THURSDAY
What: Cheap Trick
Where: Hard Rock Live, 5747 Seminole Way, Hollywood
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $34-$54
Contact: 800/745-3000, myhrl.com
It’s no April Fool’s prank: In 2007, the Illinois Senate officially designated April 1 as Cheap Trick Day, in honor of Rockford’s most famous power-pop exports. Cheap Trick has been active for more than 40 years, during which time it has sold more than 20 million albums and played more than 5,000 concerts. Still operated by founding members Robin Zander, Rick Nielsen, Tom Petersson and Daxx Nielsen, Cheap Trick remains one of rock ‘n’ roll’s preeminent road-warrior acts, so it’s only appropriate that its best-selling album, the seminal “At Budokan,” is a live album. It was recorded during a 1978 tour of Japan, where Cheap Trick was (and still is) revered like the Beatles were in ’68. Over in their native country, cuts like “I Want You to Want Me,” “Surrender” and “The Flame” have cemented residency in our cultural vernacular. Still, with 16 studio albums to their credit, they’re much more than their Top 40 hits, as they’ll prove on this latest South Florida engagement.
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Lachlan Patterson
Where: Palm Beach Improv, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., West Palm Beach
When: Various show times
Cost: $20, plus two-drink minimum
Contact: 561/833-1812, palmbeachimprov.com
Although he performed his first standup material at age 19, comedy wasn’t always paying the bills for Lachlan Patterson. His cycle of short-lived professions has included bartending, waiting tables, construction work, landscaping, valet parking and flower delivery. When he auditioned the second time for “Last Comic Standing,” in 2014, he was walking dogs for a living. The NBC series would open new doors for the Canadian funnyman, taking him all the way to the finals, a “Last Comic Standing” national tour and headlining shows like this one. But if comedy hadn’t worked out, he could always have been a model: Even before his success on the show, he earned a reputation as comedy’s living Ken doll, and judge Keenan Ivory Wayans referred to him on TV as a “mannequin.” He plays up his matinee-idol looks in his routines about everyday life, sexuality and gender differences, approaching familiar subjects with new and inspired insights, arrestingly cutting observations and a gift for pantomime.
What: GEMS film festival
Where: Tower Theatre, 1508 S.W. Eighth St., Miami
When: Various show times
Cost: $10-$60
Contact: gems2015.miamifilmfestival.com
So, do you have Oscar fever yet? Yeah, me neither—it’s a bit early, though a few award season hopefuls, like “Steve Jobs” and “Bridge of Spies,” have already begun trickling into theaters. For an extra-special sneak peak at the season’s other top contenders, particularly in the cutthroat race for Best Foreign Language Film, don’t miss “Gems,” a showcase of anticipated art-house titles screening months before their theatrical releases. Presented by the Miami Film Festival, the fest opens with the historical romance “Brooklyn,” starring Saoirse Ranon and Jim Broadbent (7:45 p.m. Thursday), and continues with Italian auteur Nanni Moretti’s metacinematic drama “Mia Madre,” costarring John Turturro (7:15 p.m. Friday); the fact-based drama “The Clan,” about the notorious “disappearances” in late 1970s Argentina (6:45 p.m. Saturday), and Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s patient thriller “The Assassin” (pictured), which is sure to be on many critics’ Ten Best lists for 2015 (2:45 p.m. Sunday). Eleven other regional premieres round out the festival; visit the website for all the details.
FRIDAY
What: “So You Think You Can Dance!”
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $30-$750
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
South Florida continued its dominance in producing winning hoofers on Fox’s competition series this past summer, as Miami’s Gaby Diaz captured the crown of America’s favorite dancer—joining fellow SoFla victors Ricky Ubeira (Season 11), Eliana Girard (Season Nine) and Jeanine Mason (Season Five). Diaz’s ascent to the challenging show’s winner circle is all the more impressive because she’s a tap dancer—the first tapper to win first place—and because she was rejected in her first audition last year, making the cut only after an impressive second audition in a different city. Suffice it to say that the New World Center for the Arts grad will be front and center in this hometown appearance, where her fellow Top Nine dancers from season 12 will perform favorites from the past year as well as new numbers choreographed specifically for the tour.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Miami City Ballet: Program I
Where: Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Starting at $20
Contact: 305/929-7010, miamicityballet.org
Only in a season like Miami City Ballet’s 2015-2016 slate could a program that includes “Swan Lake” be considered the most conservative dance lineup of the year. George Balanchine’s one-act version of the dark Tchaikovsky masterwork—a ballet so postmodern it was practically booed off the stage in its 1877 premiere—will cap a program that also includes Jerome Robbins’ exuberant “Fancy Free,” the boisterous 1944 ballet about sailors trying to attract women on shore leave, which went on to inspire the musical “On the Town.” “Viscera,” choreographed by the British phenom Liam Scarlett, will be re-staged after premiering at Miami City Ballet in 2012. The work lives up to its title by sensually staging its leotard-clad dancers in such a way as to suggest that “we’re watching organic processes occur inside a body,” according to aNew York Times rave of the 2012 debut.
SATURDAY
What: Anais Mitchell
Where: Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $25-$40
Contact: 561/450-6357, artsgarage.org
Any singer-songwriter who happens to be named after the provocative writer Anais Nin already has me at hello. And after listening to a few of her songs, this 34-year old chanteuse from Vermont will capture your heart, head and everything else. Part of the indie-folk revival movement that also includes Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver (whose singer, Justin Vernon, has collaborated with her), Mitchell’s stripped-down aesthetic layers her fragile, pixie bleat over spartan acoustic guitar, piano and simple percussion, so her effortlessly visual lyrics can take center stage. Her 2010 release “Hadestown” is an ambitious, post-apocalyptic concept album inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and many of her tunes are rustic narratives that touch on mortality as easily as sexuality (“Shepherd,” “Hobo’s Lullaby,” “Your Fonder Heart”). She even slips in a few wry references to politics, like the first lyric on her debut album “Hymns for the Exiled:” “I could tell you stories like the government tells lies/ah, but no one listens anymore.” We certainly are.
What: Opening night of “Big Fish”
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $45
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Daniel Wallace’s 1998 book Big Fish: A Novel of Epic Proportions has long outlived its 180 pages. A paean to our desire to believe in the unbelievable, the book inspired an Oscar-nominated Tim Burton adaptation—one of the few films of the 2000s to make yours truly weep uncontrollably by the moving climax—as well as a 2013 musical version with a book by John August and music and lyrics by the eclectic Andrew Lippa. Like its source material, the musical rotates between vibrant flashbacks of a dying man’s legendary (and fictitious?) life, and the muted present-day reality of his estranged, skeptical son. This regional premiere of “Big Fish: The Musical” arrives courtesy of Slow Burn Theatre Company. The former West Boca company will make its Broward Center seasonal debut in grand fashion, with Shane Tanner, Justin Fox-Hall and Ann Marie Olson leading a cast of 18 through this ambitious and beloved meta-fairytale. It runs through Nov. 8.
