Drama Queen

Getting mellow, flying high

Two trippy pieces of theater aimed at twentysomethings -- Reefer Madness: The Musical and the return of Toners in Time -- arrive in late July to offer alternative versions of getting high on art.

The Alternative Theatre Summer Festival at Florida International University is presenting Reefer Madness: The Musical, the inspired-by-the-movie stage spoof by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney.  The hilariously awful 1936 movie, originally titled Tell Your Children, was aimed at warning the young about the dangers of marijuana.  Turned into an exploitation film and retitled Reefer Madness, it became a cult classic during the toking '70s, and now a campy musical featuring adult humor, religious parody and scenes suggesting drug use, violence and sex. What's not to like?

Reefer Madness: The Musical previews July 21, opens July 22 and runs through Aug. 2 in  DM 150 on the FIU campus at 11200 SW Eighth St. in Miami.  It moves to ArtSouth Performing Arts Center, 240 N. Krome Ave., Homestead, Aug. 7-9.  Tickets are a wallet-friendly $10 (just $5 for the preview), and performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday.  Visit the festival web site for info.

Also returning for one more trip through time is Toners in Time, featuring the misadventure of reggaeton superstar-wannabes Tito and Che-Frio.  The Foryoucansee Theater production sold out (and then some) when it debuted last month at New Theatre, so the Foryoucansee guys (Alex Fumero, Lucas Leyva and Marco Ramirez) are bringing it back July 24-26.  The show is crazy funny, costs just $10 to see, and the free Caldas rum and Jupiña cocktails before the show probably make it even funnier.

Catch it at 8 p.m. July 24-25, 7 p.m. July 26 at New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St. in Coral Gables.  Get tickets via the Foryoucansee web site. 

Meltzer out as City's Shorts streamlines

Stuart Meltzer just wrapped up his second season as the artistic director of City Theatre, the company that presents the popular annual Summer Shorts festival at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the Broward Center.  As he found out after he went to work on Wednesday, that second season will be his last:  He was let go by Stephanie Norman (City's executive director and one of the company's three founders) and Alan Fein (board chairman and spouse of Susan Westfall, another City founder who also sits on the board).

Norman (she's in the middle in the photo, with Meltzer to the left and general manager Kerry Shiller to the right) explains that the company has a $50,000 deficit, a burden made worse by shortfalls in projected ticket sales in both Miami-Dade and Broward.  Worst hit during the recently ended 14th annual Shorts Fest was the Shorts 4 Kids program, which drew 76 percent of capacity last summer but fell below 30 percent this year -- probably, Norman guesses, because recession-related cutbacks brought far fewer school and camp groups to the theater.

Looking at the deficit, disappointing ticket sales and fundraising challenges, and anticipating a loss of $15,000 to $20,000 in grant money for next season, Norman, Fein and the board weighed numerous options and made the choice to go back to a seasonal festival coordinator rather than a year-round artistic director.

"The reviews and response from the audience were strong [this year],'' Norman says, "but we didn't hit our numbers."

So one major savings, it seems, will be Meltzer's salary.  The South Florida native, former head of theater at Gulliver Prep and a former full-time faculty member at the New World School of the Arts, was shaken by the news of his sudden unemployment but has chosen to take the high road.

"The board hired a young, energetic, creative person who was going to shake things up, and I tried to do that.  City Theatre has a terrific board in both Miami-Dade and Broward -- they care a lot,"  he says.  It's just bad luck that the economy is what it is."

Fein says that founders Norman, Westfall and Elena Wohl "did a great job taking the organization to the next level and the next.  After the 10th year, we asked whether we should just declare victory and wrap it up."  Because of support from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Carnival Cruise Lines, the Arsht Center and numerous other companies, foundations, individual donors and government grants -- and because of the festival's popularity -- it stuck around and kept growing until the economy shriveled. Fein says that he's determined to make sure the 15th Summer Shorts starts $50,000 in the black and is hoping the company's artistic process "gets more collaborative again."

Norman says of Meltzer, "He's a charming, bright, articulate, wonderfully creative soul.  Working with him has been a pleasure.  I like him very much personally...Do we agree on everything?  No. When you put on art, disagreement is just human nature.  This model didn't work.  For better or worse, it has to change."

