A top political analyst visits FAU, a staple of Americana rocks the Kravis, and GableStage opens its first season without Joseph Adler. Plus, “Lungs,” Amigo the Devil and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
“The National Popular Vote” with Michael Steele
When: 2 p.m.
Where: FAU Lifelong Learning Auditorium, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Cost: $35
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
The movement toward abolishing the Electoral College and establishing a national popular vote for presidential elections has broad support from 61 percent of the American people, per polling in 2020. But amending a system that has been with us for as long as the Constitution remains an uphill battle, if not a pipe dream, for its advocates. A few such dreamers on the local level, including the League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County and Floridians for the National Popular Vote, will make their case, along with guest speaker Michael Steele, at this lecture. Steele, a political commentator and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is among the minority of disaffected GOP voices who support this idea—and who will likely present a nonpartisan case for its application.
WEDNESDAY
Amigo the Devil
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
Cost: $20
Contact: 561/832-9999, sub-culture.org/respectable-street
Over just a few short years and two full-length albums, Danny Kiranos, who records under the name Amigo the Devil, has attracted the sort of cult following that’s endemic to a certain breed of confessional singer-songwriter: Think Orville Peck, Frank Turner, City and Colour and Tom Waits, artists that could easily be slotted into his “R.I.Y.L.” bin. His music toggles between plaintive folk and rousing, circus-y barn-burners, while his lyrics exude a tarnished poetry and a voyeuristic vulnerability—but are not without a sense of humor, as tunes like “Murder in the Bingo Hall,” from his breakthrough 2021 sophomore album Born Against, attest. In his native Austin, Texas, he’s famous enough to be honored with the city’s very own Amigo the Devil Day, which, of course, is so Austin. Look for a review of this concert later this week on bocamag.com.
THURSDAY
Tedeschi Trucks Band
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $44-$124
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Lovers of soul-stirring, genre-blending American music have surely missed the annual Palm Beach County pilgrimage of Tedeschi Trucks Band, the 11-piece blues-rock ensemble founded by husband-and-wife musicians Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. The Grammy-winning band, which includes members of Allman Brothers Band and Mumford & Sons, always makes it a point to perform in our pocket of paradise—not exactly an odyssey, given the band’s home base of Jacksonville, but a much-anticipated return to normal nonetheless. The group is still touring behind its latest release, 2019’s Signs, but expect a traditionally eclectic blend of original compositions and covers from its diverse slate of influences, from Willie Nelson to Jerry Garcia to Derek & the Dominoes, in a set list that changes nightly.
Opening night of “Lungs”
When: 8 p.m.
Where: New City Players at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors
Cost: $25-$40
Contact: 954/376-6114, newcityplayers.org
Theatre doesn’t get more minimalist than Duncan Macmillan’s “Lungs,” a show that is intended to have neither a set nor a lighting design (though some producers may opt to cheat a little for some atmosphere). It’s just two people onstage, talking things out. They don’t even have names—they are referred to in the play as M and W for their genders—all the better to establish them as a kind of millennial every-couple, grappling, like so many us, with the question to reproduce in a politically turbulent, climatically ravaged world. The topics the play raised in its off-Broadway premiere in 2011 have only metastasized in the decade since, with COVID adding its own unspoken relevance to Macmillan’s engrossing verbal gallery of anxieties. But it’s also funny, too—a tightrope that actors Marlo Rodriguez and Denzel McCausland will endeavor to walk in this season premiere from New City Players. It runs through Nov. 28.
FRIDAY
Opening night of “Love is Love is Love”
When: Show times pending
Where: Living Room Theaters at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Cost: $10.50
Contact: 561/549-2600, livingroomtheaters.fau.com
Eleanor Coppola, the wife of filmmaking royalty Francis Ford Coppola, has taken to more tender cinematic visions than her renegade spouse. Her second feature, the romantic “Love is Love is Love,” is an omnibus film: a series of three shorts exploring issues of love, commitment and loyalty. In the first, a couple attempts to mediate their long-distance relationship through technology; in the second, a long-married couple takes a spontaneous sailing trip to reignite the spark in their relationship; in the third, a woman mourns the death of her mother by celebrating her memory with a gaggle of her closest friends. The bustling ensemble cast includes Maya Kazan, Joanne Whalley, Chris Messina, Cybill Shepherd and Rosanna Arquette.
SATURDAY
Opening night of “The Price”
When: 8 p.m.
Where: GableStage at the Biltmore, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables
Cost: $65-$70
Contact: 305/445-1119, gablestage.org
The local theatre community can expect GableStage’s season opener this weekend to be an unusually emotional experience: It’s the first production since the 2020 passing of its leonine producing artistic director for 20 seasons, Joseph Adler. Bari Newport, who was appointed as producing artistic director a year later, has worked with Adler’s notes to continue his vision for Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” which the late director had been finalizing when the COVID pandemic closed theaters. Oft revived, and a two-time Tony nominee in 1968, “The Price” is an intimate and gripping chamber piece about the rift between two brothers, only one of whom abandoned his ambitions to support his father; when they reunite to sell their late parent’s furniture, buried resentments come to the fore. Gregg Weiner, Patti Gardner, George Schiavone, Peter Haig and Michael McKenzie star in the production, which runs through Dec. 12.
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