With Riverside Theatre’s season finale “Sister Act” having moved on to Philadelphia, community theaters are filling in the gap in live performances.
Friday is opening night for “Big Fish: The Musical” at downtown Melbourne’s Henegar Center. Based on the Daniel Wallace novel and the film directed by Tim Burton, the storyline follows a yarn-spinning traveling salesman named Edward Bloom whose son finally sets about finding the line between his father’s facts and his fictions.
The musical is directed by Henegar’s artistic director, Hank Rion. The Friday performance includes a champagne reception and music by Brevard Brass. It runs through May 22.
A little further north, in the historic district of Cocoa, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” is playing at the charming Cocoa Village Playhouse.
Opening on Broadway six years before Miranda’s blockbuster “Hamilton,” “In the Heights” won four Tony Awards including one for Best Musical in 2008.
Set in New York’s largely Puerto Rican and Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights, the story takes place over the course of three days. Quiara Alegria Hudes wrote the book.
Miranda wrote the hip-hop style lyrics and score, finishing an early draft in 1999 in his sophomore year at Wesleyan. After salsa numbers were added, the university’s theater department staged it and a group of students approached Miranda about developing it into a Broadway show.
In all, the show was nominated for 14 Tony Awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize. It also won a Grammy for the cast album.
The Cocoa Village Playhouse is staging it with a cast from the all-volunteer company of its Broadway on Brevard series. “In the Heights” runs through May 15.
This weekend’s Comedy Zone at Riverside Theatre is featuring a comedian named Kier who incorporates impressions of musicians into his act. He actually started out as a musician, and went to college on a music scholarship before figuring out his real talent was not in making his own music but making fun of everybody else’s. Also on the bill is Carmen Vallone. Comedy Zone tickets are only $16 and there are VIP boxes available for groups. With two shows per evening both Friday and Saturday, the gathering hordes waiting for doors to open can hang out on the loop outside and hear live music until the show starts.
With the end of season clearing the theater calendar, Comedy Zone weekends are back up to twice a month again, so full-time residents can get their senses of humors back before it all starts again next winter.
If you watch Jimmy Fallon, you know he’s obsessed – or pretends he is – with the Styx song “Too Much Time on My Hands.” It’s been a running gag for the past few weeks and Styx is apparently just delighted – the band’s lead singer Tommy Shaw says he wants to go on Fallon’s show and sing it with him.
Shaw is no doubt grateful for Fallon expanding his brand, especially since Fallon’s earworm is coinciding with Styx’s tour, which includes a stop at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce Wednesday night, May 11.
The group formed 46 years ago in Chicago, and in the ’70s and ’80s, as a recent reviewer wrote, they found “the sweet spot between fist-pumping hard rock and Broadway schmaltz.”
Right up Fallon’s alley.
