"We are not folding. We are not going anywhere," stressed Clive Cholerton, artistic head of Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre, when he phoned me over the weekend. "There really is no story," an assertion that all but guaranteed that his disclaimer would become a story.

The call was prompted by a posting on the blog Florida Theater On Stage, which reported that the Caldwell’s board of directors was mulling filing for federal bankruptcy protection to reorganize its considerable debt. Cholerton remains candid about the theater’s money woes, which largely stem from falling behind on the mortgage payments on the company’s still new playhouse.

So he called, not to refute the blog, but to clarify that the board is considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not the plug-pulling of Chapter 7. "We as a board have never discussed Chapter 7 and folding," said Cholerton. "We are planning now for next year."

We hope so. Cholerton added that a further announcement will be made in the near future, a cliffhanger that only serves to make us nervous again.

• Arts Garage’s new plays: Florida Stage’s founding producing director Louis Tyrrell has launched his new venture, The Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach, with a Master Playwright Series on Tuesday evenings this month. Next up during the first weekend of March will be a new play festival, similar to the 1st Stage readings that proved popular with his former theater’s audience.

Over four nights, March 1-4, there will be six readings from an impressive roster of writers, plus a keynote talk by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman.

In addition to a new play by Norman called Nightly News from the War on Women, a factual work based on interviews with survivors of human trafficking and violence against women, the festival will feature new scripts by William Mastrosimone, Israel Horovitz, Bruce Graham, Lauren Gunderson and Jessica Goldberg.

Tickets for individual readings range from $15-$20, with all-access festival passes also available. Call the Arts Garage box office at (561) 450-6357 for complete details.

• Maltz Jupiter to turn 10: Other theater troupes may be struggling, but the Maltz Jupiter is flying high. On top of its region-best 25 Carbonell Award nominations, the north county company is readying its celebratory 10th anniversary season. Announced earlier this week was its mainstage schedule, a balancing act of two Tony Award-winning dramas and three crowd-pleasing musicals.

The 2012-2013 season begins with Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (Oct. 30-Nov. 11), about the towering rivalry between musical prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and court favorite Antonio Salieri. The first musical of the season (Nov. 27-Dec. 16) will be Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, the tale of flim-flam musicologist Harold Hill’s attempt to con River City, Iowa.

Next up is Singin’ in the Rain (Jan. 8-27), about Hollywood in the early days of talkies, followed by Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (Feb. 5-17), the story of a veteran nun’s search for certainty in the case of a priest accused of inappropriate behavior with a young altar boy. The season ends with the splashy musical romance, Thoroughly Modern Millie (March 4-25).

The Maltz currently has over 7,000 subscribers, but it can always use more. Subscriptions for all five shows start at $183, a 10 to 15 percent savings over single ticket prices. Call the box office at (561) 575-2223.

At the Norton Museum of Art on Thursday nights.

The popular Thursday evening event, Art After Dark, continues from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, with another creative alternative for your same-old-thing Thursday. This family friendly event can help introduce your child to the world of fine visual art with docent-led tours and do-it-yourself art activities.

The Art After Dark is a Mardi Gras Celebration featuring complimentary caricatures with Dino DiArtist at 5 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., the pbpulse.com Tour explores Cocktail Culture.

But the activity not to be missed is the glass-blowing demonstrations at 6, 6:30 and 8 p.m. that highlight the "Studio Glass" exhibit on display through May 27. It features a selection of studio glass from the Museum Collection including works by internationally recognized artists Dale Chihuly, William Morris and Toots Zynsky.

The exhibit coincides with the Beth Lipman installation and the visit by the Corning Museum of Glass Hot Glass Roadshow, who will perform the demonstrations and, at 7 p.m., will make a piece of art using suggestions from the audience, called "You design it, we make it."

The popular DIY art activity returns from 5-7 p.m. with an evening of mask making. Also on tour at 6:30 p.m. is the Modern Masters exhibit. Catch the live banjo performance at 5 p.m. followed by music by the Zydeco band The Porch Dogs from 7-9 p.m. In Cafe 1451, a Mixology Competition will be co-hosted by Tito’s Handmade Vodka.

When: 5-9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16

Where: 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach

Admission: Free for members; $12 adults; $5 ages 13-21; free for younger than 13

Info: (561) 832-5196; norton.org

Unusual, perhaps, but it is a natural choice for a musical version of Susan Seidelman’s 2006 film comedy Boynton Beach Club, the tale of six South Florida seniors who meet at a bereavement support group and start their lives over after the death of their spouses.

This weekend, Feb. 10 to 12, the show gets four readings at the Park Vista Theatre.

Why here? In addition to being the home of Seidelman’s mother, Florence, who originated the idea for the film and also produced it, Boynton Beach has a potential audience that is a mirror image of the show’s onstage characters.

The Boynton demographic is "reflective of an audience you could find in Sarasota or Tampa, places where there is a larger population of people over 55," explains Seidelman. "Arizona, Las Vegas – all the places where the movie did really well."

Oscar-nominated Seidelman is best known for writing and directing such films as Desperately Seeking Susan and Making Mr. Right. She readily concedes, however, that the musical theater world is totally alien to her.

It would never have occurred to her to turn Boynton Beach Club into a stage show, until she got an email from the songwriting team of Ned Paul Ginsburg and Michael Colby soon after the movie was released.

"I guess they heard music when they saw it," she says. "I knew nothing about theater and I knew nothing about musicals. But as I started hearing their songs and learning how librettos are different than movie scripts, I sort of got into it."

As composer Ginsburg recalls, he had a feeling that Seidelman’s film would make a good musical even before he laid eyes on it. "I saw the ad in the paper for Boynton Beach Club and I said, ‘That looks like a musical.’ The ad copy, the picture, I just had a hunch about this one."

Seeing the movie only increased his enthusiasm. "Because it’s full of emotions," says Ginsburg. "And characters that we haven’t seen on a musical stage a lot – modern, older adults."

As theater veterans Ginsburg and Colby began writing the musical score, they approached a few playwrights about adapting the screenplay. For one reason or another, though, they came up empty.

"There were certain people that we wanted for it who weren’t available, there were other people whose ideas I didn’t necessarily agree with," notes Seidelman. "One thing I thought was really important and I hope it works, is that this be an ensemble. It’s not just one man and one woman’s story, it’s about this group."

So somewhat reluctantly, Seidelman – who had co-written the movie’s screenplay – took on the chore of penning the musical’s book.

On the differences between the movie and the show, Ginsburg says, "The screenplay moves along in little increments, little episodic moments. We jettisoned a lot of that in favor of big moments. When you get rid of those other things, you have room to make the musical moments special. And there are also some plot points that are brand new. It is not the screenplay put onstage. It’s a musical."

By 2009, they had a score of 15 or 16 songs and a draft of the book. But as Seidelman soon learned, they were only beginning. "Unlike a movie, where once you get the financing together, you film it and then you can kind of weed it out in the editing, here you edit it up front," she explains. "It’s hard to get the money to make a movie, but once you get it, it’s boom!, you go. You film it and you instantly know what’s working or not. This, because it’s live, it’s just a whole other kettle of fish."

Boynton Beach Club, the musical, has already had two staged readings in New York, about a year apart, attended mainly by the writers’ friends and neighbors, as well as invited theater insiders.

That audience liked the show from the start, but Ginsburg knew further work was needed. "We had some structural problems with the first draft. The placement of songs," he says. "We’ve also thrown out about three or four songs. The biggest challenge was bringing the stories together and keeping them balanced. It took us two or three shots before we got the stories unified."

Ready for public test

So now, more than four years after they began writing the show, the creative team believes it is ready for the paying public and an out-of-town test in Boynton Beach, a non-traditional step for such a venture. As Ginsburg puts it, "This one-week reading where the cast rehearses in New York and performs in Florida is very unusual, one of the most ambitious developmental projects that Actors Equity has sanctioned."

The show has been able to attract a 13-member cast of Broadway veterans, including Alan Campbell (Sunset Boulevard), Heather MacRae (Falsettos), Janice Lynde (Pippin) and Barbara Walsh (Big). They, in turn, hope to attract financial investors and perhaps a seasoned producer.

Theatergoers will have an opportunity to offer their opinions of the show at a post-show feedback session after this Saturday’s matinee. "We want to see how people down there react to it, whether we have to reshape anything or add jokes," says Ginsburg. "Since the last one, a couple of years ago, we’ve made some significant changes and we want to see if we have it in the appropriate shape now."

