This is the last weekend to see “Hello, Dolly!” a show so bright and big it ought to be visible from across the bridge. And if you came away thinking Dolly’s into father figures, you might enjoy another show at Riverside, “Freud’s Last Session” on the father of psychoanalysis tussling it out with C.S. Lewis over the Heavenly Father. Mark St. Germain’s 2009 play opened Tuesday on the intimate Waxlax Stage.
The two-man philosophical debate over the existence of God takes place as Freud is weeks away from death and Luftwaffe bombing raids are about to rain down on London at the start of World War II. The play is directed by Allen Cornell, who also designed the set. That just about guarantees excellence, in my experience – Cornell treasures these Second Stage productions and tends to nail them every time.
The play runs through April 3.
The first international Deborah Voigt Vocal competition is in full swing this weekend at the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center. Entries have been narrowed to 30 competitors age 20 to 30. At Voigt’s request, there was no fee to audition or compete, and Vero Beach Opera has arranged for homestays for all the artists so as not to incur costs. They all arrived in Vero with five arias prepared and will play to the accompaniment of Vero Beach Opera musical director Bruce Stasnya.
These are young, highly promising singers and the caliber of the music promises to be high from the preliminaries on. Voigt’s competition has half the number of competitors as Met tenor Marcello Giordani’s, which the opera has hosted three times in Vero.
Voigt will be doing an on-stage interview Wednesday night that isn’t being billed as a concert, but hopes are high, needless to say, that the irrepressible diva will break into song. Voigt has given a number of concerts in Vero Beach, and they aren’t all opera – she loves Broadway show tunes.
Preliminaries are March 24 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Semifinals are Friday, March, 25 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and the finals concert is Saturday night, March 26, at 7 p.m. At stake is $21,000 in prize money. The Deborah Voigt/Vero Beach Opera Foundation sponsors the competition.
If, after all those professionally trained voices, you’re up for some homegrown talent, pianist and choral conductor Marcos Flores is staging another of his Easter Cantatas at Christ-by-the-Sea Methodist Church this Saturday. Featuring a 50-voice choir and a 30-piece orchestra, the concert will feature violinist Matt Stott, who runs the public school orchestra program. There are two performances, one at 4:30 p.m. and one at 7 p.m. to accommodate the ever-growing audience.
West Palm Beach was the epicenter of the hanging chad debacle, the election everybody thought would go down in history as No. 1 in craziness. Who better than the Capitol Steps comedy troupe to disabuse us of that notion, and in Chadstown, no less. This weekend, they’re wrapping up a two-week run of “Capitol Steps: Mock the Vote” at the Kravis Center. The hilarity keeps up through a Sunday matinee. Shows are in the smaller Rinker Playhouse.
Alternatively, you could take in “Bullets Over Broadway,” Woody Allen’s musical in the Kravis’ main performance hall. With original direction and choreography by the great Susan Stroman and based on the film by Allen and Douglas McGrath, the book follows a young playwright who takes money from the mob to get his show produced. The mobster’s motive is to impress his showgirl girlfriend. And it isn’t hard to imagine Woody Allen solving for X in that equation. The New Yorker called it “a fun machine from start to finish.”
That show too runs through a Sunday matinee.
A new play opens this weekend at Palm Beach Dramaworks at the end of West Palm’s Clematis Street. “Outside Mullingar” is a romantic comedy about two Irish middle-age farmers, neighbors who are squabbling over a patch of grass between them. Written by John Patrick Shanley, the play was on Broadway in 2014 in a limited run marking Debra Messing’s Broadway debut. The play earned several award nominations including a Tony for Best Play. The New York Times called it “Shanley’s finest work since ‘Doubt.’” That play won both the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony. “Outside Mullingar” runs through April 24.
