Jeff Kiltie of the Aventura Arts and Cultural Center will be appearing on this Friday's edition of South Florida Arts Beat. 
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| Broward Center Braced for TS Isaac. |
Seems you can’t swing a dead cat or any other metaphorical animal these days without knocking into a ten-minute play. How the devil did this happen? Isn’t a play supposed to be at least long enough to fill up the space between dinner and bedtime?Stragglers
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| Jolson at the Wintergarten, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, photo: C. McGovern |
Our ego makes us want to see the 2,000. It makes us want to see the 1,000 people on the email and the 1,000 Twitter followers and call them our "audience". Reality and maturity teach us the hard way that the real audience is closer to 200.Another New One
The mission statement reads this way: "What if Works offers theatre, film and music graduates a creative bridge by which to transition from an academic environment to the professional world of entertainment while sustaining the power of literature through the exploration of works that champion compassion and social justice."Their first production will be How It Hangs, by South Florida playwright Grace McKeaney. It's apparently a mini-tour of South Florida; it will play August 23-26 at the City Church of Homestead, August 29th and 30th at Roxy Performing Arts Center, and The Sunrise Civic Center on September 8.
Florida Theater On Stage turned One last week. Congratulations! We're lucky to have such a great source for reviews and in-depth news and interviews about South Florida theater. And we're looking forward to another year of great stories, and many more after that.
The Plaza Theatre opened its production of Irving Berlin Salutes America on August 16, 2012.THE PLAZA THEATRE proudly presents IRVING BERLIN SALUTES AMERICA. A show dedicated to the music of one of our greatest composers. ALEXANDERS RAGTIME BAND, CHEEK TO CHEEK, STEPPIN' OUT WITH MY BABY, GOD BLESS AMERICA, PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ, THIS IS THE ARMY MR. JONES, and many more.Kevin Black directed Melissa Boher Jacobson, John Lariviere, Missy McArdle and Jon Zimmerman. Musical Direction by Vic Glazer.
Four capable performers plus the pianist/ arranger delivered the musical equivalent of a familiar old down comforter and a hot toddy for a nightcap. There was nothing electrifying, no fresh insights for those born after World War II, just an unabashedly pleasant, entertaining evening and that’s what the audience wanted.
(Composer Irving Berlin is) served pretty well here by two genial crooners and two expressive chanteuses: John Lariviere, Jon Zimmerman, Melissa Boher Jacobson and, notably, Missy McArdle.
Three of them do a competent if not enthralling job, but it’s McArdle you’ll remember. Once a mainstay of South Florida musicals, she’s kept her hand in, but hasn’t had the high-profile she once enjoyed when she had seven Carbonell nominations. But all that experience, craft and effusive charisma combine to make her the standout.
Lariviere seduces the ladies in the front rows with a mellow “They Say It’s Wonderful,” Zimmerman skillfully weaves in and out of the written notes in “Blue Skies” and Jacobson’s lyric soprano caresses “I Got Lost In His Arms.”
Other than McArdle’s performance, this is classic old Florida theater, which won’t do much for young audiences or even middle-aged audiences, but ought to reassure their grandparents that the music of their lives was, in fact, really that damn good.Irving Berlin Salutes America plays at The Plaza Theatre through September 9, 2012.
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| Photo Credit: Palm Beach Post |
The role of Terence O'Keefe is essentially that of straight man to a cast of eccentric, colorful, and possibly dangerous characters. Under the direction of Avery Schreiber, Ron Palillo has taken great care to hone his numerous reactions to comic perfection. While Breaking Legs is a very broad and essentially silly comedy, it is the subtle nuances that make the Jupiter production so satisfying.Rest in peace, Ron. And thanks for all the laughs!
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| Naked Stage, naked. Via Facebook. |
Stylistically adventurous, a modernist ground-breaker whose controversial Electra Garrigó preceded Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist The Bald Soprano by two years, the prolific Piñera was one of the world’s great writers, a novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer as well as a dramatist.Risen Up
Florida Theater On Stage fills us in on the re-emergence of Ground Up and Rising, a small theater company that had dropped off the map they had been wandering around on for the last few years. Still it raises a lot of questions about how accurately cultural organizations, and I daresay businesses as a whole, assess the impact of developments on the economic conditions of their communities. I suspect the assumptions arts and cultural organizations make are little different from those other businesses make about the impact that will result upon the arrival of a big box retailer like WalMart, Best Buy or Home Depot.Of course, if you want to see a new play every week, you have to go to a different theater every week.
Island City Stage opened its inaugural production of The Twentieth Century Way at Empire Stage on August 9, 2012The Twentieth Century Way was awarded the 2011 PEN Award for Drama and the 2010 NY International Fringe Festival Award for Overall Excellence in Production of a Play, garnering critical accolades from publications like the New York Times and Variety. Based on a little-known incident in history, this theatrical thrill ride explores the collision of reality and fantasy as two actors, auditioning for a film, end up juggling roles that eventually lead to entrapment of homosexuals for "social vagrancy" in the Long Beach, California of 1914..Michael Leeds directed a cast that featured Michael Westrich and Clay Cartland.
