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Stage: Hot Ticket
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 29, 2001
Adapted from adoption
Homecoming is Lauren Weedman's autobiographical solo show about being adopted by a family in Indianapolis.
"When I was growing up, no matter what my behavior was, it was always attributed to my being adopted," she says. "When I was in high school, I had a black boyfriend, and that just threw my family into a huge tizzy. They connected it with me being adopted."
Weedman, 32, developed Homecoming in Seattle, where she lived until moving to New York last year. With plans for an off-Broadway production, the play is on a short tour in Florida.
Though Weedman considers her show a comic treatment of family life, its theme naturally draws people who have firsthand experience with adoption.
"It's sort of a mixed blessing," she says. "I get a lot of adopted people and birth parents, and it's very, very somber. They're coming from all sorts of intense places, and a couple of nights have felt a little too heavy for me, but that's my own deal, my own insecurity about needing to hear laughter. I'm always grateful that people come."
Homecoming has one performance at 8 p.m. Friday at St. Petersburg Little Theatre. Tickets: $12 and $20. (888) 741-7522.
Marvin Hamlisch: the way things are
Marvin Hamlisch composed the music for more than 40 movies, including the Oscar-winning score and song for The Way We Were, but he wasn't paying much attention to the Academy Awards this week.
"Who cares? Do you think a best score Oscar ever mattered?" said Hamlisch, who is conducting the Florida Orchestra in a pops program. "Now all people care about is the song, and the scores are negligible."
His last movie score was for the 1996 Barbra Streisand vehicle, The Mirror Has Two Faces. Now he is concentrating on musical theater, writing music for Sweet Smell of Success, which is based on a 1957 movie starring Tony Curtis as a press agent.
As composer of A Chorus Line, Hamlisch has a place in Broadway history. But his last musical, The Goodbye Girl, was a flop.
Hamlisch is the pops music director of both the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington and the Pittsburgh Symphony. He is also a possible candidate for the vacant post with the Florida Orchestra.
"My pops philosophy is very simple," he said. "I think it's important that families come to the pops. You should be very careful not to make it too difficult. It's supposed to be accessible, it's supposed to be a good time."
Hamlisch leads the orchestra at 8 tonight at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 8 p.m. Saturday at Mahaffey Theater and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Tickets: $20-$38. (813) 286-2403.
Sound and movement
The University of South Florida Dance Department is featuring a pair of guest choreographers in Seizing the Moment for Dance, Music and Text, its annual spring concert. Bruce Steivel, artistic director of Nevada Ballet Theatre, set a 20-minute work to music of Haydn. Martin Kravitz, who has taught in Europe the past 16 years, choreographed two pieces that integrate singing, speaking and inventing sounds with movement.
Dances by Erin Cardinal and John Park will also be performed at 8 tonight and Saturday night and 3 p.m. Sunday in Theatre 1 on USF's Tampa campus. Tickets: $4 and $8. (813) 974-2323.
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