Drama Queen

Carbonell nominations revealed

This morning brought news of the nominations for the 34th annual Carbonell Awards, South Florida's version of the Tonys or the Joseph Jefferson Awards or the Helen Hayes Awards or however you want to look at them -- though I think by now the Carbonells are as well-known nationally.  I say "news" because I'm not on the nominating/judging panel, so the long list of names was just as much of a surprise to me as to anyone who wasn't in the secret room last night where the tough decisions got made.

For a full list of those honored with nominations, check out my online story.

I'm posting a photo of Paul Tei and Gregg Weiner (and Amy Elane Anderson) in GableStage's Speed-the-Plow, because both guys have reason to smile today. Tei got nominated as best director for Broadsword at his own company, Mad Cat, and for his leading performance in Speed-the-Plow.  Weiner did even better: a best actor nod for Dumb Show at Promethean, two best supporting nominations for A Doll's Houseat Palm Beach Dramaworks and Farragut Northat GableStage, and a chance to share in a best ensemble win for Farragut North or Broadsword.  Wonder if Weiner, who played the devil in Broadsword, really does have magical powers....Just kidding, but I'm thinking he'll be buying a lot of drinks for his friends come April 12, which is when the winners will be revealed.

All in all, it's a pretty solid list of nominations, though I would have paid more attention to Rock 'n' Roll and Dead Man's Cell Phone at Mosaic, and might have pushed for The Glass Menagerie or Mauritiusat New Theatre. 

Amy London will again direct the Carbonell Awards show, which happens at 7:30 p.m. April 12 in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center.  Tickets go on sale Friday and cost $25 ($20 each for groups of 10 or more).  Check it out (on Friday) at the Broward Center's site. 

Black Friday theater sale

Taking a cue from the way retailers drive business on the day after Thanksgiving, two South Florida theaters are offering special discounted tickets.

Plantation's Mosaic Theatre is doing so well with its production of Christopher Durang's satirical Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them that it has added late Sunday shows at 7 p.m. Nov. 29 and Dec. 6; regular performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, and the show runs through Dec. 13.  You can get $5 off the usual ticket price -- which is $37 for adults, 31 for seniors 65 and up, $15 for students -- if you order from now through midnight Friday.  Call the box office at 954-577-8243 or visit the Mosaic web site and use the promo code Black Friday. The show, a contemplation of America's love affair with violence, is chock-full of sly performances, particularly from Barbara Bradshaw, Dave Corey and Erik Fabregat.  Mosaic performs in the American Heritage School's Center for the Performing Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000.

Actors' Playhousein Coral Gables hasn't yet opened its production of Sean Grennan and Leah Okimoto's two-character musical Another Night Before Christmas.  But the theater is offering $20 tickets to some performances of the show if you buy them on Black Friday.  Carbonell Award winners Irene Adjan and Ken Clement star in the show about a lonely social worker and a Santa-like homeless guy. 

The show begins previews Dec. 2, opens Dec. 4 and runs through Dec. 27 in the Balcony Theatre in the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables. Regular performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, with an additional matinee Dec. 9 and no show on Christmas Eve. Call 305-444-9293 or visit the box office Friday to get the discounted tickets. 

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.

Another way to honor South Florida theater

The annual Carbonell Awards, coveted and often controversial, have honored South Florida's theater artists for more than three decades.  But tonight during the closing party of the South Florida Theatre Festival, the much younger Silver Palm Awards will recognize a variety of outstanding work done in the region between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009.

Receiving Silver Palms for performance are Angie Radosh(pictured, as Amanda Wingfield, with Cliff Burgess as Tom), for Speaking Elephantat the Women's Theatre Project and The Glass Menagerie at New Theatre; Israel Garcia, for Mauritius and The Taming of the Shrew, both at New Theatre; Barbara Bradshaw, for The Chairsat Palm Beach Dramaworks and Dead Man's Cell Phoneat Mosaic Theatre; John Archie, forRadio Golf at Mosaic and The Whipping Manat the Caldwell Theatre Company; Gregg Weiner, for Speed-the-Plowat GableStage, The Seafarer at Mosaic and Dumb Showat The Promethean Theatre Company.

