Theater is back! Here are some top performances coming to Miami area stages
For 2021-2022, theater is returning to its made-safer spaces large and small. Fans with an appetite for razzle-dazzle musicals will have many from which to choose, thanks to touring Broadway and such musical stalwarts as Actors’ Playhouse and Slow Burn Theatre. But the most intriguing shows on the horizon are brand-new plays and musicals, which we’re getting in abundance.
WHITE CARD
Bari Newport’s first season as producing artistic director at GableStage contains a number of intriguing titles, including Arthur Miller’s classic “The Price” (Nov. 12-Dec. 12), which was the late Joseph Adler’s final project, and the world premiere of the two-character musical “Me Before You” (Feb. 25-March 27) by Janece Shaffer and Kristian Bush of the band Sugarland.
But it’s Claudia Rankine’s “The White Card” that will likely generate the most discussion.
The prize-winning poet and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient pits a black artist against a philanthropic white couple eager to become her patrons. Reviewing a 2020 production in St. Paul, Minnesota, Dominic Pappatola called the play a “knotty examination of art and privilege and white saviorism.” Expect fireworks.
▪ Jan. 14-Feb. 13, GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables; 305-445-1119 or www.gablestage.org
GRINGOLANDIA
Zoetic Stage artistic director Stuart Meltzer has put together a typically eclectic season, launching with Nick Dear’s National Theatre version of “Frankenstein” (Oct. 14-31), continuing Zoetic’s exploration of Stephen Sondheim’s work with “A Little Night Music” (March 17-April 10) and concluding with the distinctly dark set-in-Coral Gables comedy “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” (May 5-22) by Miami native and New World School of the Arts grad Alexis Scheer.
In the heart of the season, rising playwriting star Hannah Benitez (another New World alum) will finally see the pandemic-delayed world premiere of her play “GringoLandia.” In it, a man who fled Cuba 50 years earlier takes his millennial son and daughter back to his homeland in search of a family heirloom. With live music and video, the funny and moving play captures the tug of a beloved place geographically near — yet so far — from 21st century Miami.
▪ Jan. 13-30, Zoetic Stage in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Arsht Center, Miami; 305-949-6722 or www.zoeticstage.com.
WONDERFUL WORLD
The night before the pandemic brought South Florida’s 2019-2020 season to an abrupt halt, the final preview of Miami New Drama’s world premiere musical “A Wonderful World” took place. The set has been on the stage of Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre ever since, waiting for its show to come back. In December, it will.
With a book by Miamian Aurin Squire and music drawn from its main character’s vast catalog, “A Wonderful World” stars Juson Williams as jazz trumpeter and larger-than-life personality Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. Told from the shifting perspectives of the gravel-voiced singer’s four wives, the big-budget production offers a complex yet joyous portrait of a successful, complicated man.
The musical is part of a Miami New Drama made up entirely of world premieres — the others being Winter Miller’s “When Monica Met Hillary” (Feb. 17-March 13), Carmen Pelaez’s “The Cuban Vote” (April 7-May 1) and “Papá Cuatro,” a musical by Juan Souki and the C4 Trio (June 4-July 10).
▪ Dec. 4-Jan. 16, Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre, Miami Beach; 305-674-1040 or www.miaminewdrama.org.
NILO CRUZ PREMIERES
The season brings not one but two world premiere plays from Cuban-American Miami playwright Nilo Cruz, the first Latino winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Performed in English and presented by Arca Images with simultaneous Spanish translation, both plays will be staged by the author, whose directing style is as poetic as his language.
“Hotel Desiderium” is a six-character play set on South Beach during an art fair. A love triangle centers on two men and a woman, and Cruz says that his story involves misfits, the underestimation of immigrants, blindness and “those who can see but are not visionaries.” “Kisses Through the Glass,” a two-character piece, was influenced by the pandemic. In it, a truck driver and an actress flee an unspecified malady, escaping and isolating and being brought to a moment of sacrifice.
▪ “Hotel Desiderium” (Nov. 18-21) and “Kisses Through the Glass” (March 17-20), Arca Images at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box, Miami; 786-327-4539 or www.arcaimages.org.
ON YOUR FEET
About as sure-fire a South Florida hit as a show can get, “On Your Feet!” is the centerpiece of the Actors’ Playhouse season at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables. Miamian Alexander Dinelaris Jr.’s book for the 2015 Broadway show tells the story of music superstars Gloria and Emilio Estefan, whose families left Cuba for the freedom and possibilities of life in Miami.
Full of smash hit songs that practically demand you dance along, “On Your Feet!” draws from the vast Miami Sound Machine-Gloria Estefan catalog as it explores the loss of and yearning for the couple’s Cuban homeland, love and lasting marriage, fame and the trials of life. Artistic director David Arisco will stage a show full of events that happened not too far from the theater’s Miracle Mile location.
▪ Jan. 26-March 6, Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre, Coral Gables; 305-444-9293 or www.actorsplayhouse.org.
CHILL OUT
Area Stage, which had a major pandemic-period hit with director Giancarlo Rodaz’s reimagined “Annie,” is taking its professional work to the bigger stage of the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater. With a second title still to be announced, Rodaz is launching the company’s Arsht era with the 2019 Broadway musical “Be More Chill.”
