The season, in geographic order, from Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade, kicks off at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre with that Agatha Christie chestnut The Mousetrap, based on her Ten Little Indians, the serial murder mystery that had a record-breaking run in London’s West End (Oct. 25-Nov. 8). Then, with most of its audience back in the area, it rolls out a pair of mega-musicals, Billy Elliot (Dec. 1-20) and The Will Rogers Follies (Jan. 12-31). Still trying to sell its theatergoers on drama, it will mount Peter Morgan’s recreation of the tug-of-war TV interviews from the 1970s, Frost/Nixon (Feb. 7- 21) and concludes with Cole Porter’s hip nod to Shakespeare, Kiss Me Kate (March 8-27).
West Palm’s Palm Beach Dramaworks serves up a couple of American classics in William Inge’s steamy Picnic (Oct. 9-Nov. 8) and Eugene O’Neill’s epic Pulitzer-winning family portrait Long Day’s Journey into Night (Jan. 29-Feb. 28). But this season puts more emphasis on recent scripts, like Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning look at British prep school, The History Boys (Dec. 4-Jan. 3), John Patrick Shanley’s bittersweet romance Outside Mullingar (March 25-April 24) and Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout’s biographical homage to jazz great Louis Armstrong, Satchmo at the Waldorf (May 13-June 12).
The Kravis Center apparently couldn’t quite muster six genuine Broadway shows for its subscription series, so it opens with Blue Man Group (Dec. 8-13), the international offbeat off-Broadway hit of non-verbal hijinks, now on its first U.S. tour. Otherwise, the performing arts center offers the best of what’s available on the road, including the backstage musical 42nd Street (Jan. 5-10) based on the recent revival and Motown: The Musical (Feb. 9-14), the biography of Detroit music mogul Berry Gordy, with lots of cover versions of R&B hits. Popular on both sides of the Atlantic is Matilda (March 1-6), based on the Roald Dahl children’s book about a young bookworm with telekinetic powers. And while both flopped on Broadway, the Kravis fills its series with two musicals based on popular movies, Woody Allen’s look backstage, Bullets Over Broadway (March 22-27), and The Bridges of Madison County (April 26-May 1), Jason Robert Brown’s adaptation of a brief Iowa love affair, minus the political caucuses.
All eyes are on Delray Beach’s Arts Garage, where Keith Garsson of Boca Raton Theatre Guild and Lauderdale’s Primal Forces takes over the artistic chair from Lou Tyrrell, bringing with him Genie Croft as resident director. He will be de-emphasizing new play development, but will be producing lots of area premieres like his season opener, Sex with Strangers (Oct. 24-Nov. 15), a steamy, twisty drama by Laura Eason, a staff writer for Netflix’s House of Cards. It is followed by Reborning (Jan. 23-Feb. 14) and Smoke (March 26-April 27). The only Arts Garage title that might be familiar is the biographical concert The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith (Feb. 27-March 20), which was first seen locally at Florida Stage 14 years ago. The Garage also opens a second space — a black box, for cozier theater productions.
Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre has jettisoned its attempt to interest its audience in non-musicals and is doubling down on importing Broadway veterans. For instance, it opens with Stephen Sondheim’s farcical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Ken Jennings (Sweeney Todd, Urinetown) as conniving slave Pseudolus (Oct. 1-Nov. 1). That is rather unconventional casting, but nothing like Lee Roy Reams as matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi in Jerry Herman’s Hello, Dolly! (Nov. 5-Dec. 6), which looms as the must-see show on the season. From the world of TV come contestants from the dance competition shows in a flashy holiday production with a wince-inducing title, Ballroom with a Twist-Mas (Dec. 10-27). From polling its audience, the most requested show is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer-winning musical, South Pacific (Jan. 7-Feb. 14). It will be followed by one of Kander and Ebb’s final shows, a murder mystery musical comedy called Curtains (Feb. 25-March 27). The season finale is the popular Irving Berlin revue, I Love a Piano (April 14-May 22), with a couple of dozen familiar tunes wrapped around a tale of a keyboard that keeps changing hands.
The Broward Stage Door Theater in Margate has already begun its 22nd season, and at its two-stage venue on West Sample Road is currently showing two major musicals from the 1960s: Schmidt and Jones’s The Fantasticks (through Oct. 11), and Bacharach and David’s Promises, Promises (through Nov. 1). Opening the day before Halloween is Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder (Oct. 30-Dec.6), which spawned a chilling film starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings, while Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy opens Nov. 20 and runs through Jan. 3. A musical revue recalling the era of the Everly Brothers and Bobby Darrin, Pompadour, opens Dec. 26 and runs through Jan. 31. Bob Merrill’s musical Carnival (Jan. 22-Feb. 28), and What’s New Pussycat, a musical revue of songs from the 1960s and 1970s mounted last year, returns Feb. 19-March 27. The Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical about Argentina’s Eva Peron, Evita, is set for March 18-April 24, the popular comedy Same Time, Next Year is planned for April 15 to May 22, and the season proper closes with Putting It Together (May 13-June 19), a revue of Sondheim tunes.
The adventuresome Slow Burn Theatre Co. is venturing further south to its new home within Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center, opening with Big Fish (Oct. 22-Nov. 8), the short-lived tall tales Broadway musical with a cult following. Also quirky is Violet, a compact musical about a severely scarred girl on a bus odyssey in search of a faith healer (Jan. 21-Feb. 7). The company rarely gravitates towards Tony Award winners, but Spring Awakening (March 17-April 3), with a score by Duncan Sheik based on a classic play about sexual coming-of-age, fits its target demographic group well. The same could be said of Heathers: The Musical (Jan. 9-26), based on the high school movie about a trio of mean girls.
