Drama Queen

Last chance to catch 'Broadway Unplugged'

If you love the songs of Broadway delivered by actors who were meant to sing them, you'll want to catch tonight's final performance of Broadway Unplugged.  The show is a project of The District Stage Company, a group founded by artistic director Andy Señor Jr. and other Miami talents.

 Señor, who made his professional debut playing Angel in Rent, performed the role on Broadway and in London, Asia, Los Angeles and in the U.S. national tour.  Of the dream behind District Stage, he said in a statement, "I have developed such rich relationships in the Broadway community over many years, and I'm excited to create events in Miami that feature Broadway talent and turn up the heat in the South Florida theater scene."

Broadway Unplugged has two shows Saturday evening, at 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. in the intimate black box theater at the South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211th St., Cutler Bay.

On the bill with Señor, who will sing Sarah from The Civil War, are Rebecca Naomi Jones (American Idiot and Passing Strange), Adam Chanler-Berat (Peter and the Starcatcher and Next to Normal), Matt Caplan (Rent, South Pacific and Spider-Man), Janet Dacal (In the Heights and Wonderland) and singer-songwriter Matt Nakoa.  Jared Stein is musical director of the rich, hot program.

Some of the  other numbers you'll hear tonight if you make the trek to Cutler Bay: Jones singing Murder Ballad from the Off-Broadway show of the same title; Chanler-Berat singing Smash; Dacal, who did several performances as Nina in the current Actors' Playhouse production of In the Heights when Sarah Amengual was out sick, singing songs from that show; Caplan performing This Nearly Was Mine from South Pacific; Caplan and Nakoa singing original songs.  And the cast will perform group numbers from Rent, Spring Awakening and American Idiot.

Tickets are $30, and you can get them by calling 786-573-5300 or visiting the SMDCAC web site.

'The Whole Caboodle'....and even more

This weekend is one of those when a theater lover could be driving from Miami to West Palm Beach to catch the four (yes, four) new productions that are opening -- and that's not counting the forever-popular Wicked, which has returned to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for a run through Feb. 17.

Triple Carbonell Award nominee Michael McKeever, the very successful South Florida playwright whose 1998 play 37 Postcards is going to be produced (in Russian) at the Boshoi Drama Theatre in St. Petersburg starting in June, has proven he can write it all:  comedies, dramas, full-length plays and short ones.  The Whole Caboodle, a collection of seven short McKeever plays, opens at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Studio Theatre in the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton.

Parade Productions is presenting the show, which features several plays McKeever originally wrote for Naked Stage's 24-Hour Theatre Project and City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival.  On the bill are American Gothic, Craven Tutweiler (The Real Life Story Of), Laura Keene Goes On, Knowing Best, Splat!, Love Machine,Rusted and Move On, or Sondheim at Studio 54.

In the versatile cast are Elena Maria Garcia, Clay Cartland, Jacqueline Laggy, Casey Dressler, Candace Caplin and the multitasking McKeever. Kim St. Leon is directing. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 24.  Tickets are $35 and $40.  Call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Parade Productions web site.

Also in Boca Raton, but way out west, Slow Burn Theatre is mounting yet another lavish musical, this one the rarely produced Side Show.  Kaela Antolino plays Daisy Hilton, and Courtney Poston is Violet Hilton, real-life conjoined twins who became famous in the 1930s and appeard in the Tod Browning movie classic Freaks.

Also in the large cast are Carbonell nominee Matthew Korinko, Rick Pena, Jerel Brown, Conor Walton, Karen Chandler, Krissi Johnson, Lisa Kerstin Braun, Sabrina Gore, Alisha Todd, Justin Schneyer, John Corby, Dan Carter, Michael Mena and Bruno Faria. Patrick Fitzwater is directing and choreographing the show.

The musical, by Bill Russell and Henry Krieger, runs through Feb. 10 at the West Boca Performing Arts Theatre, 12811 W. Glades Rd., Boca Raton.  Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $35 ($30 for seniors, $20 for students).  Call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Slow Burn web site.

