Drama Queen

Broadway music, 'Lansky' come to Aventura

Lawrence Toppall's Mazel Musicals and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts are pairing for two series at the new Aventura Arts & Cultural Center this season.  The first, which begins at 8 tonight, is dubbed the Melodies and Memories Series.  Directed and conceived by Barry Levitt, who was once the man behind the 92nd Street Y's Lyrics and Lyricists Series in New York, the Aventura series focuses mainly on three great Broadway composers, with some movie music at its end.

First up, from tonight through Sunday, is Say it With Music: The Songs of Irving Berlin featuring Judy Scott.  Also on the series are Time After Time: The Songs of Jule Styne (Feb. 9-13), A Grand Tour: The Songs of Jerry Herman (March 9-13) and The Night Is Filled with Music: The Music of the RKO Pictures Era (April 13-17).  Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  Admission to each show is $32.

Next week brings the Double Chai Theatrical Series, kicking off with Mike Burstyn in Lansky, as in mob financier Meyer Lansky. Burstyn earned an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for playing the notorious mobster Off-Broadway in 2009. The solo show, by Richard Krevolin and Joseph Bologna, is set in Lansky's Miami Beach home.

Also on the Double Chai series are Zero Hour (Feb. 16-27), Circumcise Me (March 16-27) and Meshuggah-Nuns (April 27-May 8).

Tickets to Lansky , which runs Jan. 19-30, are $36. Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  For tickets to either series, call the Broward Center's box office at 954-462-0222 or visit the Aventura Center's web site.  The center is located at 3385 NE 188th St. in Aventura.

 

A many-layered musical benefit

The Miami-based Roxy Theatre Group is a company dedicated to teaching and showcasing talented young actors, usually in lavish large-cast musicals.  But this weekend, four Roxy teachers take the stage in a much smaller piece, a musical about creating a musical.  That would be [title of show], a musical that began in 2004 when composer-lyricist Jeff Bowen and playwright Hunter Bell decided to create something for the New York Musical Theatre Festival -- and eventually wound up on Broadway.

Featured in the short Roxy run are Andrew Rodriguez-Triana as Jeff, Nicole Quintana as Susan, Charles A. Sothers as Hunter and Monica Grimaldi as Heidi.  They'll be accompanied by pianist Douglas McCall.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, 1645 SW 107th Ave., Miami.  Tickets are just $12 ($10 for students, though the show is recommended for ages 17 and up), and proceeds benefit the Roxy Theatre Group's Teachers' Scholarship Fund.

For info, call 305-226-0030, email SusannePinedo@gmail.com or visit the Roxy web site. 

Broadway stars at Prelude

If you're still casting about for a way to spend New Year's Eve or New Year's night -- and if you don't mind parting with some serious bucks -- the entrepreneurial Barton G. Weiss (yes, that Barton G) has cooked up an enticing, sophisticated option.  Every so often, for a couple of nights each time, he's turning his Adrienne Arsht Center eatery Prelude into what must be Miami's swankiest supper club.

Actor-singer Cheyenne Jackson kicks off the series Friday and Saturday with (based on the three numbers I heard at a press preview today) a varied set of songs and stories, like the one he told about growing up poor in Idaho in a house without running water or an indoor bathroom.  Which is true, though his mom thinks that's too much sharing.

Jackson has two movies coming out in 2011 (Smile and The Green).  He's on 30 Rock and Glee, and soon will add Curb Your Enthusiasm to his TV resume.  His Broadway credits include Xanadu and Finian's Rainbow. In October, he and Michael Feinstein sold out Carnegie Hall with their show The Power of Two.

Judging from Jackson's mini-set -- Feeling Good from The Roar of the Greasepaint, Joni Mitchell's A Case of You and Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come -- Prelude is as viable a supper club (with excellent sound) as it as an upscale restaurant. 

Future evenings will feature Tony Award winner Karen Olivo (Jan. 13-15) and Hair star Gavin Creel (Jan. 21-22).

The price tag for Jackson's gig ranges from $75 for standing room (with a two-drink minimum) to $295 for dinner and show on New Year's Eve.  For info, call 305-357-7900 or go to the Arsht Center's web site.

Stage Door negotiating Miami Beach home

Derelle Bunn and David Torres, co-producers and founders of the busy Broward Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs, may soon have much more on their professional plates.  At its Wednesday meeting, the Miami Beach City Commission voted to enter into negotiations with Stage Door to operate the Byron Carlyle Theatre at 500 71st St.  Bunn and Torres, who have been working on the southward expansion of their operations since April, are thrilled.

"We would do the same kinds of things we do here," says Bunn, whose theater is opening the musical On the Town this weekend, complementing the ongoing production of Steel Magnolias.  "It would be predominantly musicals.  We'd run year-round, with a couple of dark weeks between shows."

