Vicky Lewis (right) as Dolly Gallagher Levi with Gary Beach as Horace Vandergelder in 'Hello, Dolly!' at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.

There are a lot of clever staging ideas in director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s fresh take on Hello, Dolly!, but her best idea, by far, is the casting of diminutive dynamo Vicki Lewis in the title role.

Small of stature, large of voice, fluttery of hands and lethal of comic timing, Lewis is a take-no-prisoners knockout as meddlesome Dolly Gallagher Levi, who has set her sights on Horace Vandergelder, "Yonkers’ well-known half-millionaire." For the curmudgeonly hay and feed merchant, and for the audience at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, any attempt at resistance would be futile.

Wily, flirty, fast-talking and – the best trick of all – unexpectedly touching in the role, Lewis dominates an evening that is loaded with pleasures. As with so many recent productions at the Maltz, Dodge serves up a Hello, Dolly! that should captivate a first-time viewer as well as those who have seen this landmark 1964 musical many times over the years.

For starters, the show has great source material in Thornton Wilder’s philosophical comedy, The Matchmaker, about a turn-of-the-century marriage broker with a knack for instigating romance in all those around her, including herself. Then there is the infectious Jerry Herman score, with such seductively hummable tunes as Put on Your Sunday Clothes, It Only Takes a Moment and the irrepressible title number. Add to that Michael Stewart’s crafty, economical book, which retains Wilder’s many direct address monologues.

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Choreographer Twyla Tharp has been marrying the songs of Francis Albert Sinatra with her signature athletic, quirky dance style since the 1970s. Two years ago on Broadway, she synthesized those earlier explorations into an evening-long tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes and to the pliability of the human body called Come Fly Away.

Somewhat more than a dance concert and not quite musical theater, the show is a kinetic wonder, a nonstop display of sensuous pairings, precision grace and occasional comic clumsiness. In a Big Band era nightclub, four couples meet, hit on one another, fall in and out of love, change partners and dance the night away.

There is a plot of sorts in Come Fly Away, but like her earlier Tony Award-winning Billy Joel show, Movin’ Out, the energetic physicality trumps any effort to convey a story. Kravis on Broadway audiences expecting a conventional narrative would be advised to succumb instead to the abstract enjoyment of watching well-toned dancers take flight.

Tharp’s vocabulary of classical lifts, a bit of period ballroom, modern dance spins and her own idiosyncratic surprises are captivating, but over the course of an evening they begin to reach diminishing returns. Perhaps even she sensed that was the case, because she has pared away several numbers and the intermission from the Broadway version of Come Fly Away, producing a leaner, more effective show which clocks in at a mere 80 minutes.

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The Plaza Theatre, the area’s newest stage venture, will be producing mainly musical revues in its Manalapan home during its opening season. But before that onslaught, the company is presenting a jukebox book musical with songs by ’60s pop-rock composer-performer Neil Sedaka, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, that producer Alan Jacobson found at a Sarasota dinner theater.

That may not set the bar very high for the playhouse that once housed the late Florida Stage, but the show proves to be pleasantly lightweight entertainment. Its score is full of familiar hits, its story line winks at the romantic conventions of musical comedy, and both are served up by a capable, if not overwhelming, cast.

If you are looking for production values, you would be in the wrong place, but judging from the receptive opening night audience, there is probably a market here for the Plaza’s fare.

The show’s chief asset is Sedaka’s trunk of tunes which chronicles various stages of longing, heartbreak and puppy love, crafted into numbers with an infectious period beat. You know, numbers like Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen, Calendar Girl and Stupid Cupid, which Sedaka rode to the top of the charts, and a few, like Where the Boys Are (Connie Francis) and Love Will Keep Us Together (The Captain and Tenille) that he wrote for others.

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Soon after selecting Jerry Herman’s Hello, Dolly! one of the most celebrated shows of Broadway’s golden age of the 1960s, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre knew it wanted director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge at its helm.

A Tony Award nominee for the recent revival of Ragtime, Dodge could be counted on for a new take on the show about wily Dolly Gallagher Levi, based on Thornton Wilder’s 1955 comedy, The Matchmaker. "Every show I do, I try to respect the original (production) without copying it," she says. "As a choreographer, I’m reinventing all the choreography. If you love this show, you’re going to love this production. But open your heart to someone else’s interpretation."

What sold Dodge on doing the show here is that the offer came with one role already cast. Tony Award-winner Gary Beach (The Producers), recently relocated to Palm Beach Gardens, had indicated an interest in playing Dolly’s romantic quarry, rich Yonkers merchant Horace Vandergelder.

As he puts it, "When I was a kid, going to New York, this was the hot show. This was The Book of Mormon or Hairspray of its day. So just to be a part of it now is exciting."

Then Dodge needed a Dolly who could hold her own against Beach’s comic antics. She chose Vicki Lewis, a Broadway veteran probably best known for the ensemble TV comedy NewsRadio, even though she does not fit the usual image of the character.

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The musical 'Come Fly Away' is modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp's 're-approach' to her dance piece 'Nine Sinatra Songs'. (Courtesy The Kravis Center)

Thirty years ago, modern dance choreographer and occasional director of Broadway shows Twyla Tharp created a dance tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes, calling it Nine Sinatra Songs. Two years ago, she returned to the subject with a Broadway show, Come Fly Away, which she calls "a cousin" to the earlier work.

"In the sense that Nine Sinatra Songs is a dance, and Come Fly Away is a theater piece," Tharp explains. "Some of the characters, as I thought of them, are in both. If you know Nine Sinatra Songs, you will recognize their further adventures in Come Fly Away. It’s a re-approach."

