TUESDAY
What: Opening night of “Bullets Over Broadway”
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $27-$67
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Woody Allen, having long conquered cinema, standup comedy, short stories, plays and jazz music, has most recently expanded his creative palette to include musical theater. “Bullets Over Broadway,” adapted from his award-winning 1994 crime comedy of the same name, premiered in New York in 2014 and went on to earn six Tony nominations. The musical retains the film’s Depression-era plot—a young playwright’s mob-funded Broadway debut is complicated when he’s forced to cast a gangster’s screechingly untalented moll—while integrating jukebox hits from the Jazz Age, including “Tiger Rag,” “Let’s Misbehave” and “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.” Virtuoso director-choreographer Susan Stroman helmed this vintage showbiz ship, whose touring edition plays the Kravis through Sunday.
WEDNESDAY
What: J.C. Watts
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $50.84
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
J.C. Watts is a man of firsts—a star footballer and politician who became one of the first children to attend an integrated elementary school. He attended the University of Oklahoma on a football scholarship and enjoyed a successful career in the Canadian Football League, and later became the first African-American in Oklahoma to win a statewide office seat, when elected to the state’s Corporate Commission in 1990. He would go on to serve four terms in Congress as a Republican, delivering his party’s official response to Bill Clinton’s 1997 State of the Union address. He retired in 2003 but remains an active political commentator, urging his party to better address issues affecting the African-American community. His preferred 2016 candidate, Rand Paul, is out of the race, but he’ll surely have a few pointed opinions about the remaining presidential aspirants at this lecture, part of Broward College’s annual speaker series.
What: New Order
Where: Fillmore, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
When: 8:30 p.m.
Cost: $68.50-$86.50
Contact: 800/745-3000, fillmoremb.com
In 1980, the industrious Joy Division musicians Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook didn’t wait long after the suicide of their charismatic frontman Ian Curtis before dusting off their instruments—and adding copious synthesizers—to reform as New Order just months after Curtis’ death. The group, now sans Hook, has achieved the kind of worldwide success that likely would have eluded Joy Division’s brooding post-punk style. Brighter, shinier and dancier without foregoing its former project’s hard edges and ominous lyricism, New Order recorded many of the most iconic hits of the ‘80s, like “True Faith,” “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Blue Monday,” the latter becoming the best-selling 12-inch single of all time. The group’s ninth album, last year’s “Music Complete,” surprised naysayers with a still-relevant new batch of infectious, disco-tinged electropop tunes, many of which will be played alongside old favorites and Joy Division classics at this rare tour appearance.
THURSDAY TO SATURDAY
What: Piff the Magic Dragon
Where: Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., West Palm Beach
When: Show times vary
Cost: $25
Contact: 561/833-1812, palmbeachimprov.com
Everybody needs a gimmick, and John van der Put wears his. The London-bred magician performs as Piff the Magic Dragon, where his stage apparel is a green dragon suit that looks no more elegant than a child’s Halloween costume. In it, he “breathes fire,” delivers deadpan quips, and orchestrates illusions with an unusual assistant: his Chihuahua, Mr. Piffles, adorably attired in his own dragon couture. Currently living in (where else?) Las Vegas, Piff’s idiosyncrasies have elevated him from fringe festivals and corporate retreats to Radio City Music Hall, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the 10 million viewers of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” where he lasted to the summer 2015 finale. Once you get past the green tail and bug-eyed pooch, Piff’s repertoire has a sturdy familiarity to it, relying on playing cards, levitation, vanishing objects and impossible reveals. But the tricks proceed with a Rube Goldberg-like complexity, each one a feat of dexterous engineering.
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Courtyard Cinema series
Where: Cinema Paradiso, 503 S.E. Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale
When: Sunset each day
Cost: $5 general public, $3 FLIFF members
Contact: 954/525-3456, fliff.com
Why wait until summer for outdoor movies? The weather is perfect, and so is Cinema Paradiso’s newly installed outdoor projection system, ensuring that the titles screening at the theater’s new Courtyard Cinema series will look just as good in the breezy spring air as they would in the air-conditioned auditorium. The four movies showing this weekend are gathered under a “Date Night” theme: Mike Nichols’ generation-defining masterpiece “The Graduate” (March 24), Richard Lester’s grown-up Robin Hood romance “Robin & Marian” (March 25), the frothy Broadway adaptation “Mamma Mia!” (March 26) and the iconic ‘90s hit “The Bodyguard” (March 27).
FRIDAY
What: “Grunge and Glamour”
Where: Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach
When: 6:30 p.m.
Cost: $100
Contact: 561/571-8510, artsgarage.org
Aside, perhaps, from Marco Rubio, no South Florida institution has had a rougher 2016 than Arts Garage, which has had to overcome challenges ranging from leasing to funding. More than ever, this embattled cultural touchstone for South Palm Beach County needs your help, and this fifth-annual fundraiser is the snazziest way to support it. This year’s “Grunge and Glamour” is the Garage’s first-ever casino night, which will feature blackjack, slots, poker, roulette and craps, along with catering by Sazio and live music by Latin singer Cachita Lopez and The Devil’s Music Band. The $100 donation grants attendees 5,000 in gaming chips, and prizes will be awarded at the evening’s close. All donations and proceeds will benefit children’s education and programming.
SATURDAY
What: Opening night of “A Minister’s Wife”
Where: GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $57-$60 ($42-$60 for future performances)
Contact: 866/811-4111, gablestage.org
Coral Gables’ premier theater company, GableStage, rarely produces musicals, but when it does, the results are unforgettable: The company’s dark and expressionistic “Adding Machine” won six Carbonell nominations in 2009. Director Joseph Adler is hoping for more of the same with “A Minister’s Wife,” a musical adaptation of the classic George Bernard Shaw play “Candida” with music by “Adding Machine’s” composer Joshua Schmidt. Shaw’s pointed comedy about marital manners and mores, about a young poet whose infatuation with the title character throws an aristocratic marriage into turmoil, will transform into an inventive and acclaimed chamber musical. The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout was especially effusive in his praise for the New York production, going so far as to proclaim that it “improves decisively on its source material.” Adler’s all-star cast includes Jim Ballard, Laura Hodos, Leah Sessa, Shane Tanner and Christian Vandepas, and it runs through April 24.
MONDAY, MARCH 28
What: An Evening With Sophia Loren
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $39-$165
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
One assumes Sophia Loren emerged from the womb with supermodel looks; even at 81, she remains the kind of actress that even Hollywood’s crack special-effects crews would find impossible to uglify. The teenage beauty pageant winner launched her movie career at 15—playing roles such as “Girl Kidnapped” and “Secretary of the Dictator”—and she hasn’t stopped acting for 60 years. Along the way, she made history as the first woman to win a Best Actress Award for a foreign-language movie (the classic “Two Women”), starred in the international breakthrough “Marriage Italian-Style,” and famously turned down the advances of Cary Grant, favoring Italian film producer Carlo Ponti instead. Now, the Emmy and Golden Globe winner, who has never acted onstage, will ply the boards on this national speaking tour, which promises an intimate conversation, film clips and an audience Q&A.
