Drew Eberhard - Page 5

From the moment the lights descended on the stage at 1120 E Kennedy Blvd., Unit 151 otherwise known as Stageworks Theatre, the opening night audience sat with bated breath as we awaited the opening notes of The Color Purple: The Musical Adaptation with book by Marsha Norman and music/lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray.

Avenue Q, a musical comedy featuring puppets controlled by human actors premiered off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in 2003. Opening to rave reviews and claiming Tony Nominations for Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Book all of which it won and several nominations in the acting categories, Avenue Q proved to be a juggernaut of its time. Having assumed much praise for its approach to racism, homosexuality, and internet pornography Avenue Q proved that even puppetry can be fun for adults.

Jonathan Larson a name synonymous with American Musical Theatre in the 90s penned this phenom of a Musical based on the Puccini Opera La Boheme. Featuring a rock and roll score unlike anything heard on Broadway at its time, Rent received critical and mass acclaim following the untimely passing of its creator, who passed prior to its premiere. With such recognizable songs as, “Take Me or Leave Me,” “Will I,” “Out Tonight,” and probably the biggest musical theatre anthem of its time “Seasons of Love,” Rent went on to achieve Tony and Pulitzer claim and won the world over with its unique score and storyline of unlikely characters who were mirror images of very real people in its time. Still a musical that has many outdated references manages mass appeal today.

Matt Harmon’s Exhibits in the Zoo displays what life was like for people prior to the Holocaust living out their days in the confines of the Warsaw Ghetto. To much knowledge and further proven by history, the ideas of the Holocaust, or what our immediate resonance with the tragedy conveys is the Concentration Camp angle. With plays like Martin Sherman’s Bent, and Diary of Anne Frank, and novels such as Night and Number of the Stars, we have learned at length the tragedies that struck the communities of Jews at the hands of Hitler’s Regime.

These questions and more are the thoughts that fill my mind upon exiting the theatre following the opening night of Studio Grand Central’s Second Season opener Something Clean by Selina Fillinger. Fillinger whose more recent work Potus is a smashing success on Broadway; penned this three-hander piece about a grieving mother who also is struggling with love and culpability. Her own struggle with intimacy is backlogged by trauma and has come to a crippling head not just on her inner self but on her marriage as well.

As the final play written by the great Neil Simon, Rose & Walsh previously entitled Rose’s Dilemma ran in Los Angeles and Off-Broadway in 2003. Originally starring Mary Tyler Moore in early previews, Moore left the production when Simon sent a letter citing her to learn her lines. Neil Simon’s works include the very popular Eugene Trilogy (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound), and other great works including Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, I Ought to Be in Pictures, among many other prolific pieces both onstage and onscreen. Spanning a career writing more than 30 plays and numerous screenplays, Simon has received more Oscar and Tony Award Nominations than any other writer. Simon passed away on August 26, 2018, leaving behind a legacy as one of the great Stage and Screenwriters of his time. Rose & Walsh makes its premiere at freeFall Theatre Company on July 30, 2022, boasting an exceptionally strong cast, this production will be one you want to see multiple times over.

In its complexities of storytelling, we find a narrative grounded in teacher-student relationships that surround the 100-minute One-Act currently onstage at the Shimberg Playhouse at Tampa’s Straz Center. Written by Rajiv Joseph in 2008 this one-act quirky romantic comedy packs a punch just boiling below the surface. Analyzing the relationship between student/teacher/mentor we meet three unlikely individuals whose lives are impacted by lessons grounded not just in origami, but also in the way that as humans we feel pain and how we adapt/deal with such. Rajiv Joseph won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010 with his work Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which enjoyed a stint on Broadway featuring the late great Robin Williams. Rajiv Joseph also went on to win an Obie Award for his work Describe the Night in 2018. No stranger to telling the inner workings of human relationships, Rajiv Joseph has garnered critical acclaim for his many works, and yet still is considered slightly unknown in certain arenas.

