The Scene for June 27, 2008

The Miami Herald:

The Herald's "Critic's Pick" for this week is Shining City at GableStage. It opened last Saturday, and runs through July 20th. No review, but Christine Dolen is a faithful blogger; a story about an up and coming playwright, and an observation of young theatre patrons exhibiting daring new behavior: illicitly shooting video of a live performance.

"Then I noticed two people capturing video -- both with the chatty kids' group. An usher stopped a teenaged boy, who cooled it until the guy walked out, then resumed shooting. The other man looked to be old enough to be the kid's grandfather."

Meanwhile, the Heralds' Jordan Levin reviews CELIA: The Life & Music of Celia Cruz, and ultimately finds it wanting:

"Backed by a fine, tight seven-piece musical ensemble led by Isidro Infante, the voluptuous Gathers not only looks like Cruz but sounds like her, with a rich, gutsy voice that does full justice to Cruz favorites...

"But the music couldn't make up for the flatness of the story."

CELIA: The Life & Music of Celia Cruz plays the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts through July 6.

The Sun Sentinel:

Jack Zink reviewed Pete 'n' Keely, Caldwell Theatre's summer offering. It's hard not to like anything with Connie Saloutos, but not, alas, impossible:

"The more Connie Saloutos and Alberto Stévans sing and swing, the more labored this former off-Broadway valentine becomes. Its fizz — and there is soooo much of it — foams limply over a series of killer vocal arrangements of songs by composer Patrick Brady and lyricist Mark Waldrop."

But wait - it's not all bad:

"In its defense, there are worse musicals you can wander through in
search of a laugh. It's worth continuing the search for the groove,
which can't be too far off."

The Sun-Sentinel's Stage Bill is fully loaded this week: who says these are the "dog days" of summer? First up, Dream A Little Dream opens tonight at Florida Stage. This is the "nearly true" musical biography of the popular 60's quartet The Mamas and the Papas. It runs through July 20th in Manalapan.

Also up is The Last Five Years, the acclaimed musical by Jason Robert Brown. This 2002 Off-Broadway favorite is being presented by The Tamarac Theatre. This is the musical that follows a relationship in two directions: the boy tells it moving forward from the beginning, the girl from their breakup, moving back towards their first meeting. This one is community theater, but it's a rarely produced show, and one worth seeing. You have every Saturday and Sunday from now until July 20th to do it.

Florida Atlantic University is running its Summer Festival Repertory. This week it's A Thurber Carnival, several of James Thurber's best stories brought to life onstage. Thurber is best know for his cartoons and commentary from the New Yorker magazine, and his classic story THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY was turned into a movie starring Danny Kaye. Also playing this week: Carousel. Evita arrives on July 11.

The Palm Beach Post:

Hap Erstein also saw Pete 'n' Keely at the Caldwell. But he seems to have enjoyed it just a little more than Jack Zink did:

"Nothing happens that is unexpected, but SaLoutos has a talent for making even the stalest comic gambits seem fresh. "

Hap also writes about Florida Stage's production of Dream a Little Dream, the aforementioned "nearly true" biography of The Mamas and The Papas.

Their story - or at least one version of it - is related in a jukebox musical, Dream a Little Dream, opening Friday evening at Manalapan's Florida Stage. Or maybe it should be considered as a whole new category of shows, the rebuttal musical.

"It's like anything else, if you ask four people who were at someplace to tell you the events that happened, you're going to get four different interpretations," notes (director Michael) Barnard. "This is mainly Denny's point of view of what transpired."

The New Times

This week, Brandon K Thorp writes on Shining City, which opened Saturday at GableStage - but not right away. About half the article is a diatribe on Paul Winthrop.

Why?

Because Ronald Reagan misquoted Winthrop

Huh?

What can we say? It's Brandon. Even he doesn't seem to know why he does it:

'It's difficult to say what, if anything, this quote has to do with Conor McPherson's Shining City.'

Does the rest of the review have anything to do with the play? Hell if I can tell. If you figure it out, please post it in the comments section.

Me, I'm hitting the sack.