Matthew William Chizever wins the Silver Palm as outstanding new talent for his work in Cannibal the Musical at Promethean and La Cage aux Folles at Broward Stage Door Theatre.  Barbara Stein is being honored for her producing work on 1776 and Les Miserables at Actors' Playhouse.  Clive Cholerton gets a Silver Palm for his direction of Vices: A Love Story and The Whipping Man at the Caldwell; Margaret Ledford for Cannibal the Musical, Dumb Show and The Banality of Love at Promethean; and Bill Castellino for Cagney and Some Kind of Wonderful at Florida Stage.  Castellino's collaborator, Christopher McGovern, is being honored for his outstanding musical direction of both shows.

The Silver Palms are also honoring GableStage artistic director Joseph Adler for his support of the theater community and his consistently outstanding work; stage manager Lara Kinzeland her crew for their work on Palm Beach Dramaworks' Private Lives; and both Becon Television and Florida Media News for their support of theater in the region.

Also at tonight's bash, Barry Steinman and Antonio Amadeo will receive the Theatre League's annual Remy Awards for their service to the league.

League members get in free, but anyone is welcome to attend the party at Revolution Live, 200 W. Broward Blvd., Fort Lauderdale.  Admission is $20, and the fun begins at 7:30 p.m.  E-mail andie@southfloridatheatre.com to make a reservation.

Mosaic plans a rocking season

Plantation's Mosaic Theatre  has just revealed four of the five shows of its 2009-2010 season, and artistic director Richard Jay Simon looks to be mixing it up a little more than in seasons past.

Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, the theater's single drama (at least so far), kicks off the lineup Sept. 10-Oct. 4  The Broadway hit is set in Prague and Cambridge between 1968 and 1990, years of vast political change, and it focuses on a rock-loving Ph.D. candidate, his Marxist professor and a "flower child." 

Christopher Durang's recent Off-Broadway hit, Why Torture Is Wrong, and The People Who Love Them, follows the Stoppard Nov. 19-Dec. 3.  Durang's twisted, absurdist comedy mixes the fear of terrorism with the possibility that those who arouse suspicions just might be plain crazy.

The music of William Finn, composer of Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, fuels the revue Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn, which will run Feb. 25-March 21, 2010.  Next is last season's Broadway hit, Boeing Boeing, a '60s French farce about a playboy juggling an international trio of flight attendant fiancees.  That one runs April 15-May 9, with a to-be-announced final play following June 10-27.

Mosaic's final show of its current season, Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House, continues through June 21.  Featuring a trio of expertly unsettling performances by Ricky Waugh, Terry Hardcastle and Miriam Wiener, the play focuses on a pair of couldn't-be-more-different brothers,

Drew (Waugh) and Terry (Hardcastle).  Drew's what-the-hell lifestyle -- booze, drugs, dishonesty, flings with other women -- helped get him disbarred and finally landed him in rehab.  Trembling from withdrawal and the sheer effort of facing the truth sober, Drew asks the noticeably testy Terry to corroborate the childhood trauma he blames for his dysfunction:  abuse by a drifter who was Terry's idolized friend.

LaBute, who adds the drifter's flirtatious 16-year-old daughter into the mix, explores truth, deception, revenge and jealousy in a script that tantalizingly reveals plot points that really aren't so surprising if you're familiar with the playwright's style -- twisted, deliberately shocking though undeniably intriguing.  Simon gets richly faceted performances from all three actors, and set designer Sean McClelland finds an unsettling symbol of the brothers' topsy-turvy reality:  their boyhood tree house, set on its side but seemingly viewed from above.

In a Dark Dark House has performances at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $35 ($29 seniors, $15 students).  Mosaic performs at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Plantation. Call 954-577-8243 or visit Mosaic's web site for details.  June 21 is also the deadline for getting 2009-2010 subscriptions at the current rate:  $149 for adults, $128 for seniors, $64 for students.

