After a record-breaking 25 years on Broadway, the Tony Award-winning composer has breathed new life into Phantom of the Opera with the sequel Love Never Dies, which follows the Phantom and Christine to turn-of-the-century New York, where the pair have come to Coney Island.

“It’s high romance. I have to say; I even find the end of it difficult to watch. It’s quite an emotional piece,” Webber told Parade.com.

The Australian production of Love Never Dies has been filmed for the big screen and hits movie theaters nationwide on Feb. 28 and March 5. The DVD will be released May 29.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, 63, talked to Parade.com about bringing the long-awaited Phantom sequel to Broadway, his journey into reality TV, and more.

Were you hesitant about bringing back characters that you are so close to, and that the audience is so close to as well?
“Not really. I wanted to write it because it closes a chapter emotionally for me. I wanted to revisit these characters once more. I always felt that the moment they met again would be a wonderful opportunity.”

Are there plans for Love Never Dies to come to Broadway despite receiving mixed reviews from critics?
“I’d love it to. I’m sure it will at some point. It’s a very good production. For a musical to be a success, every element has got to come together and everything has to knit. There have been many musicals over the years, Chicago for example, that didn’t work first time around, but subsequently became a huge success.”

Photos: Hollywood Stars on Broadway

How do you explain the lasting appeal of Phantom of the Opera?
“I don’t know. There are many theories. I always quote the famous line from South Pacific: ‘Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.’ We could sit and talk about it for hours and hours and still not really get to the bottom of it, but there’s something about the love story between Christine and the Phantom that does resonate. I think it resonates even more in Love Never Dies.”

How do you know when you’ve written a good song?
“You just sort of know. It’s hard to say. I don’t write words, so the lyrics are obviously very important, but you tend to know what is working and what isn’t. But everything is changing so much now. The record industry as one remembers it, doesn’t really exist.”

You’ve written a few hit pop songs in your career. Are there any voices you’d like to write for today?
“There are a load of people I’d like to write for today. There are some really good singers. I may actually do that because I haven’t really found a musical that I want to write at the moment. Quite a few people do actually want me to have a go at writing for them. So I might. I think the best new voice around at the moment is Jessie J, but she writes her own stuff!

What do you think about the resurgence of musicals in pop culture?
“I think something has happened. There’s no question that the interest among young people in musicals is as big now as it’s ever been and it is a consequence of things like Glee. In Britain, I’ve done five TV casting shows now. We’ve created quite a pool of young performers who all went on to find good jobs and starring roles. That’s certainly turned a lot of kids onto theater. And it’s not just musicals. I think the fact that War Horse has been such a huge success has also brought a lot of young people into theater.”

If you had to choose, what’s your favorite production?
“They’re all like favorite children in a way, so I can’t really say. I do think that the score of Love Never Dies is as strong as anything I’ve ever done. But I don’t want to say that I think it’s better than Evita!”

Hollywood Blockbusters Turned into Broadway Musicals

Ricky Martin is headlining a revival of Evita later this season. How does he measure up?
“I’ve worked with him very briefly a couple days ago and he’s certainly going to be very good. It’s quite funny for me to go back and hear a show I wrote so long ago. Because it’s him, I think the score will probably get played a bit rockier than it has been.”

You’ve found success in the reality television world — finding stars for West End productions of The Sound of Music, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Oliver! and The Wizard of Oz. How do you like being a reality TV star?
“Back in Britain, people know me in a very different way than they used to because of television. I wouldn’t mind seeing if we could do one of the TV shows like we do back in Britain here in America. It would be quite interesting. Unfortunately, they copied the idea and ruined it by doing Grease: You’re the One that I Want [a 2007 NBC reality television series designed to cast the lead roles]. What a terrible series that was! It’s not really like Idol or X Factor or anything like that, it’s much more about working with the performers and trying to get the best out of them.”

What goes through your mind when you watch one of your productions?
“Sometimes it’s: ‘Can I get out of this theater as soon as possible?’ But when it works it’s wonderful. It’s about all of the ingredients coming together.”

What’s up next for you?
“I don’t have anything at the moment that I really want to work on, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t find something tomorrow morning. I never intended to do the Phantom of the Opera when I found the book. It was the last idea in my mind because I just thought it didn’t interest me. It’s this sort of strange horror story that leaves you rather confused. There had been various productions of it that had been quite jokey and a bit camp. It never struck me that sitting in there was a great love story. So you can never absolutely tell. I just happened to find a copy of the book at a fifth avenue store on a Sunday and I thought I’d buy it and have a look. I ended up finding something completely different than what I had thought.”