Palm Beach Dramaworks takes a fresh look at an American classic with its production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, about a black Chicago family in the 1950s arguing over how to use an insurance payment to change its future.  Carbonell Award nominee Ethan Henry plays Walter Younger, Pat Bowie his mother Lena, in a cast that also includes Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Shirine Babb, Marckenson Charles, Dave Hyland, McLey LaFrance, Jordan Tisdale, Mekiel Benjamin, Joshua Valbrun, Lanardo Davis and Jeffrey Brazzle.  Seret Scott is the director.

Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday, through March 3.  Tickets are $55.  Dramaworks performs in the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach.  Call 561-514-4042 or visit the company's web site.

Miami's New Theatre is also tackling a classic drama beginning this week:  John Pielmeier's Agnes of God.  Christina Groom plays a novice nun accused of murdering her newborn baby.  Pamela Roza plays the psychiatrist trying to get to the heart of the shocking mystery, while Barbara Sloan is the young nun's protective Mother Superior.  Ricky J. Martinez is staging the play.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 17 (no late show Feb. 3).  Tickets are $40 ($35 Thursday and Sunday evening; $15 student rush tickets, and the first 25 students under 25 get in free opening weekend).  New Theatre performs at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, 1645 SW 107th Ave., Miami.  Call 305-443-5909 or visit the theater's web site.

Yes, it's a way busy theater weekend with many promising choices.  But get ready: Next weekend is even busier.

 

Harper out, Powers in as star of 'Looped'

Valerie Harper has forged a post-Rhodacareer playing powerful, larger-than-life women onstage -- including, in 2010, Tallulah Bankhead in Looped on Broadway.  Harper was to have reprised that performance, launching a national tour of Matthew Lombardo's play, Feb. 26-March 3 at Fort Lauderdale's Parker Playhouse.

But Harper has had to leave the show for unspecified medical treatment, though she recently revealed in her memoir I, Rhoda that she was treated for lung cancer in 2008.  She and husband Tony Cacciotti have gone home to Los Angeles, and actress Stephanie Powers will be taking over as Bankhead.

Casting former Hart to Hartstar Powers as the hard-drinking, hard-living, often outrageous Bankhead actually makes sense when you realize that Lombardo's play is about the troubles Bankhead had re-recording one particularly notable line from the 1965 movie Die, Die, My Darling: "And so Patricia, as I was telling you, that deluded rector has in literal effect closed the church to me."  Powers, you see, played the aforementioned Patricia, the almost-daughter-in-law of Bankhead's crazed character.

After the Parker, the play will moved to Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre, Boston's Majestic and Hartford's Bushnell, with other cities still to be added.

For more information, call 953-462-0222 or visit the Parker web site. The Parker is at 707 NE Eighth St., Fort Lauderdale.

Losing 'Faith' as Broadway musical closes Sunday

Even a Tony Award nomination as best musical didn't provide salvation for Leap of Faith.  The Broadway version of a 1992 Steve Martin movie will close Sunday, after 24 previews and 20 regular performances.  That's sad news for everyone involved in the show, including leading man Raúl Esparza, the over-the-title star who has been with the musical since its first workshop in 2008.

I saw Leap of Faith during its early preview period in April so that I could do a feature on Esparza, the ex-Miamian who has earned Tony Award nominations as best actor (Company) and best featured actor (Taboo) in a musical, best actor (Speed-the-Plow) and best featured actor (The Homecoming) in a play.  I had two conversations with him and got to watch some of a rehearsal at the St. James Theatre, where director Christopher Ashley, choreographer Sergio Trujillo and the rest of the creative team were reshaping the show with all sorts of changes.  To no avail.

When the show opened April 26, it got some tough reviews.  Particularly damaging to its future was the scorched-earth one from the New York Times' Ben Brantley, who called Leap of Faith "...this season's black hole of musical comedy, sucking the energy out of anyone who gets near it." Good God, y'all.

The cast and Esparza, who gave a high-energy, intricately shaded performance as faux faith healer Jonas Nightingale, didn't have a prayer.  The $15 million musical, one that had three different directors (Taylor Hackford, Rob Ashford and Ashley) during its evolution, one that won Esparza a best actor Ovation Award for his performance in the show's Los Angeles tryout, will fold its (revival) tent on Sunday.  It dies just a week after grossing a paltry $171,381 from April 30 to May 6, its average ticket price a deeply discounted $21.51.