Don't-miss plays

Lots of shows are opening this weekend: the three separate programs of City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival (Signature Shorts, Undershorts and Shorts 4 Kids) in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts;  Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House at Mosaic Theatre in Plantation; Strange Snow at the Alliance Theatre Lab in Miami Lakes.

  But two plays that won't be around much longer are worth clearing your schedule to see.  At Davie's Promethean Theatre, Gregg Weiner, Deborah L. Sherman and David Sirois are doing a deft job of eviscerating both reckless, self-adoring celebrities and tabloid "journalists," Though some of playwright Joe Penhall's plot details seem far-fetched at best, Dumb Show is thrillingly watchable, thanks in part to Margaret M. Ledford's bracing direction.  The performers' British accents are spot on as they allow us to wallow in the pleasure of observing three morally compromised  human beings doing nasty things to one another.  Dumb Show, which is anything but, ends its run this weekend, so scurry on over to the Nova Southeastern University campus where Promethean performs.

 At Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables, you have two more weekends to catch Cold Case star Danny Pino and his fine fellow actors in Carlos Lacamara's Havana Bourgeois.  The play about Cuban society's gradual erosion -- from the heady, optimistic revolutionary days of 1958 to the cruel realities of Fidel Castro's government, revealed just two years later -- unfolds within the walls of a Havana advertising agency. Under David Arisco's sure direction, James Puig, Jossie Harris Thacker, Jennifer De Castroverde, Oscar Cheda, David Perez Ribada, Joshua David Robinson and Francisco "Pancho" Padura play achievers and strivers, most of whom don't fully grasp the elusive truth until their dreams -- or their lives -- have crumbled.  Particularly for those who lived this and left Cuba (and for the people who love them), Havana Bourgeois becomesan intense, emotional theater experience.

Mosaic travels into "Darfur"

Playwright Winter Miller worked as the assistant to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, traveling with him to the border of Sudan where the two interviewed survivors of the genocide in Darfur.  Kristof won a Pulitzer Prize for his commentary about the horrors of war in the region.  Miller turned her experiences into the intense play In Darfur, which begins performances at 8 tonight (April 16) at Plantation's Mosaic Theatre.

Miller's play follows the story of a survivor named Hawa, a new widow whose husband and children have been murdered by the Janjaweed.  She courageously speaks to a New York Times reporter about the atrocities she witnessed -- and the results are disastrous.

Patrice DeGraff-Arenas (pictured in Sean McClelland photo), Reiss Gaspard, Vaughn-Rian St. James, Pilar Uribe, Keith Wade and Ricky Waugh star in the production, which is being staged by Carbonell Award-winning director Richard Jay Simon.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through May 3.  Tickets are $35 ($29 for seniors 65 and older, $15 for students). Mosaic performs at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation.  Call 954-577-8243 or visit the Mosaic web site.

Take Note

* Actors' Playhouse holds its 18th annual Reach for the Stars gala and auction at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, April 18.  Admission is $100 per person, and for that you get a gourmet dinner, open bar, entertainment, silent auction and a live auction.  Some of the big-ticket items include international business class airline tickets, jewelry, hotel packages, cruises -- well, you get the picture.  TV's Bob Soper oversees the fun, which happens at the theater, 280 Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.  Call 305-444-9293 or visit the theater's web site.

* Miami's own Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Nilo Cruz, will be developing a new play at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference (NPC) this summer.  The Color of Desire, to be directed by NPC artistic director Wendy Goldberg, is set in 1960 Havana and focuses on an American businessman who hires a Cuban actress to play his lost love.  The play, which got an earlier reading at Florida Stage, gets staged readings in Connecticut on July 11-12.

