IF YOU GO
What:Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard AlfieriWhere: Rising Action Theatre, 840 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Oakland Park, through May 25When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3:30 p.m. SundayCost: $30Info: 800-595-4849 or www.risingactiontheatre.comWhen Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks had its South Florida premiere at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in the spring of 2003, it boasted a pair of stars (Rue McClanahan and Mark Hamill), a crowd-pleasing Florida story and obvious ambitions for a commercial Broadway run. With Hamill and Polly Bergen, the play hit Broadway that fall, where it managed just 54 performances.
Broadway and this modest, two-character play didn't suit each other. But at the Rising Action Theatre in Oakland Park, where a new production of Six Dance Lessons has just opened, Alfieri's script and the intimate venue are a far more natural fit.
Inspired in part by the playwright's mother, Six Dance Lessons brings together an odd couple -- the widow of a Baptist minister and a much younger gay dance instructor -- for weekly lessons that will change both their lives.
That the two might benefit from knowing each other seems unlikely at first.
Both Lily Harrison (Jeanne O'Connor), the comfortable retiree in the St. Petersburg condo with the ocean view, and Michael Minetti (Dwayne Tuttle), the young man who gave up a career in Broadway chorus lines to care for his dying mother, have quick-to-flare tempers. He, in fact, calls her a ''tight-assed old biddy'' not long into their first meeting. Amazingly (and essentially, for the sake of having a full-length play), she forgives him.
Over time, through lessons in swing dancing, the tango, the waltz, the Foxtrot, the cha-cha and ''contemporary'' (disco-ish) dancing, they become friends. They drop layers of deception and reserve, finally sharing the biggest secret of all: These are two wounded souls.
Director Alan Saban gets warm, believable performances from both O'Connor and Tuttle. O'Connor is slender but seems every inch the steel magnolia and former teacher that Lily should be. O'Connor is both amusingly flamboyant and, when the time is right, quite touching.
Douglas Grimm's convincing condo set, with its view of a pink-and-blue sunset (by lighting designer Johnny Gonzales); Danny Carter's crisp choreography, and the show's music (particularly Tenderly) draw the audience into Lily and Michael's world.
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks is by no means a great play. Its first four scenes follow the same sequence of events, to the point that the audience knows just when Lily's cranky neighbor is going phone. Still, O'Connor and Tuttle make us glad to be observers as two lonely people learn to reconnect.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
