The phenomenally popular children’s book series “Flat Stanley” could be a metaphor for using too much social media: A boy who suddenly becomes two-dimensional gets stamped and mailed around the world in a search to recover his well-rounded, three-dimensional self again.
“The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley,” which opens this weekend, is Riverside’s theater for young audiences production this year, the recent initiative that was launched with last year’s “Poodleful,” an original musical by Riverside’s musical director Ken Clifton and DJ Salisbury, who frequently directs.
This time, the play is targeted at a slightly older audience: 5 to 13. Like last year, the production puts the talents of Riverside’s performance apprentices on display for the public. Graduates from theater programs around the country, the apprentices mostly show off their talents by staging short plays in the county’s schools.
Jeff Brown’s “Flat Stanley” books were adapted by Timothy Allen McDonald, who also turned the works of Roald Dahl into the musicals “James and the Giant Peach” and “Willy Wonka.”
Performances are Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend and next, with three shows daily: 1:30 p.m., 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
As they did with “Poodleful,” the Riverside apprentices will travel to Stuart in late December to stage the play at the Lyric Theatre.
Entertaining as some might find the presidential campaign, only one candidate has made a stand-up routine out of it: Blue Collar Comedy Tour comic Ron White, whose shtick now includes a 2008 Vero Beach arrest for pot, just enough for a “little skinny twisted-up joint,” as he told a Las Vegas reporter afterwards.
While White did not earn a spot at the podium at Monday’s debate, he did book the stage at Melbourne’s King Center for Friday. With the motto “Vote Smart! Because You Can’t Fix Stupid,” White has taken to calling his gigs “campaign stops.”
Speaking of campaigns, the new super-group Prophets of Rage has a different vision for our nation: Make America Rage Again. At least that’s what they’re calling their tour, headed for Perfect Vodka Arena Saturday. The group consists of three members of Rage Against the Machine, plus Chuck-D of the hip-hop group Public Enemy and B-Real of Cypress Hill, the L.A.-based Latino hip-hop group. Hard to believe the groups got their start in the early 1990s. Rage’s lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha is not part of the group; he just released his first solo cut in a decade this month, part of an upcoming solo album.
We’re just weeks away from the reawakening of Riverside’s Main Stage with what will no doubt be a smokin’ production of “Ring of Fire,” the story and music of Johnny Cash. Jason Edwards, who played in the show in Broadway, will direct and star in the show, which opens Oct. 25. As a warm-up, Riverside is offering for the first time an adult seminar on the play, the first in the theater’s new Backstage Access series that will precede each Main Stage production. Part lecture, part discussion group, the class will take a look at examples of past productions, the script, and in this case the cultural impact of Cash and his music. Having watched Riverside’s education director Jim VanValen in action, on stage in the one-man show “Underneath the Lintel” a couple of years ago, and rehearsing the Riverside apprentices this summer, I can tell you his years as a college professor on top of his long career as an actor promise to make his classes deserving of standing room only enrollment.
A folksy roots rock group with broad appeal is at Kilted Mermaid Saturday night: Damion Suomi heads south from his home in Cocoa Beach. Suomi segued from Bible College to bar music and hasn’t looked back. A year-and-a-half-long stay in Ireland suffused his songbook with Irish drinking songs and he and his group the Minor Prophets, since disbanded, produced an album “Go, and Sell All Your Things.”
