Mondays are Dark

The latest gossip: Rachel Bay Jones is going on for Patti LuPone in Women on the Verge; not a replacement, per se, but she will playing Lucia on several dates; December 3,  December 11 (both performances), January 4, and the matinee on January 5th.

The Oliver! Twist
Actors' Playhouse is presenting a musical about the trials and tribulations of an orphan boy.  But the company is also hosting a photo exhibition of children needing homes.  The Miami Herald's South Florida Arts Scene has the story.

The Children’s Trust Miami Heart Gallery is a photo exhibition featuring portraits of the children taken by top photographers. It will be on display in the lobby of the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, and will be available for viewing by non-theatergoers from noon to 2 p.m. Monday-Friday and before performances, with a special exhibit pass available at the box office.... Fifty percent of the children previously featured in the Heart Gallery have been adopted.

Basel & Babylon
The Biscayne Times explores how Zoetic Stage's upcoming premiere of South Beach Babylon ties into the the South Beach art scene and Art Basel.

The play, which follows five South Beach artists during the run-up to Art Basel, was written by a local, award-winning playwright who is part of a new repertory theater that hopes to become a driving force in the arts scene by producing homegrown productions and taking them national. What a neatly wrapped and timely cultural present.

Spirit of Jack Zink
Tiles, Mosaic Theatre's Blog announces this years' Jack Zink Spirit Awards, and the story gets picked up by the South Florida Theater Review.

And I Am Telling You, It's Not Gone
Dreamgirls is coming back to South Florida; this time it's stopping in Palm Beach. Read about it in the Shiny Sheet.

Speaking of a Dreamgirl
Avery Sommers, who played Effie at the Burt Reynold Jupiter Theatre (back when such a place existed), is opening the season of cabaret at Palm Beach's toney Colony Hotel, according to BroadwayWorld.com.

Tip of the Hat
The Naples News Stage Door linked to our review page for Mosaic's Collected stories, noting that Barbara Bradshaw and Kim Morgan Dean have both appeared in Southwest Florida, too.  The other connection?  Fort Myers' Florida Rep was going to do the show, but dropped it in favor of Sylvia.  We'd be remiss if we did not link back.  Thanks, Chris!

Today in History
Well, actually, it was Saturday in History when Florida Stage kinda sorta saved the day, according to Playbill:

2002 Without an understudy and up a creek due to the illness of the lead actress (Misty Cotton) in its staging of The Spitfire Grill, the Laguna Playhouse in California puts out an all-points bulletin to find a replacement to star in its three week-old production. New York composer James Valcq gets a frantic request from California: Are any Percys from recent regional productions willing and able to jump into the production? Valcq has the answer: New York actress Kathryn Blake, who was nominated for a 2002 Carbonell Award for her performance in the Florida Stage production. She jets to California and jumps back into the role for the rest of the run.

If You Think South Florida Schools are Bad...
... wait until you read this Playbill story about Flagler County High School banning a production of To Kill A Mockingbird.  The root of the hypocrisy of the school's principal, Jacob Oliva: the novel is part of the school's current curriculum.

Huh.
We've been kicking around the idea of creating a more detailed list of SoFla's professional theatre companies, perhaps dedicating a web page to it, but it turns out that ArtsAmerica.US has already done it.  Well, they're missing a few.  And it's a little out of date.  Same concept, though.

Brandon Takes On Opera
We don't cover opera here on the Theatre Scene.  But that doesn't mean we can't point out a review of Turandot by  Brandon K. Thorp.  It's Brandon at his gonzo-critic best.

Most operas are too long for the modern sensibility. They are full of too much unnecessary, redundant exposition. There is a great deal of posturing by singers while the orchestra elaborates on unimportant themes. So I recommend spending the blather time at the Arsht Center's Bombay Sapphire Lounge sipping on a very tall Johnny Walker Black with a splash of soda water.

BTW, Brandon, I don't know why you believe that's called a Hitchens; Scotch and soda has been around long before Christopher Hitchens put pen to paper.

...the night's most compelling singing comes from the comparably unknown Elizabeth Caballero, a young lyric soprano who has largely made her career with FGO. Her tones are limpid, creamy, Tebaldian. And she can act. As Caballero sings, you really might believe that a girl could fall in love with a man self-centered enough to sing away the night as innocents are murdered because of his googly-eyed obstinacy. Which is touching, I suppose, if a little depressing. We already knew love makes us blind. Did we need to know it makes us sociopaths as well?

It's a great read, whether or not you like opera, know anything about Turandot, or even would consider going.

It reminds me of...this.....