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Created by Sam Levinson (Assassination Nation, The Wizard of Lies), Euphoria follows the lives of a group of high school students as they deal with friendship, love, identity, drugs, sex, and trauma. It s loosely based on an Israeli TV series of the same name. (10 55-min. episodes)
Glen File this one under the hard to watch, hard to turn away from department. If you ve seen
Kids (1995) or
Thirteen (2003), you know how disturbing it is to see children make terrible choices, and that s essentially what
Euphoria is all about, starting with Rue Bennett (Zendaya), a troubled young woman grappling with depression and self-medicating with whatever she can get her hands on. When she meets Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer), a transgender student new to Rue s school, they find they re kindred spirits and are fast friends. There s also Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), the school quarterback who has a toxic relationship with cheerleader Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie);
Sarasota Opera returns with a ‘Happy Deception’
A new Sarasota Opera season gets underway this weekend with the opening of Rossini’s one-act comic opera “The Happy Deception.” Soprano Hanna Brammer stars as the Duchess Isabella, who disappears and washes ashore in a small mining town, where she is taken in and cared for by a kindly miner, played by bass/baritone Alexander Charles Boyd (Brammer’s real-life husband). Tenor Christopher Bozeka plays her grieving husband, Duke Bertrando. The company also includes bass Joshua DeVane and baritone Joseph Beutel. Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi leads a smaller-than-usual orchestra and Martha Collins is the stage director. The production kicks off a four-show season that runs through April with shorter and more intimate productions to allow for social distancing and enhanced safety protocols. “The Happy Deception” will be presented live in the Sarasota Opera House for six performances through Feb. 25, and will later be made a
But now that performers have recovered, the theater plans to reopen the show for a month of performances Feb. 12-March 14.
The show features a live band led and a small cast of singers performing such hits as “Superstition,” “Let’s Get it On,” “I Want You Back,” “Brick House” and “September.”
The show was presented outdoors with audience members separated by at least six feet in the parking lot, and the cast members and musicians performing on the front steps of the theater building. Seating is limited to about 80 patrons per performance. Tickets will be sold in one-week increments and only in advance. In addition to other safety measures, which include requiring face masks, the theater has hired a COVID safety officer to ensure protocols are followed.
Despite the demise of a previous incarnation of the Sarasota Jewish Theater, director Carole Kleinberg is eager to prove that the community is ready for, and needs, a new, more professional version.
She admits the timing could be better – opening a theater in the middle of a pandemic adds to the challenge – but she is moving forward in leading a revival of SJT with a series of online performances that begin Jan. 31.
“There are 38,000 Jewish households in the Sarasota-Manatee area – that’s households, not individuals,” said Kleinberg, the former artistic director of the late Banyan Theater in Sarasota. “It seems to me in a community with 38,000 households and in a world where haters have been able to crawl out from under rocks and felt permission to spread their anti-Semitism and fear of others, that there should be a vehicle for spreading positive elements of Jewish history, culture, literature and humor.”
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Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. After the truly awful premiere of HBO’s drug-fueled, underage sex series
Euphoria, star Zendaya stated as a preview for the rest of the season, “Let’s just say like, the first episode is the most mild, to be honest.”
The June 23 episode “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy” proves her right with a long-awaited scene featuring more than a dozen penises.
The episode kicks off with a profile on high school football star Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi). For starters, when Nate was an 11-year-old boy, he discovered his father Cal’s (Eric Dane) homemade porn collection. Cal, as it turns out, is the man behind the pilot s statutory rape of a trans teen, and Nate found numerous videos of his dad having sex with boys and trans girls calling him Daddy. Surprisingly, Cal used this as a teaching moment for his son to encourage him to harden up and never let anyone know about his sexual insecurities.