Sign in to your TheaterMania account

If you loved 2003 American Idol favorite Frenchie Davis, or you voted for 2003 American Idol winner Ruben Studdard, don't forget to book your tickets for Ain't Misbehavin' (January 3-4), the national tour of the Fats Waller musical about the comic and musical soul of 1930's Harlem, set to take the stage at Van Wezel Hall in Sarasota. Richard Maltby, Jr. will recreate his original direction, and John Lee Beatty will recreate the original set design for the tour. Continuing in the Sarasota area, Asolo Repertory will be busy this month with four productions, playing their own theater with Jeff Baron's Visiting Mr. Green (January 30-February 21), and then landing at the Mertz Theatre with Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid (January 2-March 1), Inventing Van Gogh (January 9-April 16), and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (January 23-May 16). If you're looking for an excuse to break out a poodle skirt and run down to the soda fountain, Florida Studio Theatre will take a trip back to the 50s with Hula Hop Sha-boop (January 6-March 21), with a collection of musical vignettes and comical stories. In a more intellectual vein, FST will also explore the life of American Sculptor Louise Nevelson in Edward Albee's Occupant (January 14-31).

Moving up the coast line to Bradenton, the Manatee Players present the classic tuner, The Music Man (January 8-February 1), while across the bay, Jobsite Theater will present Steve Martin's absurdist comedy Picasso at the Lapin Agile (January 8-25) at their home in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Moving toward the center of the state, Orlando Shakespeare's PlayFest is headlined by Olympia Dukakis who stars as Prospera on January 30 and 31 in readings of Another Side of the Island, an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Continuing east, the Tony Award winning musical comedy, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (January 16-18), will take the stage at the Maxwell C. King Center for the Performing Arts in Melbourne with six young competitors, overseen by adults who barely escaped childhood themselves. Further down the coastline, dive into the world of America's greatest showman in Jupiter at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre with Barnum (January 6-25), featuring a colorful score by Cy Coleman. In the area, the Atlantic Theater will examine the life of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo in Vincent (January 3-31), Leonard Nimoy's reconstruction of Van Gogh from Theo's prolific collection of letters to his brother, to be performed by Dan DePaola.

In West Palm Beach, take a trip into a (fictional) hit 1928 musical with The Drowsy Chaperone (January 6-11) at the Raymond F. Kravis Center, the Tony-Award winning tuner from the minds of Bob Martin, Don McKellar, Lisa Lambert, and Greg Morrison. Valerie Harper is set to star in Matthew Lombardo's new comedy, Looped (December 31-February 16), about original celebrity bad-girl Tallulah Bankhead, set to play at the Cullio Centre for the Arts.

In Lake Worth, comedy comes to the nunnery at Lake Worth Playhouse this month with the musical Nunsense (January 16-February 1). Boca Raton will get the Broadway treatment when New Vista Theatre Company brings Avi Hoffman, Terrell Hardcastle, and Christa Moore to the West Boca Performing Arts Theatre stage for The Producers (January 15-February 8), Mel Brooks' Tony Award winning hit musical. The Caldwell Theatre Company will head in an opposite direction to examine the realities of one of the greatest presidential scandals in recent history in Frost/Nixon (January 4-February 8), Peter Morgan's treatment of the famous interviews between Richard Nixon and David Frost.

To brighten any storm that's brewing, Broadway Across America will bring ABBA flavored sunshine to Fort Lauderdale with Mamma Mia! (January 20-February 1), the smash-hit musical -- and now popular feature film -- set to play at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. For the more dramatically inclined, Rising Action Theatre presents Roll with the Punches (January 21- February 1), the story of Dr. John Evans and the forces that threaten to tear apart his family. In Davie, the Promethian Theatre will take a philosophical plunge with A Report on the Banality of Love (January 9-25), the story of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his Jewish student and lover, Hannah Arendt.

In the Miami area, Playground Theatre will present A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (January 14-February 8), an adaptation of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz. The Dave and Mary Alper JCC will present A Jew Grows in Brooklyn (January 17-February 1), a musical comedy about a young boy's quest for the American dream. GableStage will focus in on capitalism with Elmer Rice's incendiary play, The Adding Machine (through February 1).

Across the state, on the southern tip of the west coast, the drama continues in Fort Myers, where the Florida Repertory Theatre will mount Brian Friel's Tony-Award winning play, Dancing at Lughnasa (January 9-February 1). Further south, The Venice Theater will have a variety of choices, including Reefer Madness, the Musical (January 8-February 1), Escabana in da Moonlight (January 13-February 1), and Late Night Catechism (January 18-19).