It is not just that Slow Burn Theatre Co. keeps taking risks with its dark, unconventional musical choices, but the scrappy West Boca troupe continues to deliver on its offbeat selections with high-impact, powerful productions.
The case in point at the moment is Parade, the 1998 show based on the downbeat history of Leo Frank, a Brooklyn Jew who moves to Atlanta — a lox out of water, so to speak — for a promising job managing the National Pencil Co.’s factory. But Frank meets anti-Semitic resistance and is soon wrongfully accused and convicted of killing a young female employee.
His struggle to save his life is told by Alfred Uhry, who has often focused on tales of Jewish characters in Georgia (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo), but none as bitterly dramatic as Parade. That darkness is leavened, but not very much, by Jason Robert Brown’s ambitious score which ranges from modern opera to jazz to a cakewalk to pure Broadway, sometimes relieving the drama and often plunging us further downward.
Frank (Tom Anello) underestimates his resourceful wife Lucille (Ann Marie Olson), who works tirelessly for his exoneration. But just as she seems to succeed, Frank’s fate takes another downturn. Just before that, the show begins to emphasize the growing love between them, culminating in the score’s strongest number, the soaring duet All the Wasted Time.
Olson in particular has a powerful singing voice, as heard previously playing the Beggar Woman in Slow Burn’s Sweeney Todd. Anello bears a striking resemblance to Woody Allen, in both appearance and mannerisms, which serves to underline his character’s New York Jewish roots. He too is quite musical, managing the complexities of Brown’s score as the innocent man grows increasingly frantic.
Director-choreographer Patrick Fitzwater does his usual fine job molding the 16-member cast into an organic ensemble. Still, there are standouts among the supporting players, including Matthew Korinko as the politically ambitious prosecuting attorney, Kaela Antolino as the doomed 13-year-old Mary Phagan and Kaitlyn O’Neill as the girl’s mother.
Slow Burn has showcased little-known non-Equity talent since it began five years ago and does so again in Parade. In addition, it has become more accomplished with its design work, particularly Lance Blank’s laser-sharp computerized lighting and Guy Haubrich’s expert sound design. The busy Sean McClelland contributes an attractive, yet gritty multi-level unit set of the pencil factory, versatile enough to represent many other locales.
It is probably worthwhile to keep in mind how Slow Burn manages to do such impressive work with such limited resources. But even with that aside, Parade is as good as any musical production you are likely to find among South Florida’s resident companies.
PARADE, Slow Burn Theatre Company at West Boca High School, 12811 W. Glades Rd., Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Feb. 9. Tickets: $40. Call: (866) 811-4111.
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From Bob Fosse’s original transformative direction-choreography to Diane Paulus’s current Broadway revival set inside a circus big top, Pippin has usually been a triumph of production over material.
Now comes Boca Raton Theatre Guild to serve up its version of this consciously anachronistic musical history of the son of Emperor Charlemagne. Whether by design or by the company’s resource limitations, the focus is on Stephen Schwartz’s eclectic score and Roger O. Hirson’s episodic book. They prove to be more than serviceable, even while the production lacks the requisite magic and sense of wonder.
The show is ostensibly set in 780 A.D., but Prince Pippin seems to stem from the “me generation” of the 1970s. He knows he is meant for extraordinary things, if he could only find his “corner of the sky.” So Pippin tries his hand at war, Oedipal rebellion, hedonism and suburban life. Although his story is the show, the character is inevitably upstaged by the Leading Player, an ingratiating but eventually malevolent stage manager with his own posse of accomplices.
So it goes at BRTG, where Mike Westrich is an appealing, if naïve young royal, but the show belongs to Reggie Whitehead as the Player. He moves with rubber-limbed agility, sings commandingly and has charisma to burn. If his performance has a fault, it is its lack of foreshadowed menace early on.
Patti Gardner, Carbonell-nominated for the company’s Chicago last season, once again demonstrates her musical theater skill as Pippin’s scheming stepmother. Although uncredited in the program, she does double duty playing another supporting character, one who leads the audience in a philosophical sing-along. Other standouts include Troy Stanley as the physically imposing king and Leah Sessa as a widow with child who is out to domesticate Pippin.
Otherwise, director Keith Garsson and especially choreographer Ron Hutchins have a challenge getting the ensemble to cohere. Hutchins seasons the production with some of Fosse’s signature pigeon-toed, hip-popping moves, while coming up with easier steps for the many untrained dancers in the cast.
Pippin is predicated on theater magic, which is hardly the Boca Raton Theatre Guild production’s strong suit, but the show is so likeable and the score so infectious that you might as well succumb to its — as one song puts it — simple joys.
PIPPIN, Boca Raton Theatre Guild., Willow Theatre, 300 S. Military Trail, Sugar Sand Park, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Feb. 9. Tickets: $35. Call: (561) 347-3948.
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All the Plaza Theatre really had to announce was “Renee Taylor, appearing in person,” then get out of the way of the stampede of ticket buyers.
