Drama Queen

McCraney's plays inspire a rave

Miami's Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote most of his reputation-making trilogy -- The Brother/Sister Plays -- while he was still a graduate student at the Yale School of Drama.just over two years ago.  Since then, he has gathered awards, acclaim and admiration both in the United States and Great Britain.  And the trilogy -- In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet -- has kept his ascendant career soaring.

Produced last spring at the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre, the trilogy has just opened at New York's Public Theater, where the plays are running through Dec. 13.  Though some critics had mixed reactions to the three plays, the all-important New York Times review was an out-and-out rave.

Ben Brantley began his review this way:  "Spinning stories becomes a blessed biological process in Tarell Alvin McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays, as natural and necessary as breathing.  It is said of one character in this gorgeous trilogy,..that she 'breathes like the wind.'  So do Mr. McCraney's plays, which are pumped full of a senses-heightening oxygen that leaves you tingling."

But that's not all.  A few paragraphs later, Brantley writes:  "Watching them, you experience the excited wonder that comes from witnessing something rare in the theater:  a new, authentically original vision.  It's what people must have felt during productions of the early works of Eugene O'Neill in the 1920s or of Sam Shepard in the 1960s."

Heady stuff.  But that's the kind of praise that helps make a career and win even more awards.

If you're heading to New York and want to see what the fuss is about, call 1-212-967-7555 or visit the Public's web site.  Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre is also planning new productions of the Brother/Sister Plays, this time all staged by Tina Landau (she directed In the Red and Brown Water at the McCarter and the Public; Robert O'Hara staged the other two).  The plays will run in rep Jan. 21-May 23, 2010.

Yet even though at least two South Florida artistic directors have tried (so far unsuccessfully) to get the rights to The Brothers Size, McCraney's work still hasn't been produced in the place that helped shape him.

Hear a play, listen to a story

Christopher Demos-Brown is an attorney and a playwright.  The latter career seems to be heating up, with the world premiere of his play When the Sun Shone Brighter -- about a Cuban-American Miami mayor undone by ambition, lies and sex -- scheduled at Manalapan's Florida Stage May 12-June 20, 2010. 

He's got another new play, Tropical Depression, in the works, and here's a reminder that you can experience it much sooner.  GableStage is doing a free staged reading of the script at 7:30 p.m. Monday. Stuart Meltzer directs a topnotch cast -- Barbara Bradshaw, Todd Allen Durkin, Amy McKenna, Bill Schwartz, Deborah Sherman, David Sirois and Ivette Viñas -- in the dark comedy about a family trapped by a hurricane.  GableStage, if you don't know, is in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Call 305-445-1119 or visit the company's web site for more information.

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Florida Atlantic University and Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company are collaborating again on an adult storytelling series, this time with more featured artists.  Singers and Zingers: A Musical-Comedic Storytelling Series kicks off Nov. 30 with Charlotte Blake Alston telling stories and sharing music from West Africa.  Bil Lepp, Nancy Donoval, Grammy winner Bill Harley and guitarist Heather Forest are also on the series.

All performances are at 2 and 7 p.m. Mondays at the Caldwell, 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton. Tickets are $20 and-$25 for one show, $60 and $80 for the series.  Call 1-877-245-7432 or visit the Caldwell's web site for details.

Crazy Christmas fare, an honor and the Humana Fest lineup

If you're fond of gents in dresses and unorthodox takes on Christmas classics, Cinema Paradiso has a live pre-holiday treat for you.

New Orleans-based performers Varla Jean Merman (a.k.a. Jeffery T. Roberson), Yvette Hargis and Ricky Graham are doing a wee tour of Scrooge in Rouge: A British Music Hall Christmas Carol, and they're bringing it to Cinema Paradiso Nov. 27-29.  The three tackle more than 20 characters and provide a Christmas Carol unlike any that have come before it.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at Cinema Paradiso, 503 SE Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $45 ($30 for Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival members).  Visit the FLIFF web site for info.

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Congrats to Mario Ernesto Sánchez and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival (IHTF), which was honored Oct. 30 with the FIT de Cádiz-Atahualpa del Cioppo Award.  The award recognizes the festival, which will turn 25 in July, for its championing of "the values of Ibero-American theater."