Nunsense premiered off-Broadway in 1985 with music, lyrics, and a book by Dan Goggin. The show ran for 3,672 performances and became the second longest-running off-Broadway show in history. Nunsense was then adapted for television starring everyone’s favorite Golden Girl Rue McClanahan and has since produced six sequels and three spin-off adaptations. Nunsense A-Men, more recently produced at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, a “Straz Produced” production, brings to the stage a group of local bay area performers to tell the story of the Little Sisters of Hoboken. As the leader of the Merry Band of Nuns is none other than the Enigmatic, and truly Exceptional Matthew McGee as Sister Mary Regina, Mother Superior. For the first time in 22 years, Matthew McGee makes his Jaeb stage debut as a performer in the musical. Dubbed a “Life-Long, bucket list opportunity”, Matthew is just downright Heaven-sent in the role. From his first entrance to the final bow Matthew, along with the rest of the cast present a side-splitting, laugh-filled evening that will make your cheeks hurt even the next day.

Every so often in our lives along comes a musical full of heart. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, is a musical comedy with Music & Lyrics by William Finn, with a book by Rachel Sheinkin. The Broadway Production opened in 2005 and was directed by James Lapine. Since its opening, many productions both locally and regionally have been produced throughout the United States. Spelling Bee was nominated for 6 Tony Awards, winning two including Best Book. This fast-paced musical comedy features 6 adult performers playing children in a local annual spelling bee competing for the top prize, and a savings bond for furthering their education. At the judge’s table and moderator for the events of the bee are past spelling Champion Rona Lisa Peretti, who is also a local Real-Estate Agent, and Vice Principal Douglas Panch. The unique aspect of the show is that four audience members are invited on stage with the performers in the show to compete in the bee. The Announcer and Moderator switch off by ad-libbing mixed sentences and various definitions for the words often to hilarious ends. One by one the performers playing middle school-aged children take their turn at the mic and perform their unique form of spelling by talking into their hand, writing the word on the floor with their foot, or drawing the word on their arm all competing to make sure each word is spelled correctly.

John Patrick Shanley’s The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, is a complex and intricate story that dives not only into the depths of our subconscious but boldly sits on the surface level of our emotions as well. Allowing us as the audience to not only deep dive within the minds of these characters, but into our own past or current circumstances. Shanley’s piece while complex is told within the length of 3 scenes ultimately ending with the audience making up their own conclusion to not only the events of the story but our own lives as we’ve grown so accustomed. John Patrick Shanley achieves masterful work here even with this being an earlier part of his repertoire. Shanley, most famously known as the Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award-winning playwright for Doubt, and the Oscar-winning Moonstruck has written 23 plays most of which he has gone on to direct, and is a Screenwriter on 9 Feature Films. Out of his 23 plays few have been performed in the Tampa Bay area, so it’s a much-needed breath of fresh air that TampaRep has decided to produce one of his earlier works, and still find relevance in the piece today. Director Chris Marshall, who has wanted to direct a Shanley play for some time says it best in his Director’s Notes, “...Our process has been about using the power of language to connect, though to do so is terrifying. It’s been equally about fierce listening and seeking to be affected as a listener, something we do less and less of these days. In these spaces (the theatre as theatre and as the room to hold scenic representations), we have finite opportunity, space, and time to connect, to learn, to discover. What a gift.”

A Skeptic and a Bruja by Rosa Fernandez makes its world premiere with Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, and in Cooperation with freeFall Theatre Company across the bay. The last time freeFall worked in conjuncture with another company was their collaboration with the Hippodrome and their production of Lone Star Spirits, and more recently with their staging of Ebony Rep’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. In speaking with Matthew McGee, freeFall’s Marketing Coordinator, he mentioned this is something the folks at freeFall will continue to explore with future seasons. I for one can attest with first-hand knowledge that this is something that freeFall should continue to do.

