Stage West announces a colorful new lineup

Stage West Community Playhouse just announced its 2002-03 season, and the lineup is filled with shows that actors will love to be in and audiences will love to see.

The season starts in September with Ray Cooney's sex farce, Run for Your Wife, a wacky show about a cab driver with two wives in different parts of London. The outrageous Cooney is a favorite of local audiences, who love to laugh at the crazy situations only he can think up. The show had a wildly successful run at Richey Suncoast Theatre several seasons ago and started a spate of Cooney productions around the Tampa Bay area.

The other plays are the comedy-drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, made famous by the 1975 Academy Award-winning Jack Nicholson movie, set for January 2003, and the wonderful comedy Enter Laughing, based on Carl Reiner's story of a stage-struck kid, set for May 2003.

Stage West has chosen two of my very favorite musicals, the hilarious Mame, based on the play Auntie Mame, and the poignant and powerful A Chorus Line, which tells the tribulations of dancers trying out for a show. Mame comes in November, while A Chorus Line will be in March 2003.

Season ticket prices will remain the same as this year, $60 for all five shows before the March 31 deadline, $65 after that, and will go on sale sometime in January, according to Leanne Germann, publicist for the Spring Hill theater.

Speaking of stars, the Hudson-based rock band Harry Dash will open for the Cranberries' gig at Mahaffey Theatre on Sunday, a high honor indeed, and already a sold-out show.

In the mid 1990s, the Cranberries became Ireland's most successful musical export since U2 when the single Linger hit the top 10 in the United States. It's still a noted band, especially lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, who sounds faintly like Sinead O'Connor, but without all the passion.

Harry Dash started out as the YZ Band a decade ago, when lead singer-guitarist Richard Wise was but 15 years old. In 1996, YZ (as in "Wise") changed its name to Harry Dash, a cockney phrase that means "cool" or "flash."

Band members have changed many times over the years, but Wise has remained the core of the group. HD placed second in Sam Goody's national Battle of the Bands a while back, and they've played in venues from Jilly's in downtown New Port Richey to actor Johnny Depp's club in Los Angeles, the Viper Room. One of their tracks, Control for Now, was played as background on the television show Third Watch.

Earlier this year, they were chosen to play in the Ice Palace pavilion before the big concert by the Dave Matthews Band.

I have a more than passing familiarity with the Harry Dash sound. The Wises live on the other side of the big ditch behind my house, and the band frequently rehearses in their living room, letting sounds waft down the ditch and into my ears as I lounge on my lanai.

The kickoff weekend for Greater New Port Richey Main Street's Holiday Festival was a big success.

The Youth Art Festival drew more than 1,200 entries from 25 elementary schools throughout the county, according to festival chairman Marilynn deChant.

A popular exhibit came from students of Trudy Stugard of Fox Hollow Elementary, who had studied semiabstract painter Wassily Kandinsky as a prelude to creating their own art.

"Working with abstract releases them -- they're not afraid of making a mistake," Ms. deChant said. "It's teaching kids to think outside the box at a time when FCAT is making them go into the box."

The second big event of the weekend was the first-ever "Taste of the Holidays" fundraiser at the Moose Lodge on Grand Boulevard, also sponsored by Main Street. More than 80 people paid $25 apiece to gorge themselves on dishes from The Crab Trap, Boulevard Beef & Ale, Juan's Black Bean Deli and Cafe Grand, and gorge we did.

"We raised over $2,000," said Laura Turner, executive director of Main Street. About half of that was from a silent auction of beautiful holiday wreaths donated by businesses and individuals, some of them going for up to $75.

A highlight of the evening was the announcement of Pasco County's "Who's Been Naughty or Nice" list, secretly nominated by people at the party.

Among those on the "Nice" list were Richey Suncoast Theatre board president Charlie Skelton "for breathing life back into the Richey Suncoast Theatre" and Joe DeLuca "for being a man of honor, and keeping your word no matter what the price," an apparent reference to DeLuca's providing free space on Main Street for the Main Street organization.

The "Naughty" list was a tad irreverent, with naughty little digs for some of the "honorees."

Why was New Port Richey City Council member Ginny Miller on the list? "We would tell you," the nominator wrote, "but her husband might threaten to kill us," a reference to the tiff between Ms. Miller and fellow council member Tom Finn that escalated into, well, you know the story.

The Shuffleboard Senior Citizen Vandals were also on the "Naughty" list, a reference to the petty thefts some seniors made after the city ousted them from their longtime shuffleboard club. "You had it virtually free for 50 years . . . stop whining . . . you acted worse than the "hoodlums' you complain about in your neighborhoods," the nominator wrote.

The biggest barb was reserved for Saddlebrook Resort owner Tom Dempsey "for his proposal of a tennis stadium in Saddlebrook/Wesley Chapel . . . to be funded by tourism tax dollars." Wrote the nominator: "Can we say, "All about you!' "

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