If so, Boynton Beach Club could take its next step toward Broadway. "I think anyone who writes for the musical theater would like to see their show get to Broadway," says Ginsburg, "but we’re not trying to get there instantly. I think we’d like to get the show out to the country and see how it takes in other cities and try to build some momentum. Then if it makes sense to play the show in New York, then by all means."

Seidelman is well aware, however, that unlike a movie, if the show does not please a few critics in New York, her years of work and the investors’ money could evaporate overnight.

"I think it’s crueler than the movies," she says. "If a movie doesn’t work, you still have the DVD, there are other lives for it if it doesn’t work theatrically. But here, if it doesn’t work, that’s it, you’ve got nothing."

Still, its creative team remains optimistic.

"It’s a very entertaining show, with comedy, with song, with some heartfelt moments. And we have a terrific cast of Broadway veterans," suggests Ginsburg. "It’s not just fluff. It’s got a message and it ends on a real high. If audiences down in Florida react to it the way some of the audiences in New York have, they’re going to have a great time."

‘BOYNTON BEACH CLUB’

Park Vista Theatre, 7900 Jog Road, Boynton Beach. Friday, Feb. 10 through Sunday, Feb. 12.

Tickets: $25

Contact: (561) 738-0552

The Rachmaninov deserves its reputation as one of the towering monuments of late Romantic piano writing, not just for its haunting opening theme and vivid solo and orchestral writing, but also because it’s tremendously difficult.

On Friday, Feb. 10, the task of scaling this Everest of music falls to Christopher Murphy, a 22-year-old senior at Palm Beach Atlantic University and winner of the West Palm Beach college’s most recent concerto competition. He’ll play the concerto on an all-Russian program with the PBA Symphony under its director, David Jacobs.

Murphy, a West Palm native and Dreyfoos School grad who studied briefly at Boston’s Berklee College of Music before returning to South Florida and PBAU, said he heard the piece last year at a live performance in Boca Raton.

"I just basically fell in love with it, and I had to play it," Murphy said, and took the score to his PBA piano teacher, Marlene Woodward-Cooper, who advised him to enter the school’s concerto competition.

One of the things that makes the Rachmaninov so tough is that the composer himself was a tall man with very large hands that could span a 12th on the keyboard, and he wrote for his physical gifts.

"I didn’t completely realize that until I started playing the third movement," Murphy said, adding that the music also requires many octaves played at rapid speed. "You have to build up your endurance for that. I think one of the biggest difficulties is the endurance, combined with having to produce a good musical tone. I’ve never played something like this before. It’s an incredible piece."

The orchestra also will play two infrequently heard works by colleagues in Russia’s "Mighty Handful" of native composers, starting with Mili Balakirev’s Overture on Three Russian Themes, and including the Symphony No. 3 (in A), of Alexander Borodin, which was unfinished at the composer’s death in 1887 and was later completed by Alexander Glazunov.

The concert begins at 7:30 Friday, Feb. 10, at the DeSantis Family Chapel on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic. Tickets are $10. Call (561) 803-2970 or visit www.pba.edu/performances.

Seraphic Fire: Miami’s Seraphic Fire concert choir will offer three performances of the monumental Mass in B minor (BWV 232) of J.S. Bach, one of the great works of the musical West. Sunday night, Feb. 12, is the Grammy Awards, and Seraphic Fire is up for two of the awards (and its producer is up for a third). Founder and director Patrick Dupre Quigley will be in Los Angeles for the ceremony, which means he won’t be leading that night’s performance at St. Gregory’s Episcopal in Boca Raton.

That task will fall to Scott Allen Jarrett, who plays one of the two pianos on Seraphic Fire’s recording of the London version of Brahms’ German Requiem, which is one of the two discs that have been nominated for a Grammy. The choir will be joined by its instrumental ensemble, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra.

The Sunday, Feb. 12 concert begins at 4 p.m., and by the end of it around two hours later, the audience at St. Gregory’s should know whether they’ve been listening to a Grammy-winning ensemble. It promises to be a night of great music, beautifully performed, and a night of huge excitement for a South Florida institution receiving major national recognition.

The Boca performance is the last of three. The choir performs the work at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, at Fort Lauderdale’s All Saints Episcopal Church (sold out), and at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, at First United Methodist Church in Coral Gables. Tickets are $50. Call (305) 285-9060 or visit www.seraphicfire.org.

Palm Beach Symphony: Conductor Ramon Tebar, who hails from Valencia, Spain, offers a program of Spanish and Spanish-inspired music for the orchestra’s concert Monday, Feb. 13. Joaquin Turina’s well-known Bullfighter’s Prayer (La oracion del torero, Op. 34) is on the bill along with Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s arrangement of music from Carmen, Frenchman Georges Bizet’s beloved Spanish-themed opera.

Tebar also has programmed the Italian Luigi Boccherini’s Night Music of the Madrid Streets (La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid), written during Boccherini’s decades of service for the Spanish nobility. The other piece is a true rarity in American concert halls, the Acuarelas Valencianas (Valencian Watercolors) of the long-lived Eduardo Lopez-Chavarri (1871-1970). His musical language is conservative, much like his fellow Valencian Joaquin Rodrigo, and full of national color.

The orchestra performs at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13, at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church on Palm Beach. Tickets are $50. Call (561) 602-6720 or visit www.palmbeach symphony.com.

Delray String Quartet: The foursome travels into the land of the fivesome beginning Sunday, Feb. 12, welcoming guest violist Chauncey Patterson into their ranks for two supreme quintets of the Romantic literature. Patterson, a familiar face in South Florida music circles, is the former principal violist of the Denver Symphony and was for 17 years the violist in the Miami String Quartet. He joins the Delrays for the String Quintet No. 3 (in E-flat, Op. 97) of Dvorak, and the String Quintet No. 1 (in F, Op. 88) of Brahms.

Also on the program is a Sandor Devich arrangement for string quintet of Brahms’ Sonatensatz, originally for violin and piano. The group will play this program three times, once each in Fort Lauderdale (Feb. 17), Coconut Grove (Feb. 26) and at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12, at The Colony Hotel in Delray Beach. Tickets: $35. Call (561) 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.

"As women, we have integrated our knowledge and wisdom and embraced the glory of our complexity. Our passion as we evolve as women is magical and daring. Empowered women think outside the box," said Rachel Goldberg, co-owners of the gallery with Michael Gordon Penn.

"The exhibition exemplifies how women can overcome, spread joy, provoke thought and connect to the infinite possibilities in life, no matter what limitations they may have," Goldberg said. "These women weave a tapestry with their art, portraying what it means to be an empowered woman."

Featured artist Tribble is a nationally known, award-winning artist whose surreal work is both meditative and captivating. She is a committed environmentalist and also a jewelry designer, and she’s currently collaborating with Disney.

Curtis is an established impressionistic painter who is drawn to color and textures. Curtis is fascinated with things and people that others may shy away from. She has learned to look for the beauty, and wants others to as well. She also teaches stress relief classes through art.

Henderson, owner of Miss Katie’s Kreations in St. Lucie West, is devoted to fashion and her vibrant abstract art shows her colorful perspective on embracing living.

This is the first show for the self-taught artist, 29, who has Down syndrome.

‘The Magical Journey of Empowered Women’

Where: Osceola32 Gallery and Design, 32 S.E. Osceola St., Stuart

When: Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10; exhibit runs through March 10

Admission: Free

Info: (772) 872-6072; osceola32.com

A Bird in Winter is a children’s book inspired by Bruegel’s great painting. Originally published in France, it’s a story about a little girl who lives in the village depicted by Bruegel. It’s also about a bird, who may or may not be one of the blackbirds sitting in the leafless trees above the hunters.

The story is more explicit than it needs to be, the character of the little girl thinner than it should be, but the book has a triumphant ending, as it reproduces the Bruegel painting, sealing the story with a sense of communal celebration of which the artist would surely approve.

And now for something completely different…

Riviera Cocktail (teNeues) consists of the photographs of Edward Quinn, who haunted the nightclubs and movie premieres of Cannes and its environs for decades.

The faces are mostly familiar (Brando, Bardot, Fellini, Picasso, Sinatra, etc.) but because of the environment, everybody seems much more relaxed than they were back home.

Quinn seems to have been a high-end paparazzi, and he certainly had great access. In time he became a close friend of Picasso’s, and segued from shooting movie stars and celebrities to artists such as Ernst, Calder, Bacon and Dali.

Quinn died in 1997, but his work survives as an evocative time capsule of a time and place caught midway between the glamorous and the tawdry.

