Drama Queen

Girl Play 2013 is a varied look at life from a lesbian perspective

The Women's Theatre Project, based for its main stage productions at the Willow Theatre at Boca Raton's Sugar Sand Park, has long included plays with lesbian themes and points of view in the work that it does.  Girl Play, a festival of short-play readings, is part of that mission, and this year's fourth edition happens June 21-23.

Sixteen short plays are included in the lineup, with eight read on Friday starting at 7:30 p.m. and eight on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.  Audiences will pick their favorites, and those plays will get a second reading on Sunday at 2 p.m.

This year's plays, chosen from more than 100 submissions, are Joan Lipkin's Are You Married?, Sharon Goldner's Based on True Events, Donna Hoke's Cake Top This, Rahti Gorfien's Diaphanous, Dian "MJ" Perrin's Dyke Tracy, Detective, Karen L. Lewis' Gallery Postmortem, Jan O'Connor's Gayby's Playdate, Ruth Dyck Fehderau's Hildie and Hilda Go for a Walk, Tabia Lau's In the Water, Penny Jackson's Palpitations, Barbara Lhota's Personal Penchants, Eileen Tull's Semi-Circles, Kathleen Warnock's Sharing the Pie, Patricia Milton's Stonehenge, Michelle F. Solomon's Taste of Thai and Carol Mullen's Zero Mile Mark. 

Directing the readings are Genie Croft, Marj O'Neill-Butler and Kim Ehly.  Ehly isn't just directing four shows -- she's also playing the lead in Dyke Tracy, Detective.  The other actors in Girl Play 2013 are Sally Bondi, Casey Dressler, Lela Elam, Noah Levine, Ann Marie Olson, Barbara Sloan, Karen Stephens, Carol Sussman, Pilar Uribe and Elayne Wilks.

The festival takes place at Art Gallery 21 at the Woman's Club of Wilton Manors, 600 NE 21st Ct., Wilton Manors.  Admission is $15 for one program, $25 for two and $35 for three.  Patrons on Saturday and Sunday will be given a parking pass because of the Stonewall Festival taking place those days (otherwise, parking would be $10).

For more info or tickets, call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Women's Theatre Project web site.

Also note:  This festival is intended to be festive, so show up at least a half-hour early for drinks, music and an art exhibit.

Slow Burn's 'Wedding Singer' is that 'feel good' show

Slow Burn Theatre, the company that boldly goes where not many others in South Florida do when it comes to musicals, has done its share of complex, artsy shows -- think this season's Sweeney Todd, for example.

But when summer rolls around, co-artistic directors Patrick Fitzwater and Matthew Korinko are perfectly happy to go for fluff and fun.  Hence, The Wedding Singer, which opens Friday, June 21, for a way-short run through June 30.

Clay Cartland, who seems to be everywhere this season (a good thing, since he's abundantly talented), gets the plum role of Robbie Hart, the Jersey guy who's a popular wedding singer circa 1985.  Yes, that's the part Adam Sandler played in the movie.  And though Sandler's a mega-gazillionaire known the world over, I'm betting Cartland will bring something special to the part. (Alas, I'll be on vacation and will miss this one, so I'm going out on a limb and speculating.)

Courtney Poston plays the waitress with the rhyming name, Julia Gulia, the gal who just might save Robbie from his mega heartbreak after he's dumped at the altar.

Also in the cast are Conor Walton, Domenic Servidio, Erica Mendez, Rick Hvizdak, Nicole Piro, Penny Mandel, Jerel Brown, Rick Peña, Ben Solmor, Jonathan Yepez, Lauren Bell, Sabrina Gore, Kaitlyn O'Neill and Alisha Todd.

The musical gets just six performances:  8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.  Slow Burn performs at the West Boca Performing Arts Theater on the campus of West Boca Raton High School, 12811 W. Glades Rd.

Tickets are $35 ($30 for seniors, $20 for students).  For info, call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the company's web site.

(Photos by Gemma Bramham)

Durang's Tony winner, McCraney play top GableStage season

A little earlier than is his custom, GableStage's Carbonell Award-winning artistic director Joseph Adler has put all the pieces of his new season puzzle together -- and the lineup for 2013-2014 is full of enticing titles.

Hot from its Tony Award as Broadway's best play last Sunday, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be produced at GableStage next spring.  Durang's smart satire of Anton Chekhov's characters and themes will run May 17-June 15, 2014.

