Daily Loaf

A fabulous sampling of the 2009-2010 season at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (recently renamed the Straz Center), beginning with two tickets to one of the most anticipated theater events of the year: the world premiere of Wonderland, the new Frank Wildhorn musical based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That’s not all. You also get two tickets to Complexions Contemporary Ballet (Jan. 14) and two tickets to Opera Tampa’s production of Puccini’s La Rondine (Apr. 23-25).

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There are two sets of crises in 100 Saints You Should Know, one religious, one sexual. The religious crises are experienced by a priest named Matthew, who’s losing his faith, and a cleaning woman named Theresa, who’s just beginning to gain hers. The sexual crises involve Matthew again – he’s discovering that he’s gay and that he needs physical intimacy – and 16-year-old Garrett, who already knows that he’s gay, but is reluctant to out himself. There are two other important characters — Abby, Theresa’s rule-breaking daughter, and Colleen, Matthew’s dogmatic mother — and then there are the two near-nude dancers who, in Kerry Glamsch’s ambitious staging of the play, punctuate the action with intense slow-motion homoerotic couplings set to music including Gregorian chant.

The ultimate result is mixed: the play is original in its treatment of the ebb and flow of faith, formulaic in its scenes of gay self-actualization, and both spectacular and overly pious — sexually pious! — in its choreography. Still, author Kate Fodor is unafraid to aim for big game (her previous play was about who else, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt), and on several occasions she scores a direct hit. This may not be a totally successful work of theater, but it’s provocative and daring. At the very least, it’ll give you something to talk about. Read the rest of this entry »

Whoa. That was intense.

If you missed the GoodVibes Production of “You Are More Than You Know: A Celestial Odyssey” (or should I say ODDyssey?) this past weekend at The Studio @620, you really missed…something.

The attempt was noble, I’ll give them that. Their website (www.goodvibesmusic.com) describes the production thusly:

“Have you heard the news? This is not the only Earth, ours is not the only universe, and you are not the only you! Leading scientists now describe ‘the multiverse’ as a collection of universes containing a series of ‘parallel worlds’ where every conceivable version of every Earth event — past, present or future — happens somewhere, and alternate versions of you experience every possible version of your life!

“This special multimedia event presents these concepts in an entertaining format through stunning celestial video images, animation, live music and audience participation. Take a trip with ‘The GoodVibes’ into the mind-bending possibilities of a new millennium awakening to a new wisdom. Explore the far reaches of the multidimensional realities where time and space have no meaning, where everything happens at once, and where the future you dream of already exists!”

OK, so it sounds a little weird, but not so, so, (so) weird, right? It sounds like maybe if you were a little gullible, and went into it thinking you were going to be ‘awakened to a new wisdom,’ and wanted to buy into something a little kooky, you might just get what you paid for.

But wait. You’re about to slip into a parallel world. Read the rest of this entry »

Zombies are always hungry — good thing they aren’t real.  Metropolitan Ministries have hungry families and their need is real, so the cast of Jobsite Theater’s Night of the Living Dead is teaming up to help!

All jokes aside (and I can’t take credit for that headline, that’s the work of our resident designer Brian Smallheer), hunger is serious business. For over 35 years, Metropolitan Ministries has helped over 150 families a day get GEDs, find employment and overcome homelessness. Their Backpacks of Hope program helps put the tools kids need in their hands to be successful students. At the holidays they provide food and toys for thousands and thousands of area families.

If you’ve spent much time in Tampa during the holidays, you’ve no doubt seen the large tent on Florida Avenue not that far north of downtown. My wife and I have personally contributed in some fashion every year, and it’s impossible not to be moved by the holiday spirit when you stop in to drop things off.

This year, I have read over and over again how many organizations like MetMin across the country are hurting far worse going into the holiday season than ever before.  The economy is still down, unemployment is still up. All non-profits are taking a hit in this economy. Even Jobsite has had some stressful moments. But not with this show, so let’s face it, when it comes to a hungry actor or a hungry family — the hungry family wins every time.  Metropolitan Ministries is facing a perfect storm: Growing need and diminishing contributions.  Over 8,000 families will need assistance this holiday season, from food to warm clothing, shelter to toys from Santa. Read the rest of this entry »

Yasmina Reza’s Art has two subjects, one of them serious and worthy of attention, the other slightly embarrassing and perhaps even philistine. The better theme – and the one that gets most of the stage time – is male friendship and the unspoken agreements that sustain it.