Sánchez, founder of Miami's Teatro Avante and the IHTF's longtime artistic director, picked up and award in Cadiz and remarked, "Despite the difficult time the world's economy is going through, all our sponsors, volunteers, artists, technicians, researchers, academics, programmers and audiences enable us to keep our commitment to the survival, continuity and development of our Hispanic cultural heritage, which contributes so much to everyone's quality of life."

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The playwrights and works that will be showcased at the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays -- the country's best-known new play fest -- have just been announced. 

No South Florida playwrights made this year's cut, but Deborah Zoe Laufer, whose plays End Days, The Last Schwartz and The Gulf of Westchesterall premiered at Manalapan's Florida Stage, got one of the slots with her new play Sirens(which was also to have been featured at Florida Stage this season, 'til it got pulled for further "rewrites").  It's described in the Humana Fest materials this way:  "Enchanting music, memories of passionate youth and Facebook Scrabble conspire against drifting empty-nesters Sam and Rose in this captivating comedy.  Will a 25th anniversary cruise to the magical and mythical Greek Isles rekindle their relationship?  Rose hopes so, but Sam has other ideas."

Also on the bill at this year's festival Feb. 21-March 28, 2010, are Fissures (lost and found) by Steve Epp, Cory Hinkle, Dominic Orlando, Dominique Serrand, Deborah Stein and Victoria Stewart; Ground by Lisa Dillman; Phoenix by Scott Organ; The Method Gun by Kirk Lynn and the Rude Mechs; The Cherry Sisters Revisited by Dan O'Brien (music by Michael Friedman); and Heist! by Sean Daniels and Deborah Stein.

The 34th Humana Festival takes place at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, with single ticket prices ranging from $30 to $56.  Special ticket packages for theater professionals, new play lovers, educators and students are available starting Friday.  For information, call 1-800-428-5849 or visit the Actors' Theatre web site.

(Humana Festival poster by Richard Wilkinson)

The devil's due in Coral Springs

If you're looking for something theatrical to do this weekend, one option is to watch as a sly devil explains precisely how to undermine the faith of a new convert to Christianity.

The Screwtape Letters, an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis' novel, is doing its entertaining, intellectually stimulating dirty work for three performances at Broward's Coral Springs Center for the Arts, 2855 Coral Springs Dr.  Actor Max McLean, who wrote the script with director Jeffrey Fiske, plays the exuberant senior devil, Screwtape.  From his comfortable office in Hell (where else?), he dictates his game plan to his secretary, Toadpipe (Karen Eleanor Wight),

Performances are at 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $29 to $49.  Call 954-344-5990 or visit the Coral Springs Center's web site for information.

A comic (book) sensibility hits the stage

Marco Ramirez, who's in his second year at the Juilliard School's prestigious play-writing program, is an award-winning South Florida playwright who has always loved the fantastic worlds to be found in comic books.  His newest full-length work -- Macon City: A Comic Book Play -- is rooted in that tradition, with a plot that sounds as if it could just have easily have been created as a comic book or graphic novel.

Opening Friday the 13th in a Naked Stage production at Barry University, Macon City is set in a decaying metropolis where residents are struggling to survive, their city having been abandoned by its crime-fighting superheroes.  John Manzelli is directing and doing the lighting. Antonio Amadeo has created the set, Leslye Menshouse the costumes, and Matt Corey the sound design.

In this first full production of the new work are David Hemphill, Hugh Murphy, Scott Genn, Alyn Darnay, Jasmine Fluker, Naja Corbett, Jason DeWitt and Giordan Diaz.

The play has a short run, just through Nov. 29, at the Pelican Theatre on Barry's campus, 11300 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m.Sunday (no show on Thanksgiving).  Tickets are $25 ($18 for seniors 60 and older, $12 for students).  If you want to be among the first audiences to experience Macon City, call 1-866-811-4111 or visit Naked Stage's web site.

Theater shorts

No, this isn't a post about a festival of short plays.  It's a collection of brief items about theater -- an edgy play, a benefit raffle, a rock musical premiere, enhanced Broadway touring performances -- from around South Florida.