Bunn says she and Torres will meet with Miami Beach reps Nov. 10 to negotiate a lease, hoping that the terms will be approved at the commission's end-of-November meeting.  She wants to start presenting theater on Miami Beach in January or February, working around some shows already booked into the Byron Carlyle in January.

This isn't the first time that Bunn and Torres, who launched Stage Door in 1994, would be operating a theater away from their two-theater Coral Springs base; the two ran the 26th Street Theatre in Wilton Manors for seven years.  The deal that the two are negotiating calls for Stage Door to run the Byron Carlyle for five years, with an option to renew for another five.

The expansion is, obviously, a risk.  The not-for-profit theater's current $1.5 million budget will have to grow, as will its staff.  But Bunn says she and Torres are up for the challenge.

"We're really excited," she says.  "It's a great opportunity in a beautiful area that the city is trying to revitalize, one with a great audience base."

For info on the Stage Door Theatre, call the box office at 954-344-7765 or visit the company's web site.

UM's Joshua Henry is a rising star

Joshua Henry hasn't been out of the University of Miami all that long -- he graduated in 2006 -- but the 26-year-old actor is forging an ascendant career.  He played the boyfriend of Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson in the first Sex and the City Movie, was part of the ensemble (and understudied the leading role of Benny) in the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights, and got the showy role of the buff military recruiter in American Idiot. 

But on Sunday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, Henry's life in the theater jumps to a whole new level with the opening of The Scottsboro Boys, the final musical by the team that wrote the edgy scores for Cabaret and Chicago, John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Henry stars as Haywood Patterson, one of nine young black men falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train in 1931.  The case of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the nine were called (Scottsboro was the Alabama town in which they were first tried, in front of an all-white jury after being held incommunicado), became both infamous and precedent-setting, reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, despite the fact that one of the defendants' two accusers recanted and said the rapes hadn't happened. Patterson was convicted in four separate trials, sentenced to death after each of the first three.

That's plenty of real-life drama, but Kander and Ebb (plus playwright David Thompson) take The Scottsboro Boys into another realm by styling the story as a minstrel show.  Tony Award winner Susan Stroman is the director and choreographer of a piece that composer Kander saw through to completion the 2004 death of his longtime lyricist-collaborator Ebb.

 Henry's grand opening night begins at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.  If you're New York-bound, you should know the show goes on at 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at the Lyceum, 149 W. 45th St.  Tickets are $39.50-$131.50.  Call 1-800-432-7250 or visit the Telecharge web site to order.  For more on the musical, visit the Scottsboro Boys site.

 

 

A rich glimpse at 'Follies'

While I feel uneasy about reviewing a staged reading or a concert version of anything -- the rehearsal time is too short, the actors aren't off book, etc. -- I do want to share a few quick impressions of the first performance of Follies from the Caldwell Theatre Company's Broadway Concert Series this weekend (just two performances left, so if you're a Stephen Sondheim fanatic, get in your car and head to Boca Raton for the presentation tonight at 8 or Sunday at 2 p.m.

Director Clive Cholerton, with a mighty assist from musical director Eric Alsford and lighting designer Dustin Hamilton (whose effects and projections add a vintage look to an otherwise barren stage), draws strong vocal work from a first-rate cast. Especially memorable are Stephen G. Anthony as the emotionally deadened Ben, Laura Hodos as a brittle Phyllis, Melissa Minyard as the never-got-over-Ben Sally and a way intense Wayne LeGette as Buddy.  (Side note:  When LeGette was delivering his big dark comic solo, Buddy's Blues, castmates John Debokowski [who plays young Ben] and Nicole Niefeld [Young Phyllis] were sitting behind him laughing and talking through much of the number. Not cool, kids.)

Certain numbers (I'm Still Here) lack the bite that more rehearsal could have infused into them, but for the most part, another glorious Sondheim score is strongly served; just try not to get teary when Minyard sings Losing My Mind.

Tickets are $25 and $35; the Caldwell is at 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton. Call 1-877-245-7432 or visit the web site.  But hurry.

A final side note: The Caldwell just got the rights to its fourth and final show for the 2010-2011 season -- Yasmina Reza's London/Broadway hit God of Carnage.  I'll bet a few people in Follies will be auditioning.  And they should.

'Follies' at the Caldwell

After great success with its concert versions of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods -- presentations that have just earned it a Silver Palm Award, to be presented at the closing night party of this year's South Florida Theatre Festival Oct. 25 -- the Caldwell Theater Company is again exploring the Sondheim catalog with a concert version of Follies.

With a book by James Goldman, music and lyrics by Sondheim, and original direction by Harold Prince, the 1971 Follies takes place during the reunion of former follies performers, its flashbacks full of youthful dreams, its reunion scenes full of disillusionment and regret.  Its beautiful score includes Broadway Baby, I'm Still Here and the exquisite Losing My Mind.

