It’s unusual for Riverside Theatre to stage a show with no songs, but you can at least sing the title to the play coming up next: “Over the River and Through the Woods,” a multi-generational comedy opening Tuesday. Written by Joe DiPietro in 1998, it had a two-year run off Broadway, and in 2002, Riverside staged it to rave reviews.
DiPietro also wrote the off-Broadway musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” and won the Tony for the book and lyrics of “Memphis.”
A native of Teaneck, New Jersey, DiPietro set this play in Hoboken, where two sets of Italian-American grandparents try to keep their grown grandson from moving away.
The play runs in Vero through Feb. 21.
It’s the last weekend for “Smokey Joe’s Café” at Melbourne’s Henegar Center, the 1950s musical revue that features the music of the song-writing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They composed huge hits for Elvis Presley, the Coasters and the Drifters, including “Young Blood” and “Hound Dog.”
But don’t expect a plotline – there isn’t one. The show is just about the music, and the cast album won a Grammy.
Miami City Ballet offers its heady Program II in West Palm this weekend with the Twyla Tharp masterpiece, “In the Upper Room.” Set to the music of Philip Glass, with costumes designed by Norma Kamali, the grooving, buzzing, swarming dance, named for Mahalia Jackson’s gospel song, is every bit as soaring. Also on the program: Balanchine’s “La Source,” a recreation of 19th century French ballet; and the company’s first work by Peter Martins, set to Samuel Barber’s “Violin Concerto.”
Performances are Friday and Saturday evening, with matinees Saturday and Sunday at the Kravis Center.
Next weekend, Feb. 6 and 7, at 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., Riverside’s original musical “Poodleful” is presented at the children’s theatre. Written by Riverside’s mu sical director Ken Clifton and frequent director and choreographer DJ Salisbury, “Poodleful” played back in September to a happy houseful of little kids and their families. It’s based on the children’s book “Pansy at the Palace,” written by Windsor resident Cynthia Bardes. The cast is made up of apprentice actors, led by Samantha Cho Grossman as the poodle who nabs a jewel thief at a fancy hotel. She just came off a run in “A Chorus Line” on the Main Stage at Riverside.
Also next weekend, if you’re up for an adult theme or two, Vero Beach Opera offers a Saturday night concert, “Seduction and Betrayal,” performed by artists from the prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia. Think of the concert as a pre-Valentine cautionary tale in styles spanning opera to the American Songbook. The Feb. 6 concert starts at 7 p.m. at the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center.
As proof that what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas, that town’s longtime top magic act, Penn and Teller, is coming to Melbourne. The duo plays Thursday Feb. 4 at the King Center. Penn Jillette’s 2011 book “God No!” is a good example of how broad and irreverent a thinker he is. Teller, on the other hand, describes himself as having been raised as a “sort of half-assed Methodist.”
But he won’t go on and on about that. He rarely speaks in his act, using mostly mime to communication. Early on, Teller legally changed his name to just Teller, a mononym, which spares him one more word to say when he has to introduce himself. He developed the mute routine at Amherst, when he used to perform at frat houses and found that they threw less beer at him if he did his tricks but didn’t talk.
For seven years through 2010, the pair had a documentary series on Showtime called “Bullshit!” in which they staged political debates to espouse their shared naturalist, libertarian capitalist point of view and debunked pop culture lifestyle trends like abstinence, the war on drugs, animal rights, life coaching, 12-step programs and anything paranormal.
The show became a global hit, seen in more than a dozen countries, and was the longest running Showtime series ever.
After seeing the recent impeccably staged, thought-provoking “The History Boys” at Palm Beach Dramaworks, I am desperately trying to make time to drive south for Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece, “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” It opens next Thursday (Feb. 4) at the newly renovated intimate theater on Clematis Street, set amidst some of West Palm’s best restaurants and nightspots.
The theater, which in January was nominated for 14 of the South Florida theater scene’s Carbonnell Awards for last year, uses the slogan “theater to think about.” And it certainly should deliver with this one, widely considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
O’Neill wrote the semi-autobiographical work over 1941 and 1942, but the play wasn’t published until 1956, three years after his death. That same year it opened on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Play and it posthumously earned O’Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The action takes place in four acts over one long day of fault-finding and forgiveness in the life of a family of four.
The play runs through March 6.