Mike Browning’s Word of the Week…

boeotian: stupid; culturally backward.

Quote Unquote…

"People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know."

— Brooks Atkinson

Migrant Mother by photographer Dorothea Lange. (Courtesy Palm Beach Photographic Centre)

Sometimes a picture is more than a picture; sometimes it’s a message in a bottle from 150 years ago.

In this particular case, the picture is both an original albumen print and a gorgeous close-up portrait of a sleeping 2-year-old child. In the lower margin is written in longhand, "My grandchild Archie."

The photographer — and the writer of the marginal notation — was Julia Margaret Cameron, whose unusually intimate pre-Raphaelite images proved not only that photography was an art, but that women could master it.

It’s an arresting image, but it’s far from the only high point of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre’s "Full of Grace: The Child in Photography," the most extensive theme show the Centre has ever done.

It revives dormant memories of Edward Steichen’s "Family of Man" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, which resulted in a book that sold four million copies.

In essence, the show traces the history of photography from close to its beginnings through modern masters such as Joel Meyerowitz and Gregory Crewdson in a knockout series of more than 250 prints, most of them original prints from private collections.

They range from Dorothea Lange’s iconic picture of a migrant mother — also featured in the Steichen exhibit — to W. Eugene Smith’s equally iconic photo Walk to Paradise Garden, of his children emerging from darkness into light.

What makes curator Ray Merritt’s show special is its breadth, the excellence of the images, and the quality of the prints. You can buy a copy of Lange’s photo from the government – Lange was working for FDR’s Farm Security Administration at the time — but this is a vintage print.

Likewise, Eugene Smith was legendarily persnickety about his prints, but this is one he made himself and it looks like it.

There are also premier shots by Alfred Eisenstadt, Robert Frank – his children are passengers in a car and look alarmed, as well they might – Cartier-Bresson and even one of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nubian photos.

The only glaring lack are Diane Arbus’ creepy twins, replicated by Stanley Kubrick to unsettling effect in The Shining.

I was particularly taken with Erwin Olaf’s The Ice Cream Parlor, a recent work including a Cub Scout, a dog, and an ice cream cone that aims to replicate the composition, lighting and effect of a Norman Rockwell portrait.

In fact, heavily designed art photography is the most prominent continuing feature of the recent work in the exhibit, as with a picture from Gregory Crewdson’s Twilight series, of a pregnant woman standing in a child’s wading pool while another woman fills the pool with a hose and a chubby young boy lies asleep on the grass a few feet away. In the background is a frame house with the lights showing through a window.

The effect is double-edged: normalcy in suburbia, but with an excessive formality in the composition and lighting. The layer of contrivance gives the shot a creepy David Lynch hint of something terrible happening just beneath the mundane surface.

The show is not without a certain amount of implicit edginess, mainly over subtly sexualized images of youth. There are several shots from Larry Clark of young troubled teens, all of which might as well be titled "Jailbait." Joel Meyerowitz Heidi is of a stunningly lovely young teenager on the beach, each hair on her head individualized, the large format camera even capturing the fine down on her arms.

Likewise Andres Serrano’s American Jewel, a portrait of the winner of a children’s beauty pageant called "Little Yankee Miss," drips with irony.

But the show also points out that sexualizing children is nothing new, for there are some original tinted and toned prints of Lewis Carroll’s portraits of Alice Liddell, with her torn shirt worn off her shoulder. The overall effect is that of a saucy waif-pirate.

This is the largest show the Photo Centre has done; it not only fills the Centre’s beautiful exhibition space, confirming its multifaceted utility, it also confirms Photo Centre director Fatima NeJame’s ambitions.

If you go

"Full of Grace: The Child in Photography"

Through March 17 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, 415 Clematis St.,

City Hall complex,

West Palm Beach

Information: (561) 253-2600

Billy Ray Cyrus

Billy Ray Cyrus is the latest celebrity to sign up with Amazon.com

The singer of “Achy Breaky Heart” and father and former co-star of Miley Cyrus has a memoir, “Hillbilly Heart,” coming in spring 2013.

Amazon.com, which has been aggressively expanding its publishing operation, announced Thursday that Cyrus would discuss with “great candor” everything from his early years to life as the parent of a teen superstar. Cyrus and his daughter starred together in the hit TV series “Hannah Montana.”

Others with Amazon deals include actress-director Penny Marshall and actor James Franco. Those books, however, will not be available everywhere. Barnes & Noble Inc. announced earlier this week that it would not stock releases from its rival retailer.

Each week, he brings in a major American writer for a reading of a seminal work, plus a post-reading interview-discussion. On Tuesday, Israel Horovitz appears with his absurdist one-act play Line, about five characters jockeying for position in a line of indefinite purpose. Since opening off-off-Broadway in 1974, Line has become the longest-running play in New York history.

In subsequent weeks, the series will feature John Pielmeier, William Mastrosimone and John Guare. Tickets are $15-$20 in advance, or $48-$64 for the four-evening series. For reservations, call (561) 450-6357 .

It is no coincidence that the main character of Donald Margulies’ semi-autobiographical play Brooklyn Boy has the same name as that of illusionist Harry Houdini, but he cannot escape his past. In the middle of a promotional book tour for his new book – also named Brooklyn Boy – he is duty-bound to return home to visit his father, who is dying of cancer. It is a trip that will put him on a collision course with his ethnic identity which he has long denied.

First seen on Broadway in 2005, the play has been selected to launch Parade Productions, a promising start-up company that performs at the almost-as-new Studio at Mizner Park, under the artistic direction of Kim St. Leon. Featured as Weiss is area favorite Avi Hoffman, who brings a natural likability to a character whose internal conflicts are manifest in some abrasive behavior.

The ubiquitous Sean McClelland contributes an attractive visual production with a multi-location unit set dominated by the Brooklyn Bridge, a symbolic representation of the geographic gravitational pull in Weiss’ life

From his father’s hospital room, where Weiss seeks in vain some acknowledgement of parental pride in his literary accomplishment, the play moves to the cafeteria, where he has an uneasy reunion with a childhood friend, Ira Zimmer (wonderfully authentic Michael Gioia). Ira is both annoyed by his old pal Ricky’s condescension and flattered that he has inspired a minor character in the book. The action then shifts to Manhattan and a confrontation between Weiss and his wife, an unsuccessful writer in the middle of divorcing him.

Before the very moving final scene, the second act goes for a broader comic tone with two scenes – one with a too-young groupie in an L.A. hotel room, the other a meeting with a crass producer who wants to water down Weiss’ film adaptation of Brooklyn Boy. As performed here, the former lacks much sexual tension and the latter settles for sitcom. To some extent, that is inherent in the scene, but St. Leon does not seem to have encouraged her actors to play against the problem.

Brooklyn Boy succeeds or fails with the performer playing Weiss, and Hoffman’s restrained work, offering a window into the character’s inner turmoil, is among the best things he has done in a lengthy career. Most of the supporting cast is non-Equity and less than persuasive, notably Candace Caplin as the West Coast producer and Jacqueline Laggy as Weiss’ goyish wife.

Still, by play’s end, as Weiss returns to Brooklyn and makes a tentative step towards embracing the Judaism he long ago rejected, the script and the production return to a firm footing, making it an evening well worth seeing, despite some flaws.

R E V I E W

Brooklyn Boy

B

Where: Parade Productions at The Studio at Mizner Park, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton.

When: Through Feb. 12

Tickets: $30. Available at: www.parade productions.org

The verdict: A semi-autobiographical drama about a novelist’s struggle with his ethnic roots, featuring a first-rate, restrained performance by Avi Hoffman.

Andre Masson's Le Temp Profane is part of the exhibit at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens. (Courtesy Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens)

It’s clear from the exhibition of André Masson’s work at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens that he functioned as both an original and as a synthesizer.

Some of his figures are more or less straight out of Marc Chagall, while in Sirens, he seems to be channeling Picasso; sometimes he even resorts to Picasso’s iconography – the bull. And sometimes, as with a painting called Avanche, he’s clearly playing around with what became abstract expressionism.

But the fact remains that Masson had his first one-man show in 1924, while Miro and Max Ernst were still wrestling with the precepts of surrealism, so it’s entirely possible that the entire crew were happily cross-referencing (read: pillaging) each other.

What’s clear is that Masson was a major figure in European art in the 20th century, an abrupt, slashing draughtsman, with a gift for bold colors and what the French have valued in their artists since World War I – a subtle aura of derangement.

