Florida Spotlight: September 2010
The creators of Stomp turn trash into musical treasure yet again as Pandemonium kicks off a U.S. tour at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, September 16-26. Performed by the Lost and Found Orchestra, the show takes the D.I.Y. rock ethic of Stomp into classical territory, transforming bottles, bicycle horns, traffic cones and other junkyard fodder into the instruments of a symphony orchestra.
Fort Lauderdale has something for every taste this month, with Motherhood the Musical celebrating the joys and pitfalls of parenthood at Nova Southeastern University’s Miniaci Performing Arts Center (September 24-October 31) and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts staging the Off-Broadway musical Bare (September 9-18), an expose of two teenage gay lovers’ ansgt against the backdrop of their Catholic boarding school.
Nearby, check out Completely Hollywood (abridged), the new comedy from the Reduced Shakespeare Company that gives the modern classics of Tinseltown their patented fast-paced skewering at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation (September 9-October 3). And in Coral Springs, take in a little theatrical comfort food with the Broward Stage Door Theatre’s production of the dishy beauty parlor play, Steel Magnolias (September 24-November 7).
In Central Florida, there’s plenty for the kids to cheer about as the new Disney on Ice production of Toy Story 3 glides its way across the state with dates at the Lakeland Center (September 3-4) and Orlando’s Amway Arena (September 10-12), while the Orlando Repertory Theatre gives children a taste of old-school girl power with the adventures of the plucky storybook heroine Pippi Longstocking (September 11-October 10). Also in Orlando, check out the slapstick Hitchcock sendup The 39 Steps at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center (September 15-October 10) and Mad Cow Theatre’s production of Company (September 10-October 17), Stephen Sondheim’s tuneful tribute to marriage through the eyes of a committed bachelor.
Tampa’s Jobsite Theatre opens a door to the mind of science’s greatest dreamer with the stage adaptation of Alan Lightman’s surreal novel Einstein’s Dreams, playing at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, September 15-October 3. Also in Tampa, the Gorilla Theatre gets a lift from the tall tales of an eccentric “adventurer” with their production of Donald Marguiles’s comedy Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself) (September 23-October 17). Further south, take in the Manatee Players’ production of Sunday in the Park with George in Bradenton (September 23-October 10), the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical tribute to painter Georges Seurat.
Elsewhere across the state, you can find homespun comedy with the Venice Theatre staging of Greater Tuna (September 28-October 17), where a pair of actors take on the roles of an entire Texas town’s population. And in Gainesville’s Hippodrome Theatre, be sure to catch Marc Camoletti’s farce Boeing Boeing (September 3-26), in which a frequent-flying architect can’t escape his infidelities.
