Albert Cattafi and Holly Shunkey in Vices: A Love Story.By Hap Erstein
Belying the proverb about opportunity only knocking once, here comes another chance to see the steamy, quirky, Carbonell-award-winning dance musical Vices: A Love Story, back at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton, where it had its world premiere in the summer of 2009.
Vices is a series of eclectic songs about obsessions and addictions, tied together by a pair of lithe, athletic dancers whose characters’ bad habits are illustrated by the musical numbers. In the opening sensuous pas de deux, they meet and hop into bed without knowing much more than their physical attraction to each other. The next day, they start to get acquainted, by opening up about their vices.
She smokes, is hooked on recreational shopping, loves chocolate to excess and is addicted to plastic surgery. He is a workaholic, craves working out at the gym and needs to play casino blackjack. With these personal confessions out on the table, they then have to figure out if they have any future together.
Vices: A Love Story, on the other hand, has a definite future.
“I think it deserves to have a big life. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” says Clive 
Cholerton (at right), who gambled by making the show his introduction as the Caldwell’s new artistic director. “You’re at a high emotional level when the show begins and it only goes up from there.”
“I just think it’s so unique, innovative theater,” chimes in AC Cuilla, the show’s Tony Award-nominated (Footloose) choreographer. “I personally think this would be a great show to have running off-Broadway in New York. I think New York audiences would love this show and identify with it.”
Writers Mike Heitzman and Ilene Reid had sent Cholerton a CD of the score, just at the time that such TV dance competitions as Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? were posting big ratings. They had been seeking a way to connect the dots of their songs, and Cholerton suggested a pair of dancers whose internal monologues were the musical vices.
After agreement on the concept, Cuilla flew down to Boca and began creating the show on the fly. In fact, he devised and rehearsed the dances before there was any dance music.
“I’ve never worked like that before and now I will always want to if you have a team who can work like that,” says Cuilla. “We’d just play with it, and I’d start to create a rhythm. Then Everett (Bradley, one of the co-composer) came in, got the feel for it and created music that fit that rhythm.”
Cholerton was pleased with the results of that first production, while recognizing its limitations. “It was very satisfying, but it felt like what it was – not a finished show,” he concedes. “I loved the fact that it was something that no one had seen before. This time around, we want to take that same excitement, that same originality, but take away those moments where we simply ran out of time.”
Cholerton is gambling again by bringing the show back to the Caldwell so soon after the initial run. But since it played during the summer, he knew that a lot of his subscribers missed it.
“It, to me, is the statement of where we are headed, but so few people saw the statement.” So, he thought, “Let’s do it again and give ourselves the opportunity to work on it again.”
Rather than a total overhaul of the show, he sees this production as a “refinement, neither a re-mount nor a rework.” Vices still runs only 80 minutes, without an intermission, about which Cholerton says, “That’s how long it takes to tell the story.”
He and the writers mulled the notion of expanding the show by added a few vices, but ultimately decided against it. “You soon get to the point of thinking, ‘How messed up are these people?’ ”
VICES: A LOVE STORY, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Friday, Nov. 12, through Sunday, Dec. 12. Tickets: $27-$50. Call: (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432.