Two big Broadway musicals opening Tuesday: One, “A Chorus Line” at Riverside Theatre is a homegrown production; the other, “42nd Street” is on tour at West Palm’s Kravis Center.
“A Chorus Line,” developed by tape-recording actual dancers about what it was like to audition and perform, opened in 1975 at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre and ran for 15 years. One of those interviewed dancers, Mitzi Hamilton, who went on to perform in the show for a decade, will be directing and choreographing Riverside’s production.
I’ll be keeping a prideful eye on Riverside acting apprentice Samantha Cho Grossman in the role of Connie. Grossman, a recent graduate of Pace University, starred as Pansy the dog in Riverside’s original musical “Poodleful” last fall. She’ll be reprising that role here Feb. 6 and 7.
“A Chorus Line” runs through Jan. 24.
“42nd Street” is the show that transformed Riverside Theatre a few years back into a Broadway blockbuster musicals machine, recruiting patron producers who got behind the (nearly) all-musicals format and through their generosity, greatly enhanced the theater’s offerings.
At Kravis, “42nd Street” is directed by Mark Bramble, co-author of the musical’s book, and choreographed by Randy Skinner. The pair staged the Broadway production that won a Tony for Best Musical Revival. The show runs through Jan. 10.
On opening night, Steven Caras will be offering a pre-performance discussion at the Kravis’s Arts Education Center. That starts at 6:45 p.m. Caras, a famed dance photographer and former New York City Ballet dancer, is now Miami City Ballet’s director of development for Palm Beach County. He had a similar stint at Palm Beach Dramaworks, the prestigious straight-drama playhouse we told you about last week.
And by the way, Dramaworks’ excellent production of “The History Boys” by the British playwright Alan Bennett has been extended a week. Having seen it, I’m not a bit surprised. It now closes Jan. 10.
We will have a rare chance to see all guest conductors leading the Atlantic Classical Orchestra this season, when the new artistic director will be chosen among the four conductors, one at each concert.
First up on Jan. 14 in Vero, David Amado, conductor of the Delaware Orchestra, takes the podium here in a program featuring Lindsay Garritson playing Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2.” The concert also includes Schubert’s “Symphony No. 9” and “Overture to Oberon” by Carl Marie Von Weber.
Amado previously was a staff conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and director of its youth orchestra. ACO chair Marie Jureit-Beamish notes that Amado and Garritson shared the stage in St. Louis in a performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto. Juriet-Beamish is Garritson’s mother; she has a home in Stuart, though Lindsay was raised in St. Louis.
Piano soloist Garritson, who has a master’s in music and artist diploma from Yale, first played with ACO in 2011.
Amado, who trained at Juilliard, is the grandson of the legendary violinist Lillian Fuchs; his mother and aunt were also accomplished string players. He took up piano “as a safe place” with all those string players, as he recently told a Pennsylvania-based newspaper. He played in Juilliard’s pre-college program as well as at the Aspen Music Festival, though it was hardly getting away from home – his grandmother taught at both.
His wife Meredith, whom he met at Juilliard, is an accomplished chamber violinist.
Amado will be conducting in Palm Beach Gardens’ Eissey Theatre, Stuart’s Lyric Theatre and in Vero, at St. Edward’s School.
The Vero concert is Jan. 14 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $60 and $50. The orchestra is also holding “Meet the Maestro” luncheons to meet the candidates. They will be held at 11:30 a.m. on the day of the concerts at Northern Trust Bank. Tickets for all four luncheons are $100.
All you college kids home for Christmas break, Saturday night, the Palm Beach female-fronted indie-rock band Raggy Monster plays starting at 9 p.m. at Guanabanas, a fun bar with decent food near the Jupiter Inlet. If you saw Raggy Monster at Sunfest when they opened for Train and Smashing Pumpkins in 2013, you may have sat up and listened when the band nearly broke up last year when it lost its ninth musician in three years. Then husband-and-wife founders Billy Schmidt (keyboards) and Rachel DuVall (vocals and guitar) found a fierce new guitarist, Mike Guido, plus bassist Oren Gross. And Raggy Monster was revived.