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Stage: Hot Ticket
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 25, 2001
Stripped-down Shakespeare
Shenandoah Shakespeare Express brings The Comedy of Errors to Tarpon Springs on Friday. Shakespeare's shortest play, it is a knockabout farce about long-lost twins who both happen to have twin servants. The possibilities of mistaken identity abound, and Shakespeare takes full advantage of them, but the play also explores relationships between husbands and wives, servants and employers.
Shenandoah, based in Staunton, Va., specializes in stripping Shakespeare down to the basics. They perform on a simple set, surrounded by audience members sitting onstage and sharing the same light as the actors. Pictured here are Comedy players Heather Murdock, seated, and Chaya Gordon.
Two appearances by Shenandoah take place Friday, beginning with a lecture-demonstration from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Tarpon Springs Cultural Center. Tickets of $5 and $7 include a light lunch. The performance is at 8 p.m. at the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $13 and $15. (727) 942-5605.
The king of bassoon
Mark Sforzini is one of the most versatile musicians in the Tampa Bay area. He's best known as principal bassoon with the Florida Orchestra, but Sforzini is also a conductor, of the Pinellas Youth Symphony, and a composer. Nor is this onetime Hula Hoop world champion (as a 10-year-old from Auburn, Ala., on the Dinah Shore Show) given to classical music stuffiness: Who could ever forget his star turn in Michael Daugherty's Dead Elvis, a concerto for bassoon in which he wore a sequined getup from the King's Vegas period?
Sforzini, presumably in a tuxedo, is the guest soloist in Weber's Bassoon Concerto with the Tampa Bay Symphony, giving its first series of concerts of the season under Jack Heller. Also on the community orchestra's agenda are works of Handel/Harty (Water Music Suite), Hindemith (Symphonic Metamorphosis) and Barber (Essay No. 2). In memory of Sept. 11 victims, the orchestra will play the Funeral March from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.
The Tampa Bay Symphony plays Friday at Mahaffey Theater, Monday at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and Tuesday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, all at 8 p.m. Tickets: $10. (727) 319-8383; www.tampabaysymphony.com.
The many faces of dance
Life as a housewife in the '50s is the idea behind Kelly Drummond Cawthon's To the Moon, one of six works in Landscape in Motion, the autumn program of the University of South Florida Dance Department. In a different vein, Jeanne Travers has choreographed Recuerdes del Camino (Memories of the Road), a multimedia piece inspired by the gypsies of Andalusia and featuring flamenco dancer Esther Suarez and her husband, guitarist Jose Moreno. Also on the program are Concerto Vivant, a ballet set to music of Poulenc by Gretchen Warren, as well as works by Jennifer Salk, Vicki Somoya and Katurah Robinson. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday in Theatre 1 on the Tampa campus. Tickets: $5 and $10. (813) 974-2323.
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