Looking at the upcoming theater season in South Florida, you would never know that we were in the midst of a sluggish economy.
Palm Beach Dramaworks is pouring millions into the renovation and purchase of its new performance space which will nearly triple the group’s seating capacity, and recently received a $2 million donation for the project. A completely new company, Parade Productions, will be kicking off in Boca Raton in January. And Boca’s Caldwell Theatre is inaugurating a second stage program with three full productions beginning in December.
Of course, the theater community is still reeling and shaking its collective heads over the abrupt closing and bankruptcy filing of 25-year-old Florida Stage, just before its announced summer show this year. That leaves a significant hole in the cultural scene, yet there is plenty left to look forward to seeing.
Among the highlights is one mini-theme of plays about the value of art. At both the north and south extremes of the region, Coral Gables’ Gable Stage (Nov. 5-Dec. 4) and the Maltz Jupiter Theatre (Feb. 14-26) will each be producing John Logan’s 2010 Tony Award-winning play Red, about abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, caught in the act of creation. West Palm’s Palm Beach Dramaworks is giddy over its coup of snagging the rights to Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters (Feb. 17-March 11), the true story of British miners who take up painting and become sensations of the art world. At New Theatre, also in Coral Gables, the world premiere of Twain and Shaw Do Lunch (Dec. 2-18), by Chambers Stevens, eavesdrops on the clash of egos and attitudes towards their art as two of the early 20th century’s greatest writers meet, eat and expound.
Dramaworks moves into the drastically reconfigured former Cuillo Centre on Nov. 11 — yes, numerology fans, that’s 11-11-11 — with Arthur Miller’s World War II morality drama, All My Sons (through Dec. 11). The group’s season also includes two Pulitzer Prize winners, Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Jan. 6-29) and David Auburn’s Proof (May 25-Jun 17), as well as one of South African Athol Fugard’s best apartheid parables, Master Harold … and the boys (April 6-29).
Artistic director Clive Cholerton continues to shake up the Caldwell Theatre with new works and his first fully produced musical. He opens his season with Amy Herzog’s heady After the Revolution (Oct. 16-Nov. 20), about a family’s suffering under the cloud of the McCarthy hearings of the ’50s. Miami attorney-turned-playwright Christopher Demos Brown is showcased with the world premiere of Our Lady of Allapatta (April 15-May 20), about a police investigation of a mysterious religious image on the side of a Miami strip mall. In between, the company tackles the Cy Coleman-Larry Gelbart pulp fiction musical City of Angels (Feb. 26-April 1), about a crime novelist and his detective alter ego.
Bullish on the future, the Caldwell has taken dates in the Mizner Park Cultural Center for three additional productions this season. Dubbed Caldwell 2, it kicks off in December with a holiday comedy. In the same space, acting teacher-director Kim St. Leon is inaugurating Parade Productions with Donald Margulies’ semi-autobiographical Brooklyn Boy (Jan. 26-Feb. 12), featuring South Florida favorite Avi Hoffman. If all goes well, the company will expand its operations in future seasons.
The Maltz Jupiter Theatre opens its season with the manic comic take on Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (Nov. 1-13), before concentrating on its strong suit — musical theater. Its line-up includes Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Nov. 29-Dec. 18), Cabaret (Jan. 10-29) and Hello, Dolly! (March 13-April 1).
Actors’ Playhouse of Coral Gables, which also chiefly produces musicals, must have been cribbing from the Maltz Jupiter’s schedule, or vice versa. It mounted The 39 Steps this past season and will be presenting its own take on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat this season (March 7-April 8). It opens this fall with Hairspray (Oct. 12-Nov. 13), with artistic director David Arisco as Edna Turnblad. The company’s holiday show is Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol (Dec. 7-Jan. 1), the classic Dickens tale told from the viewpoint of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dead partner, followed by the bi-polar musical, Next to Normal (Jan. 18-Feb. 12) and a new Steven Dietz comedy, Becky’s New Car (May 9-June 3).
