Florida Agenda

By Warren Day

Stephen Schwartz has had an illustrious career as the composer of musicals for the stage (“Wicked,” “Pippin,” “Godspell”), and also for animated musicals produced by Walt Disney (he’s the winner of three Oscars for Best Song). The one musical that didn’t seem to work so well seems to have stuck in his craw, however. “Working” opened on Broadway in 1978, but closed after just 23 performances. After nearly 35 years, Schwartz has recently revamped the show, adding two new songs, cutting others, and updating the book. This new version is experiencing one of its first productions now through April 1 at the Caldwell Theater in Boca Raton. And as usual for this company, it’s a first-rate production.

Based on a non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, the musical tells–through a series of vignettes—stories about the everyday experiences of a variety of working people: a fireman, a cleaning lady, a teacher, a trucker, a housewife, a money manager, a receptionist, an iron worker, a fast food clerk, a prostitute, and even a retiree, whose time is spent talking about not working. Rather than a traditional book musical with a main storyline, it’s a kind of staged cantata devoted to the poignant, unexpected, and funny experiences of the workplace, providing insights into the dreams and disappointments of people who are often otherwise invisible to us.

The workplace has seldom been the focus of a musical. Offhand, I can think of only two others among the hundreds of musicals in the Broadway canon: “The Pajama Game” and “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.”

It’s strange that the workplace should be so ignored since we spend far more of our waking life at our labors than we do anyplace else. At least 70% of our time awake is spent either at work, or traveling to and from–much less preparing for or thinking about it. It’s estimated that the average American worker spends 100,000 hours of his lifespan in full or part-time jobs. (If that cold fact isn’t excuse for an instant mid-life crisis, what is?) So it’s refreshing when a musical finds the workplace as its rhyme and reason, particularly one that’s as well directed and well performed as this one. Clive Cholerton, the Artistic Director for the Caldwell Theater Company, has personally directed and given the production a creative and energetic flow that makes the evening pass quickly. The cast of six professional and highly talented actors play various roles, and succeed in making you both laugh and cry. Particular notice should be given to Laura Hodos, who sings a show-stopper of a song about what a waitress does to turn her job into art.

Schwartz is the creative force behind the show, but the songs are not only his alone: six others, including five-time Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor, and Mary Rodgers, daughter of legendary “Great American Songbook” composer Richard Rogers, contribute to the libretto.

In the end, “Working” does what good theater has always done: help you see the life and choices of another person in a new and clearer light.

The Caldwell Theatre Company is located at 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL 33487.

Performances at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Call 561-241-7432 or visit caldwelltheatre.com.

By WARREN DAY

All musicals, by their very nature, are improbable. When is the last time you broke into song with full orchestration just because you pronounced a sentence correctly, or because you spotted a stranger across a crowded room? Okay, maybe that latter, but you see my point.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch, as presented currently at the Empire Stage Theater in Fort Lauderdale, has more improbables than a block of Broadway musicals.

First of all, does it seem like a probable idea to do a musical about an East German boy who gets a shaking surgeon when he goes for a sex change operation?  And how about staging the whole thing like a glam rock performance at some American underground club next to where his protégé is playing to a packed amphitheater

? In addition, have it undergirded by a Greek myth, plus some connection to a discarded Gospel, while throwing in a male character playing a female – and a female character playing a male –  and you get a general idea of how the improbables pile up.

And the improbables extend to this particular production itself, because what sane director and producer would attempt to do a show in Fort Lauderdale that required finding a local actor who can sing and perform like a seasoned club act, play an electronic keyboard, convey emotions from A to Z, and do all of that with a German accent in full glam drag while prancing around in Joan-Crawford-fuck-me pumps? And also find four believable rock musicians, one of whom has to sing beautifully and cross-dress. It ain’t like casting “The Sunshine Boys.”

And yet, what might be the biggest improbability is to pull all of this off in a highly effective and professional manner that will engage anyone who is open to a different kind of theater experience.

Infinite Abyss Productions is responsible for this staging, as they were in 2010 for the excellent Stop Kiss” As in that play, the director Jeffrey D. Holmes demonstrates a talent for getting an exceptional and emotionally true performance from his lead actor. This presentation would fall flatter than that proverbial pancake if Joe Harter as Hedwig wasn’t multi-talented and able to deliver a multi-layered performance.

That Greek myth can be found in Plato’s Symposium and says there were three sexes originally – children of the moon (a man and woman combined), children of the earth (two women) and children of the sun (two men). Angry gods divided them, thus creating heterosexuality, and female and male homosexuality. Ever since, we’ve felt incomplete and been longing for our other half.

This kind of Greek dualism permeates this production; it’s even reflected in the graphic that producer Erynn Dalton picked for the program cover. And the fact that feelings of dual natures are felt by many people partly explains the power and the appeal of this improbable musical that’s been performed in hundreds of places around the world. We’re lucky to have a good production of it here in South Florida.