The new season begins Nov. 23-Dec. 22 with Aaron Posner's still-running Off-Broadway hit My Name Is Asher Lev.  Based on a novel by Chaim Potok, the play focuses on a talented Jewish painter torn between his Hasidic upbringing and his dreams of artistic success.

Next is Miamian Tarell Alvin McCraney's set-in-Haiti adaptation of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.  A collaborative effort of the Royal Shakespeare Company, New York's Public Theater and GableStage, the play will be presented by GableStage at Miami Beach's Colony Theatre Jan. 11-Feb. 9.

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, a play set at Memphis' Lorraine Motel on the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, runs March 15-April 13.

After the Durang play, Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale takes audiences into the world of a 600-pound recluse and his angry teenager daughter.  That one runs July 19-Aug. 17, 2014.  The next season wraps up Sept. 20-Oct. 19, 2014, with David West Read's The Performers, a play about high school friends reconnecting at the Adult Film Awards in Las Vegas.

(And a side note: GableStage's current season isn't over yet.  David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People runs July 20-Aug. 18, with Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet closing out the 2012-2013 season Sept. 21-Oct. 20.)

GableStage is offering its new lineup to current subscribers for $225 and to new subscribers for $260, and with each subscription, theatergoers get an additional complimentary ticket to one show.  Single ticket prices will be going up for the new season, and a subscription provides a savings of nearly 40 percent.

The theater is located in Coral Gables' historic Biltmore Hotel at 1200 Anastasia Ave.  For information, call the box office at 305-445-1119 or visit the company's web site.

(Photo of the Broadway production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Carol Rosegg; photo of Tarell Alvin McCraney by George Schiavone)

The sounds of musicals fill the summer

If you're a voracious theater fan, you may be feeling that your summer calendar looks kind of light -- and you'd be right, mostly.  There aren't dozens of full-fledged productions, though we do have City Theatre's Summer Shorts, Slow Burn Theatre's The Wedding Singer, Rated P for Parenthood at Actors' Playhouse, Cock and Good People at GableStage, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Character Man at Stage Door in Coral Springs, The Facts of LIfe: The Lost Episode at Empire Stage, plus 8-Track: The Sounds of the '70s and Waist Watchers the Musical at the Plaza Theatre in Manalapan. Miami's Arsht Center will play host to two big summer shows, 8CHO and Slava's Snowshow.

There are college summer festivals at Florida Atlantic University (Side by Side by Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Man Who Came to Dinner are on the bill) and at Florida International University (featuring an alumni showcase, Bachelorette, Reverse Psychology, A Thousand Years and a Glengarry Glen Ross featuring successful FIU acting alums), plus a Broward Center anthology event celebrating five years of work by Conundrum Stages. The 28th edition of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival plays the Arsht Center's Carnival Studio Theater in July. And there are play-reading events too, notably the Women's Theatre Project's Girl Play 2013 and the ongoing Summer Theatre Fest Stages of the Sun reading series on Mondays through Aug. 26 at various theaters.

But this summer also brings something special in the form of concert presentations of musicals at two Palm Beach County theaters.

At the Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach, this month's Summer Tune-Up is already under way.  The series, which happens at 7:30 p.m. each Thursday under the guidance of artistic director Louis Tyrrell, features reading-style concert presentations of fresh new musicals.  This week it's The Longing and the Short of it, a theatrical song cycle by Daniel Maté; on June 20, it's The Hostage Song by Clay McLeod Chapman and Kyle Jarrow; and on June 27, the musical is Dani Girl by Michael Kooman and Chris Dimond.

Admission to each event is $15-$20 ($5 more at the door).  The Theatre at Arts Garage is at 180 NE First St., Delray Beach.  Call 561-450-6357 or visit the web site for more information.

More lavish concert versions of classic musicals are planned for July and August at Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach, where Dancing at Lughnasa is in its final week.  Former Caldwell Theatre Company artistic director Clive Cholerton will helm the popular Dale Wasserman-Mitch Leigh-Joe Darion musical Man of La Mancha July 10-21, then move on to Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Company, which will run Aug. 7-18.

Performances of both musicals are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, with tickets priced at $35.  For information, call 561-514-4042 or visit the theater's web site.

 

 

Actors' Playhouse rounds out its next season

Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables has finalized its six-show lineup for 2013-2014, and it's an eclectic one split 50-50 between musicals and plays.