Also settling into its new Broward Center home is Outré Theatre Co., which kicked off its season devoted to the “power of women” with a small cult musical of shared living quarters in post-revolutionary Russia, Bed and Sofa (through Sept. 13). Next the company goes classical with Euripides tale of maternal revenge, Medea (March 11-27), followed by a concert production of the two-character musical Goblin Market (April 8-10), about a pair of women returning to their childhood Victorian-era home.
The Broward Center’s Broadway series boasts a couple of recent Tony winners — Cyndi Lauper’s Tony-winning musical about manhood and transvestite footwear, Kinky Boots (March 1-13), and the jukebox biography of singer-songwriter Carole King, Beautiful (May 10-22). Shows on the performing arts center’s schedule that have already played South Florida include the Irish-Czech love story Once (Oct. 6-18), the stage version of the Disney movie about newsboys, Newsies (Nov. 17-29), the uber-irreverent Book of Mormon (Jan. 26-Feb. 7) and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (June 15-19). Also in the series, though they never played Broadway, are national tours of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Dec. 15-27) and the nostalgic Catskills romance, Dirty Dancing (April 12-24).
Across town in Fort Lauderdale, Thinking Cap Theatre mounts Erin Courtney’s A Map of Virtue (Oct. 1-18), a tale of strange coincidences, dark nights and a tiny bird figurine. Also on the cerebral troupe’s slate is Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy of romance and mistaken identity, The Importance of Being Earnest (Nov. 12-Dec. 6).
Gay-themed Island City Stage moves into new digs in Wilton Manors this fall, gaining a few seats and some breathing room. Its season includes Angry Fags (Nov. 12-Dec.13), described as an “Oscar Wilde meets Fight Club fantasia,” the world premiere of Who Killed Joan Crawford? (Jan. 12-Feb. 12), Michael Leeds’s comic mystery with shoulder pads, and The Submission (April 7-May 8), a Jeff Talbott play of mistaken identity, sexual orientation and race. The season closes with Feeding the Bear (June 2-July 3), a tale of father-son, patient-caregiver relations by Michael Aman, the author of last season’s POZ.
In Miami Shores, Mad Cat Theatre Co. plans a season of brief, pop-up productions, like Harry Nilsson’s The Point (Dec. 4-6), a musical parable about a round-headed misfit in a pointed village, and Tones on Tales: An Evening of Samuel Beckett (March 16-20), showcasing the work of the 20th century’s most influential playwright. The theatrical hijinks continue with Gerald Ford, Superfreak (May 26-June 12), a saga of the clumsy, unelected president, fresh from the South Beach Comedy Festival.
Miami’s Arsht Center has its own Broadway series, of course, though some of the shows will be playing elsewhere in South Florida too. It begins with Kinky Boots (Dec. 8-13), then has the area exclusive on a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (Dec. 29-Jan. 3), coinciding with the Oscar-winning movie version’s 50th anniversary. Motown bops into the Arsht (Feb. 2-7) just before a new staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera (yes, still with a crashing chandelier) (Feb. 24-March 6). And Kander and Ebb’s chilling look at Weimar Germany at the Kit Kat Club, Cabaret, struts its stuff (April 12-17).
In the Arsht’s intimate Studio space, Zoetic Stage offers a trio of challenging works, starting with Stripped (Nov. 5-22), a world premiere by one of its resident playwrights, lawyer Chris Demos-Brown, mulling the fate of an immigrant mother trying to retain custody of her daughter. Next up is Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn (Jan. 14-31), a look at three generations of women facing their options in a post-feminist world. Having has success with Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, the company will wade into almost as dark waters with his Passion (Feb. 18-March 13), an unlikely love story between a handsome soldier and a lonely, obsessive older woman.
Further south in Coral Gables are two of Miami-Dade’s prime companies — GableStage and Actor’s Playhouse. The former likes to produce the latest hits from New York, like Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced (Oct. 3-Nov. 1), about the struggles of a Muslin-American attorney in a world of racial profiling, and Constellations by Nick Payne (Nov. 21-Dec. 20), the intersection of romance, advanced physics and parallel universes. Then again, sometimes artistic director Joe Adler just wants us to laugh, so he selects Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play (Jan. 23-Feb. 21), about theater folk at their bitchiest, at an opening night party. Almost as rare at GableStage are musicals, so A Minister’s Wife (March 26-April 24), an adaptation of Shaw’s Candida by the team that brought us The Adding Machine, must be pretty special. It will be followed by The Royale by Miami’s Marco Ramirez (May 28-June 26), about boxing’s controversial black champ, Jack Johnson.
Actors’ Playhouse fills its two stages with musicals and small-cast plays. This season the former will be represented by The Toxic Avenger (Oct. 14-Nov. 8), a nerd-turned-mutant saga with music by Bon Jovi’s David Bryan, the classic tenement romance West Side Story (Jan. 27-Feb. 21) and Sondheim on Sondheim (March 16- April 3), a revue of the master composer-lyricist’s output, with video commentary. At far as plays go, the company produces a new take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge (Dec. 2-27), Sean Grennan’s The Tin Woman (May 18-June 12), about the human connections forged by a heart transplant, and Buyer and Cellar, a one-man comedy about the shopping mall in Barbra Streisand’s basement (July 13-Aug. 7). No, really.