Opening night happy hour(s)

On Friday evening, I drove up to Manalapan (a ritzy oceanside community south of Lake Worth in Palm Beach County) for the world premiere of Some Kind of Wonderful! at Florida Stage.  It was opening night, and (as with Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables) the Florida Stage folks like to make sure that special audience (which includes subscribers, board members, donors, theater staffers, actors' family members and, yes, critics) walks into the theater happy. 

So there's food before (at Actors' it's after), dessert after the show and, most importantly, free wine and/or special cocktails right up to showtime.  Now, if you've ever been a guest at an event, a wedding or a party with an open bar, you know that for many people, restraint isn't part of the experience. "Free" seems to be an irresistible magic word.

Now, I enjoyed Some Kind of Wonderful! -- just check out my review.  But if you were part of that opening night audience and listened to the crowd's reaction, you might have thought you were watching Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia! and Wicked, all rolled into one.  They hooted! They hollered!  They gave it their best woo-woo!  And many of them were at least partially plastered, or on the way there.

I don't begrudge anyone a good time.  But alcohol does tend to make inhibitions (not to mention sober reflection) melt away.  Hence the bellowing glee from some theater staffers and friends of the cast (and band) who were seated in the audience.

How do I know that some of the mad cheering wasn't coming from regular ticket buyers?  One example: Several people seated near the back of the theater to the right were giving loud props to the bass player -- by name -- and that's not something that your average audience member does.  Too hard to look up the name in the program in the dark.

Another example:  The staging for The Lion Sleeps Tonight involved inflatable palm trees, flashlights and a small toy lion.  Cheesy in the extreme.  But from the reaction -- the far-from-sober reaction -- you might think you were watching Elphaba levitate as she sings Defying Gravity.

Turning opening night into one long party isn't unusual.  Florida Stage does it, Actors' Playhouse does, so does Miami's Mad Cat.  But if you've ever wondered why reviews of an opening night show aren't always as wildly enthusiastic as the partisan, partying crowd reaction would lead you to expect, now you know. 

Acting in Spanish

The 24th edition of Miami's International Hispanic Theatre Festival gets under way on Wednesday, July 8, bringing with it the opportunity to savor lots of Spanish-language plays over a short time period.  Though some of the festival's plays will have English supertitles to help not-so-fluent theatergoers follow along, and one (Oliver Mayer's Dias y flores, by the Los Angeles-based Company of Angels Theatre) will be performed in English, most shows will demonstrate the art of acting in Spanish.

For a number of the actors in Prometeo Theatre's Otelo -- Raquel Carrió's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello-- their festival performances July 9-12 mark a milestone.  The 11 students in the first class to complete Prometeo's one-of-a-kind, two-year professional conservatory program have completed their coursework and are ready to enter the larger world -- of theater, television and movies -- of Spanish-language arts and entertainment.

The official festival performances of Oteloare at 8:30 p.m. July 9-10, with additional performances at 8:30 p.m. July 11 and 5 p.m.July 12  at Prometeo's theater on the Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami.  Tickets are $25, with discounts for students, seniors and disabled theatergoers.  Call 305-237-3262 or visit Prometeo's web site.

With those 11 actors moving on, Prometeo's director Joann Maria Yarrow is looking to fill five remaining slots for the new group of students entering the program in the fall.  The last round of auditions is July 20.  Information and application forms are on the Prometeo web site.

World premieres and a marriage musical

Further putting the lie to the idea that summer is a dead zone for South Florida theater, the next two weeks bring a pair of world premieres, plus a peppy musical revue about the pleasures and travails of marriage.

In Coral Gables, Actors' Playhouse is offering a bit of resonant escapism in its upstairs Balcony Theatre. Married Alive!, which previews July 8-9 and opens July 10 for a run through Aug. 16, follows a pair of newlyweds and a long-married couple as they deal with the stresses and joys of life, including little ones who then grow up and fly away. Carbonell Award winner Gary Marachek, Marcia McClain, Julie Kleiner and Jason Parrish are the show's stars.   Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday (Thursday-Saturday beginning July 30), 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinees 2 p.m. July 15 and July 22).   Tickets are $48 Friday-Saturday, $40 other shows, $35 for previews (student and senior discounts except Saturday-Sunday). The theater is at 280 Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. Call 305-444-9293 or visit the Actors' web site.