Plays 8pm Thursdays thru Saturdays until June 4th, Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased online at www.infinite-abyss.com or at the door (cash only).

By MICHAEL FRENCH

Erin Pittleman stars in “Grey Gardens: The Musical”.

Photo: Courtesy, Rising Action Theatre

Ft. Lauderdale’s very own Rising Action Theatre’s production of the Grey Gardens: The Musical at the Sunshine Cathedral, offers a comically disturbing portrait of a mother and daughter’s’ relationship fraught with a paradox of emotions.

It is a “MUST SEE!”

Mother, Big Edie and daughter, Little Edie are iconic women — in an eccentric, precarious fashion — as the subjects of Albert and David Maysles’ documentary Grey Gardens. The Edies were the aunt and first cousin, respectively, of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. In the early 1970s, they lived in squalor and self-delusion at their dilapidated, family estate , Grey Gardens in East Hampton.

Some believe most women become like their mothers. The stage musical Grey Gardens emphasizes this transformation with that of “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale by casting the same actress, Erin Pittleman as both Little Edie and her mother at the zenith and collapse of their family fortunes. Mother and daughter share a love of music. The women, breaking into song emphasizes their tenuous, fragile grasp on reality.

It’s July 1941. Grey Gardens is a social landmark in East Hampton, Long Island, and home to quipping,sarcastic personalities. “We didn’t have a black sheep of our own, so we had to import one,” one of the Beales remarks of George Gould Strong,(Larry Buzzeo) Big Edie’s opportunistic, live-in piano player.

The play opens with Little Edie (Lisa Kerstin Braun) announcing her engagement to Joe Kennedy Jr. (Christopher Michaels), older brother of JFK. Big Edie’s plans to sing nine songs at the party indicates only one of the family fractures that makes Little Edie eager to marry and escape Grey Gardens.

Jerry Weinberg, as Big Edie’s father J.V. “Major” Bouvier, gives the song, “Marry Well” a real punch. Erin Pittleman makes Big Edie a larger than life figure prone to warbling in classic operatic style, or singing politically incorrect tunes such as “Hominy Grits.” She proves so innately likable she softens Big Edies’ hard edges and doesn’t seem to deserve the contempt of her daughter and father.

Even if you’re don’t know the story of Grey Gardens , you can feel their future is ominous, and anticipating the decline of the women’s lives in Act Two.

Lisa Kerstin Braun’s sweet voice conveys young Little Edie’s desperation. Her performance contains virtually no shared traits with the Little Edie at middle age. Her transformation is so bizarre, they’re like two completely different women. In many ways they are.

Act Two fast forwards to 1973 and becomes the tale of two charmingly, some what daft ladies vicariously living their lives in the shortening shadow of days gone by. Erin Pittleman plays Little Edie, while Dee Deringer-Piquette takes over as the now “Mrs. Haversham like, Big Edie. The ghostly song “Entering Grey Gardens” indicates the house’s filth: “The crumbling walls, the broken clocks/It’s like a 28-room litter box.” Big Edie’s teenage friend Jerry even wears flea collars on his pants to keep off the vermin! Neither Edie attempts to keep up appearances, further reflecting their decline.

Ms. Deringer- Piquette gives Big Edie enormous charisma, even though she is bedridden for much of her time on stage. Big Edie’s number “Jerry Likes My Corn” is both sweet , but hauntingly insane.

At one point, the Edies aggressively volley their decades-long grievances at each other. Their simultaneous complaints to the audience have such yapping musicality, it could be a song.

Meanwhile, Erin Pittleman’s poignant, touching song “Around the World” reaches emotional heights, tugging at one’s heart strings. Songs connect audiences to the roles’ feelings, but Grey Gardens’ songs also express the Edies’ eccentric detachment from the world. Little Edie’s “The House We Live In,” is rousing, pitiful and comical. The ladies’ mental states, like their once regal home, Grey Gardens, have run riot and become, an unweeded garden that grows to seed.

For anyone who has been a caregiver to an aging parent, whom at times tests the limits of their child’s love, who has put their own dreams on the back burner, this tantalizing play will echo a prickly, familiar, rotating, conflicting melange of anger, guilt, resentment,and sadness which at the same time battles with love, compassion, and commitment.

“Grey Garden: The Musical” presented
through April 3rd at Rising Action
Theatre at Sunshine Cathedral, 1480
SW 9th Ave.,Fort Lauderdale,
954-561-2225

Kevin Coughlin and David Goldyn will be casting for an upc

oming play, “Grey Gardens: The Musical” on Saturday, November 13 from 1 to 4 p.m. and Monday, November 15 from 6 to 9 p.m. Auditions will be held at the Rising Action Theatre (now at Sunshine Cathedral/MCC), 1480 SW 9th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. Call the theater at (954) 561-2225 for more information or to schedule appointment — you can also just show up. Prepare two 16-bar songs and a short monologue. You may be asked to read from the script. Performance dates: February 25 through March 20, 2011, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.