Solve a murder mystery at Old School Square, enjoy a world-premiere thriller at Palm Beach Dramaworks, and dive into supernatural folklore at the Morikami. Plus, Belle and Sebastian and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: “Yōkai: Scenes of the Supernatural in Japanese Woodblock Prints”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, 4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach
Cost: $12-$18 museum admission
Contact: 561/495-0233, morikami.org
A superhuman figure levitating in a lotus pose atop a horde of dragons. A feline humanoid playing a stringed instrument. A snakelike figure with fangs and a wickedly long tongue. These are just a few examples of yōkai, the blanket term for a wide range of supernatural entities inhabiting Japanese folklore. From chimeras to ghosts to shape shifters to sea serpents, the amount of yōkai is daunting, with some chroniclers estimating the number of distinct creatures to number in the thousands. Seemingly as long as the written word has existed in Japan, yōkai have haunted its page, dating back to the Shoku Nihongi, a commissioned history text completed in 797; similarly, from Japan’s Middle Ages through the Edo period and beyond, artists have found inspiration in these diverse folkloric creatures, which range from malevolent to beneficent. This exhibition, on loan from a college in Claremont, Calif., showcases 90 works on woodblock prints and printed books dating back 250 years, offering a vibrant crash course on the myriad paranormal entities that have tickled the imaginations of countless generations of Japanese. It runs through Aug. 29.
FRIDAY
What: Opening night of Vineland Place
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
Cost: $115, includes reception (later performances $95)
Contact: 561/514-4042, palmbeachdramaworks.org
Steven Dietz is one of the most prolific and produced playwrights in regional theatre, penning some 39 original plays since his 1981 debut, plus 15 adaptations of works by Bram Stoker, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and others. If there isn’t a signature Dietzian style, a la Neil Simon or David Mamet, it’s because Dietz disappears into his versatile oeuvre, whether working in comedy, thriller, tragedy or some hybrid of the above. Palm Beach Dramaworks has the privilege of world-premiering Dietz’s latest play as the closing production of its 2025-2026 season. Vineland Placecenters on a young writer who accepts a surreally fulfilling opportunity: finishing the final book of his most admired novelist, who died while writing it. But, while being bankrolled by his hero’s widow, he finds himself tangled in a dangerous mystery. The production runs through May 31.
SATURDAY
What: Ballet Palm Beach’s Giselle
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 2 and 7 p.m.
Cost: $69-$109.25
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Many of us enjoy dancing, but we’d prefer not to hoof ourselves straight to the grave. Yet that’s the punishment for adulterous men in Giselle, this 1841-vintage, full-evening ballet composed by Adolphe Adam. It’s all thanks to the Wilis, a group of spectral sisters-in-arms who torment their ex-lovers with fatal choreography from the other side. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves: Giselle is a love story as much as a ghost story. In Act I, Giselle is an effervescent peasant girl smitten with Albrecht, her aristocratic lover. When he strays, she dies from madness and heartbreak, and spends Act II in the afterlife, where her imperative for revenge clashes with her transcendent feelings of love. Giselle is a romantic tribute to dance—the activity deployed in life, death and beyond—with one of the classical repertory’s most complex and challenging roles for a lead ballerina.
What: Midnight at the Masquerade Murder Mystery Dinner
When: 6 to 10 p.m.
Where: Vintage Gymnasium at Old School Square, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach
Cost: $60
Contact: 561/243-7250, pearson@mydelraybeach.com
Attendees to this interactive spin on dinner theater can put their deductive skills to the test and channel their inner Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Benoit Blanc by solving a “murder” between cocktail hour and dessert. The setting is the Billionaires’ Club’s annual Masquerade Ball, an invite-only gathering of the world’s elite, barely recognizable under Venetian masks and feathered boas. When one of them expires in mysterious circumstances, you and your fellow-diners will exchange clues, gather information, and endeavor to solve the crime, all while enjoying libations (each ticket includes two drinks), passed hors d’oeuvres, a salad course, an entrée (a vegan alternative is available), and a dessert. Costumes are not provided, but Delray Beach Parks & Recreation, which is presenting this event, recommends tuxedos or suits, formal ball gains, jewelry, sequins, Venetian masks, and feathered accessories to best blend in.
SUNDAY
What: Belle and Sebastian
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
Cost: $64.35-$111.15
Contact: 305/949-6722, arshtcenter.org
There is neither a Belle nor a Sebastian in Belle and Sebastian, the seminal Scottish indie septet that took its name, way back in 1994, from a short story written by its longtime frontman and songwriter, Stuart Murdoch. It’s an appropriate conception for one of Europop’s most bookish outfits. For the band’s formative records, Belle and Sebastian married a minimalist, gossamer sound with literary lyrics brimming with both wit and acidity: “I could kill you, sure, but I could make you cry with these words” Murdoch declares, in “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying.” That tune is from the group’s most universally beloved LP, If You’re Feeling Sinister, which turns 30 this year. To celebrate, the band will play the album live in its entirety, alongside a suite of newer cuts that showcase its more expansive, danceable material of recent years. It marks Belle and Sebastian’s first South Florida show in more than a decade.
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