Again helmed by Caldwell artistic director Clive Cholerton, the concert features some of the region's finest musical theater talent: Laura Hodos, Wayne LeGette, Melissa Minyard, Stephen G. Anthony, Meghan Colleen Moroney, Jeanne Bennett, Lourelene Snedeker, Nicole Niefeld, John Debkowski, Kevin Healey, Colleen Amaya, Melanie Leibner and Joey Zangardi.

There are just four performances of Follies at the Caldwell, 7901 N. Federal Hwy. in Boca Raton.  See it at 8 p.m. tonight or Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday or Sunday.  Tickets are $25 and $35 ($10 for students).  Call 1-877-245-7432 or visit the Caldwell web site for info.

(Follies poster by Michael McKeever)

'Miami Beach' sings

Months in the making, Miami Beach -- The Musicalcomes to life this weekend thanks to Arts at St. John's artistic director David Kingery and his story-gathering collaborators. 

Kingery, coauthor Dale Penn, lyricist Doug Cureton, composers Andrew Sargent and David Cohen, and choreographer Kevin Black will premiere a 16-song piece that explores more than a century of colorful Miami Beach history via drama, comedy, dance and music.  The team culled history books, newspaper stories and the memories of just plain folks -- memories solicited in a very 21st century way on Facebook.  The subjects, they say, include "dreamers, scoundrels, rum runners, bigots, saints, criminals, politicians, millionaires and ordinary people."

Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at Arts at St. John's, 4760 Pine Tree Dr., Miami Beach.  Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door.  For tickets and info, visit www.artsatstjohns.com or www.miamibeachthemusical.com.

Actors' gets another world premiere

Actors' Playhouse, which plans to begin its 2010-2011 season with the world premiere of The Color of Desire by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz, has just filled in the last gap in its schedule with another world premiere.

See Jane Run!,

by actor-singer-writer Maribeth Graham and composer Dana P. Rowe, will premiere as Actors' summer musical July 13-Aug. 14, 2011.  The edgy musical about 21st century women is described as the story of an everywoman who is trying to decide "what makes her run, who she's running from and where she's running to."

Graham, who divides her time between South Florida and New York, is a veteran performer and three-time Carbonell Award winner who has appeared Off-Broadway and in most of the region's major theaters.  Rowe's shows include Zombie Prom, The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick, the latter two earning him Olivier Award nominations.

In between the world premieres, Actors' has another gem -- Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County -- plus productions of Oliver!, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

Six-show subscriptions range from $185 for previews to $435 for opening night. Call the box office at 305-444-9293 or visit the web site for season info.

Theater in the Gables

GableStage, Actors' Playhouse and New Theatre are the go-to professional theaters in arts-supportive Coral Gables, but two companies featuring young talent expand options for anyone who can't get enough theater.

The University of Miami's Jerry Herman Ring Theatre has just announced its 2010-2011 season, a terrific mix of classics and musicals both recent and vintage.  The lineup kicks off with the edgy satire Urinetown,about a totalitarian place in which access to bathroom facilities is strictly controlled, Sept. 29-Oct. 9.  Then comes Henrik Ibsen's endlessly fascinating Hedda Gabler  Nov. 10-20. Charles L. Mee's Big Love (a dazzling update of a tragedy by Aeschylus) runs Feb. 16-27, alternating with performances of  Aristophanes' Lysistrata Feb. 17-26. The season ends with the musical classic Carousel April 13-23.  Tickets are $16-$22 for week nights and matinees, $18-$25 Friday and Saturday.  UM faculty, staff, alumni and seniors 65 and older can get discounts, and subscribers can save 18 percent.  Call 305-284-3355 or visit the Ring web site for info.

Near the UM campus, Area Stage has extended the run of its hugely popular production of the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical Cabaret.  The large cast features students from Area's Theatre Conservatory:  Rebecca Admire, Marcos Alvarez, Ashley Arana, Alexandra Bacallao, Joseph Barbosa, Michael Barnette, Jorge Barranco, Sophie Carbonell, Marilyn Caserta, Sarah Crane, Stephanie Diggles, Katie Erwin, Manuel Jaquez, Kia Kessler, Ale Mesa, Ani Mesa, Sarah Pelaez, Mia Pennekamp, Caie Pires-Fernandes, Giancarlo Rodaz, Javier Romero, Roberto Sanchez, Diego Schaps, Ali Sousa and Natasha Zedan. The show's director, John Rodaz, and codirector, Maria Banda-Rodaz, are the couple behind Area Stage.

Performances are 8 p.m. tonight and Friday.  Tickets are $20 ($10 for students 25 and under).  Area is located at 1560 S. Dixie Hwy., Coral Gables.  Call 305-666-2078 or visit Area's web site for info.