Broward Stage Door Theatre had planned to begin a long run of Tony Finstrom's world premiere comedy Knish Alley!on July 10, but a cast change has now pushed back the opening to July 17.  The play follows the journey of a troupe of poor Yiddish actors traveling from England to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, as the performers do menial jobs by day and put on operettas at night.  Steven Chambers, Todd Bruno, Miki Edelman, David Hemphill, Kally Khourshid, Jaime Libbert and Kevin Reilly star in a play Finstrom describes as "...a fond look back at the way things were...and might have been, on board a ship bound for a new land, a new language and the promise of a new beginning."  Performances of Knish Alley!, which runs through Aug. 30, are at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday.  Tickets are $33.25. The theater is at 8036 W. Sample Rd., Coral Springs. Call 954-344-7765 or visit the Stage Door's web site.

Clive Cholerton begins his run as the second-ever artistic director at Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company with the world premiere of Vices: A Love Story.  Created by Ilene Reid, Michael Heitzman, Everett Bradley and Susan Draus, the musical explores relationships through song and dance (and, apparently, not too many costumes).  A.C. Ciulla, who got a Tony Award nomination for his work on Footloose, is doing the choreography.  Cholerton's comment on the show:  "The story is contemporary and involves individuals in their 20s and 30s.  The music is sophisticated while remaining accessible.  Above all, the show manipulates a fine line between heartfelt human emotion and outlandish comedy."  Vices previews July 8-9, opens July 10 and runs through Aug. 2.  Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday.  Tickets are $38-$47.50.  The Caldwell is at 7901 N. Federal Hwy. in Boca Raton.  Call 1-877-245-7432 or visit the theater's web site.

It's the Toners, bro

I felt like a spy from Babyboomerland when I went to the Toners in Time show in Coral Gables on Sunday.  The creation of playwrights Marco Ramirez, Lucas Leyva and Alex Fumero  (the guys behind the new Foryoucansee Theater company),  Toners in Time was a brash creative attempt to get the club crowd to try theater.  It worked, and not just because the tickets were only $10 each.

Thanks to a combination of funny writing and acting, booming faux reggaeton, multimedia daring, and a free-flowing combo of Caldas rum and Jupiña (probably the audience's favorite sponsors), the 100 people crammed into New Theatre's too-tight-for-the-Toners quarters realized that original, Miami-centric theater can be fun.

The Miami references, everything from Turkey Point to Sunset Place to the Youth Fair, flew as fast as that Back to the Future Delorean (though the one parked outside the theater Sunday night set off the smoke alarm -- don't ask).  The script was basically in English, but if you knew Spanish and/or Spanglish, you got way more of the jokes. The acting -- by Fumero as nerdish Che-Frio, Danny Monsalve as reggaeton dreamer Tito, Giordan Diaz as skinny reggaeton heavyweight Flipi, Cristi Garcia as the has-groupie-tendencies Anisette, and Erik Fabregat as a record mogul-wannabe and a Walter Mercado doppelganger -- was the bomb.  Particularly cool was the way Foryoucansee used multimedia:  Fabregat's parts were on video (the actor himself was in the audience), and the live performers interacted with his image.

Among the lessons learned:  Don't do an original show for just three performances in a 100-seat venue.  Tighten up transitions between scenes.  Don't start serving the Caldas and Jupiña too early if you want the audience to pay attention.  And if you want anyone older than 29 in the audience, stick a little guide to the script's place-and-pop-culture references in the program.

Next episode in the Toners Live!saga goes up in August, probably Aug. 21-23, though not at New Theatre, which will be in rehearsals for The Taming of the Shrew then.  Keep checking the Foryoucansee web site for info on exactly when/where you can catch Back to Bassics, which looks to have some sort of Star Wars vibe to it.

A musical with bite

Never a company to let a little thing like a recession stand in its way, Davie's resourceful The  Promethean Theatre is trekking ahead with its plans to end summer on a light note with Cannibal! The Musical -- Live on Stage.

An adaptation of a student movie that South Park co-creator Trey Parker made while he was at the University of Colorado/Boulder, Cannibal! The Musical laughably re-tells the story of real-life gold miner Alferd Packer.  Packer traveled through the Colorado Territory in 1873 with a group of fellow miners and, after a series of dire life-threatening mishaps, ended up consuming parts of his companions.

Parker's 1996 movie, which featured himself and South Park co-creator Matt Stone, contained references to Star Trek, Les Miserables, Friday the 13th and much more.

