You can hear an old joke a dozen times, and suddenly, it’s funny: proof that it’s all in the telling.
Next Thursday, it’ll all be in the acting when Dee Ridenour directs the Vero Beach Theatre Guild’s season finale, the 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “You Can’t Take it With You.”
The three-act comedy, written by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, is a staple of community and high school theater. Then again, it just enjoyed a Broadway revival starring James Earl Jones that had New York Times critic Ben Brantley complaining of jaw ache from a three-act-long grin. And Nora Ephron directed a reading of the play a few years back as a benefit for UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television; it starred Rita Wilson, Mila Kunis and Tom Hanks and had the crowd roaring start to finish.
The 1938 film version, digitally remastered just two years ago, was directed by Frank Capra and starred Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart and a 15-year-old Ann Miller. It was a runaway hit, winning two Oscars and being nominated for seven. It was the highest grossing film that year.
Even without Broadway talent, Vero’s production, like all community and school productions, has one obvious edge: The play’s zaniness is amplified by the audience’s familiarity with the actors. The play features a number of Guild regulars, including Ben Earman, Debbie Chastain, Susan Grandpierre, Don Croteau, Larry Strauss and Lorina Beniamino.
The play is about a stuffy wealthy Wall Street couple and their son who is dating a girl from an eccentric family whose patriarch keeps snakes for pets. He also doesn’t pay his taxes, and those two details converge with the IRS comes knocking, and the agent is presumed to be that date … and, and, and: That’s just the first thread that gets yanked in a tangle of mayhem.
The play runs May 14 through May 24.
May 15 through 31, the Henegar Center in Melbourne is staging the community theater world premiere of “Cry-Baby,” the musical based on the 1990 John Waters movie, a cult classic that launched Johnny Depp’s career. The Henegar’s artistic director Hank Rion (formerly of Riverside Children’s Theatre) went beyond the pale to nail down the rights for this show for the center’s main stage. Previously, a reduced version had been staged by the edgy New Line Theatre in St. Louis, MO, that bills itself as “the bad boy of musical theater.” Other than its previews in San Diego and New York and a short run on Broadway, it has remained on the shelf until now.
With a book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who also adapted Waters’ “Hairspray” for the stage, the show is yet another 1950s other-side-of-the-tracks love story, with lyrics by “The Daily Show” writer David Javerbaum and music by Adam Schlesinger of the pop band Fountains of Wayne. The 2008 production on Broadway was nominated for four Tony awards and won a Drama Desk award for Rob Ashford’s choreography. It received mixed reviews however, with Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal loving every minute, calling it “madly, outrageously funny” (he’s the same critic who declared Riverside’s “West Side Story” a “meritorious” effort). The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, on the other hand, found “Cry-Baby” flat.
Whatever the reaction, Rion’s commitment to bringing the show to his stage is laudable. He is also the director. The Henegar is on East New Haven Ave. As with the Vero Beach Theatre Guild, tickets are reasonable: $26.
Also in Melbourne, though further north, blues great John Mayall is playing the King center May 15. Known as the godfather of British blues, Mayall is a multi-faceted talent: a singer/songwriter who also plays guitar, keyboards, drums, and harmonica. (He is also an artist.) His band, the Bluesbreakers, included at various times Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, and John McVie. Now 80, he has released a new and very personal album, “A Special Life.” And he’s also just released an archival live album from 1967 including all those band members except Clapton. In all, Mayall cut 60 albums.
For a while in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, John Fogerty’s music had a standing reservation at the top of the music charts. His band Creedence Clearwater Revival produced hits like “Proud Mary” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” before finally falling apart in 1971.
Fast forward to 2013 when Fogerty made his highly regarded last album, “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” joined by rock bands Foo Fighters and My Morning Jacket, and country singers Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert, among others. Now he hits the road with a tour dedicated to one year of music: 1969, in the heyday of Creedence. He’s playing Coral Sky Amphitheatre May 17 in West Palm Beach.