Now at Empire Stage, Twentieth Century Way is a dense, dizzying piece of absurdist theater, intellectually challenging and imbued with more layers than Tetris.
The direction, by Michael Leeds, is frequently spellbinding, keeping spectators on their toes with every surprise, double-cross, and rule-break. Hunched over and downcast, Westrich conveys his character's pool of untapped longing, and Cartland cuts a towering figure of sociopathic confidence. He's a tragic cipher hidden under multiple personalities, and it's impossible to take your eyes off him. Neither actor nails all his myriad accents, but it doesn't matter. Their chemistry is palpable, pulsating with homoerotic subtext that comes to a head in the play's final, revealing twist.Ron Levitt reviewed for ENV Magazine:
Mix in two of the finest performances of the year with a disturbing-but challenging production, astute direction and an adult script built on historic fact aimed at a particular segment of society, and one should have a winner. That’s exactly what appears to be the potential for The Twentieth Century Way making its Florida premiere here as the initial offering of the restructured Island City Stage in cooperation with Empire Stage.
Director Michael Leeds – with gusto – takes his audience on this historic trip with so many questionable stops.Bill Hirschman reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:
This initial production by Island City Stage, the resurrected phoenix that was once Rising Action Theatre, is an audacious and ambitious offering in which actors Clay Cartland and Michael Westrich slip in and out of a dozen roles under the direction of Michael Leeds.
The play is gloriously theatrical as the duo nimbly shuttle among characterizations like the supernumeraries in The 39 Steps. But the hard truth is that they get so involved in the technical demands of the transformations that they aren’t precise enough to clearly deliver the thematic subtleties of Tom Jacobson’s Byzantine script. Another few days of shakedown seem called for.
...the work of the actors and Leeds is admirable as they encompass vaudevillian comedy, streaks of pathos and stretches of Beckett. Westrich is not terribly persuasive or engaging in his role as the nasal stolid Mr. Brown, but he skillfully and assuredly disappears into an ever-morphing collection of distinct characters portrayed by Mr. Brown.
Cartland devours the showier role as the aggressive Mr. Warren. Cartland’s comic chops get a workout as Warren gleefully inhabits a parade of intentionally cartoonish characters with a United Nations-worth of broad accents.
Even with its flaws, the intriguing The Twentieth Century Way is welcome if only as the vehicle that returns Artistic Director Andy Rogow and a company with the mission of focusing on LGBT-themed theater. A nod, too, to Empire Stage for agreeing to be a co-producer and providing Island City a temporary home on the tiny vest-pocket stage in Fort Lauderdale.Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:
There’s a new theater company on the South Florida scene, and if its debut production is any indication, Island City Stage will be a troupe worth watching.
Each actor in the Island Stage plays numerous parts: the auditioning actors, cops, an investigative reporter and his crusty editor, a lawyer and various vividly drawn victims of Brown and Warren’s scheme. The challenge for director Michael Leeds and the two performers is to keep the story clear as the play hurtles forward, its distinctive characters appearing, vanishing and reappearing. Quite artfully, they succeed.Roger Martin reviewed for miamiartzine:
Cartland and Westrich employ shifting accents (you’ll hear guys from Brooklyn, Chicago, Minnesota, Scotland, Germany and more), changing costume pieces and altered physicality to portray the men perpetrating, caught up in, covering or dealing with the fallout from the entrapment scheme. Both give fearless, fine performances.
The Twentieth Century Way is an eighty-five minute show of seemingly endless character, accent and costumes changes; an eighty-five minute display by a terrific comedy team that milked Tom Jacobson's serpentine script of every emotion.
Westrich is the quiet, almost stolid Mr Brown, persuaded by the flamboyant, wonderfully over the top Cartland, (Mr Warren) to engage in an improve session to determine who is the better actor. And by dint of the skill of these actors and the many characters they play, we see what really happened in 1914 California when “two out of work actors hired themselves out to the Long Beach Police Department to entrap 'social vagrants' in Public restrooms.
Michael Leeds directed this impressive first showing from Island City Stage, and he directed it beautifully. There's not a dead moment in a piece that's as demanding of the actors as any I've seen. You know the tyro question; how on earth do you remember all those lines? Well, I confess, I sat there asking myself just that. And all the blocking? And costume changes? And accents? Ah yes, very impressive.Island City Stage presents The Twentieth Century Way at Empire Stage through September 9, 2012.
While you were sleeping, we've been tinkering. Our second version of The Scene has served us well, but it was beginning to feel crowded. The column allotted for our content was constrictive, and the other columns were beginning to feel cluttered instead of useful. And we've been wanting to expand some of the information we make available.