With music and lyrics by Joe Iconis and a book by Joe Tracz, the show follows the misadventures of high school junior and social outcast Jeremy Heere, who discovers that popularity can come in a pill – but at what price? As with “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Be More Chill” explores what happens when a teen’s angst and loneliness are replaced by a dream-turned-nightmare.
▪ Feb. 4-20, Area Stage in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Arsht Center, Miami; 305-949-6722 or www.arshtcenter.org
PRELUDE
Conceived by Susan Caraballo and written by Juan C. Sanchez, the immersive transmedia piece “Prelude to 2100” is set in 2050, when the Deering Estate has been converted into a residential complex for people who have fled international climate change. Holding an open house, the residents invite the public to visit – only to have theatergoers encounter conflicts, personal stories, climate change empowerment, loss, love and notions of community.
Other fresh new theater pieces in Live Arts Miami’s season are Juraj Kojs’s “Where Home Is” (Dec. 9-11), a game-based piece about immigration done in multiple levels of Miami Dade College’s Parking Garage 7; Natasha Tsakos’s “CARABOOM” (March 31-April 17), a playful Knight New Work show in Parking Lot 1 at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus; and Leyla McCalla’s commissioned “Breaking the Thermometer To Hide the Fever” (May 6-7), a multidisciplinary piece at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.
▪ Jan. 27-Feb. 6, Live Arts Miami at The Deering Estate, Miami; 305-237-3010 or www.mdclivearts.org.
BROADWAY RETURN
At long last, touring Broadway is back, and fans have plenty of familiar and first-time-here shows from which to choose. Three musicals stand out, for different reasons.
“Dear Evan Hansen,” just released as a movie [on 9/24], is a Tony Award-winning musical by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Steven Levenson. The moving, complex story of an anxious teen whose life is altered when he embraces a lie has a truly gorgeous score, and the show is deeply resonant.
“Come From Away,” the Irene Sankoff-David Hein musical about how the people of the small Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland, cared for 7,000 stranded travelers after the 9/11 terror attacks, demonstrates the healing power of community.
And as much as parents likely know every note and word of the animated Disney movie hit “Frozen,” the Broadway version by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez and Jennifer Lee is likely to be the family show of the season.
▪ “Dear Evan Hansen,” Feb. 15-20, Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami, and Dec. 15-19, Kravis Center, West Palm Beach; “Come From Away,” Nov. 3-14, Broward Center, and Nov. 16-21, Kravis Center; “Disney’s Frozen,” March 9-20, Broward Center, Fort Lauderdale; 954-462-0222 or www.browardcenter.org.
UP AND DOWN
Commissioned by Dramaworks, Carbonell Award-winning playwright Michael McKeever has explored an intriguing scenario for his latest world premiere: What were the stories of those who helped hide Anne Frank and seven others from the Nazis in an Amsterdam office annex? Of course, the moving “Diary of Anne Frank” has immortalized a young teen whose hopes and dreams came to an end during the Holocaust.
But what was life like for the people who risked their own lives to protect the Franks and others for two years? McKeever’s research and speculation inform “The People Downstairs,” which features Amy Tanner as Miep Gies, who brought food and news of the chaotic outside world to the family, and Tom Wahl as Mr. Kraler, friend and business associate of Anne’s father Otto.
▪ Dec. 3-19, Palm Beach Dramaworks, West Palm Beach; 561-514-4042 or www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.
BOOTSTRAPPED
The 2013 Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein musical, about a failing British shoe manufacturer whose business gets saved thanks to his unexpected partnership with a drag queen, is firmly in Slow Burn’s razzle-dazzle wheelhouse. Artistic director-choreographer Patrick Fitzwater is deft at both spectacle and touching moments, and “Kinky Boots” has plenty of both.
Carbonell Award winner Elijah Word has the plum role of Lola, the drag star who has fought a lifelong battle for acceptance. Slender and very tall, Word is going to need some extra-long red boots.
▪ Dec. 17-Jan. 2, Slow Burn Theatre at the Broward Center, Fort Lauderdale; 954-462-0222 or www.browardcenter.org.
ARMATURE
The world premiere of Andre Kramer’s “Armature” plus the long-delayed production of Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly, Last Summer” (March 17-April 17) are highlights of the season at Island City Stage, the Wilton Manors company focused on telling LGBTQ stories.
Starring Carbonell Award winner Karen Stephens, “Armature” connects a pair of troubled gay men and a black family whose matriarch is running for office, with themes that include racism, homophobia, eroticism and self-hate. Angie Radosh, also a Carbonell-winning actor, plays the imposing Violet Venable in “Suddenly Last Summer,” one of Williams’ most poetic, vivid and shocking plays.
▪ Jan. 27-Feb. 27, Island City Stage, Wilton Manors; 954-928-9800 or www.islandcitystage.org.
MORE FIRSTS
▪ “Last Night in Inwood,” Feb. 3-27, and “Overactive Letdown,” March 24-April 10, Theatre Lab at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. 561-297-6124 or www.fau.edu/theatrelab
Following the mid-September world premiere of Rachel Teagle’s “The Impracticality of Modern-Day Mastodons,” two more world premieres are scheduled back-to-back at Theatre Lab, the professional company on the campus of Florida Atlantic University.
First up is Alexis Sobler’s “Last Night in Inwood,” a comedy about the end of the world set in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood. That’s followed by Gina Montet’s “Overactive Letdown,” a darkly comic thriller about escapist fantasies as a coping mechanism for postpartum depression.