*  Unhinged Theatre, a company of Florida International University theater grads and students, is putting on a brief run of Stephen Adly Guirgis' Den of Thieves.  Jose Grau directs Ashley Alvarez, Zunyer Garcia, Yesenia Iglesias, Michael Leon, Matthew Mur, Paul Perez and Ryan Rodriguez in a play about people who plot to steal $750,000 in drug money, only to find themselves in a life-and-death battle.

The show goes on for two weekends, at 8 p.m. this Saturday-Sunday and Nov. 21-22, at the Alper Jewish Community Center's Robert Russell Theater, 11155 SW 112th Ave., Miami.  Tickets are $15 (students $10).  Call 305-785-7377 or go to the Unhinged web site for more info.

* This Friday, Plantation's Mosaic Theatre is partnering with its host institution, The American Heritage School, to raise funds for the ongoing medical treatment of teen burn victim Michael Brewer.  The theater and school are selling raffle tickets at $2 each or three for $5, and the prizes are 45 "gently used" eMac computers and 45 tickets to Mosaic shows.  Send a check made out to American Heritage School, with "Michael Brewer" on the memo line, to Mosaic Theatre, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Suite 3121, Plantation, FL 33325 -- but remember, the drawing is this Friday.

*  In Broward Center news, 100 Years of Broadway composer Neil Berg is world premiering a new piece called The 12 on April 1, 2010, in the center's Au-Rene Theater.  Berg's rock-style score, set to a story by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle), will be performed by Broadway/rock performers including Rob Evan, Danny Zolli, Lawrence Clayton and Patti Russo.  The show is described as "the musical that begins where Jesus Christ Superstar left off."  Tickets are $25-$55 and are on sale at the box office (954-462-0222) and on the Broward Center's web site (but you have to search for it by typing in The Twelve -- it doesn't show up if you try The 12 or Berg's name).

* Also at the Broward Center, the center has joined with Broadway Across America to offer both signed and open-captioned/audio-described performances of this season's touring Broadway shows.  Signed performances communicate dialogue, lyrics and sound effects to those who understand American Sign Language.  Audio-described narration allows visually impaired theatergoers to listen to descriptions of a show's visual elements on special head sets. Open captioning provides a text displayof dialogue and lyrics to the side of the stage.

The center's current show, Legally Blonde the Musical, will ahve a signed performance at 8 p.m. Nov. 20 and an open-captioned/audio-described performance at 2 p.m. Nov. 21.  Similar performances will take place during the runs of The Phantom of the Opera, The 39 Steps (at the Parker Playhouse), In the Heights and The Color Purple.  Get tickets to the special performances by calling the box office at 954-462-0222 or calling via TTY at 954-468-3283.

Through the looking glass to Tampa

New plays are born all over the United States, but new musicals -- particularly those with Broadway aspirations (and face it, almost all of them fit that category) -- can have a tougher time finding a place to incubate.  They have larger creative teams, tend to have larger casts and are more expensive to produce than most plays.  Florida has rarely been a proving ground for new musicals, but the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and its president Judith Lisi are aiming to change all that something called the Broadway Genesis Project and a $3 million production of Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure.

With a score by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Jack Murphy, and a book by Murphy and director Gregory Boyd, the musical follows a contemporary, grown-up Alice into a New York Wonderland searching for her young daughter.  Its star is South Florida girl-turned-Broadway star Janet Dacal, whose most recent gig was in the world premiere of the Tony Award-winning In the Heights on Broadway.

Dacal, who graduated from Coral Park High School and Florida International University, isn't the only Wonderland talent with South Florida ties.  Wildhorn, who had three musicals running on Broadway 10 years ago (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Civil War), went to Hollywood Hills High School and attended the University of Miami before moving to California.

As with his other shows, Wildhorn has already released a concept recording of Wonderland: Alice's New Musical.  It features Dacal on several cuts, along with fellow cast members Jose Llana, Darren Ritchie, Nikki Snelson and Karen Mason, the Broadway-cabaret veteran who plays the Queen of Hearts. You can hear the music or buy the CD at the show's web site.

And, of course, if you're up for a road trip, you can catch the show before it moves on to Houston's Alley Theatre (where Boyd is the artistic director) and, just maybe, to Broadway.

Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure previews at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center Nov. 24-Dec. 4, then has a gala opening Dec. 5.  It will run through Jan. 3, then play the Alley Jan. 15-Feb. 14.  Performances in Tampa are Tuesday-Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.  Preview tickets range from $23.50 to $52.50, and gala tickets are $250-$450.  Regular ticket prices -- $31.50-$72.50 -- kick in on Dec. 6.

For information, call 1-800-955-1045 or check out that Wonderland web site.

Theater manners, continued

I have kvetched in this blog before -- and, given human nature, will undoubtedly do so again (many times) -- about the "manners" of some of the folks with whom we share audience space when we go to the theater.

Thanks to preshow spiels, we are reminded nearly every time we go to a play or musical of what not to do.  As in, turn off your cellphone and don't use it during the show.  No taking of photos or videos. Do not text during the show.  Do not talk during the show.  If you feel compelled to suck on a candy or a cough drop, take off that crinkly wrapper now.  Those who don't like being told what to do, particularly when they've paid upwards of $50 (or far more) for a ticket, can get their backs up all they want.  Some of these restrictions are actual union regulations, but really, adhering to them means everyone has a shot at actually enjoying the show.

Still, the preshow announcement doesn't cover all potential audience misbehavior.  I was reminded of that when I went to see Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farce in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Arsht Center last week.  The black-box theater space can be configured many ways, and for the Druid Theatre Company's production, the audience sat on not-too-comfortable chairs on risers facing the stage.  To exit, you had to walk down from the risers, approaching the stage before making a turn for the door.  And the floor, I should mention, is noisy.

So on opening night, a woman seated to my left made it through the first act and, though the guy with her bailed, she came back for the second act.  But midway through it, she decided she was bored or needed to make a call or had to visit the ladies' room or wanted to grab a drink -- who knows?  So she squeezed out to the aisle, tromped down the riser and click-clacked her way across the floor as the actors went bravely, frantically on while the audience watched the woman make her exit.

No, the moment didn't last long.  But theater is a shared experience.  And just like the candy wrappers, the cell phones and the running commentary some feel compelled to provide, walking out mid-performance is disruptive, selfish and just plain rude.

A reading and a delayed opening

Actor-director Avi Hoffman, who's currently starring with Gordon McConnell in the world premiere of Seth Rozin's Two Jews Walk Into a War at Florida Stage, is using his usual Tuesday night off to (what else?) do some theater work.

Hoffman will be at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave. in Coral Gables, for another in City Theatre's series of free readings leading up to the company's 15th annual Summer Shorts Festival next June.

Among the short plays set to be read are Reality TV Reality TV by Christopher Demos Brown, Exchange by Elena Garcia and So It Goesby Andrew Rosendorf.  All are under consideration for the June 3-27 festival at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.  For more info, call City at 305-755-9401 or visit the company's web site.

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The North Miami-based M Ensemble Company was supposed to have opened its production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean on Nov. 12.  But someone broke into the company's space at 12320 W. Dixie Hwy. and stole three air conditioners, setting back rehearsals for what is the first play (chronologically) in Wilson's 10-play Century Cycle about black life in Pittsburgh's Hill District. 

Now, M Ensemble is planning to open Gem of the Ocean on Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving, and run it through Dec. 20.  For more information, call the company at 305-899-2217 or visit the web site. 

 

 

Jump-starting the holidays

If you've been in almost any kind of store lately, you know that holiday decorations (which used to show up a few weeks before Thanksgiving) have been piled on shelves since way before Halloween.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Cirque Dreams Holidaze, a new show from Neil Goldberg and the folks that took Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy to Broadway, is bringing some early holiday cheer to Hard Rock Live at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino tonight through Sunday.

The family-oriented show, featuring a cast of aerialists, acrobats, singers, dancers and musicians, serves up everything from snowmen to toy soldiers to a 24-foot-tall "magical" Christmas tree.

Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday in the Hard Rock complex in Hollywood (just north of Stirling Road, off State Road 7/US 441).  Tickets are $35 to $65.  Call Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000 or visit the Ticketmaster web site.