The show, which opens at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on Tuesday, features a troupe of dancers trained in Tharp’s idiosyncratic, energetic signature style, plus a live orchestra and the recorded voice of Sinatra.

Come Fly Away employs many of the great singer’s biggest hits, often synthesized through Tharp’s sensibilities. For instance, as she explains, "when I thought about My Way and I used it in the show, it’s not an egocentric kind of thing about a guy who thinks ‘it’s got to be my-way-or-the-highway.’ It’s like if you want to have a relationship and you want to hold it steady, you need two people, both of whom are doing it their way, and can express to one another what ‘their way’ is or there will be huge resentments. So I sort of reinterpreted that sentiment."

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Those who are dissatisfied with their jobs tend to say that their work is only what they do, not who they are. But in his book of interviews with members of the workforce, Chicago newspaperman Studs Terkel found that not to be the case, that what one does for a living leaves its mark on the person.

In 1978, Stephen Schwartz has the notion to bring Working to the stage. And since he makes his living as a composer-lyricist, he conceived it as a musical revue. Or perhaps "play with music" is a more accurate label, for in his adaptation (along with Nina Faso), he wrote oral biography monologues that are every bit as powerful as the song score.

In addition to himself, Schwartz invited such songwriters as James Taylor, Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant and the team of Mary Rodgers and Susan Birkenhead to contribute musical numbers on the lives of truck drivers, mill workers, waitresses, cleaning women and housewives, to name just a few.

Despite its promising concept, when Working arrived on Broadway in 1978, it lasted a mere 25 performances. But Terkel and Schwartz were on to something undeniably stirring and primal, which would not die.

So 30 years later, after more interviews were gathered, a downsized, updated version of the show was created, and now Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre has given it a very winning production.

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Just as many workplaces have downsized in recent years because of the anemic economy, so has the musical revue Working, which opens Friday at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre.

Based on a collection of interviews by newspaperman Studs Terkel about people’s attitudes towards their jobs, the show opened on Broadway in 1978 with a cast of 27 and closed four weeks later. But because of its score by such composers as Stephen Schwartz, James Taylor and Craig Carnelia, and a videotaped TV production, Working has achieved cult status.

Four years ago, the show received a major overhaul at the Asolo Theater in Sarasota. The cast was whittled to six, the script updated and two new songs were commissioned from Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights). And the formerly dour show turned more upbeat.

The original version "took itself too seriously. It had too much angst," says Caldwell artistic director Clive Cholerton. "This version has a lighter tone. There is a certain amount of joy in our jobs, and we also take joy in complaining about our jobs sometimes. Y’know, it’s a job."

Directions, invite a friend

As cast member Laura Hodos says of the show’s characters, "Some of them are downtrodden and some of them absolutely love without reserve what they do for a living. Some of them unexpectedly so, because I’ve done some of these jobs and I go, ‘Really? You loved that?’" On balance, though, "I think overall it’s surprisingly uplifting."

In addition to new material on jobs that did not exist in 1978, like outsourced tech support operators, Working now also deals with the recent recession. "It would be irresponsible not to," says Cholerton. "You get a sense of the overriding fear of people, ‘Am I going to be the next to be let go?’"

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Lee Hall’s curiously didactic The Pitmen Painters is based on a real group of coal miners from Northern England who rose to prominence in the art world in the 1930s. But being factual is not necessarily the same as being dramatic, as this intriguing, yet inert tale proves.

Hall, best known for writing Billy Elliot as both a film and a musical, uses the miners’ history to explore issues of art and the nature of talent, while downplaying the human struggle of these men. Palm Beach Dramaworks certainly does its part, gathering a terrific company of actors for the play’s area premiere, but they cannot hide the fact that their characters are rarely more than two-dimensional mouthpieces for the author’s arguments.

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Although there is nothing geometric about deeply self-absorbed Mark Rothko’s abstract expressionist paintings, playwright John Logan’s cerebral and passionate drama-as-art-lesson is a gripping triangular tale involving the artist, his assistant and his artwork.

The 2010 Tony Award winner for best play, Red is named for the dominant color of a series of murals Rothko has been commissioned to create for the new Seagrams Building’s Four Seasons restaurant in the late 1950s. But the title also refers to the hue of anger, a state of rage that the once pioneering artist often feels as he senses the challenge of a new generation of painters bearing down on him.

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The coal miners of Ashington, England, in the 1930s had never been inside a museum or even seen a painting. Yet as depicted in Lee Hall’s recent play, The Pitmen Painters, opening tonight at Palm Beach Dramaworks, they began taking government-sponsored art appreciation courses dedicated to expanding the horizons of lower-class laborers.

Why would they sign up for such courses? "It’s like an adult education class," explains cast member Rob Donohoe. "These guys only went to school to a certain level, but they know there’s more out there. They have a thing about not being viewed as stupid, just because they aren’t. But their teacher had difficulty getting the miners to connect to art, because they have no frame of reference.

"Out of frustration he decides to let them paint something, so they’ll understand what it takes and, therefore, appreciate it more," says Donohue. Many of them find they have a talent for painting, and so began the Ashington Group, an acclaimed set of primitive artists whose work is now considered museum quality.

"Where the play ultimately focuses is whether these men are exceptional or can anyone be an artist," notes J. Barry Lewis, director of Dramaworks’ production. "So it becomes a look at what is the role of art, who possesses it, what is the importance of it. What makes someone an artist?"

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