It was to be a routine announcement of the show titles for next year’s “Kravis on Broadway” series, the sixth season of touring productions since the West Palm Beach performing arts center began presenting road shows on its own. But the publicist kept frantically e-mailing a strong suggestion that I bring a camera to the event.
Which headliner of which show had the center coerced into appearing and pressing the flesh with the media and the group sales reps invited to the Thursday morning shindig?
While the Kravis’s director of marketing Ilene Arons was pitching the season hard from the microphone on an elevated platform at one end of the Cohen Pavilion, a banging sound was heard coming from the lobby outside the function room. The doors swung open and in trotted Joey, the equine puppet title character of War Horse, the five-time Tony Award-winning World War I epic heading our way in February of next year.
Joey is a life-sized wire mesh see-through sculpture, powered by two actor-puppeteers inside his body and a third in front guiding him by his reins. The production ― at least the one I saw at Lincoln Center ― is truly remarkable, mainly for the illusion of the horses. The puppeteers quickly become invisible as the viewer’s eye focuses on the horse, which seems to come to life and radiate emotions.
You really have to see it for yourself, which, of course, is exactly the response this brief preview was supposed to elicit.
War Horse is far and away the major argument for subscribing for next season, which has five other shows, mostly from recent seasons on Broadway, but mostly shows that have played elsewhere in South Florida already. (War Horse, for instance, plays the Broward Center this year, May 7 -19).
Anyway, the 2013-14 “Kravis on Broadway” lineup is:
• Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Starring the Rockettes (Nov. 29 – Dec. 8, 2013) ― A traveling version of the holiday variety show at New York’s iconic movie palace.
• The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Jan. 7-12, 2014) ― The classic American folk opera about the denizens of Catfish Row, as artfully tampered with and turned into a Best Revival Tony winner by director Diane Paulus.
• War Horse (Feb. 12-16, 2014).
• Sister Act (March 4-9, 2014) ― A stage musical based on the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg flick about an R&B singer forced to hide out in a convent. With a score by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater.
• Evita (April 8-13, 2014) ― A road show of the recent Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s jaundiced look at Eva Peron, the controversial political and social-ladder climber of Argentina.
• Million Dollar Quartet (April 29-May 4, 2014) ― A musical recreation of a fabled recording session with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, or at least stand-ins for them.
Subscriptions for all six shows range from $174 to $492, available to the general public on Friday, July 12, by calling (561) 832-7469.
