “We Got the Beat,” “Cool Jerk,” “Vacation,” the title track and many more. The production runs through June 26.

What: Opening night of Summer in the City concert series

Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton

When: 8 p.m.

Cost: Free

Contact: 561/393-7890, mizneramp.com

With last Friday’s cancelation of the Battle of the Bands, this Friday marks the opening of the City of Boca Raton’s free summer concert series, a welcome return to the new post(ish)-COVID normal. Hopefully with the rain behind us, it will be a “Beautiful Day” (sorry) to welcome U2 by UV, South Florida’s favorite U2 tribute band, performing hits and deep cuts from the Dublin rockers from their auspicious debut Boy all the way through the band’s latest material. The four-piece has been playing and honing U2’s music since 2004, so if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, you’ll definitely find it Friday night in Boca Raton. Food and beverages will be available for purchase, and specialty vendors will be on the premises as well. Bring your own blanket and/or chair, or rent a chair onsite for $5.

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