The show opens with a Ghost Light center stage. As most shows of a Brechtian nature go, characters of nondescript fashion layout the evening events in the manner of Prologue. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, or as it is subtitled “The Parable Play,” tells the story of the rise of Arturo Ui a fictional Chicago Mobster as he ruthlessly tries to control the Chicago vegetable market despite opposition. A political satire based on Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Nazi Germany prior to the events of World War II.

Anyone who has been immersed in “Pop Culture” over the last 30+ years has seen, heard, or knows every line and sequence of the 1990 Romantic Comedy Pretty Woman starring the iconic duo of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Read our critic's review of the new stage musical.

The Sugar Ridge Rag, a play by Philip Middleton Williams, premiered at LAB Theater Project in Tampa’s Historic Ybor City on April 28, 2022. The story is a complex, yet simplistic study of the life of an average family in rural Ohio, and what lies at the depths of family values and the definition of true love. From the synopsis found on the Playbill; Pete and Dave Granger, age 17, are twin brothers in rural northwest Ohio in 1970. Dave enlists in the Army; Pete goes to Canada to pursue his career in music. Over the next five years, their lives are changed by the Vietnam War and the choices they made. Deb and Hal, their parents, are left to deal with the consequences of their actions and their future as a family.

'Do yourself a favor, DO NOT miss this incredibly sobering production.' says BWW's critic.

Over the course of the last 26 years somewhere along the line of learned history in the depths of musical theatre you have heard the name Jonathan Larson, synonymous with the 1996 Rock musical RENT that changed the face of musical theatre in its time. Boasting a rock score and groundbreaking storylines such as the rise of the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country, RENT was unlike anything in its conception. However, Jonathan Larson and his stamp on modern musical theatre came into fruition before RENT. Trying to establish himself in the live theatre arena since the early 1980s, Larson began performing his Semi-Autobiographical Rock Musical Tick, Tick...Boom! in the early 90’s as a solo piece. Tragically Jonathan Larson passed away in 1996 of a rare heart condition before he was able to feel the immense magnitude of his fame.

Read our critic's review! Over the years and throughout the History of the stage musical, certain shows come along and start as films before moving into an adaptation for the stage. Shows such as Grease, The Bodyguard, Ghost, and more recently Moulin Rouge, Beetlejuice, and Back to the Future. One thing is true to most if not all of these....they sell tickets!

Little Shop of Horrors is a horror comedy rock musical with somewhat of a cult following much like Hedwig & the Angry Inch, and Rocky Horror Show. Read our critic's review.

Murder on the Orient Express a stage adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel was written and adapted by Ken Ludwig and premiered in New Jersey in 2017. Based on the Christie novel that was first published in the United States in February 1934, and originally published under the name Murder on the Calais Coach. The twisted plot is full of a wild cast of characters. As Poirot puts it, “It was like a painting by Pablo Picasso.” We open the play in Istanbul at the Tokatlian Hotel, as we meet Poirot we understand he is due in London in three days' time due to the delivery of a telegram, and he runs into his old friend Bouc. His friend then arranges a trip on the Orient Express which he is the owner, and the two climb aboard with Poirot hoping he makes it to London on schedule. Upon boarding the Orient Express one by one Poirot meets an oddity of characters much like boarding a train to Carnival. As the train departs the station amidst the snowy conditions like an onion we see the layers of each of the passengers peeled back one by one.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill is a play with music written by Lanie Robertson and this production is directed by Wren T. Brown. The musical premiered in 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia and its story recounts some events of Billie Holiday’s life leading up to this performance at Emerson’s four months shy of her death in 1959. Emerson’s is a small bar in South Philadelphia and the time is a midnight performance by Lady Day. Set to the backdrop of a piano center stage and a few cocktail tables around the space, we relive some events of Ms. Holiday’s life as told through stories found deep in her memory but living on the surface as if they just happened yesterday.