Theater News

Florida Spotlight: January 2010

Horse Sense

A scene from Cavalia
A scene from Cavalia

If you’re looking for high-profile shows to kick off the New Year, you’ll hardly be able to miss Cavalia, the multimedia equestrian show conceived by Cirque du Soleil’s Normand Latourelle. Too big for an indoor show, Cavalia promises acrobatics from human and horse alike under the big top in Miami’s Bicentennial Park, January 19-31. New shows can also be found in nearby Coral Gables with Sandra Riley’s The Hour of the Tiger, a culture clash between a traveling American woman and a Japanese geisha premiering at the New Theatre (January 22-February 14).

In West Palm Beach, New York City’s Aquila Theatre Company visits the Kravis Center with productions of Henrik Ibsen’s caustic political drama An Enemy of the People (January 21-22) and Shakespeare’s rollicking comedy As You Like It (January 23-25). The touring production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific also stops at the Kravis Center for the opening dates of its Florida run (January 5-10) before moving on to the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa (January 12-17) and the King Center for the Performing Arts in Daytona Beach (January 19-24). Close by in Jupiter, get your tickets quick for the Under-the-Bridge Players production of D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game at the Burt Reynolds & Friends Museum (January 26-30). Seats are limited for this comical battle of wits between senior home residents, directed by Reynolds himself. Meanwhile, the curtain goes up and the feathers fly at Jerry Herman’s out loud musical La Cage Aux Folles at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre (January 12-31).

Mike Burstyn brings the ambition and angst of a famous gangster into focus with Lansky at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale (January 20-24), a one-man show that recounts Meyer Lansky’s struggles to reconcile his Jewish beliefs with his pursuit of the American Dream. For more comical conflict, take in Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn at the Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs (January 22-March 7), where an aspiring ladies man gets a lifetime of bad advice at his older brother’s bachelor pad. Over in Tampa, it’s ladies night all month long — starting with Gorilla Theatre’s production of Adam Bock’s The Drunken City (January 14-February 7), in which a threesome of friends rethink their impending marriages after a scandalous girls’ night out. At the David A. Straz Jr. Center, take a walk through the life of the Queen of Comedy with Thank You For Asking: An Evening with Lucille Ball (January 5-17), directed by the icon’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz. Also the David A. Straz Jr. Center, see Jobsite Theatre’s presentation of What the Butler Saw (January 6-24), the bawdy English farce by Joe Orton.

The Bob Carr Performing Arts Center raises the chandelier for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, as the touring musical stops in Orlando for an extended run, January 20-February 14. Elsewhere in town, Orlando Shakespeare Theater tackles the bard’s masterpiece with their production of Hamlet at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center (January 27-March 13). In South Florida, a string quartet clashes over a rushed rehearsal in Michael Hollinger’s Opus at the Florida Repertory Theater in Fort Myers (January 8-24), while the Venice Theatre stages Sly Fox (January 12-31), a comic update on Ben Jonson’s Volpone by the late M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart.

Lastly, a pair of decidedly different musical revivals make their way down the state: A Chorus Line high-steps it to the Times-Union Performing Arts Center in Jacksonville (January 19-24) and the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples (January 26-31), while the romantic ’80s send-up The Wedding Singer kicks off its Florida run at the Marina Civic Center in Panama City on January 21 before heading to the Mattie Kelly Arts Center in Niceville (January 22), the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce (January 23) and Sarasota’s Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall (January 24).