In fact, Masson was a soldier in the war, and was seriously wounded. Once he recovered, he became known for what he called "automatism," by which he meant staying up for as long as possible, in order to exhaust himself before he began painting without any kind of planning or premeditation.

The idea was that art could only be pure if it came directly from the subconscious, without any mental editing.

He also disliked using brushes, preferring to spread the paint directly from the tube or with his hands.

Masson was quite successful; his painting Battle of Fishes was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in 1937 – one of the museum’s earliest purchases.

The result, as in the work entitled Le Temp Profane, is colorful, exuberant, theatrical. It figures that Masson designed a production of Hamlet for Jean-Louis Barrault just after World War II – I’d love to see the designs.

Masson’s life was nearly as turbulent as his painting; he went to Spain in the 1930s, but had to return to France once the Fascists took control. Then came Hitler, and Masson had to get himself and his Jewish wife out of Dodge in a hurry.

He came to America, where some of his paintings were seized for allegedly pornographic content. Perhaps in retaliation, he reputedly refused to learn a single word of English, and returned to France as soon as it was practically possible. He stayed there for the rest of his long life until he died in 1987 at the age of 92.

The collection of paintings, etchings and aquatints at the Sculpture Gardens have been loaned by Louis Toninelli of Monte Carlo, and they have to be considered among the highlights of the season.

‘Andr

'Recapturing the Real West' at the Society of the Four Arts features works like Philip Goodwin's 'A Pause on the Journey'. (John Woolf / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

ART-A-PALOOZA TIME!

Big fairs and new exhibits are stretching from West Palm Beach to Delray Beach.

The American International Fine Art Fair opens tonight and runs through Feb. 12 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach. Click here for more

One of the most intriguing museum exhibits of the season opens Saturday at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Recapturing The Real West: The Collections of William I. Koch looks at the true story of Western expansion through paintings, photos and more, including the only known tintype of Billy The Kid. Koch, the Palm Beach energy magnate, has long been fascinated by the West and has meticulously collected its lore. The show will kick off with a lecture by Koch at 11 a.m. Saturday. Information: (561) 655-7226. | Directions, invite a friend

Opening today at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is Tacita Dean, a self-titled show of the English artist’s "photo-based" work, in which she uses film images and adds to them everything from paint to text. Information: (561) 832-5196. | Directions, invite a friend

In Delray Beach at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, two shows open on Tuesday. Old Techniques, New Interpretations: Japanese Prints from the Paul and Christine Meehan Collection features 75 prints from masters of the form in 20th-century Japan. A second show, Mariko Kusumoto: Unfolding Stories, features the artist’s ability to turn metal sculptures into everything from street scenes to music boxes and clocks. Information: (561) 495-0233. | Directions, nearby dining

LIVE MUSIC HEAVEN

The next few days should prove to be musical bliss. One of the rarest concerts of the season pairs veteran folk singer-songwriter John Prine with Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, tonight at 8, the Coral Springs Center for the Arts. Information: (954) 344-5900. | Directions, invite a friend

Also this weekend at the Kravis: Pops standards keeper Michael Feinstein tonight, soul siren Patti LaBelle on Saturday and frequent county visitors Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. on Sunday. Information: (561) 832-7469. | Directions, nearby dining

And the Palm Beach Pops puts on a salute to Louis Armstrong with singer Lilias White and trumpeter Longineu Parsons. Monday-Tuesday at the Kravis.

SMART FUN AND HIP FOOD

A Smart Look Into Science is Saturday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at The Gardens Mall, giving you a chance to meet scientists from Scripps Florida and see hands-on science activities, plus science fair winners from area high schools. Information: (561) 776-7750. | Directions, invite a friend

The Mounts Botanical Garden seems an odd place for BBQ, Blues & Brews, but that’s what’s happening this Sunday from 11-4, with live music, beer and food trucks. $5 entry fee. Information: (561) 233-1757. | Directions, invite a friend

DOWN SOUTH: HIP NEW ACT

The Civil Wars, a Grammy-nominated indie folk duo whose album Barton Hollow was one of the most widely praised discs of 2011, plays Fort Lauderdale’s Culture Room on Saturday. Information: cultureroom.net | Directions, invite a friend.

UP NORTH: FESTIVAL FUN IN HOBE SOUND

The 11th Annual Hobe Sound Festival of the Arts is Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A1A and Dixie Highway. Juried art, green market, children’s activities. Information: (561) 746-6615 or artfestival.com. | Directions, invite a friend

THEY’RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD

Led by a faux Jake and Elwood (and sanctioned by Dan Aykroyd and the Belushi estate), the Official Blues Brothers Revue brings that Chicago blues sound to the Kravis Center, 8 p.m., Thursday. Information: (561) 832-7469

DANCE AT THE DUNCAN

The Luna Negra Dance Theatre focuses on the latest interpretations of modern Latino choreography. Spanish-born Gustavo Ramirez Sansano leads the Chicago-based troupe. 8 p.m. Friday, Duncan Theatre, Lake Worth. Information: (561) 868-3309. | Directions, invite a friend

FRANK AND DEAN AND SAMMY!

The celeb tribute show, The Rat Pack Now, is a live presentation of the music of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, as sung by area performer Bob Hoose. 8 p.m. Monday, the Eissey Theatre, Palm Beach Gardens. Information: (561) 207-5900. | Directions, invite a friend

MAKE UP YOUR SHAKESPEARE

The Improvised Shakespeare Company is just that. An audience member suggests a title and the company makes up the play on the spot. Sunday, Monday at the Kravis Center. Information: (561) 832-7469.

Pete Correale performs this weekend at the Improv at CityPlace, while Derek Richards and the Irish Comedy Tour head to Jupiter's Atlantic Theatre.

Pete Correale brings his perspective on the quirks of everyday life back to the Palm Beach Improv this weekend. He first stepped on stage in 1994 after graduating from Fredonia State College in New York. Since then he has showcased his material on television on Premium Blend, Shorties Watchin’ Shorties, Tough Crowd, Last Call with Carson Daly and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In addition to working the stand-up circuit, he is a writer and radio personality. For four years he, along with former Saturday Night Live actor Jim Breuer, co-hosted Breuer Unleashed on Sirius satellite radio.

Directions, invite a friend: Pete Correale | Irish Comedy Tour

The laughs continue in Jupiter this weekend at the Atlantic Theater where it’s never too early to start celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! Get in the spirit with the Irish Comedy Tour, complete with a guitarist (Derrick Keane) from Dublin, on Saturday. Detroit native Derek Richards, who has appeared on the Bob & Tom Show, will entertain with tales about his pale Irish skin, the holidays and dating a stripper. Boston-born Mike McCarthy will showcase the no-holds-barred humor that has landed him on Comedy Central and Showtime. The boisterous, belly-laugh trio will perform two shows, one at 7:30 and one at 9:30 p.m on Saturday.

What: Pete Correale, Irish Comedy Tour

When: Correale performs 8 p.m. Thursday, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Friday, and 7 and 9:45 p.m. Saturday. The Irish Comedy Tour shows begin 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday .

Where: The Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave. Suite 250, West Palm Beach; The Atlantic Theater, 6743 W. Indiantown Road, Jupiter

Tickets: $18.40 (Correale); $27 advance, $30 at the door (Irish Comedy Tour)

Phone: (561) 833-1812 (Improv); (561) 575-4942 (Atlantic Theater)

Paul Stapleton transforms ordinary objects into an unusual breed of sculpture. (Photo provided)

Things are changing in the art world, changing fast.

The evidence will be on view at the 16th annual American International Art Fair, which opens in downtown West Palm Beach Friday for a 10-day run.

What began as an art and antique fair is making a transition to an art and design fair.

The colors will be stark – black and white and gray, with LED lighting throughout the show. "There’s a movement toward minimalist works," says David Lester, whose company runs this fair and January’s ArtPalmBeach.

"A contemporary home tends to have white walls and neutral colors. The furnishings of today are rarely as ornate as in the past. Mar-a-Lago was typical of Palm Beach in its time, but today’s house is much more contemporary in nature."

Directions, invite a friend, nearby dining

The fair will still present a broad range, from 19th- and 20th-century paintings and photographs and sculpture to objects that are intrinsically beautiful, from a 17th-century Stradivarius violin to World War I-vintage automobiles.

A daily lecture schedule will cover everything from investing in art to discussions on Rembrandt, Fabergé and Chinese contemporary ink painting. The granddaughter of Andrew Wyeth will talk about her family’s paintings.

The 'Corsican Chair', made from various hardwoods. (Courtesy Todd Merrill)

The idea, Lester says, is to present an eye-pleasing variety.

