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Hot Ticket: On the Fringe in Orlando
By JOHN FLEMING and BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published May 19, 2005
The Orlando Fringe Festival is a 12-day celebration of art, music, theater and cultural enterprises that defies easy categorization.
For the first time in its 14 years, the festival will take place in the city's Loch Haven Park, rather than in temporary venues scattered across downtown. True to the spirit of the festival, some of the art and performances are pretty exotic, and many are for mature audiences. (The nonjuried art show, for example, is billed as "uncensored," so beware.)
But there also are G-rated components, including a Kids Fringe festival on weekend afternoons.
A sample of some of the wide-ranging theater: Boy Groove, a musical boy band parody; Dragness of God and the Naked Holy Ghost, a cross-dressing parody of Agnes of God; Heartman, family-friendly performance art; Karaoke Knights: A One-Man Rock Opera; and June Cleaver, a drama about perfect political wives. The festival runs today through May 30. Buttons to enter the festival are $6, and individual performances range from free to $10. For tickets or information, see www.orlandofringe.org
The potion made him do it
Michael Mathews stars in Jekyll & Hyde, the musical by Frank Wildhorn (music) and Leslie Bricusse (book and lyrics) that turns on a chemical formula that changes a man from good to evil. It was the first Wildhorn show to reach Broadway, powered by stirring anthems like This Is the Moment, Someone Like You and A New Life. The two women in Jekyll-Hyde's life are played by Catherine Ernst as his fiancee, Emma Carew, and Amanda Bernstein as femme fatale Lucy Harris.
Jekyll & Hyde is more pop opera than book musical, with relatively little spoken dialogue and much sung-through recitative in the style of The Phantom of the Opera. The show has gone through numerous rewrites since its original incarnation 15 years ago, and it will be interesting for fans to see which version is being performed these days.
The Salerno Theatre production opens tonight and runs through May 29 at HCC Ybor Theatre, 15th Street and Palm Avenue, Ybor City. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $18-$21. 813 631-9430; www.salernotheatre.com
- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic
The spoken poetry of a pope
Pope John Paul II was a man of many talents: athlete, playwright and actor, priest. He was also a poet, using the pen name Andrzej Jawien. Here's one of his poems, Magdalene:
The spirit has shifted, my body remains
in its old place. Pain overtakes me
to last as long as I grow in my body.
Now I can give it food from the spirit
where before there was only hunger.
At times love aches: there are weeks, months, years.
Like the roots of a dry tree my tongue is dry
and the roof of my mouth. My lips are unpainted.
Truth sounding out error.
But it is He who feels
the drought of the whole world, not I.
Alley Cat Players will honor the pope with a reading by Jo Averill-Snell of a selection of his poems from Friday through May 30. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 8 p.m. Monday at the Isaac Center, 610 E North St., Tampa. 813 231-8478; www.alleycatplayers.org
- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic
Ode to Jerry Herman
Two of the Show Palace Dinner Theatre's biggest hits have been Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles, thanks in great part to the music and lyrics of Jerry Herman.
Songs from those and other Herman shows (Mame, Mack and Mabel, Milk and Honey) will fill the theater Friday through June 26 in "Jerry's Girls, the Music and Lyrics of Jerry Herman."
"It's an homage to theatricality," said show director Matthew McGee. That's glamor and glitz and glittery costumes.
Patti Eyler, who played Dolly Levi in the Show Palace's Hello, Dolly!, returns to do big numbers from that and other Herman shows. Sara DelBeato (Fanny Brice in Funny Girl in Spring Hill) will do Herman's torch songs and his famous anthem, I Am What I Am (from La Cage). Laura Hodos (Sarah in Guys and Dolls) will join Eyler in Bosom Buddies from Mame and solo in So Long Dearie from Dolly.
"Jerry's Girls, the Music and Lyrics of Jerry Herman," at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre, 16128 U.S. 19, Hudson. Matinees and evenings. Dinner and show, $39.50; show only, $28.45; ages 12 and younger, $21.95 and $16.95, all plus tax and tip. Call (727) 863-7949 in west Pasco; toll-free elsewhere at 1-888-655-7469.
- BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN, Times staff writer
[Last modified May 18, 2005, 14:59:59]
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