*  Multitalented former Miamian Raúl Esparza is following his much-praised performance in this season's Broadway revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plowwith something completely different.  He'll play Orsino to movie star Anne Hathaway's Viola in the free Shakespeare in the Park production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.  The play runs June 10-July 12 at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in Manhattan. Also in the cast: Tony winner and Private Practic star Audra McDonald,David Pittu, Michael Cumpsty,Hamish Linklater and Jay O. Sanders. Visit the Public Theater web site for more info.

Theater lover's heaven

 The critics I know in South Florida have been joking about this week -- some loving/dreading it -- for several months.  For whatever reason, six major South Florida companies have scheduled openings of new shows within three days this week.  For theater lovers, it's bliss.  For critics, it's "what do I see when" and "thank God gas isn't over $4 a gallon any more."

I'll tell you a little more about each of these shows as the week goes on, but here's what's opening:

M Ensemble is opening I Ain't Yo Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin, Robert Alexander's biting satire of the Harriet Beecher Stowe classic, on Thursday, April 16, at 8 p.m.

Mosaic Theatre begins performances of Winter Miller's In Darfur, about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, Thursday at 8 p.m.

New Theatre starts performances of Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius, about half-sisters who inherit trouble along with a rare stamp collection, at 8 p.m. Thursday. (That's Michaela Cronan pictured in Mauritius)

The Caldwell Theatre Company has previews Tuesday-Thursday, April 14-16, and a Friday opening of its Agatha Christie musical spoof Something's Afoot.

Broward Stage Door Theatre opens Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning A Little Night Music at 2 p.m. Thursday.

And GableStage opens its production of Nilaja Sun's No Child, with Lela Elam playing 16 characters at a public school, on Saturday, April 18, at 8 p.m.

Carbonell Awards become a "theater prom"

The 33rd annual Carbonell Awards were handed out Monday night in a moving, entertaining, raucous and altogether memorable ceremony in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.  Countless talented South Florida theater folks were involved, but the mind and vision that shaped this year's show belong to Executive Producer/Director Amy London, who did a spectacular job.  (That's Amy at left with playwright/actor/Carbonell program designer Michael McKeever.)

London's Carbonells weren't as flashy as those in recent years.  No orchestra, no Vegas/cruise ship production numbers, no out-of-town "celebs" without connections to (or knowledge of) South Florida theater.  Instead, the show was by, of and for the region's theater artists.  And it was also both more meaningful and more memorable.

Thanks to the magic of Power Point, when nominees in each category were announced, a production photo or picture of the artist at work reminded everyone of the richness of the talent that graced South Florida Stages in 2008.  Instead of random Broadway musical numbers, London's show featured a number from each of the productions vying for the best musical Carbonell.  After a terrifically witty opening number by Laura Hodos and Maribeth Graham (Carbonell-skewering lyrics set to the tune of Stephen Sondheim's Getting Married Today from Company) and the presentation of four design awards, the entire cast of GableStage's Adding Machine (except for Ken Clement, who didn't sing in the show) emerged to demonstrate why London's musical-highlighting notion was such a fine idea.

Oscar Cheda, Jim Ballard, Stacy Schwartz, Graham -- all of whom won Carbonells for their work in the show -- and the stellar "chorus" (Irene Adjan, Erik Fabregat, Lisa Manuli and Barry Tarallo) sang the heck out of one of the musical's devilishly complex numbers, as their Carbonell-winning musical director Erik Alsford accompanied them on the piano.  Later, director Joseph Adler and the show itself won Carbonells.  That musical moment was a vivid demonstration of how artistic risk can bring rewards and of how deep South Florida's talent pool has become.

  Because of the dominance of Adding Machine, GableStage had a great night. So did Mosaic Theatre, the company that American Heritage School grad Richard Jay Simon started at his Plantation alma mater and built, with amazing speed, into one of the region's powerhouse companies.  Mosaic's production of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer brought it multiple Carbonells, including best production of a play and best director for Simon.  Gregg Weiner (at right in photo with Seafarer cast mate and fellow nominee John Felix) was named best actor.  Dennis Creaghan, who beat out Felix for best supporting actor, acknowledged his cast mate by musing that maybe there should have been a recount, Felix hollered good-naturedly from the audience, "I want one."

