Sunday’s matinee of “Memphis” marks the end of the season at Riverside Theatre. It’ll be a while before we see the word “rollicking” on the marquis again, at least until next season’s “Swinging on a Star,” though that seems to have already dibsed a double share of past participles from the marquis letter sorter: “toe-tapping” and “finger-snapping” are already up on the website. Also on the roster: “A Chorus Line,” “Hello, Dolly” and “Sister Act” and another show written by Joe DiPietro (as Memphis was): “Over the River and Through the Woods.” That show will be the rare straight play on Riverside’s main stage, though it is a family comedy – rollicking, no doubt.
If instead, what you’re really craving on a marquis is “creepy,” “surreal” and “absurdist” (mmm – date night!) then head down to West Palm’s Clematis Street this weekend to see the final show of the season of Palm Beach Dramaworks: Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer prize-winning play “Buried Child.” One of the very few stages in South Florida willing to go the distance with straight theater, Palm Beach Dramaworks is nothing if not a success story: it just handed the city of West Palm a $1.2 million check to buy the building that it has leased from a community redevelopment agency since 2011. It was then-Mayor Lois Frankel who had the vision to push that CRA purchase through in order to get a vibrant theater scene going on Clematis.
Now called the Dan and Ann Brown Theatre, the 225-seat space is wrapping up its 15th season this weekend. Past plays have included the works of Ionesco, Albee and Thornton Wilder, as well as February’s “Les Liaisons Dangéreuses” complete with lavish 18th century French costumes.
The upcoming season includes William Inge’s “Picnic” and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” With this plus, Miami City Ballet’s season at Kravis, I’m lobbying for a bullet train with a dining car, and maybe wagons-lits.
The Vero Beach Book Center is co-hosting with the Mental Health Association a book signing for Paul Gionfriddo’s “Losing Tim,” the remarkable memoir of a father and former Connecticut state legislator who recounts the failures of the country’s mental health care policies in treating his schizophrenic son. Now a resident of Lake Worth, Gionfreddo is the CEO of Mental Health America, with which the Vero MHA is affiliated.
His book, published in October by Columbia University Press, deals with his son’s wrong diagnoses, struggles in school – his freshman “year” took him in and out of five schools in 30 months. Incarceration, Gionfreddo found, turned out to provide the most “stable” environment after Tim’s years of homelessness.
Gionfriddo assumes part of the blame for turning mentally ill people out into the streets with no safety net in place. Elected to the Connecticut house at age 25, he took an active role in clearing out and shutting down mental hospitals and other institutions, a trend in the 1980s. He helped fund community mental health centers and mainstreamed those formerly institutionalized into public schools. The results were more or less disastrous, and in his own life, his son would bear the brunt of those actions.
Gionfriddo appears at the Book Center Thursday evening at 6 p.m. Other memoir writers might ask of the difficulties of putting such torment to paper – both his son’s and his own.
If your kids grew up in Vero – and your maternity clothes had shoulder pads – it might make you nostalgic to learn Saturday is the 34th annual Children’s Art Festival. For years, the fair took place under the oaks at Riverside Park; today, it’s held in the Vero Beach Museum of Art from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
In the afternoon, awards are handed out at the countywide juried Student Art Exhibition. Inevitably, I see works of staggering genius, to borrow from a title of writer/publisher Dave Eggers, who, by the way, was an aspiring painter as a kid.
Bravo to the organizers of this art show; any parent who thinks art school is a lark ought to have a look at the intense competition kids face in the field – yet still have the will to go.
And brava to the professional skateboarder-turned-IRSC graphic design student, Taylor Beatty, for a show next Saturday night of her spontaneous portraits of people who answered a call on social media to show up earlier this month at downtown’s newest gallery, Project Space 1785 on Old Dixie downtown. This artists’ collaborative is turning into the hot property to be part of downtown, as our Ellen Fischer found out when she dropped in for that photo shoot and found herself getting snapped. You can read her take in this week’s issue. The May 2 show is from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
And a beautiful union in song of young people and adults Friday night and Sunday afternoon when the Indian River Charter High School choir joins in the 30th anniversary performances of the Vero Beach Choral Society at Trinity Episcopal Church. They’ll be singing John Rutter’s “Gloria” and “Te Deum.”
Concerts are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday.