Without a doubt, the show by composer Alan Menken, lyricist Glenn Slater, and book writers Janus Cercone and Warren Leight could have benefitted from additional months of work, had the producers followed their original plan and brought it to Broadway this fall instead of jumping into the St. James this spring after the failed revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever closed.  Would a delay have made a difference?  Maybe not.  But after Sunday, a lot of talented actors -- including a gifted and so often impressive leading man -- will be doing what actors so often find themselves doing: looking for work.

(Photo by Joan Marcus)

Actors' Playhouse adds 'Other Desert Cities'

Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables is celebrating its 25th anniversary next season, and the theater has just filled one of two blanks in its 2012-2013 schedule with a hot show: Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities. Now running on Broadway at the Booth Theatre, the play is a clear contender for numerous awards, including this year's best play Tony.

Baitz, the creator of the television series Brothers & Sisters, has written a funny, explosive play about a conflict-laced family reunion.  Returning to celebrate Christmas at the Palm Springs home of her power-player Republican parents, a writer with a history of depression reveals she has written a memoir about family matters Mom and Dad would prefer to forget.

Coming on the heels of this season's Next to Normal and last season's August: Osage County at Actors Playhouse, Other Desert Cities promises to be a major draw for South Florida acting talent next season.

Godspell opens the Actors' season Oct. 10-Nov. 4, followed by the intimate musical The Last Five Years Dec. 5-30.  Other Desert Cities kicks off 2013 with a run from Jan. 16-Feb. 10, then comes the regional premiere of the Tony-winning musical In the Heights March 6-April 7.  Ken Ludgwig's comedy The Fox on the Fairway runs May 6-June 2, 2013, with a summer show still to be announced.

Subscription prices range from $185 for previews to $435 for opening nights.  Actors' Playhouse is located at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables.  For info, call 305-444-9293 or visit the theater's web site.

 

Barry on Broadway, Lowery at Sundance

Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, the prolific author and occasional Rock Bottom Remainders rocker, has more than promoting his new comic novel Lunatics (co-written with former Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel) on the horizon.  The news from New York today is that Peter and the Starcatcher, a play-with-music based on Peter and the Starcatchers by Barry and Ridley Pearson, will begin previews at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre March 28.  Tickets for the show, which has its official opening April 15, go on sale Feb. 13 via Ticketmaster.

Adapted for the stage by Jersey Boys co-author Rick Elice, the play features a dozen actors playing 50 characters in the "prequel" to Peter Pan.  Twice extended during its spring 2011 run at Off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop, the show won the 2011 Obie Award for its two directors, Alex Timbers (Tony Award nominated for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) and Roger Rees (Tony winner for his leading performance in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby).  The two will team again to stage the show on Broadway, but the cast hasn't been announced yet.

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Barbara Lowery, a much-admired actress, director and long-time drama teacher, got a wonderful surprise last week when she learned just how much she still means to actor Rob Morrow, who was her student at Miami Sunset High School from 1978 to 1980.

Morrow, the film and television actor who was a regular on Northern Exposure and Numb3rs, nominated Lowery for the non-profit Creative Coalition's 2012 Teachers Making a Difference award.  She'll receive it on Monday at a program and luncheon in Park City, Utah, during the Sundance Film Festival.

This is a big deal for the woman who followed her five years at Sunset with 19 at Miami Dade College's North Campus.  She's one of only two teachers being honored.  The other is Sister Marionette Gibson, who taught actress Alfre Woodard.  Actor Wilmer Valderrama is serving as moderator, conducting a conversation with each teacher-actor pair, and Morrow will present Lowery with her award.

Lowery, who earned her master's degree from the University of Miami, studied at both Stella Adler and the H.B. Studio in New York. She is a Carbonell Award-winning director who has staged professional productions for the now-defunct Acme Acting Company, City Theatre's Summer Shorts, New Theatre and the Coconut Grove Playhouse.

She says of the honor, "Excited, shocked and touched are the words that come to mind.  Rob was not only obviously talented as a teenager, he was extraordinarily focused...in pursuing his dream."