The season begins Oct. 9-Nov. 3 with the Off-Broadway satire Ruthless! The Musical, a look at a diva of a third grader who would kill for a starring role.  Next is Sean Grennan's play Making God Laugh(Dec. 4-29), a moving comedy about empty nesters who welcome their grown kids home over holidays spanning three decades.

Peter Quilter's Broadway hit End of the Rainbow gets its regional premiere Jan. 15-Feb. 9.  The play-with-music focuses on the legendary Judy Garland as she prepares for her London comeback try in 1968.

Spamalot, the season's big musical offering, runs March 5-30.  The wildly funny Tony-winning show by Monty Python's Eric Idle and composer John Du Prez follows a decidedly different version of King Arthur and his knights as they go on a quest to find the Holy Grail.

Mark St. Germain's play Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah runs May 14-June 8, 2014.  The barbedplay focuses on literary giants F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway on a particular night in 1937 at the Los Angeles resort the Garden of Allah.

The traditional summer musical revue for 2014 is Mid-Life 2! (The Crisis Continues).  Running July 16-Aug. 17, the Baby Boomer-friendly show looks at all the joys, laughs and concerns that go along with becoming eligible for an AARP card.

Subscriptions to the season range from $185 for previews to $435 for the gala opening night performances.  The cost is $239 for Wednesday-Thursday evenings and Sunday matinees, $275 for Friday-Saturday evenings, $279 for VIP flexible/anytime tickets for premium seats at any performance.

Actors' Playhouse performs at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables.  For information, call 305-444-9293 or visit the theater's web site.

Outré Theatre goes 'BOOM!'

Boca Raton's Outré Theatre Company, which launched in November with Andrew Lippa's musical The Wild Party, is turning to an autobiographical musical by Rent creator Jonathan Larson for its next production.  tick, tick...BOOM! began as a solo show performed by Larson in 1990.  After his tragic death on the night before the first preview of Rent -- the musical that would make his reputation and win him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize -- playwright David Auburn restructured tick, tick...BOOM! as a piece for three actors.  Miami's Raúl Esparza won an Obie Award for his performance as Jon in the 2001 Off-Broadway production.

In the Outré production, Michael Westrich plays Jon, an aspiring composer whose fast-approaching 30th birthday has him questioning whether to follow or drop his dreams.  Sabrina Gore is Susan, Jon's dancer-girlfriend, and Jerel Brown is his pal Michael, a former actor who has given up showbiz for a more lucrative corporate life.

The show opens Friday and runs through June 9 at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton.  Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $30 ($25 for seniors, $20 for students).  For info, call 954-300-2149 or visit the Outré web site.

 (Outré Theatre photo of Jerel Brown, Michael Westrich and Sabrina Gore)

New Theatre's Martinez debuts 'Road Through Heaven'

Ricky J. Martinez, the artistic director at New Theatre, has been working on a trilogy of plays for a long time -- over 10 years, actually, starting before his graduation from Miami's New World School of the Arts.

The first play, Sin Full Heaven, debuted at New Theatre in 2007.  Now another one, Road Through Heaven, is getting its world premiere at New Theatre this weekend (the third, Heavenly Hand, is still to be produced).

Like the others, Road Through Heaven is part of what Martinez calls In God's Land: An Island Trilogy.  It is set on "a forgotten island" in the Caribbean, focusing on three people whose lives become entwined:  Jesus (Javier Cabrera), a 21-year-old who was orphaned at the age of 12;  Dolores (Evelyn Perez), a tough woman in her late 30s; and Victor (Martinez), a hard worker devoted to his woman and, increasingly, to the younger man.

"I wrote the plays because, as a first generation Cuban-American, I was trying to figure out who I was," says Martinez.  "I was influenced in this one by images of mules, men, the sky, the occult, unconditional love, balance and the suspension of time."

Martinez hadn't intended to play Victor, but when the production was moved to May and the actor who was originally cast became unavailable, director Margaret M. Ledford convinced the playwright to take on the role.

"I told him, 'I think you're perfect,'" she says.  "This is a very haunting script.  The magical realism takes everyday relationships and has them [ascend] onto an ethereal plane."

Martinez calls Ledford "an amazing visionary.  She sees that the play is more than lyricism. She can extract the realism too."

Road Through Heaven has its first performance at 8 p.m. Friday, then gets its press opening at 8 p.m. Saturday.  The show runs through June 2 at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, 1645 SW 107th Ave., Miami.  Regular performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday (no evening show this Sunday).  Tickets are $40 ($35 Thursday and Sunday evening).  Students 25 and younger can get $15 rush tickets, based on availability, and the deal on opening weekend is even better:  The first 25 students under 25 get in free.

