Jobsite Theater stages a gothic thriller for Halloween with Bloody Poetry, a play by Howard Brenton set in 1816, when the poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley and Shelley's wife, Mary, author-to-be of Frankenstein, spend a "haunted summer" together on the shore of Lake Geneva. Above, Chris Holcom plays Shelley and Summer Bohnenkamp-Jenkins the ghost of his first wife. Directed by Katrina Stevenson, the play opens Friday and runs through Nov. 16. $15.50, $19.50. 813 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; www.tbpac.org
- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic
Eugene O'Neill's silvery "Moon'
Many people consider A Moon for the Misbegotten the richest play Eugene O'Neill ever wrote. It is laced with all his usual dark themes of family pathology, drunkenness and a misspent life in the theater, but it also has a comic charm absent from Long Day's Journey into Night or The Iceman Cometh, the playwright's heavyweight masterpieces.
Julie Rowe plays the indomitable Josie Hogan and Ned Averill-Snell, right, the onetime Broadway idol James Tyrone in the American Stage production of O'Neill's final play, directed by Todd Olson. It opens Friday and runs through Nov. 23. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday no matinee this Saturday. $22-$32. (727) 823-PLAY or www.americanstage.org
- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic
"Crucible' opener
Merideth Maddox is Abigail Williams, and Patrick James Clarke is John Proctor in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which opens the season at the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota. Once a staple of high school required-reading lists, Miller's 1953 play, ostensibly about the Salem witchcraft trials in 1693, functioned as a metaphor for the Communist witch hunts of the 1940s and '50s when it premiered. Today, its central idea might be applied to other hysterical threats to personal freedom - anti-Muslim sentiment, say - that poison public debate. The first performance is Friday and then it runs in repertory into February. $15-$45. (941) 351-8000 or toll-free 1-800-361-8388.
- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic
Born in Bethlehem . . . PA
In !Hero, The Rock Opera, the Jesus of the Gospels is transformed into a dreadlock-wearing street preacher for the hip-hop generation. The new musical stars Christian recording artists Michael Tait of the Grammy-winning group dc talk; Mark Stuart, lead singer for Dove award-winner Audio Adrenaline; and Grammy-winner Rebecca St. James.
This modern version of the Jesus story is set in New York City.
The debut 19-city tour of the musical begins Saturday in Wabash, Ind., and ends Nov. 23 in San Antonio, Texas. It comes to Palmetto's Manatee Civic Center on Wednesday and to Calvary Assembly in Winter Park on Nov. 6.
The Manatee Civic Center show beings at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $35 and available at (941) 722-3244, ext. 244, or Ticketmaster.