Among the evening's other high points:  When Actors' Playhouse artistic director David Arisco received the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, he actually spoke about the honor's legendary Broadway namesake, recalling how much it had meant to have Abbott in the audience at Actors' when he staged Damn Yankees (a show Abbott co-authored and directed on Broadway in the year Arisco was born).

Among low points:  award recipients who took advantage of London's decision not to put a time limit acceptance speeches by gushing and babbling endlessly; "artists" who seem unable to speak into a microphone without dropping f-bombs; one obviously alcohol-powered actor-director who kept yelling another director's name from the audience.  The Carbonells may have turned into a happy "theater prom" this year, but they're a celebration of a professional community, not a time-trip back to high school.

The theater community will, inevitably, do plenty of Tuesday-morning quarterbacking about who did/didn't win Carbonells.  But the show itself?  London did herself and South Florida theater proud.

With Carbonells come kudos and kvetching

So the nominations for the 33rd annual Carbonell Awards have gone public, and though Monday is dark and a holiday, I can vividly picture the joy and rage flowing through South Florida's theater world.

Happiest, I'd guess, are the folks at Palm Beach Dramaworks, the small but artistically adventurous West Palm Beach company that got more nominations -- 15 -- than any other company (including several far larger theaters) in South Florida.  Primarily because of its widely-lauded production of Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs and Stephen Temperley's Souvenir (about tone-deaf opera diva wannabe Florence Foster Jenkins), Dramaworks earned smirking rights. How many of those nominations will turn into egg-shaped bronze awards on April 6 when the Carbonells are bestowed remains to be seen, but Dramaworks deserves whatever champagne its artists might be quaffing tonight.

His miserable look in the Adding Machine publicity photo aside, Oscar Cheda is probably celebrating too (ditto best actress nominee Maribeth Graham, she of the wagging finger).  Cheda got two acting nominations, one for Adding Machine, the GableStage musical that got more nominations -- 12 -- than any other show of 2008.  The dense, challenging musical paid off for artistic director Joseph Adler, who was nominated for his staging of Adding Machine but got shut out of nominations for best director of a play -- an award he has won five times since 2002.  Despite his record of artistic excellence and his winning streak, the opinionated Adler has never been shy (as if) about criticizing what he sees as flaws in the Carbonell system.  So who knows? Maybe the Carbonell judges bit back a little this year.

I wouldn't know -- though I participate in the program as a nominator, I'm not a judge, so I have no say in who gets nominated,nor in who wins.  But I'm a critic, so of course I have opinions. And so I'll share a few.

For the most part, I think the judges got it right.  Nothing on the nominees list jumps out as a what-were-they-thinking choice, though there were a few egregious omissions.  Work at most of the region's good companies (with the exception of Miami's Mad Cat, which is one of South Florida's boldest troupes) got noticed.  New Theatre's decision to focus on new plays paid off with four "best new work,"  to the misfortune of  Manalapan's Florida Stage, which has a far longer (and, I'd argue, better) track record of bringing new scripts to life (Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics at New Theatre being a glorious exception).  I might have put Jessica Goldberg's Ward 57 at Florida Stage into the new work category instead of Jules Tasca's The Mission at New Theatre, for instance. But I wasn't one of the "deciders."

Likewise, I would have included the cast of the Women's Theatre Project's Jar the Floor in the best ensemble nominations.  I would have given GableStage's Blackbird a best play nod.  I would have nominated Ken Clement as best supporting actor for Mosaic's The Seafarer.  And so on.

But as noted, I'm not a judge. So I'll be just as surprised as the rest of the theater community when the Carbonells are divved up at the Broward Center in April.  Tickets this year are cheaper, just $25 (or $20 each, if you have a group of 10), and they go on sale Feb. 27 via the Broward Center web site.  For a complete list of nominees, check the Herald online.