"We are like a movie theater – we’re a platform. If you show Casablanca every night, after a week people get bored," says Lester. "My goal is to re-create a much more theatrical event in the convention center, as it was when we were in the big tent on Okeechobee – more of a wow factor for collectors.

"We have to remember that we’re in the entertainment business – shopping for cultural entertainment. Brown furniture is having a hard time; chrome is hot. We’re living in the day of the Droid and the iPhone, it’s not a black phone from Ma Bell anymore."

This broadening of definitions is taking place at the same time as a loosening of the purse strings, which was signaled last year when a lovely Renoir went for $9.8 million at the fair. Suddenly, art is selling again, on the high end and for younger, emerging artists.

"It’s much better than it was even two years ago," says Sarah Gavlak of the Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach. "People are more confident."

What seems to be happening is that since conventional investments have had a rocky ride of late, people are much more interested in investing in tangible objects – gold, silver, wine, art.

"When the market dips 400 points, and people scramble for liquidity," says Gavlak, "the greatest opportunity comes from blue- chip contemporary art. There’s less risk than there is in trading pork bellies. If you have a Warhol or a Rauschenberg, those objects and images have a built-in, absolute solid market value, and they can be sold in three days."

Things are jumping to such an extent that local artist Bruce Helander is now editing a glossy magazine called The Art Economist, which accepts no advertising and regularly lists the top 300 artists in terms of their auction prices.

For Helander, it’s a switch.

"In the ’60s and ’70s, for artists that were too commercial, made too much money, it was a negative. Now, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are celebrated in the marketplace. They’re labeled as geniuses by many, but they’re very strict marketers and money managers, and it shows. And it hasn’t taken away from their work."

The Internet has changed the way the collecting game is played, opening up a market that, as Helander puts it, was once as veiled as "a sheik’s daughter in the Dubai airport."

"If someone wants to find out what something is worth," says David Lester, "they can go online and look at the sale prices for a hundred pieces by that artist."

That resulting body of knowledge may also be why there’s a lot more bargaining than there used to be.

Lester feels that the traditional gallery system is failing, and that the growth is in art fairs and online, but then he’s not exactly unbiased. He points to the retail figures for December; conventional retail increased by a little less than 1 percent, online increased 17 percent. "That has to come at the expense of bricks and mortar," he says.

Gavlak says that despite the improved economy, which has resulted in a freer flow of money, quality remains of paramount importance.

"Look, anybody can buy merchandise, but if you’re serious about collecting art, it’s a different story," she says. "It’s about watching the artists of our time who are showing their ideas and watching them go from graduate school to a gallery to having well received exhibitions, to getting bought by museums and collections.

"When you get in on the ground floor of that, it’s very exciting, as well as a validation of your own taste."

American International Art Fair:

Friday-Feb. 12, Palm Beach County Convention Center, West Palm Beach.

Information: (239) 495-7293 or aifaf.com

Arruza's 'D-Vine Baby, $1,500.

Interior designer Joseph Publillones’ dining room is eclectic with a continental flair. The color palette is gray, with black, orange and touches of gold.

He started with a table base with feet created by Pedro Friedeberg, who is known for his Hand Chair sculpture. The chairs are Louis XVI style; the 1950s screen once graced a Christian Dior boutique, and the side table is hand-artisan-made from metal. The carpet is a new style by Stark, a patchwork with an overdye.

The table is beautifully set with crisp linens, a centerpiece featuring a collection of Japanese Kutani vases and Meissen china, celebrating the Year of the Dragon.

For art for this room, Publillones used a work by West Palm Beach photogrpaher Tony Arruza.

“I choose Tony’s photograph because of its detail,” Pubillones said. In the photograph, there’s an image within an image of a trellis and a vine. “It’s beautiful, taken in Puerto Rico, and as you look at it you’ll see an Asian baby’s face,” he said.

“The image appealed to me, but in addition, since the room has an underlying Oriental flavor with the vases, carpet and the dragon plates, it tied into the overall theme of the room.

“I call the painting, D-vine Baby.”

To lighten and update the dark mahogany den, Joseph Cortes of HomeLife Interiors used whites and ivories, and the Stark grass cloth on the walls is backed with silver, “to reflect light and give the room the glamor factor,” he said.

“The Stark carpeting is another big focal point. Its contemporary geometric pattern sets the tone in that room.”

He chose to integrate works by Palm Beach artist Clemente into the decor. “Clemente works in many different styles,” Cortes said. “The works we used in the den are free flowing forms of geometric shapes with energetic color. He wants to engage the viewer’s imagination to create his or her own interpretation.”

'Pendant' by Clemente, $11,500.

Cortes was drawn to Clemente’s work because they are expressive and airy. “They also created a focal point backdrop with our two HomeLife custom-designed chairs and the Mies van der Rohe table. Pendant, with its bold lines against a background of color, had the right amount of energy for the space and imparted a contemporary accent to the interior.”

Christopher Leidy of Christopher Leidy Images said that he painted the upstairs hallway his “usual color of battleship gray” and then he installed pieces of his limited edition fine art photography. “You will feel like you are doing the breaststroke through my upstairs underwater hallway world,” he said. “Please come and check it out!”

Christopher Leidy's photographs start at $4,000.

The 36th Red Cross Designers’ Show House is at The Mansion, 3001 Spruce Avenue in Old Northwood. The house was built in 1923 by Orrin Randolph and currently owned by Monique and John Book. Show House hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $30.

Photography by Carol Korpi-McKinley

'The Last Supper', one of Da Vinci's most famous works, is among the works on display in the Fathom Events showing 'Leonardo Live'.

In an effort to get people into movie theaters, many of the multiplex chains are offering one-night only showings of everything from rock concert films to New York opera productions.

This month, NCM Fathom, which does most of the screenings across the country, is broadening its cultural offerings.

On Feb. 16, you can see a filmed tour of the current Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at London’s National Gallery, where the Wall Street Journal reports that patrons are queuing up at dawn to get tickets that are being scalped for prices up to $600. Here, you can see it for a ticket price of $12.50.

The HD movie will show highlights of the 60-work show, which features paintings and sculptures from the years Da Vinci was a court painter in Milan.

Speaking of British, Fathom will also offer a screening of the National Theater’s production of Travelling Light, the new Nicholas Wright play about the dawning of cinema. Other films include two Metropolitan Opera productions, a sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera and a concert by the L.A. Philharmonic.

Here’s what’s showing this month:

Thursday: Kevin Smith: Live From Behind
Feb. 9: National Theater Live: Travelling Light
Feb. 11: The Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung Live.
Feb. 16: Leonardo Live
Feb. 18: L.A. Philharmonic, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting Mahler’s 8th.
Feb. 25: The Metropolitan Opera’s Ernani live.
Feb. 28: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, from a filmed Australian stage production.
Feb. 29: L.A. Philharmonic encore.

For information, times and locations, go to fathomevents.com.

After a record-breaking 25 years on Broadway, the Tony Award-winning composer has breathed new life into Phantom of the Opera with the sequel Love Never Dies, which follows the Phantom and Christine to turn-of-the-century New York, where the pair have come to Coney Island.

“It’s high romance. I have to say; I even find the end of it difficult to watch. It’s quite an emotional piece,” Webber told Parade.com.

The Australian production of Love Never Dies has been filmed for the big screen and hits movie theaters nationwide on Feb. 28 and March 5. The DVD will be released May 29.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, 63, talked to Parade.com about bringing the long-awaited Phantom sequel to Broadway, his journey into reality TV, and more.

Were you hesitant about bringing back characters that you are so close to, and that the audience is so close to as well?
“Not really. I wanted to write it because it closes a chapter emotionally for me. I wanted to revisit these characters once more. I always felt that the moment they met again would be a wonderful opportunity.”

Are there plans for Love Never Dies to come to Broadway despite receiving mixed reviews from critics?
“I’d love it to. I’m sure it will at some point. It’s a very good production. For a musical to be a success, every element has got to come together and everything has to knit. There have been many musicals over the years, Chicago for example, that didn’t work first time around, but subsequently became a huge success.”

Photos: Hollywood Stars on Broadway

How do you explain the lasting appeal of Phantom of the Opera?
“I don’t know. There are many theories. I always quote the famous line from South Pacific: ‘Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.’ We could sit and talk about it for hours and hours and still not really get to the bottom of it, but there’s something about the love story between Christine and the Phantom that does resonate. I think it resonates even more in Love Never Dies.”

