You used to have to travel to Chicago, New York or L.A. to see the kind of comedy improv where the timing, material and delivery is brilliant enough that you’re left thinking somebody had to have scripted this.
Then came “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” – a British television game show, quickly introduced in a U.S. version, with a cast of absolute comedy geniuses.
Since then, two of those actors, the Scottish-born Colin Mochrie and Canadian Brad Sherwood, have devised a tour that uses audience suggestions as their improv prompt, the way it’s often done in clubs.
Their latest effort – The Scared Scriptless Tour – drops in at Melbourne’s King Center Thursday. If the family has cabin fever from last week’s storm, this might be just the thing to loosen everyone up again.
As for the pediatric cure for the stir-crazies, Riverside Children’s Theatre is staging “The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley” next weekend, Oct. 21-22. That play, staged by Riverside’s adult acting apprentices, had been slated for last weekend. The show is part of Riverside’s new family programming. If you haven’t seen the “Flat Stanley” books – or gotten a paper cutout of Stanley mailed to you – it’s about a boy who turns two-dimensional and travels the world trying to reclaim his fully formed self.
Hurricane Matthew also bumped the First Friday Gallery stroll to the second Friday, with Gallery 14 holding its “Think Pink” reception happening this Friday as well as artist Lisa Steffens’ opening a show of paintings and monographs at Raw Space @ Edgewood.
Also Friday, you can wrap up the Gallery Stroll with Row Jomah performing on Kilted Mermaid’s stage starting at 8:30 p.m. The talented five-piece rock-fusion band that grew from its vocalist Joe Roma is on tour from its home base of Clearwater. Kilted has a convenient feature on its website that allows you to sample all the bands it hosts. This one strikes me as particularly good with a drummer, Dylan Chee-a-tow, that could keep you up all night.
And one more second chance, this one not storm-related: If you missed British blues guitarist John Mayall at the King Center Tuesday, his tour continues Friday night at the Lyric in Stuart. As excellent as his performance was in the 2,000-seat King Center, the Lyric offers a much more intimate concert, one in which Mayall should shine.
Leonard Nimoy had some fanatical followers as he trekked among the stars in “Star Trek.” Through it all, he himself was following the Dutch-born French impressionist Vincent Van Gogh, perhaps best known for his painting, “Starry Night.”
These days, Nimoy and Van Gogh are travelling the country together, staging a play Nimoy has written and produced about Van Gogh’s life. “Vincent” is on its way to West Palm’s Kravis Center, where next weekend it will be performed in the intimate Rinker Playhouse.
Riverside’s Comedy Zone was a casualty of Matthew’s bluster. It will return next weekend when the place will be in full Octoberfest mode. In the meantime, this weekend there’s Howl at the Moon, with John Kenney at the keyboards again opposite Neal Kern. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday, and there’s always a band out on the circular drive under the oak trees. Friday night it’s a Beatles tribute band.
Sunday in a simulcast at the Majestic Theatre in Vero, the Bolshoi Ballet goes gangster with the “The Golden Age,” a jazzy satire of a European 1920s cabaret, where a humble fisherman, Boris, falls in love with Rita the cabaret dancer and friend of a gangster. Yuri Grigorovich directs the production, which screens at 12.55 p.m. The theater shows it a second time next Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 7 p.m.
Lots of changes at the Vero Beach Museum of Art as we await the naming of a new director replacing the retiring Cindy Gedeon. Before she goes, Gedeon and curator Jay Williams give us the first trio of exhibits in the new season, including the pottery of the African American slave known as Dave and the paintings of Florida artist Bruce Marsh, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida.
This weekend, a third exhibit opens in the Holmes Gallery: The American Spirit: Selections from the Manoogian Collection. Richard and Jane Manoogian are collectors of American art, including of the Hudson River School. There are also two watercolors of Andrew Wyeth.
