THURSDAY
What: Robert Goolrick
Where: Books and Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: Free, but books available for $25.95
Contact: 305/442-4408, booksandbooks.com
The bonfire of the vanities is still raging. In The Fall of Princes, best-selling author Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife, Heading Out to Wonderful) spins an elliptical fiction about stratospheric Wall Street excesses and the inevitable bursting of its traders’ hedonistic bubbles, a familiar tale given a raw cachet of personal truth. As a critic for the Buffalo News put it in his review of The Fall of Princes: “Robert Goolrick was a Wall Street ‘prince’ of the ’80s who had it all and ended up on welfare.” That experience imbues this blunt and colorful novel, which has earned comparisons not only to Tom Wolfe’s classic Bonfire but to “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” Savor the karmic comeuppance at this live presentation/reading.
FRIDAY
What: Boca’s Ballroom Battle
Where: Boca Raton Resort & Club, 501 E. Camino Real, Boca Raton
When: 6 p.m.
Cost: $175-$2,250
Contact: 561/347-6799, scholarship.org
Boca’s Ballroom Battle is our region’s answer to “Dancing With the Stars,” in which professional hoofers from Fred Astaire Dance Studio will be paired with local personalities/dignitaries, helping them whirl and twirl on the Boca Resort dance floor while raising money for the George Snow Scholarship Fund. After months of practice, this weekend finally reveals the fruits of these intrepid participants’ labor. Attendees will enjoy a cocktail reception and then watch the following dancers compete for the coveted “Mirror Ball” trophy: Brian Altschuler (Boca Raton Regional Hospital exec), Peg Anderson (top volunteer), Elias Janetis and Chris Nichols (business owners), Frank McKinney (author and real estate “artist”), Holly Meehan (photographer and volunteer), Donna Parlapiano (AutoNation exec) and Wendy Sadusky (designing housewife). Feel free to indulge one of the more expensive tickets to this event, knowing that funds will benefit an exemplary cause; last year, the Battle raised $224,000 to send underserved students to college.
What: Free Summer Flicks
Where: Pompano Beach Amphitheatre, 1806 N.E. Sixth St., Pompano Beach
When: Dusk, circa 8 p.m.
Cost: Free
Contact: 954/519-5500, pompanobeacharts.org
If you missed out on the most recent Oscar movie season, the Pompano Beach Amphitheatre has been catching you up all summer long. Each week since July 17, the venue has been screening an Oscar-nominated movie on its Great Lawn, including such critically acclaimed classics-in-waiting as “Selma,” “Boyhood” and “Whiplash.” This Friday, don’t miss “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” director Wes Anderson’s imaginative Rube Goldberg contraption of a movie, which boasts pretty much the greatest ensemble cast in the history of film. And if you’ve seen the movie, with its cavalier changes in aspect ratio, you know it deserves to be seen only on a screen big enough to contain its ambitions. Show up early for free live music from DJs and Christian bands beginning at 5 p.m.
What: Opening night of “Bed & Sofa”
Where: Abdo New River Room at Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $30
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Released in 1927 at the height of Russian silent cinema, Abram Room’s “Bed and Sofa” addressed such scandalous subjects as polygamy and abortion, in a social satire about a husband, a wife and the wife’s lover cohabitating in a cramped working-class dwelling. The movie needed no dialogue to get its sexually liberated message across, and it was promptly banned in the U.S. and Europe. Even today, “Bed and Sofa” is rarely seen as the canonical film it was, but at least it inspired an award-winning off-Broadway musical of the same name, which has more than filled in the movie’s audio gaps. Described as a “silent movie opera” by composer Polly Pen and librettist Laurence Klavan, this “Bed & Sofa” includes charms all its own, earning its original production raves from the New York Times and Village Voice. Noah Levine, Elvin Negron and Rebeca Diaz star in the Southeastern premiere from Outre Theatre Company, which runs through Sept. 13 at the Broward Center.
What: Opening night of “Waiting for Waiting for Godot”
Where: Thinking Cap Theatre, 1501 S. Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $20-$35
Contact: 813/220-1546, thinkingcaptheatre.com
Just so we’re clear, the name of this play is not a typo. This isn’t “Waiting for Godot,” Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic classic regularly shortlisted as the best play of the 20th century. This cheeky contemporary play offers comedy of a more straightforward sort, a satire-cum-parody for theater insiders that hopefully retains some of the absurdist charms of the original “Godot.” Penned by Dave Hanson, a former joke writer for “Late Night With Chelsea Handler,” “Waiting for Waiting for Godot” is set backstage during a production run of “Waiting for Godot,” as two understudies banter about their craft while waiting to go on. Juilliard’s theater program, talent agents, David Mamet, Sanford Meisner and more are satirized in Hanson’s hip script, which helped propel the play to the top of the 2013 New York Fringe Festival. Critics have since called it “delectable” and “damn near perfect.” Thinking Cap Theatre’s production, starring Scott Douglas Wilson, Mark Duncan and Vanessa Elise, runs through Sept. 13.
SATURDAY
What: Respectable Street 28th Anniversary Block Party
Where: the 500 block of Clematis Street in West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/832-9999, sub-culture.org/respectablestreet
Once the only intimate to mid-sized venue for touring bands to visit Palm Beach County, Respectable Street has seemingly been around since the advent of guitar amplification. And every year, this historic lounge celebrates its legacy with a free end-of-summer birthday party, the definitive nightlife event of the season. This year, the club turns 28, which means no less than 28 bands will perform until well past midnight on five stages: An outdoor main stage, inside Respectable Street, the Respectable Street patio, and the patio stages of nearby Longboards and Hullaballoo. Goth-punk pioneers the Misfits (pictured) headline the main stage, and an incomparable roster of Florida indie-rock heavyweights will fill out the rest of the slots, including Astari Night, Sweet Bronco, Bonnie Riot, Chauncer, Stratolites, Deaf Poets and the Nirvana tribute act Smells Like Grunge. It will pay, literally, to arrive early: There’s an open bar between 8 and 9, and free pizza while it lasts.
SUNDAY
What: Gallagher
Where: Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: $50-$60
Contact: 561/450-6357, artsgarage.org
There was a time when Leo Gallagher, North America’s most infamous prop comedian, tried to distance himself from his trademark Sledge-O-Matic and perform sets of more traditional standup comedy. It didn’t last: Audiences demanded the visceral thrill of being pelted with chunks of cottage cheese and sauerkraut and—always his signature finish—watermelon. And so, for the 2015 jaunt by this pioneer of the primetime comedy special (he’s filmed 14 of them), foodstuffs play a major role in the marketing materials. In the tour poster, the G-man clutches a melon below the event’s tagline: the “Jokes on You Comedy Tour.” Liberals beware, however: While Gallagher’s act usually closes on apolitical food-smashing, the rest of his standup act can verge on the sort of right-wing hysteria espoused by the Victoria Jacksons and Donald Trumps of the world.