Promethean's version, to be directed by Margaret M. Ledford, will star William Adams, Katherine Amadeo, Jeffrey Bower, Anne Chamberlain, James Carrey, Matthew William Chizever, Ken Clement, Phillip de la Cal, Mark Della Ventura, Mark Duncan, Andy Fiacco, Ed Fitzpatrick, Lindsey Forgey, Dan Gelbmann, Noah Levine, David Meulmans, Sean Muldoon, Andy Quiroga and Patrick Jesse Watkins. Whew!

Cannibal! The Musical plays the Black Box Theatre at Nova Southeastern University's University Arts Center, 3301 College Ave. in Davie, From Aug. 21-Sept. 6. (Caution to all you direction-challenged people:  Promethean uses two spaces at Nova, and this is the one in the big arts center.)  Tickets are $25 ($15 for seniors 65 and over, $10 for students 25 and younger).  For information, call 786-317-7580 or visit the Promethean web site.

Farewell to a super critic

Lois Baumoel, a theater critic for more than 50 years, passed away a week ago.  She had a wonderful, long life -- she was 93 when she died -- but losing someone special is always sad.  And Lois was special.

She worked as a critic in Cleveland, her hometown, and told me that Lois Lane in the Superman comics was named for her.  How true that is I never knew, but I loved the story.  I met Lois long after she had moved to Palm Beach County and began working as a critic for Focus magazine.  I would see this chic, tiny, white-haired lady at one opening after another, and eventually we got to talking.  And became friends.

Lois was active in the Carbonell Awards program and the American Theatre Critics' association, traveling to cities all over the United States for conferences.  I remember her tottering up a hill in San Francisco, dressed to the nines (as she always was), determined not to miss a moment of theatergoing or fun.

She formed strong, long-lasting connections with the many people whose lives she touched.  One of those was J. Wynn Rousuck -- Judy -- the longtime theater critic for the Baltimore Sun. Judy was Lois' goddaughter, and when Lois spoke of her, she glowed.

Lois also touched my son Sean's life in a special way.  I was older when Sean was born, and my parents both died before he turned nine.  He got to know Lois (who loved kids) at South Florida shows and an American Theatre Critics' meeting in Oregon.  Eventually, Lois said to him, "You can call me Grandma." And he did.

Anyone wanting to honor Lois' memory can make a contribution to the Lois Baumoel Scholarship Fund for Theater Students, Randolph College, 2500 Rivermont Ave., Lynchburg, VA 24503.  It's a fitting way to remember a truly generous, kind, lovely lady.

Orsino woos a movie star

Raúl Esparza opens this week in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central Park. The Miami-raised actor and four-time Tony award nominee is playing Orsino, and he's part of an impressive cast that includesAudra McDonald, Jay O. Sanders, Hamish Linklater, David Pittu and Julie White.  Oh, and a movie star making her New York stage debut:  Anne Hathaway.

The advance buzz on the show is terrific; some who have seen the show in previews think the Dan Sullivan-directed show is one of the best Public Theater Shakespeare productions in years.

Twelfth Night opens Thursday, June 25, and runs through July 12, should you happen to be in New York during that too-brief window of time.  Tickets are free and, clearly, in demand.  For more info, visit the Public's web site.

(Photo by Joan Marcus)

A caliente "Fuerza Bruta"

Fuerza Bruta, that surreal entertainment event unfolding almost nightly on the Ziff Ballet Opera House stage at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, is packing in the hands-on club-going types who normally wouldn't be caught dead going to the hoity-toity stuff they think of as theater.  The Arsht is again reaching out to that new young audience by releasing a new block of tickets and offering a limited number of $20 rush tickets an hour before each performance.

Performances of Fuerza Bruta, which runs through July 5, are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, with 10 p.m. late shows on Friday and Saturday.  Experiencing the production is different in myriad ways: You enter through the Opera House loading docks, chill out before and after with music, drinks and food in the G-Lounge, then get taken onto the stage where you stand, gawk, move around and occasionally brush up against the action for an hour.

Regular tickets are priced at $63.75 and $73.75.  The Arsht is located at 1300 Biscayne Blvd., but you enter through the loading docks on NE 14th St.  For info, call 305-949-6722, or visit the Arsht Center or Fuerza Bruta web sites.