How great that a now-famous student's long memory has led to celebrating the work of a superb teacher who really did make a difference in his life.

 

Big buzz on campus

Tommy Tune, Broadway superstar, has been working away quietly at the University of Miami, applying the talent and vision that helped win him nine Tony Awards to a new show about the heyday of Studio 54 .  Working with playwright Mark Saltzman, the soft-spoken Tune has channeled personal memories and impressions of his one-time hangout into Fifty*Four*Forever, a disco-driven snapshot of the late-'70s club that was, for a time, the hottest see-and-be-seen place on the planet.

Tune, Saltzman and their collaborators workshopped the piece last January at UM's Department of Theatre Arts, where chairman Henry Fonte has busily forged alliances between the worlds of professional and educational theater since assuming his post last year.  Now, Fifty*Four*Forever has reached its second phase, as a fully produced musical at the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre.  Running for only 10 days,the piece is both a buzz-generating university event and (because Tune has invited theater pals to come south to see it) a flashy version of a backers' audition for a potential New York production.

The UM show features an all-student cast, young actors who roamed the Ring before Wednesday's opening performance, chatting happily with audience members and saying just how much they have loved working with Tune.   In addition to what they've learned from their famous director and playwright Saltzman, they've watched as the production's other seasoned theater pros, including set designer Roger Hanna, costume designer Dona Granata, choreographer David Warren Gibson, musical director Greg Brown and lighting designer Eric Haugen, resurrected a place, a style and an era.

Undoubtedly, if Fifty*Four*Forever has a future life, it will continue to evolve.  The UM version runs just 70 minutes.  And as good as many of the students are, experienced professional actors would bring their own magic to the musical.  (Note that we don't review student performers unless, as in the recent Arsht Center-UM collaboration on The House of Bernarda Alba, they're being paid for their work.)

The opening-night audience didn't just like the musical: They adored it. Lots of the Ring patrons, including smiling seniors (that's senior citizens, not college seniors), looked a little let down when the show ended.  The sexy musical's disco-song mix (including Hustle, Funkytown, Love to Love You Baby, YMCA) got them moving and grooving, and they didn't want to stop.

So what about a future for Fifty*Four*Forever?  Again, because this isn't a professional out-of-town tryout, we'll pass on a review.  But as the creative team goes forward, a few thoughts:  Saltzman has chosen to write Rubell's rise-and-fall story in verse, which presented a challenge for the young actors and led occasionally to awkward/clunky rhymes. Sticking with straightforward dialogue would work just fine.

The show's one original song, Lament for Three Jersey Girls (by composer Jeffrey Saver and lyricist Stephen Cole), is terrific, theatrical and funny. More like that, please.

Tune's inspired touch is all over the show.  I'm thinking particularly of the duet between the undercover FBI agent and his sexy blond boss, the two taking athletically seductive twirls around a pole as they sing.  Muy, muy caliente.

Fifty*Four*Forever is at the Ring, 1312 Miller Dr. on the UM campus, through Nov. 19. Remaining performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  Tickets are $25 Friday-Saturday evening, $22 for other shows (discounts for UM faculty, staff, alumni and students).  For info, call 305-284-3355 or visit the Ring web site.

(Miami Herald photo of Tommy Tune and Mark Saltzman by Arkasha Stevenson; Fifty*Four*Forever photos by Kent Lantaff.)

 

 

 

 

 

Menzel, Esparza coming to Arsht Center

A pair of Broadway stars, Idina Menzel and Raúl Esparza, will give concerts this season at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

First up is Menzel, the Tony Award-winning star of Wicked -- she was the complicated green heroine Elphaba in the original Broadway production.  And she played Rachel's lookalike mom on Fox's Glee. 

With a full orchestra, Menzel will perform at 8 p.m. Dec. 3 in the Knight Concert Hall, singing rock, pop, jazz and Broadway songs.  Last spring, her hubby (Practice star Taye Diggs, whom she met when the two were in the original cast of Rent) performed his nightclub show at the Arsht's Prelude by Barton G.  Now it's Menzel's turn.