Sticking with a good thing, or at least a popular one, West Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Company brings back its Halloween hit, The Rocky Horror Show (Oct. 21-29). Next up is Urinetown, The Musical, the story of a greedy toilet monopoly (Jan. 20-29), then Stephen Sondheim’s twist on fairy tales, Into the Woods (April 13-22).
One of the theaters taking up the slack from Florida Stage is Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre with several world and Southeastern premieres, including the recent New York hit about the famed Green Bay Packers football coach, Lombardi (Nov. 10-Dec. 4). Also on Mosaic’s play list is The Birds (March 8-April 1), Conor McPherson’s stage adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier yarn that Hitchcock turned into an iconic suspense film. So new it does not have a final title is a fact-based play by Joe Calarco (April 19-May 13), about a 15-year-old boy who was doused with rubbing alcohol and set on fire by five teenagers.
GableStage has had its eye on Broadway lately, and Joe Adler has put together a season of recent New York plays. In addition to Red, he will offer the area premieres of The Motherf**ker with the Hat (Jan. 7-Feb. 5), Stephen Adly Guirgis’ poetic tale of drug-dependent low-lifes, and A Steady Rain (March 3-April 1) by Keith Huff, a series of monologues delivered by two Chicago cops. Also direct from Broadway comes Margulies’ Time Stands Still (May 5-June 3), an uneasy romance between a photojournalist and a foreign correspondent, trying to make peace away from the war zone.
As befits its name, New Theatre of Coral Gables has a slate of world premiere plays ahead. Its first production this fall is Edith Can Shoot Things (Oct. 14-30) by A. Rey Pamatmat, a stark look at two abandoned teens. Later in the season, the company unveils Winter (Jan. 27-Feb. 12), Robert Caisley’s squabble over the arrangements for a deceased mother, and Property Line (March 23-April 8) by Juan C. Sanchez, a comic battle between neighbors over real estate ownership.
Miami’s Zoetic Stage fills at least one of the gaps left by Florida Stage’s demise, opening its season at the Arsht Center with Christopher Demos-Brown’s Captiva (Nov. 3-20), a family reunion comedy that had been announced for the defunct West Palm Beach company’s schedule. Zoetic follows it with David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries (Dec. 8-23), featuring Michael McKeever in elf mode, and ends its season with the world premiere of McKeever’s Moscow (March 29-April 15), a comic look at the tumultuous early ’60s Cold War era in Miami.
The anarchic Mad Cat Theatre Co. has only one future production set, Angela Berliner’s Macbeth and the Monster (Dec. 16-Jan. 7), a tale of the Scottish king-to-be as a youngster, playing at the troupe’s new home at Miami’s Goldman Warehouse.
For many audience members, theatergoing means attending the various Broadway series at the three performing arts centers in South Florida. West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center leads off its season with the somewhat revised touring version of The Addams Family (Nov. 8-13), then the Tony-winning revival of Hair (Jan. 10-15), the similarly acclaimed new production of La Cage aux Folles (Feb. 14-19), featuring Palm Beacher George Hamilton. Kravis on Broadway concludes with the collaboration of choreographer Twyla Tharp and the late Frank Sinatra, Come Fly Away (March 13-18) and Les Miserables (May 16-26), reconceived for its 25th anniversary.
In Fort Lauderdale, the Broward Center calls its series Broadway Across America and it has the area exclusive of the acclaimed Billy Elliot (Feb. 29-March 11), the emotional tale of the miner’s son who prefers dance to boxing. The season starts with the Beatles tribute band Rain (Oct. 4-16), then the non-union Beauty and the Beast (Nov. 15-27) and the always welcome Jersey Boys (Jan. 11-29). The expansive revival of South Pacific arrives in the spring (April 10-22), followed by La Cage (June 12-24).
At Miami’s Arsht Center, The Addams Family shows up (Oct. 25-30), followed by another cartoon-inspired musical, Shrek (Dec. 6-11). The musical recreation of a recording session of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, called Million Dollar Quartet (Dec. 27-Jan. 1), plays the coveted Christmas week, prior to Come Fly Away (March 20-25) and the return of Disney’s The Lion King (May 15-June 10).