How do you know when you’ve written a good song?
“You just sort of know. It’s hard to say. I don’t write words, so the lyrics are obviously very important, but you tend to know what is working and what isn’t. But everything is changing so much now. The record industry as one remembers it, doesn’t really exist.”

You’ve written a few hit pop songs in your career. Are there any voices you’d like to write for today?
“There are a load of people I’d like to write for today. There are some really good singers. I may actually do that because I haven’t really found a musical that I want to write at the moment. Quite a few people do actually want me to have a go at writing for them. So I might. I think the best new voice around at the moment is Jessie J, but she writes her own stuff!

What do you think about the resurgence of musicals in pop culture?
“I think something has happened. There’s no question that the interest among young people in musicals is as big now as it’s ever been and it is a consequence of things like Glee. In Britain, I’ve done five TV casting shows now. We’ve created quite a pool of young performers who all went on to find good jobs and starring roles. That’s certainly turned a lot of kids onto theater. And it’s not just musicals. I think the fact that War Horse has been such a huge success has also brought a lot of young people into theater.”

If you had to choose, what’s your favorite production?
“They’re all like favorite children in a way, so I can’t really say. I do think that the score of Love Never Dies is as strong as anything I’ve ever done. But I don’t want to say that I think it’s better than Evita!”

Hollywood Blockbusters Turned into Broadway Musicals

Ricky Martin is headlining a revival of Evita later this season. How does he measure up?
“I’ve worked with him very briefly a couple days ago and he’s certainly going to be very good. It’s quite funny for me to go back and hear a show I wrote so long ago. Because it’s him, I think the score will probably get played a bit rockier than it has been.”

You’ve found success in the reality television world — finding stars for West End productions of The Sound of Music, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Oliver! and The Wizard of Oz. How do you like being a reality TV star?
“Back in Britain, people know me in a very different way than they used to because of television. I wouldn’t mind seeing if we could do one of the TV shows like we do back in Britain here in America. It would be quite interesting. Unfortunately, they copied the idea and ruined it by doing Grease: You’re the One that I Want [a 2007 NBC reality television series designed to cast the lead roles]. What a terrible series that was! It’s not really like Idol or X Factor or anything like that, it’s much more about working with the performers and trying to get the best out of them.”

What goes through your mind when you watch one of your productions?
“Sometimes it’s: ‘Can I get out of this theater as soon as possible?’ But when it works it’s wonderful. It’s about all of the ingredients coming together.”

What’s up next for you?
“I don’t have anything at the moment that I really want to work on, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t find something tomorrow morning. I never intended to do the Phantom of the Opera when I found the book. It was the last idea in my mind because I just thought it didn’t interest me. It’s this sort of strange horror story that leaves you rather confused. There had been various productions of it that had been quite jokey and a bit camp. It never struck me that sitting in there was a great love story. So you can never absolutely tell. I just happened to find a copy of the book at a fifth avenue store on a Sunday and I thought I’d buy it and have a look. I ended up finding something completely different than what I had thought.”

Watch the trailer for Love Never Dies below:

Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine met more than 50 years ago. They have written a dual memoir of their lives together as a gay couple in the upper reaches of society. (Taylor Jones / Palm Beach Post)

Begin with the beginning.

They met in 1958, after a matinee of Jamaica, a Harold Arlen musical starring Lena Horne. Understudy Alan Shayne went on that day in place of star Ricardo Montalban. In the audience was a young artist named Norman Sunshine, who had gone to the show with a friend.

After the show they went backstage because the friend had worked with Shayne on television. Alan and Norman met, shook hands. There was a slight spark, but nothing spectacular. That came later, but not much later.

Fifty-three years later, the part-time West Palm Beach residents have written Double Life, a dual memoir of two lives lived openly together, at a time when that sort of thing wasn’t done, or, if it was done, was done surreptitiously.

Each of them has focused on creative endeavors – Shayne eventually quit acting, got into production and rose to become president of Warner Bros. television; Sunshine devised the "What Becomes a Legend Most?" ads for Blackglama, later serving as creative director for Lear’s magazine. Mostly, though, he’s concentrated on his fine art.

But the book makes clear that the most meaningful creation for these men has come from the mutual making of their life together. In one sense, it’s a book consciously written by tribal elders for those who come after. This is how we did it, they’re saying. This is the way it was. Weren’t we lucky? And aren’t you even luckier?

"We decided to tell the truth," says Shayne, as the two men relax in their stunning wrap-around downtown waterfront condo. "In retrospect, we can see that much of what we lived through was because people were afraid to be themselves. So we made a conscious decision to be ourselves. We felt we had a responsibility to tell our story for anyone who thinks that gay life is paradise and costumes."

When they met, Shayne was an ambitious actor with strong classical leanings, but it would eventually become obvious that a major acting career wasn’t going to happen.

"(Actress) Martita Hunt once told me about what she called ‘the envelope,’" he says . "You’re born with a certain look, a certain presence. And my envelope was not tough or street, and after Brando came in, everybody wanted street."

Shayne had been moonlighting as a stage manager, and one of Broadway impresario David Merrick’s staff suggested he go into casting. "I think he saw that I was a good stage manager, that I was responsible. And he saw that I was not going to have a great acting career – and he was right!"

Typically, once Shayne became a casting director, he didn’t miss acting at all. "Once I make a decision, I don’t veer from it," he says. "I never even thought of acting after that. And today, if you ask me if I miss Hollywood, the answer is no – I never think of it."

New York closet

Shayne became part of Merrick’s operation, then spent some years producing for David Susskind. He didn’t particularly care for either man – Merrick was cruel, and Susskind was an opportunist. But it was an invaluable experience, because Shayne’s account of Susskind’s production of Laura starring Lee Radziwill – the Heaven’s Gate of television – is a classic saga of showmanship bereft of common sense.

Double Life is open about everything from the New York closet – exemplified by men cruising Grand Central while their families were back home in Westport – to Hollywood homophobia. They also make sure to include some great show business dish.

Sunshine, who was working in advertising before hurling himself into art, remembers the exquisitely calibrated tensions of two-martini lunches with clients who would lean over the table and say, "I’m glad you’re not a fag."

They had one foot in the straight world, but they were careful not to dive wholeheartedly into the gay world. Rather, they were Alan and Norman – an island of two.

"We were quite serious about our work and each other," Shayne says, "and gay parties had a certain lightness. And we had made a decision to be faithful. Gay parties had a sexual component. We didn’t know how to behave."

"It was always about the work," offers Sunshine by way of completing the thought.

One of the most interesting qualities of the book is its depiction of the behavioral subtleties of gay life – the prevalence of a muted homophobia in Hollywood, for instance, theoretically one of the few places in America where a gay man could openly function in the 1960s and ’70s.

"Homophobia was more sublimated there than it was in Little Rock, Ark., but it was there nonetheless," says Shayne. "New York was the same way. Making rounds, for instance. An actor couldn’t make the rounds with another actor, or they’d think you were gay.

"In Hollywood, even George Cukor wasn’t really out. He had gay parties, with boys around the pool, but that was on the weekends. It didn’t intrude into his professional life. I worked with him on The Corn is Green with Katharine Hepburn – he would doze on the set, and I would nudge him awake. He’d walk over to the actors and say, ‘Look alive!’ But George never talked about anything gay. Ever."

After the two moved to Los Angeles, where Shayne, after a difficult period as an independent producer, began climbing the ladder at Warner Bros., Sunshine focused on his art. Sunshine’s work shifts in terms of light and approach, but always has an admirable stripped-down clarity – there’s nothing extraneous, whether it’s a landscape or a cityscape. It was an approach he had to relearn when they moved to L.A.

"You draw from what’s around you," he says. "In Los Angeles, my paintings become very geometric. When we moved back east to Connecticut, the landscapes returned."

Some of the shows Shayne put on in his 10 years at the head of Warners television – such as Alice, Night Court, The Dukes of Hazzard – shows it’s hard to imagine him watching if they weren’t part of his job.

Speaking of sublimation: How did he sublimate his own tastes to those of the mass audience he had to serve?

"I don’t eat meat," he says. "But if I go to a dinner party and they serve meat, I’ll eat it. We were out to sell shows. Some of the shows involved jokes and car chases done by very talented people. I couldn’t think, ‘That’s beneath me.’ I was as intent on The Dukes of Hazzard as anything else."

Sunshine chimes in: "I thought there were going to be more shows like The Corn is Green – that you could be more idealistic."

It’s not like Shayne didn’t try. He mentions how he was bowled over by Alec McCowan’s stage rendition of The Gospel of St. Mark. "In my madness, I taped it. Nobody ever bought one copy of it."