Also headed to the Arsht is Esparza, the Miami-raised star who stole the show in Babalu and performed at the Arsht's five-year anniversary celebration.  At his 8 p.m. concert Feb. 11, 2012, the four-time Tony nominee will perform the show that won him raves at Lincoln Center this past season, singing everything from Cuban music to Broadway songs.

Tickets for each concert range from $50 to $125.  They go on sale to Arsht Center members on Monday, to the public on Sept. 18.  The Arsht is located at 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.  For information (starting Monday), phone the Arsht box office at 305-949-6722 or visit the center's web site.

'Memphis' moves from stage to screen

Memphis, with a book by Joe DiPietro and score by David Bryan, won the Tony Award as best musical almost a year ago.  It's still going strong on Broadway, and it will launch a national tour -- in Memphis, where else? -- in October.  But you don't have to go to New York or wait 'til the show makes its way to South Florida to see it.

National CineMedia Fathom and Broadway Worldwide are bringing four showings of an HD version of Memphis to more than 530 movie screens around the United States, starting this Thursday and ending May 3.  And many of those screens are in South Florida.

Much like the Metropolitan Opera's Fathom moviecasts, Memphis will bring its tale of a white DJ who falls in love with a powerful black singer in segregated 1950s Memphis to theater fans who don't mind paying $20 -- more than the price of a movie ticket, but considerably less than the charge for seeing the live show on Broadway -- for a visual experience that is a hybrid of film and theater.  And you'll get to see original stars Chad Kimball and Montego Glover do their dazzling thing.

Memphis is one of the earliest splashes in a gathering wave of stage-to-screen experiences.  This is not, it should be emphasized, a movie musical based on a Broadway hit, ala Chicago or Hairspray. Those are thoroughly reworked, recast and shot as movies. This Memphis is an HD version of the show as performed on Broadway.  Which raises the question:  Is it theater? A movie? Or that hybrid?

I vote hybrid.  Before writing a feature story on The House Theatre of Chicago's The Sparrow, which winds up its run in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts this weekend, I watched a DVD of the piece shot during a Chicago performance.  Last Saturday, I went to see a live performance of it at the Arsht.  For me, that was a far superior experience -- more involving, more exciting, much more moving.  Part of the theatrical experience is the emotional give-and-take between actors and audiences, something that cannot happen in a movie theater, regardless of how strongly a moviegoer reacts to what he or she is watching.

But love it or not, the wave is coming, led by Memphis.  Screenings at various theaters are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and May 3, and at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday.  For a list of theaters and to buy advance tickets, visit the Fathom Events web site.

Revues celebrate Herman, Gershwins

The sounds of great Broadway composers -- Jerry Herman and the Gershwin brothers, George and Ira -- will fill the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center and Fort Lauderdale's Parker Playhouse through Sunday.

First up is A Grand Tour: The Songs of Jerry Herman opening tonight at 8 in Aventura.  Part of the center's Melodies and Memories series, the show features Broadway performer Sal Viviano, guest starring alongside South Florida singer-actors.  The University of Miami grad and namesake of the school's Jerry Herman Ring Theatre is the only composer-lyricist to have had three musicals that ran more than 1,500 consecutive performances.  From his smash hits, which include Mame, La Cage aux Folles and Hello, Dolly, the cast will sing everything from the rousing Before the Parade Passes By and The Best of Times Is Now to the pensive If He Walked Into My Life and Time Heals Everything.

Performances of A Grand Tour are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday and 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  Tickets are $32, and the center is located at 3385 NE 188th St., Aventura.  Call 954-462-0222 (the Broward Center's box office handles phone sales) or visit the center's web site.

Beginning Thursday, the national tour of S'Wonderful brings the music of George and Ira Gershwin to the stage of the Parker Playhouse.  Through five "mini-musicals," the revue takes theatergoers from New York in 1916 to Paris in the '30s, Hollywood in the '40s, New Orleans in the '50s to the present day.  Songs in the show include Someone To Watch Over Me, Rhapsody in Blue, Shall We Dance and Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at the Parker, 707 NE Eighth St., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $29-$49.  Call 954-462-0222 or visit the theater's web site.

(S'Wonderful photo by Carol Rosegg)