For information on New Theatre and Road Through Heaven, call 305-443-5909 or visit the company's web site.

(Photo of Javier Cabrera, Evelyn Perez and Ricky J. Martinez by Eileen Suarez)

Summer Shorts plays are set

City Theatre's popular Summer Shorts festival goes into rehearsals in a little over two weeks, and now we know what plays the company -- Renata Eastlick, Irene Adjan, Ken Clement, Todd Allen Durkin, Rayner Garranchan and Vera Varlamov -- will be rehearsing.

This year's program consists of a dozen plays divided by an intermission, with Producing Artistic Director John Manzelli, Antonio Amadeo, Margaret M. Ledford and Mcley LaFrance doing the staging.

Seven of this year's plays are world premieres:  Kendra Blevins' iZombie, Holly Hepp-Galvan's Departure, David Bar Katz's Handing Down the Recipe and Mothra vs. the Casting Agent, An Allegory, Nina Mansfield's Bite Me, Susan Westfall's Feel the Tango and Steve Yockey's Serendipty.  Also part of this year's festival are Leslie Ayvazian's The Favor, Matt Hoverman's The Student, Rick Park's Please Report Any Suspicious Activity, Paul Rudnick's The Gay Agenda and Sheri Wilner's A Tall Order.

Summer Shorts begins June 7 and runs through June 30 in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center's Ziff Ballet Opera House, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.  Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, and tickets are $35.  For more information, visit City Theatre's web site.

 

Mad Cat is making a move

Fresh off its South Beach Comedy Festival debut of Jessica Farr's Charming Acts of Misery, Miami's 13-year-old Mad Cat Theatre Company is on the move.  No, not to Los Angeles, which Farr and Mad Cat founder-artistic director Paul Tei now call home.  These theater cats are setting up shop at Miami Theater Center in Miami Shores, where a full-length version of Farr's play -- retitled B**w Me (it's about fashion muse Isabella Blow, so you can fill in the asterisks yourself) -- will get its world premiere Aug. 16, running through Sept. 1.

Since its founding in 2000, Mad Cat has had a long and happy symbiotic relationship with the Miami Light Project, first working in the old Light Box space on Biscayne Boulevard, then moving to Miami Light's new venue, the Light Box at Goldman Warehouse in Wynwood.

But the company began looking for quarters that might replicate the intimacy of its first home, finding that combination in MTC's 50-seat SandBox space.

  "With a move to Miami Theater Center as our core venue, we look to return to our roots and expand our mission.  It's a prospect we are all looking...forward to.  A new homecoming," Tei said in a statement, also expressing gratitude to Miami Light Project for the organization's long time support of Mad Cat.

MTC artistic director Stephanie Ansin, wanting to grow her facility as a place where many companies and artists can work, noted, "We are doing what we can to creatively and collaboratively respond to [challenges in the arts] so we can strengthen, mobilize and preserve the theater community in South Florida."

MTC's SandBox is located at 9816 NE Second Ave. in Miami Shores.  For updates on Mad Cat's move and the production of B**w Me, visit the company's web site.

(Photos of Mad Cat artistic director Paul Tei and Erin Joy Schmidt as Isabella Blow by Mitchell Zachs )

Colin McPhillamy shares an adventure

That Colin McPhillamy is an uncommonly fine actor comes as no news to anyone who has seen him in Palm Beach Dramaworks' current show, Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King.  Or to those who saw him at Dramaworks in Copenhagen or The Pitmen Painters, or in several plays at the late, lamented Florida Stage and Promethean Theatre.

The London-born, Royal Central School-trained actor is equally adept at drama and comedy (both skills on display in his current performance), and he has also been a director, teacher, producer, playwright and short story writer.

As it happens, McPhillamy knows his way around a memoir, too.  His new book, An Actor Walks Into China, details his adventures as he struggled to produce Western theater in China and Chinese theater in London.  Frustration, humor, keen observation and a sense of the dramatic (naturally) are all part of McPhillamy's entertaining story.

On Thursday at 2:30 p.m., the actor-author will read from his book at Dramaworks' Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach.  Admission to the hour-long reading and talkback is $10, but that buys you a copy of his book.  Can't make it?  The book is also available via the actor's web site, on Amazon and at other online sites.

For information on the reading or Exit the King, call 561-514-4042 or visit the Dramaworks web site.