He also idealistically launched a television series of classic American plays. The inaugural production was You Can’t Take It With You, starring Art Carney and Jean Stapleton. Not a lot of people tuned in; today the idea of a broadcast network putting on a classic play is incomprehensible.

When it came time to write their book, they wrote alternate chapters in different parts of their house in Washington Depot, Conn., then read each other’s material.

In the book, Shayne articulates why he thinks the relationship has succeeded, and, aside from obvious things like patience and humor, it comes down to fidelity – not just sexual fidelity, but emotional fidelity as well.

"So many gay men, especially when they’re young, are hung up on physical attractiveness and want to prove their own desirability. I certainly did…(But) I think by remaining faithful to one person, you store love, and it will be there when it’s needed."

Genially agreeing to disagree

Occasionally, in talking about their lives, Shayne and Sunshine slip into an unintentional version of the Lerner and Loewe song I Remember It Well – genially disagreeing over the form and substance of an event, then agreeing to disagree.

"I have a sense of truth," Shayne says.

"And I have a sense of style," Sunshine says.

In 2004, they were married on a beach in Massachusetts. Initially, it was purely for legal reasons – "We’re getting older, and one of us is going to go first," Shayne says. "We needed to arrange things so that the survivor would be able to live comfortably."

But it became a deeply emotional experience that took them both by surprise. After the ceremony, Sunshine saw both Shayne and himself in a different way, from a revelatory point of view: "After years of being who we truly were only in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending."

In trying to sum up his shared life, Shayne says, "I wanted to be an artist, a great actor. That was my goal, not to have a cottage in the Cotswolds. Acting didn’t happen, but I wanted to achieve, and I think I – we – have done that."

There has been a lot of hard work involved in the melding of two creative lives. Shayne, with the pragmatic streak that made him a successful studio executive, thinks that some of their success has been fueled by the fact that they were both gifted, and could function on two simultaneous tracks – in the world, as well as in their own creative spaces. "Pray to whoever you pray to that you have talent," he says by way of summing up. "It gives you choices."

And then these two men who chose wisely and well look at each other and smile – the unspoken communication that makes all the difference.

Beth Lipman is assisted with gluing her sculpture by Norton assistant registrar John Welter (Jeffrey Langlois / Palm Beach Daily News)

Beth Lipman’s "One and Others" was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of studio glass in America, but you might say it’s site-specific.

In outline, it’s a table setting resting on a black coffin. Why the coffin? When Lipman was walking to the Norton Museum of Art for the first time, she couldn’t help but notice the large cemetery right across the street.

The juxtaposition of art, which aims to illuminate life, and death, for which no illumination is possible, was too rich to resist.

In broad formation, the large glass sculpture consists of eight or 10 specific objects – a pineapple on its side, a dead rabbit, some beautiful carafes and gazing globes, a pear, a basket with splayed melon, some stemware, a painter’s palette and a candelabra – surrounded by foamy waves of glass that represent disrupted tablecloths and other linen.

Overall, it resembles a more-or-less sumptuous feast interrupted by some ambiguous but encompassing disaster.

Beyond the specific inspirations, that range from a cemetery to native Florida produce, Lipman’s overall conception is heavily influenced by Dutch master paintings, as well as Courbet’s Still Life, from 1871, which is displayed in the same gallery as the Lipman. These were painters who delighted in paintings of fruit and dead animals that were all about delineating the line between ripeness and rot.

"So many of those paintings are about death," says Lipman. "Dead animals, and some of the fruit is obviously decaying."

It all sounds rather ominous, but Lipman is far from that. A young mother who lives in Sheboygan, Wis., she’s cheerful about explaining her work process.

She doesn’t sketch the sculpture, but rather decides on specific components, makes them, then moves them around the setting. Once she’s decided on the individual placements, creating what she calls "the vocabulary of the piece," she creates the bonding glass.

It’s obviously her favorite part of the process, perhaps because she sees it as analogous to life itself – a work in progress where perfection isn’t possible and may not even be desirable.

"Working with hot glass is all about your skill on any given day. And I’m interested in the still life tradition, which means that some pieces are better crafted than others. I need that – the good, the bad and the ugly. I need all that."

Lipman’s sculpture is in the equivalent of black and white, i.e. mostly clear glass with silver highlights. "I’m interested in triggering memories of objects. If I would use colors… I just think that glass is a decorative art, and colors can become campy or kitschy."

It’s a complex, audacious piece, one that will become part of the Norton’s permanent collection.

scott_eyman@pbpost.com

BETH LIPMAN

Through May 27 at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. | Directions, invite a friend

Information: (561) 832-5196.

Also on display: A glass-blowing workshop from the Corning Museum, and a glass exhibit from the Norton’s collection.

A former “American Idol” contestant is heading to Broadway with a character who, it’s safe to say, is truly two-faced.

Constantine Maroulis will play the title dual role in a revival of the musical “Jekyll & Hyde” that’s slated to come to New York in spring 2013 after a 25-week national tour that starts in San Diego on Oct. 2, Nederlander Presentations Inc. announced Sunday.

Maroulis, who was a finalist on the fourth season of “American Idol,” had a three-year run in Broadway’s “Rock of Ages” and received a best actor Tony nomination and a Drama League nomination for his performance. He also played the role of Roger Davis in a recent national tour of “Rent.”

Maroulis made his Broadway debut in “The Wedding Singer” and is currently in the title role of “Toxic Avenger” at the Alley Theatre in Houston. His debut album, “Constantine,” was released on his own label, Sixth Place Records.

“Jekyll & Hyde” features a story and lyrics by two-time Oscar winner Leslie Bricusse and music by Frank Wildhorn, who co-conceived the musical. It will be directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun.

Additional cast and creative team, as well as tour cities, will be announced later.

Wildhorn has had a tough time on Broadway recently, with back-to-back shows that have failed. His show this spring called “Wonderland,” an updated telling of “Alice in Wonderland,” was poorly reviewed and his “Bonnie & Clyde” recently closed early this season.

“Jekyll & Hyde” made its Broadway debut in 1997 with such songs as “This is the Moment,” ”A New Life” and “Someone Like You,” earning four Tony nominations. It tells the story of a London doctor who accidentally unleashes his evil alternate personality in his quest to cure his father’s mental illness.

Robert Cuccioli played the lead, and Sebastian Bach and David Hasselhoff later took over. After 1,543 performances, the production played its final performance on Jan. 7, 2001.

Kevin Boldenow

Kevin Boldenow of Stuart chose to break away from the dimension of mania that he feels entangles most people. Rather, he uses his camera to capture the essence of the world as he sees it. “It’s like gathering proof that indeed we live within more than concrete and asphalt,” he said.

"Antelope Canyon," B/W Photography; 50 by 45 inches, (frame size); $1,500.

“More than six billion people walk this Earth and within minutes, another 1,000 are born. There are 300 million Americans working. They grab a cup of coffee in the morning, run out to the car with cell phone, and find themselves on the road fighting swarms of people doing the exact same thing.”

It’s important to notice the natural world around us, he believes –“the old oak tree or Florida pine standing beside the road, the majestic Washingtonian Palm and the Bougainvillea in full bloom.

“There is more to life than running to the next appointment.”

For more than twenty-three years, the Council has awarded $345,000 to 23 artists through the Fellowship program.

"Somber," B/W Photography, 28 by 20 inches, (frame size); $500.

"Blue Cypress Revisited," B/W Photography; 43 by 50 inches (frame size); $1,500

Boldenow received the 2004 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Grant for Visual and Media Artists.

For what is the conflict between corporate mogul Caldwell B. Cladwell, whose firm bought up all the public toilets in order to overcharge the masses to relieve themselves, and those who think such bodily functions are an inalienable right, but a thinly disguised parable of the one-percenters versus the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Or at least it would be if writers Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis took their story the least bit seriously. But they are too busy mocking the conventions of musical theater and aping the signature staging moves of iconic musicals to muster sufficient gravity over the central injustices they portray.

Book writer and co-lyricist Kotis has a winking way with a pun as the name of Cladwell’s firm, Urine Good Company, attests. Seizing the profit potential in a drought, Cladwell buys all the municipal toilets, like Amenity #9, where fee collector Penelope Pennywise (a bountiful, belting Cindy Pearce) upholds the corporate order and where her assistant, crusading Bobby Strong (fervent Daniel Schwab) hatches the idea to stir up the downtrodden and liberate the bathrooms so the multitudes can pee for free.

