Theater sets stage for more musicals

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 26, 2000

The theater season is at its height right now, but theater honchos are already thinking about the next season. This week, Stage West Community Playhouse's board of directors okayed next year's shows, and the list looks terrific.

There's a significant change in the 2000-2001 programming. Instead of the usual three plays and two musicals, there will be two plays and three musicals. This may not sound like a big deal, but, believe me, it is. Musicals usually mean a much larger investment in time, energy and money, but they usually mean higher attendance, too. Most community theaters make their living on their musicals and hope to break even on their plays.

Actually, Stage West patrons have chosen plays as their "favorite show" as often as they have musicals: Moon Over Buffalo (1999); Lost in Yonkers (1997); Move Over, Mrs. Markham (1996); and Lend Me a Tenor (1994).

The switch in format doesn't mean that Stage West is deserting plays. Actually, look for even more plays and more kinds of plays from this ambitious, accomplished group, thanks to the addition of the soon-to-open Forum, the theater's new 159-seat satellite theater.

"We'll be doing more dramatic-type things in the smaller theater," said Madeline Child, president of the board.

The recent Tea and Sympathy and 1997's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof showed that Stage West can handle serious material with style.

Dates and directors haven't been announced yet, but the 2000-2001 shows will be:

Kiss Me, Kate, Cole Porter and Samuel and Bella Spewack's delightful take on Shakespeare. Kate takes place backstage and onstage during a tryout of a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, where the egotistical actor-producer Fred and his temperamental co-star and ex-wife Lili fight and make up behind the scenes in a manner very similar to what Shakespeare's Petruchio and Kate do on the stage. The show is full of hummable tunes, including So In Love and the quirky Always True to You in My Fashion.

Wait Until Dark, Frederick Knott's crime drama about a young blind woman and the dirty rats who try to snuff her out to get a heroin-filled doll she doesn't know she has.

The Secret Garden, the musical drama about a spoiled, lonely little orphan girl sent to live with an uncle in England. The uncle is still in mourning for his dead wife and is seemingly indifferent to his bedridden 10-year-old son. The girl finds a secret garden filled with brambles and makes it a haven for herself and her ailing cousin. A sweet story for all grown-ups and mature children.

The Day They Kidnapped the Pope, a clever comedy with a wonderful message. When the Pope visits New York, a taxi driver kidnaps him and holds him for a unique ransom: one whole day of world peace. Imagine the Pope calmly peeling potatoes for the family supper as the world goes bonkers with worry about him outside -- you get the idea.

The Music Man, Meredith Willson's paean to small-town life, with the fast-talking "Professor" Harold Hill and the shy Marian the Librarian as sweet lovers. The show has some of theater's best moments and best songs.

Yes, Richey Suncoast Theatre did it in 1998, and both the Show Palace Dinner Theatre and Playhouse 19 in Crystal River are doing it this year, but Stage West felt that there still will be plenty of people to come enjoy the show by spring of 2001 -- and they're probably right.

Stage West's summer show is one that (as far as I can tell) hasn't been performed in these parts since 1987, when the Playmakers did it in Ybor City: The Rocky Horror Show. The musical is the original version of the cult movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which has been running in theaters non-stop since 1975.

"It will draw quite a new crowd," Ms. Child said, a definite understatement. It's described as a "sicko-wacko-weirdo rock concert."

No word on whether the curtain time will be at midnight, the hour it's shown at movie houses. And no word on whether we will be frisked for squirt bottles and rice before we go in, because the movie's patrons always bring such items to spray or throw, respectively, at the appropriate times.

It will be a few weeks before tickets go on sale, but you can get on a waiting list right now. Current season-ticket holders will get first dibs on their current seats for the first few months (no deadline has been set yet), then the seats will go on a first-come, first-get basis.

Individual prices are staying at $14 for musicals and $12 for plays. Early bird season ticket buyers will get five regular season shows for $55. After that, the price bumps up to $60.

With this lineup of shows, and with Stage West's growing reputation for high-quality productions, look for those babies to go quickly.

Speaking of shows, the Show Palace Dinner Theatre has made a change in its 2001 season. The January 2001 show was going to be Once Upon a Mattress, the musical version of The Princess and the Pea, which catapulted Carol Burnett's career. But the response from travel agents who buy those big blocks of tickets wasn't all that enthusiastic, so the Palace owners changed their lineup.

Now the 2001 kickoff show will be Some Like It Hot, The Musical, otherwise known as Sugar. The show is based on the Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis-Marilyn Monroe movie about two unemployed musicians who witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, then try to escape from the gangsters who want to rub them out by dressing up like women and joining an all-girls band. Of course, the pretty, young blond, Sugar, thinks they are girls and makes them her best friends.

Richey Suncoast Theatre did the show a couple of years ago, and audiences loved it. It should be a huge hit at the Palace, too, because it has all the things that make it perfect for dinner theater -- guys dressed up like women, a sexy blond running around in her undies, a lecherous old man, mobsters, broad humor and lots of action. It fits in nicely with the entire season, too. Fiddler on the Roof and Wonderful Life (the musical of It's a Wonderful Life) precede it; Hello, Dolly and Carousel follow.

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