The three men in this case are Marc, Serge and Yvan, whose comradeship is threatened by a disagreement over a painting, and who eventually discover what awkward and never-admitted assumptions have bound them together for over a decade. The painting they disagree about – an all-white canvas by a celebrated modernist named Antrios – is the occasion for the second theme: the imaginative bankruptcy of modern art and the pretentiousness of those who claim to admire it.

From the moment that Serge admits he paid 200,000 francs for the monochromatic rectangle, Reza implicitly makes the case that today’s art world is a den of con men and women supported by suckers who wouldn’t know a masterpiece from a mud puddle. This argument is ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »

Good improv requires a lot more than acting talent. It requires intelligence, a wide-ranging imagination, split-second decision-making and an unfailing instinct for what’s comic in the human condition. Where Gavin Hawk and Ricky Wayne of The Dumb Show (photo, L-R) are concerned, it also means the willingness to appear utterly ridiculous in front of a crowdful of strangers. Whether impersonating Britney Spears trying to make up with Kevin Federline, a sadistic father and his horrified son playing racquetball, or two U.S. Airway pilots overshooting their destination by several hundred miles, Hawk and Wayne repeatedly aim for the dangerous heights – or is it depths? – of vulnerability, absurdity, insanity and just plain silliness. They’re not always successful, but at their best they find more humor in their unscripted hijinks than most actors ever find in the most celebrated of comic texts. If you love to laugh, you ought to give them a look. Read the rest of this entry »

Jobsite Theater’s Night of the Living Dead isn’t even very funny. Insofar as it has a plot, it’s tiresomely repetitive, and the script, by Lori Allen Ohm, isn’t within miles of being the sort of inspired Charles Ludlam-like parody one might have expected. There are a few good moments — a couple of graphically gory shockers, some silly combats, and all the much-too-short scenes involving Jason Vaughan Evans — but in general this is a sloppy, flaccidly directed yawner that’s short on invention and memorable acting. In its 75 minutes, it offers about 30 seconds of real hilarity.

The play begins with Barbara (Kari Goetz) and Johnny (Matthew Lunsford, pictured left), siblings who’ve come to a cemetery in order to place a wreath on their father’s grave. They’re rudely interrupted by a zombie (Evans, pictured right) who struggles with Johnny, leaving Barbara to escape to a house in the vicinity. There she tries to call for help, but her cellphone’s not working, and the blood she sees on her hand seemingly sends her into shock. A rescuer arrives: Ben (Dayton Sinkia), a forward-thinking good guy who helps her fight off more ghouls and then proceeds to board up the visible doors and windows with a few unconvincing planks. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Rudnick’s The New Century starts out incandescent, loses a little effulgence in its second scene, becomes decidedly lackluster in its third, and fizzles out completely in its fourth and fifth. The American Stage “After Hours” production offers two outstanding performances — by Annie Morrison and Matthew McGee — and even during its least interesting moments, there’s always a chance that witty Rudnick will deliver another zinger. But clever jokes aren’t enough to hold a play together, and The New Century comes off finally as a series of unconnected sketches. It’s too bad, because the author has a message to deliver about the need for straight/gay cooperation. As it stands, that message can just barely be heard. Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Rutherford (Nicole Jeannine Smith photo)

The Woman in Black is an entertaining, unusually literary ghost drama for the Halloween season, though one that lacks much reason for existing outside its capacity to excite a degree of fear. Beautifully acted by Christopher Rutherford and Glenn Gover, the current Gorilla Theatre production is genuinely spooky — several times spectators shrieked — and pleasingly original. It won’t remind you of anything else you’ve seen.

It features wonderfully discomfiting sound effects, super-serious characters (to raise the level of terror), and a ghost of dreadful countenance with nothing the least bit friendly about her. Skillfully directed by Ami Sallee Corley, Woman has everything but substance — some perspective on reality that might remain with us after the final curtain falls.

I suppose it’s wrong to want more than chills and thrills from a Halloween play, but this drama is so consistently intelligent, a little authentic significance would hardly be out of place. Oh, well. If you’re looking for a spine-tingler more intellectual than ZooBoo, this is your poison. It’s about as nerve-wracking as these things get, and so gore-free that you can bring the (older) kids. Read the rest of this entry »