That is the premise of the show that allows West Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Co. to have it both ways – dark-toned and silly.

Resident director-choreographer Patrick Fitzwater strikes the right deadpan mood, leavened by sly send-ups of such shows as Les Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story. The more musicals-savvy you are, the more inside jokes you will catch, but even at the most basic level Urinetown is very clever stuff.

If there is a drawback to the production, it is the sub-par sound design by Traci Almeida. The balance between the vocals and Manny Schvartzman’s five-piece band was way off on Friday’s opening performance, rendered too many of the lyrics in the ensemble numbers shrill to incomprehensible. For a score that is unfamiliar to most of the audience, that lack of clarity is unfortunate.

Still, Slow Burn’s non-Equity cast is loaded with budding talent. Recent Palm Beach Atlantic University graduate Daniel Schwab anchors the show as rabble-rouser Bobby, with tongue firmly planted in cheek on such cornball rallying cries as Look to the Sky and Run, Freedom, Run.

His love interest – isn’t there always one? – happens to be Cladwell’s daughter Hope, disarmingly played by Lindsey Forgey, who has been Slow Burn’s go-to ingenue lately.

Perennial utility player and company co-artistic director Matthew Korinko handles the juicy role of narrator Officer Lockstock (yes, his partner is named Barrel), handling a first act hip-hop number with genuine street cred. And the true find of the production may be Jaimie Kautzmann as Little Sally, a smart-mouthed stand-in for the audience, regularly wondering whoever thought this was a good idea for a musical.

Urinetown is offbeat, to say the least. But go along with it for the sake of discovering some brash new voices in the musical theater and another must-see show from Slow Burn.

R E V I E W

Urinetown

B+

Rated: Brash new voices in musical theater.

Where: Slow Burn Theatre Company at West Boca High School, 12811 West Glades Road, Boca Raton.

When: Through Sunday

Tickets: $35. Call: (866) 811-4111.

The verdict: A Brechtian musical send-up of the eternal battle between the haves and have-nots, darkly comic and ably sung.

Liam Scarlett has been putting other dancers in motion for almost as long as he has been dancing. He choreographed his first ballet when he was 11, the same year he entered the Royal Ballet School in London.

"I liked organizing people," the 25-year-old Briton says. "I liked patterns. Like a massive chess game, or a flock of birds when you see them change direction and you’re like, ‘Wow, they’re in perfect formation.’ "

The latest flock of dancers Scarlett has set into flight is the Miami City Ballet troupe, which presents the world premiere of his newest work, Viscera, this weekend at the Kravis Center, after runs in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

South Florida audiences are the first in the nation to glimpse one of ballet’s hottest new choreographic talents in his first full U.S. production – a potential coup for MCB.

Scarlett’s dances for the Royal Ballet have earned raves since the company’s school began presenting his student works in 2004.

Commissioning a new ballet is risky business, as MCB learned in 2008 when Twyla Tharp’s Nightspot proved to be a costly dud. The Scarlett is the company’s first premiere by an outside choreographer since then.

MCB artistic director Edward Villella is thrilled that he and his troupe are playing a part in the rise of Scarlett, whom he believes could be an important new talent.

"He’s one of the quickest minds and the brightest talents I’ve ever had the pleasure to be in the presence of," Villella says. "It seems like, ‘Wow, we’ve come upon something.’ It’s very exciting."

For Scarlett, who spent three weeks in August creating Viscera with the company ‘s dancers, it was a big step to work with a major U.S. company that has a very different style and personality than his home troupe.

"There’s such a vibrant energy buzzing through this company," Scarlett said in August as he was finishing final rehearsals for Viscera. Rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired, he spoke eagerly and with confidence.

He first visited Miami last January to observe MCB’s dancers, and then, inspired by their "drive, athletic qualities, intense passion," based the new piece on contemporary American composer Lowell Lieberman’s Piano Concerto No. 1, an edgy composition he’d been listening to for five years.

"One of the most important things to me is to use dancers well," Scarlett says. "The first thing I did when I got here (in August) was I played them the entire piece and said, ‘This is for you and because of you.’ "

For the dancers, it was a rare thrill to have a work choreographed especially for them.

"Getting to create something new with someone new is really fulfilling, because you feel like you’re part of it," says second-year corps dancer Emily Bromberg.

Principal dancer Jeanette Delgado said working with Scarlett gave her a taste of what it must have been like for an earlier generation of dancers on whom George Balanchine set many of the ballets MCB performs.

"None of us were around with Balanchine, and we never got the process of how it all came together," Delgado says.

In rehearsal in August, Scarlett, who is younger than many of the dancers, banters and jokes. "I might screw up, but watch my legs," he tells them as he demonstrates a new sequence. They laugh, but watch intently. The movement – arms slashing in counterpoint, sudden, subtle changes in balance and direction ending at an unexpected place in the music – is demanding.

Unlike older choreographers or coaches, Scarlett often does the steps himself, moving in to show Ezra Hurwitz how to wind Bromberg into spiraling curves around his body.

"He treated us like a peer; he was so friendly and warm," Delgado says.

But he also pushed them to the top of their game, finishing Viscera in just two weeks.

"I don’t premeditate or work anything out at home," he says. "I found it to be such a waste of time. For me it’s important to use what’s in front of you."

While Scarlett has his own vision, he is very much a believer in the traditional aesthetics and values of classical ballet.

"For me ballet is beauty," he says. "It can come in many forms. But it’s seeing the body as a piece of architecture or sculpture. It’s encompassing the whole thing and using the ballet technique we trained in. It’s a waste if you don’t use what you’ve trained in for years. It’s in your body anyways. So explore it and develop it. Don’t go away from it, but push it further."

If you go:

MIAMI CITY BALLET: Performing works by Scarlett, Robbins, Balanchine. Friday-Sunday, Kravis Center, West Palm Beach. Information: (561) 832-7469.

Harland Williams, whose film career took off after he starred in Half Baked with Dave Chappelle, will return to the Palm Beach Improv this weekend. Williams has also appeared in Dumb & Dumber, Superstar, There’s Something About Mary, The Whole Nine Yards and Employee of the Month. Despite his busy film schedule, he still devotes time to his first true love: live stand-up comedy.

What: Harland Williams

When: 8 and 10:30 p.m. today, 7 and 9:45 p.m. Saturday, and 7 p.m. Sunday.

Where: The Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave. Suite 250, West Palm Beach | Directions, nearby dining

Tickets: $25.82

Phone: (561) 833-1812

The cast of 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee', performing at the Lake Worth Playhouse. (Photo by Theresa Loucks)

Community theater is a vital part of the arts community because it’s where we’re introduced to our future in the form of fresh, young actors and in new works that show us the direction theater is taking.

Director Rob Dawson brings us The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which opened on Friday at the Lake Worth Playhouse in downtown Lake Worth. The 2005 Broadway production won two Tony Awards, and the lively script and tongue-in-cheek lyrics make this one-act musical comedy surrounding some quirky kids competing in a spelling bee lighthearted fun. But there are also tender and compassionate moments that make your heart want to burst.

Directions, invite a friend

Everyone who has ever known or been a high school misfit will see themselves in these performers. Here are five reasons to see the play:

It’s live theater so anything can happen. Each performance each night is different, which makes it so much fun. The performers start fresh every time. On opening night, a few technical glitches and those well-known jitters tripped up the fine troupe a few times but they kept going.

They break the “fourth wall.” This imaginary separation between the audience and the actors usually requires that neither step out of their roles, but the wall is shattered in two ways. First, audience members are recruited to play parts on stage, and second, the audience represents the spelling bee audience so the interaction is natural and even expected. The delightful part is watching the faces of these unsuspecting audience members as they become the punch-line. Such good natured fun!

Little Olive Ostrovsky. This sad little character played by Jessica Rahrig as a precocious but terrified and lonely competitor really earned the empathy of the audience. This is Rahig’s first Florida performance and hopefully not her last.

William Barfee. Ah, the daily trauma of a funny name. Despite constant corrections, William (Carlo Rubino Sabusap) cannot get anyone to pronounce his name correctly. “It’s Bar-FAY,” he cries. “There’s an accent aigu!” And considering how critical correct pronunciation is at a spelling bee, it seems like a conspiracy of disrespect that no one ever gets his name right. Eventually, exasperation wins out and William gives up, but not before he’s won over the audience.

The songs. From the revealing My Friend, The Dictionary to the hilarious Magic Foot to the sentimental I Love You Song, you may find yourself singing these songs all the way home.