By Greg Stepanich
Before James Cameron made his dream of 8-foot blue people on a distant planet come stunningly to life, makers of film and television had much more modest resources on hand when they wanted to bring the creatures of nightmare to screens large and small.
But that doesn’t mean their visions were any less intense, and for a generation of creators in Japan, the threat of nuclear annihilation and environmental catastrophe was very real, even if the ultimate products often proved to be laughable fodder for late-night viewing years on.
Delray Beach’s Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens has been running an exhibit since June called Kaiju! Monster Invasion! in which more than 100 vintage toys depicting some of the more alarming and puzzling beasts in the Godzilla orbit are on display.
models of cities, according to the Morikami.
Music: It took a while this summer for things to get really cooking at the Cruzan Amphitheatre outside West Palm Beach, but fans of country, Boomer, teen, emo and alt-rock will have a chance to see some of the most popular acts in those niches.
Canadian prog-rock, as the distinctive voice of bassist Geddy Lee rises above the churning polyrhythms he and his Rush bandmates have been turning out since the early 1970s. All real Tom Sawyers will doubtless be there for this stop in this durable band’s Time Machine tour.
Tickets are available through Live Nation or Ticketmaster, which have merged.
Theater: Stephen Sondheim’s fans are legion, but the composer-lyricist has now had such a long career (he turned 80 in March) that there are devotees of his post-Sweeney Todd oeuvre who might be less acquainted with earlier
scores, such as Anyone Can Whistle.
One of his very finest earlier works is Follies, a big effort from 1971 that derives some of its great musical interest from songs that evoke bygone Broadway styles that were part of the fictional Weissman’s Follies around which the plot revolves. Some of its songs are now
classics of the stage, including Losing My Mind and the survivor ballad I’m Still Here.
Caldwell Theatre artistic director Clive Cholerton produced impressive concert versions of Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods last season, and starting Oct. 1, he’ll mount four concert performances of Follies. The book of this show has always been problematic for some critics, but the score has been cherished from its debut, and the Caldwell is not likely to lose a lot by doing it in semi-stage format.
Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3. Tickets range from $25 to $35. Call 241-7432 or visit
www.caldwelltheatre.com.
Greg Stepanich is the editor/founder of the Palm Beach ArtsPaper, available online at www.palmbeachartspaper.com
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