Mondays are Dark

What a Coincidence!
Miami Artzine reports that The Playground Theatre's new Sandbox Series opens on Valentine's day, and the evening's offering is called Love Stories.  What are the chances?

New is New, and Old is New
The Sun-Sentinel reminds us that Louis Tyrell, founder of the late and lamented Florida Stage, is kicking off Theater at Arts Garage on each Tuesday this month.  Meanwhile, The Examiner reports that Florida Stage's old digs in Manalapan is home to The Plaza Theatre, opening this week with Donna McKechnie's one woman show My Musical Comedy Life.

Homecoming for La Cage Star
The Shiny Sheet reminds us that George Hamilton, star of screen and the current tour of La Cage Aux Folles, is a South Florida native.

Hamilton spent his late teens in Palm Beach and began his acting career at Palm Beach High School, where he earned a state prize for his starring role in Brigadoon before heading to Hollywood to try his luck in the movies.

Palm Beach High became Twin Lakes High, which in turn has become The Dreyfoos School of the Arts, which is adjacent to The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, where La Cage opens this Tuesday.

In the Green Room
Florida Theater On Stage interviews the inimitable Barbara Bradshaw.

BAA Announces Next Season at Broward Center
Florida Theater On Stage has the line up that Broadway Across America is bringing to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for their 2012-2013 season.  Million Dollar Quartet, Sister Act, Flashdance, and a re-tooled The Addams Family all lead up to the show everyone really wants to see: War Horse.  Oh, and Wicked.

Speaking of Broward Center
The next Broadway tour at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts is Billy Elliot, and Broadway World talks it up.

Painting the Town
The Palm Beach Post talks with the cast of Jupiter Theatre's production of RED.  If the play sounds familiar, GableStage's critically acclaimed production played to packed houses just a few months ago.  If you saw it there, you should see it here; it's a rare opportunity to see how different artistic visions can express the same script for us.

Perspective
The Arsht Center has been in operation a little more than five years, and Stage Directions report that they just replaced their lighting system.  Compare that to The Broward Center, which is finally raising money to overhaul their two-decades-old space; they're still using the original Colortran lighting system installed in the late eighties!

Got a Minute?
The Rake Theater fills us in on the First South Florida One-Minute Play Festival, opening February 26 at The Deering Estate in Miami.

Censor-Free Grove Commentary
The Coconut Grove Grapevine picked up on the censorship at Save the Coconut Grove Playhouse, and created a place for Grovites to leave comments about The Playhouse.

Meanwhile...
...in Palm Beach, the Royal Poinciana Playhouse is still closed.  But the owner of the property is making some wild claims in The Shiny Sheet:

■ The Playhouse is available for lease and has been since we took control of the property in 2008.

■ We have spent more than $9,000 on 14 regularly run advertisements in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal during the last two years offering the Playhouse for rent. These efforts have yielded only a few out-of-state calls.

We find this curious; every week, we do an internet search on the three Playhouses mouldering in South Florida.  And not once in the  last five years that we've been doing these searches has a single listing of for The Royal Poinciana Playhouse appeared anywhere on the internet.  It must be one amazingly crappy piece of writing if it hasn't popped up once in our approximately 260 web searches on the subject.