Those looking for tell-tale signs of Florida Stage in Lou Tyrrell’s latest venture, The Theatre at Arts Garage, need look no further than the new company’s first full production, the biographical revue Woody Sez.
A close first cousin to Woody Guthrie’s American Song, which played at the predecessor troupe’s Manalapan home 18 years ago, the newer show is more folksy than cutting-edge, but its left-leaning politics should be familiar to the Florida Stage crowd.
Guthrie, the so-called “Dust Bowl troubadour,” traveled the country — from California to the New York island, as one of his most popular compositions put it — turning his life and observations into song. Woody Sez shoehorns 28 of those songs, familiar and obscure, into a narrative of the Oklahoma-born crusader’s hardscrabble existence and the country’s most difficult economic times.
David M. Lutken, an alumnus of that previous show, co-wrote and narrates Woody Sez, frequently acting as Guthrie’s stand-in. He has an easygoing manner, a pleasant, countrified singing voice and is able to convey the emotion of Guthrie’s frequent tragic downturns. He is joined by Helen J. Russell (also a veteran of American Song), David Finch and Megan Loomis, each one a musical virtuoso on such varied instruments as guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and the occasional spoons.
You are likely to be familiar with many of the show’s songs beyond Guthrie’s two most popular numbers, This Land Is Your Land and This Train Is Bound for Glory. Union Maid (“You can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ to the union”) and a wry kiss-off to Herbert Hoover and the Republicans (So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh) were among the tunes that the audience spontaneously sang along to at the performance I attended. Several specifics of the difficulties of the Depression era will probably bring to mind parallels to conditions today.
Woody Sez covers a lot of ground, apparently more interested in the breadth of Guthrie’s life than mining much depth. Still, as this is the centenary year of Guthrie’s birth, that seems reason enough for another theatrical celebration of his musical output. And the show makes a fine calling card for The Theatre at Arts Garage, a hootenanny to bring Tyrrell’s audience back to the fold.
WOODY SEZ. The Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach. Through Sunday, April 8. Tickets: $25-$35. Call: (561) 450-6357.
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We critics are a jaded bunch and, speaking for myself at least, the thought of seeing Hello, Dolly! again, as well-crafted as the show is, did not make my pulse race.
After all, the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s philosophical comedy has become a museum piece of Gower Champion’s original staging and Carol Channing’s oversized performance, both unchanged since the musical opened in 1964.
But leave it to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre and to Tony-nominated director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge to respectfully shake up the show with a versatile unit set, some stunning stage images, a bit of Dodge’s signature tap moves and, most especially, the unlikely but entirely winning casting of diminutive Vicki Lewis as professional meddler, Dolly Gallagher Levi.
Seductive, wickedly funny and, just when she needs to be, surprisingly touching, Lewis dominates a production that is full of audience-pleasing joys. Add in veteran comic actor Gary Beach — Tony winner for The Producers — as Dolly’s quarry, “Yonkers’ well-known half-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, and what’s not to like, whether you are new to the show or have seen it many times over.
The show’s plot takes widow Dolly, Vandergelder, his two put-upon clerks and their love interests — a milliner and her giddy assistant — all over New York on a single day of sheer adventure. Dodge and her scenic designer Paul Tate Depoo III manage such venue changes with brisk ingenuity, including a pair of stage-high staircases that roll into a variety of handy configurations.
Rubber-legged Matt Loehr (of the Maltz’s Crazy for You) is a standout as clerk Cornelius Hackl, delivering his courtroom testimony solo It Only Takes a Moment and the subsequent monologue on his sudden discovery of romance. As milliner Irene Malloy, Daniella Dalli trills Ribbons Down My Back with great feeling and Katie Emerson amuses as her shop assistant, prattling breathlessly on her initial entrance.
Still, this show works or it doesn’t based on the actress playing Dolly. At the Maltz, it works like gangbusters, thanks to a little dynamo named Vicki Lewis.
HELLO, DOLLY! Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday, April 1. Tickets: $43-$60. Call: (561) 575-2223.
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While Hello, Dolly! ran 2,844 performances on Broadway — at one point the longest-running show ever — Working, a musical revue based on interviews with the labor force about their jobs by Chicago broadcast journalist Studs Terkel was a quick 25-performance flop in 1978. But because it generated a record album as well as a subsequent public television production, the show has survived, becoming a cult hit despite its sizeable cast.
Now comes a revised version, re-arranged musically for a cast of six, with a couple of new songs by Lin Manuel-Miranda (In the Heights) and some other new material that takes into account job market changes over the past 34 years as well as the job challenges of the recent recession.
Tested out at regional theaters in Sarasota and Chicago, prior to an expected return to New York, this Working, 2.0 edition has been embraced by Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre, which gives it a simple, yet effective production, featuring an energetic, versatile sextet of performers and a high-tech set of visuals inspired by Google Earth.
The show is as strong in its monologues as it is with its musical numbers, resulting in an evening that feels more like a “play with music” than a musical. Still, with a team of songwriters ranging from Stephen Schwartz to James Taylor to Craig Carnelia to Micki Grant, many of the numbers become the evening’s highlights.
Laura Hodos is a standout as a flamboyant waitress on Schwartz’s It’s an Art. Melissa Minyard impresses in a ballad of the underappreciated (Carnelia’s Just a Housewife), Barry Tarallo expresses the challenge of retirement in the number Joe and Kareema Khouri belts out Grant’s rousing Cleanin’ Woman.
Jim Ballard handles most of the blue-collar assignments — a long-haul trucker, a fire fighter, for examples — and is very affecting on a slightly off-topic number, Fathers and Sons. Still, the find of the production is recent Florida Atlantic University grad Michael Focas, who buoyantly serves up Miranda’s new Latin-tinged tunes.
Artistic director Clive Cholerton stages the show simply and effectively, assisted by choreographer Dave Campbell, who lends the show a much-needed fluidity. More conventional and accessible than some of the Caldwell’s recent offerings, Working should make the ailing theater some new fans, while remaining true to Cholerton’s emphasis on new work.
WORKING, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, April 1. Tickets: $38-$50. Call: (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432.