We have two thoughts; 
Broward Stage Door Theatre opened its production of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill on July 20, 2012.It’s 1959 and legendary musical performer Billie Holiday is just four months away from death as she steps to the microphone in a seedy bar in Philadelphia for one of her final performances. Though she is there to sing, the audience will find she has a lot more on her mind than music. In addition to featuring a dozen of her hits, Holiday tells the tale of who she is, in her own original . This production showcases the talents of the strong, yet, fragile woman who pioneered a new way of looking at music while presenting a story fused with drama as much as humor that plays like one of Lady Day’s legendary songs.Dan Kelley directed Paulette Dozier, with musical direction by David Nagy, accompanied by Kai Sanchez and Howard Moss.
Built around a superb performance by Paulette Dozier, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill mounted at Broward Stage Door intersperses more than a dozen Holiday classics with the jazz chanteuse telling long stories about her tragic spiral.
Dozier and Kelley artfully and smoothly chart Holiday’s gradual descent, especially using body language. At first, there are the small graceful hand and arm gestures as she sings, body slightly leaning to one side, eyes always half-closed as if seeing an image in her head. Then, we see the increasingly wobbly figure who stumbles like a sleepwalker in a drug-induced haze.Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:
But obviously, the requisite skill is in delivering Holiday’s repertoire. Dozier is more than a match for these two-minute slices of musical nirvana. While Holiday herself mocks her audiences’ expectation that she will sing her most famous songs, “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit,” Dozier/Holiday doesn’t stint on investing consummate technique and profound emotion in her deeply affecting versions. The production is elevated by a dead solid band of Kai Sanchez on upright bass and Howard Moss led by musical director David Nagy.
The show has been done in South Florida before; in fact, star Paulette Dozier played Holiday at the Boca Raton Theatre Guild several months ago.
What makes her performance special is that Dozier is primarily a jazz singer, as was Holiday. Yes, Dozier is also a Carbonell Award-nominated actress, but her power and expressiveness as a singer trump her acting, transporting the audience as she interprets just over a dozen songs written by or identified with Holiday.
The actress’ voice is richer and deeper than Holiday’s, and when she’s singing, her voice is reliably strong and dramatic. Listening to her work her way through this set — including What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Crazy He Calls Me, God Bless the Child, Strange Fruit and Hush Now — is an exquisite experience.
Watching this sad, tormented woman get wasted as she reminisces about the many lows of her life is unsettling, even painful, as it should be.
For Holiday, brilliance and ruin went hand-in-hand. That juxtaposition is always on display in Dozier’s performance.Michelle F. Solomon wrote for miamiartzine:
The role of singer Billie Holiday in the play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill isn't easy. In fact, it as demanding as any role can be. The actress portraying the 1930s-era songstress must have a versatile singing voice, be able to act with a range of emotion, plus capture the essence of a real person, and do all this while keeping an audience entertained for 90 minutes, straight through with no intermission. Although there is a three-piece band and the pianist has a small acting part, Lady Day is really a one-person show.
Dozier does a superb job of channeling Holiday, weaving in and out of an alcohol induced haze, singing the hits with the same depth and emotional urgency that the chanteuse mustered herself. Yet Dozier doesn't try to create a caricatured picture of the femme fatale, but imbues the role with a genial likeableness. She is a stronger singer than actress, and seeing her perform the Holiday songbook is, in itself, worth a night at the theater. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is a tour de force for any actress and Dozier gives Holiday her due.
The energy level of the production could also be stepped up a pace, which drags at times and is, in part, due to the dense stories that Dozier has to deliver. Director Dan Kelley has obviously helped this along, but it could use just a bit more of a nudge.Lady Day at Emerson's Bary & Grill plays at Broward Stage Door through August 26, 2012.
The live, three-piece band is spot on and helps to create the illusion of a small jazz club, circa 1959. David Nagy, who has a few speaking lines as Jimmy, Holiday's paramour, musical director, and handler, is extremely talented on piano, and is richly genuine as the concerned Jimmy. Nagy is also the production's musical director.
The Naked Stage opened its production of The Turn of the Screw at Barry University's Pelican Theatre on July 27, 2012.Based on Henry James' provocative tale of suspense, horror, and repressed sexuality, Jeffery Hatcher's adaptation of The Turn of the Screw gives the famous story yet another turn of its own. A young governess journeys to a lonely English manor house to care for two recently orphaned children. Her predecessor, Miss Jessel drowned herself when she became pregnant by the sadistic valet Peter Quint, who was himself found dead soon after. Now, the new governess has begun to see the specters of Quint and Jessel haunting the children, and she must find a way to stop the fiends before it is too late. But... are the ghosts real, or the product of her fevered imagination?Margaret M. Ledford directed Katharine Amadeo and Matthew William Chizever.
