With a new show opening at Mosaic in Plantation next weekend and two great shows currently running in Coral Springs and Davie, it’s a great time to be a theater
lover in Broward.
The Promethean Theatre at Nova Southeastern University in Davie is presenting its version of a heralded work, Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain,†and it’s one of the theater’s most rewarding productions in some time. Terry Hardcastle plays Walker, the nomadic, erratic son of a world-famous, emotionally glacial architect. Returning from an impromptu trip to Florence after hearing of his mentally disturbed mother’s death, he’s living, for the moment, in the dilapidated Greenwich Village hovel where his dad and his father’s partner created the designs for their masterworks. He’s found his taciturn father’s oblique diary and begins to bury himself in his lineage, much to the chagrin of Nan (Deborah L. Sherman), his estranged sister, who is visiting from suburbia to help seal the fate of their father’s self-designed palace. Walker wants the house desperately, but he fears it may go to Pip (Matthew William Chizever), the son of his dad’s business partner, Theo.
Act two sees the same actors portraying new, or rather old, characters, back in the ‘60s: Hardcastle is now Walker’s stuttering father Ned, Chizever is Theo and Sherman is Lina, the southern belle who comes between the ambitious architects.
The time-shifting structure – a recurring theme to South Florida theatergoers, after this season’s productions of “Cane†and “Clybourne Park†– works wonders to decode the characters’ withdrawn natures, making us rethink our initial perceptions of them. It also shows how personality traits become passed on, unconsciously, through generations. We discover in the second act that, in his day, Ned was called a “flaneur,†a French term for an urbane wanderer; Walker, as much as he has tried to distance himself from his father, has become a vagabond himself, his abrupt disappearances an escape from a lifetime of pain.
Hardcastle is marvelous in the dual father-son roles. He appears in many musicals, but this performance is a reminder how wonderful he can be doing straight theater. Chizever continues his respectable ascent as one of the best young actors in the South Florida scene, and Sherman has simply never been better or more comfortable onstage, embodying her contrasting archetypes with vim and vigor. This is the kind of production that’s small enough to be overlooked come awards time, but if it doesn’t at least receive a Carbonell mention in the Best Ensemble category, it would be a travesty.
In Springs, the Broward Stage Door is doing a stand-up job on “The Music Man,†Meredith Wilson’s Tony-winning musical about a traveling swindler who ignites a controversy in a fictional Iowa town, through June 19. The theater’s set design is merely functional, but Stage Door has assembled a top-notch 26-piece cast for this ambitious project. Jonathan Van Dyke is an exuberant, physically engaging Harold Hill, zipping around the stage with his rigged plan to cure the town’s moral ills with the medicine only he can prescribe – a “boy’s band†with he, a bargain-basement Barnum, as the conductor. Colleen Amaya is even better as Marian Paroo, bringing a soaring, operatic voice to Hill’s prim and proper love interest.
“The Music Man†is an oddball sort of a musical, which is why it’s accrued more cult acclaim than many Broadway shows. Its musical palette is eccentric, from jazzy scat rhythms to jubilant hoedowns to serene barbershop crooning to marching-band orderliness, a schizophrenic goulash of styles that somehow work together under the same umbrella. Wilson’s book, too, has a strange wit about it, full of ridiculous alliterative analogies that should be heard to be believed. Stage Door’s commitment to the show’s uniqueness is commendable, and its costume design evokes the dusty Midwestern period with fitting nostalgia.
“The Music Man†is at Broward Stage Door, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs, through June 19. Call 954/344-7765 or visitwww.stagedoortheatre.com. “Three Days of Rain†is at the Promethean Theatre at NSU, 3301 College Ave., Davie, through June 5. Call 786/317-7580 or visit www.theprometheantheatre.com.