The 80-year-old writer-performer has long been a show business fixture, appearing on television (The Nanny), in movies (The Producers, Made for Each Other) and on the stage (Bermuda Avenue Triangle, If You Ever Leave Me, I’m Going With You).
Taylor is an inherently funny woman, so who wouldn’t want to spend an hour-and-a-half or so in her presence? That is the attraction of My Life on a Diet, her amusing memoir-cum-diet advice tract. Not much theatrical happens, but that does not prevent the evening from being entertaining.
My Life on a Diet is also the title of a book of reminiscences that Taylor wrote with the assistance of her longtime collaborator and husband, Joseph Bologna, three decades ago. The show is simply Taylor sitting at a desk, reading that book, or at least a slightly edited version of that clever tome.
The recitation is full of name-dropping anecdotes and delicious tales of Taylor’s lifelong struggle with her weight. They are enjoyable to hear, but she has been performing this show, off and on, for the past year. Couldn’t she have taken the time to memorize some of it?
Like Kevin Bacon, it seems that few show business icons did not come in contact with Taylor. Marilyn Monroe. Barbra Streisand. Grace Kelly. Jerry Lewis. Joan Crawford. And of course, Fran Drescher. She’s got an anecdote about each one and they’re all amusing.
Then there is her mission to find out what the beautiful people eat, so she can become thin like they are. Many of them put in an appearance in the accompanying slides and Taylor is also seen throughout the years, from an 11-year-old kid shaped like “a large sugar cube,” about to embark on her first fad diet, to her days as a young, svelte — no, really — actress, and then yo-yoing up and down over the years.
As Taylor puts it, she is “a food tramp, someone who eats around.” Her candor makes it easy to empathize and identify with her struggle, and her sense of humor about herself makes My Life on a Diet an easy tale to swallow.
MY LIFE ON A DIET, The Plaza Theatre, 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan. When: Through Sunday, Feb. 9. Tickets: $45. Call: (561) 588-1820.
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A Chorus Line is surely in the top handful of great musicals and, almost as importantly, Michael Bennett’s staging and choreography of the seminal work verges on perfection. So for the past 40 years, productions of the show all around the globe have stuck closely to Bennett’s vision — first out of contractual obligation and more recently out of sheer admiration.
The Maltz Jupiter Theatre, which has prided itself in recent seasons on imaginative re-conceptions of classic musicals, goes the homage route with A Chorus Line. Director-choreographer Josh Walden, who was a cast member of the recent Broadway revival, does a fine job of reproducing what Bennett hath wrought.
Squint at the stage and you might think you are seeing the tour of that 2006 revival. That is no small feat and for most theatergoers that is what they hope for and expect. While admiring the talent and effort required to pull off such a replication job, I for one would have liked to see a new directorial take on this valentine to those largely unsung foot soldiers of the musical theater.
As one probably already knows, A Chorus Line looks at 17 diverse dancers, all desperate to impress Zach, the callous, invasive creator of an imminent show, who only needs eight for the ensemble that will back up the marquee name star. So one by one, he asks them to step forward from the taped-off white line in the empty rehearsal hall and talk about themselves, in words, song or dance.
At a time when musicals are becoming increasingly dependent on spectacle, sets and special effects, A Chorus Line goes in the opposite direction, which is part of its primal appeal.
Then there is then score by Marvin Hamlisch and Ed Kleban, full of raw, heart-on-sleeve emotions, and the book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, all based on hours of taped interviews with actual chorus dancers, full of the harsh realities of the business.
Bennett’s dances are grounded in the basic steps of contemporary, jazz and tap styles, which he builds into combinations, then ultimately production numbers. Much of it has a simple elegance, and then there is The Music and the Mirror, an anguished solo for Cassie (Elizabeth Earley), who rose to featured roles and now is desperate for acceptance back in the chorus. Earley performs the grueling number well, but like the character, she is a far better dancer than actress.
Wanting something unexpected, I found it in Camden Gonzales as Diana, whose fresh interpretation of the song Nothing, a recollection of her thwarted efforts in acting class, was very welcome. Less innovative. but still bracing was Jordan Fife Hunt, delivering a emotionally naked monologue about his early career in a tawdry drag show. Also worth noting was Jennifer Byrne as haughty Sheila and Demarius R. Copes’s kinetic energy as Ritchie, who followed his dream of dancing professionally to avoid being stuck as a kindergarten teacher.
The Maltz’s design team is at its usual high level, from Michael Schweikardt’s detail-rich “empty” space to Paul Black’s unadorned lighting to Anna Christine Hillbery’s take on rehearsal dancewear. The production is probably best for those who have never seen A Chorus Line — where have you been? — but if you crave a return to what you saw before and know you still love, rest assured it remains “one singular sensation.”
A CHORUS LINE, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. When: Through Sunday, Feb. 2. Tickets: From $52. Call: (561) 575-2223.