Damn, you want to see some great stuff, then just whistle across town to Barry University's Pelican Theatre and settle in for 85 minutes of intense theatre from the Naked Stage's production of The Turn of the Screw.
Katherine Amadeo and Matthew William Chizever are pure delight in this gloomy, ghostly tale of a young Victorian era governess hired by a London man about town to look after his orphaned niece and nephew in his country home.
Amedeo is brilliantly uncertain... Chizever's handling of his roles is a lesson in subtlety. His switches from male to female, from adult to child are remarkably believable. He has the essence of each character captured completely. Without visible effort...
Credit Margaret M Ledford for the masterful direction of a piece that rings all the changes in the spooky old house whose interior was extraordinarily well created on stage by Antonio Amadeo. The just right Victorian costumes are by Leslye Menshouse and the this is how it was in 1872 sound is by Matt Corey. Margaret M. Ledford also designed the inspired lighting.
...one of the best shows of the year.Bill Hirschman reviewed for Florida Theater On Stage:
Attend the tale of The Turn of the Screw, Henry James’ psychological thriller given a superbly accomplished production as The Naked Stage’s first outing in almost two years.
Actually, many ingredients contribute to this witch’s brew top-lined by the flawless performances of Katherine Amadeo as a sexually-repressed governess in 1872 England and Matthew William Chizever inhabiting an emotionally-indifferent uncle, a venerable housekeeper, a troubled 10-year-old boy and an ineffably evil spirit.
With the skill of an orchestra conductor, director Margaret M. Ledford has deftly wrought a world of half-shadows and whispers. She paces the evening masterfully, from Chizever’s slow delivery of passages like a connoisseur savoring the bouquet of a fine wine, to rapid-fire exchanges between angst-engorged characters, to the terror-fueled crescendo of souls and minds twirling on the precipice of damnation and insanity.
Amadeo and Chizever’s work is so solid, so finely-crafted, so seamless that it’s hard to dissect or even describe.
Amadeo smoothly traces the governess’ arc from a naïf confidently eager to meet a challenge to a terrified unhinged victim.
Chizever pulls off the difficult trick of portraying four different characters... What Chizever accomplishes is making each so credible that you stop marveling at the acting and just forget it’s a young man playing a middle-aged domestic or a deeply disturbed boy.
Several times during the evening, one character or another asks, “Have I seduced you?” The answer is yes.Christine Dolen reviewed for The Miami Herald:
Haunting theater doesn’t require a lavish set, tricky effects or a grand scale. In the case of Naked Stage’s Turn of the Screw, a strong cast, a clever director and imaginative designers deliver a spellbinding ghost story that creates the kind of unrelenting tension Henry James had in mind when he dreamed it up more than a century ago.
Turn of the Screw is all about atmosphere, mood and goosebumps. Director and lighting designer Ledford conjures all those things, in collaboration with Antonio Amadeo, whose predominantly gray period set keeps the focus on the expressive faces of the actor-storytellers; Leslye Menshouse, whose dark costumes do the same; and Matt Corey, whose sound design dials up the tension at key moments.Michelle Petrucci reviewed for BroadwayWorld:
Almost an apparition herself, with her waif-like figure and porcelain beauty, Amadeo makes the 20-year-old governess a potential victim and determined fighter. She doesn’t definitively suggest whether the young woman is right about the ghosts or losing her grip on reality, and that ambiguousness just deepens the play’s mystery.
Chizever is crafty, commanding and chameleonic. Leaving the stage as one person then suddenly reappearing as another, he uses his malleable voice and physicality to populate the stage with distinctive, memorable characters. It is Chizever who supplies the emotional jolts in Turn of the Screw – the “boo” factor that thrill seekers and ghost story lovers crave.
As eerie candlelight dances across dark walls, two actors create an intensely creepy world that extends past the fourth wall and lures the audience into its chilling tale. With great use of theatrical magic, The Naked Stage manages to transform a tiny black box theatre into a grandiose haunted mansion with the use of slight shifts of light, simple blocking patterns and the dynamic believability of both actors.
Katherine Amadeo and Matthew William Chizever tell this story with honesty and clarity. She evokes a ghost-like presence as she turns mad. He deftly switches between sinister bachelor, warm caretaker and sly 10 year-old boy. In an instant, the play is riveting and all we can do is hold our breath until the very end.The Naked Stage presents The Turn of the Screw at Barry University's Pelican Theatre through August 12, 2012.
To support these fine actors, Margaret M. Ledford has shaped this work into a beautifully twisted piece of art. Her lighting design works hand in hand with her keen direction... This company has a brilliant way of making us see that which is not there: as literal as the young girl, Flora, and a piano, or as figurative as the ghosts of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint.
The result is an absolute must-see piece of theatre.