Watch the trailer for Love Never Dies below:

A former “American Idol” contestant is heading to Broadway with a character who, it’s safe to say, is truly two-faced.

Constantine Maroulis will play the title dual role in a revival of the musical “Jekyll & Hyde” that’s slated to come to New York in spring 2013 after a 25-week national tour that starts in San Diego on Oct. 2, Nederlander Presentations Inc. announced Sunday.

Maroulis, who was a finalist on the fourth season of “American Idol,” had a three-year run in Broadway’s “Rock of Ages” and received a best actor Tony nomination and a Drama League nomination for his performance. He also played the role of Roger Davis in a recent national tour of “Rent.”

Maroulis made his Broadway debut in “The Wedding Singer” and is currently in the title role of “Toxic Avenger” at the Alley Theatre in Houston. His debut album, “Constantine,” was released on his own label, Sixth Place Records.

“Jekyll & Hyde” features a story and lyrics by two-time Oscar winner Leslie Bricusse and music by Frank Wildhorn, who co-conceived the musical. It will be directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun.

Additional cast and creative team, as well as tour cities, will be announced later.

Wildhorn has had a tough time on Broadway recently, with back-to-back shows that have failed. His show this spring called “Wonderland,” an updated telling of “Alice in Wonderland,” was poorly reviewed and his “Bonnie & Clyde” recently closed early this season.

“Jekyll & Hyde” made its Broadway debut in 1997 with such songs as “This is the Moment,” ”A New Life” and “Someone Like You,” earning four Tony nominations. It tells the story of a London doctor who accidentally unleashes his evil alternate personality in his quest to cure his father’s mental illness.

Robert Cuccioli played the lead, and Sebastian Bach and David Hasselhoff later took over. After 1,543 performances, the production played its final performance on Jan. 7, 2001.

The cast of 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee', performing at the Lake Worth Playhouse. (Photo by Theresa Loucks)

Community theater is a vital part of the arts community because it’s where we’re introduced to our future in the form of fresh, young actors and in new works that show us the direction theater is taking.

Director Rob Dawson brings us The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which opened on Friday at the Lake Worth Playhouse in downtown Lake Worth. The 2005 Broadway production won two Tony Awards, and the lively script and tongue-in-cheek lyrics make this one-act musical comedy surrounding some quirky kids competing in a spelling bee lighthearted fun. But there are also tender and compassionate moments that make your heart want to burst.

Directions, invite a friend

Everyone who has ever known or been a high school misfit will see themselves in these performers. Here are five reasons to see the play:

It’s live theater so anything can happen. Each performance each night is different, which makes it so much fun. The performers start fresh every time. On opening night, a few technical glitches and those well-known jitters tripped up the fine troupe a few times but they kept going.

They break the “fourth wall.” This imaginary separation between the audience and the actors usually requires that neither step out of their roles, but the wall is shattered in two ways. First, audience members are recruited to play parts on stage, and second, the audience represents the spelling bee audience so the interaction is natural and even expected. The delightful part is watching the faces of these unsuspecting audience members as they become the punch-line. Such good natured fun!

Little Olive Ostrovsky. This sad little character played by Jessica Rahrig as a precocious but terrified and lonely competitor really earned the empathy of the audience. This is Rahig’s first Florida performance and hopefully not her last.

William Barfee. Ah, the daily trauma of a funny name. Despite constant corrections, William (Carlo Rubino Sabusap) cannot get anyone to pronounce his name correctly. “It’s Bar-FAY,” he cries. “There’s an accent aigu!” And considering how critical correct pronunciation is at a spelling bee, it seems like a conspiracy of disrespect that no one ever gets his name right. Eventually, exasperation wins out and William gives up, but not before he’s won over the audience.

The songs. From the revealing My Friend, The Dictionary to the hilarious Magic Foot to the sentimental I Love You Song, you may find yourself singing these songs all the way home.

Frankie Valli brings his show to the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood in March. (Courtesy Frankie Valli)

The iconic Frankie Valli. Iconic may sound cliché but there really is no other way to describe the influence Valli and his group had in the music industry and the legendary hits they produced.

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ classic hits include “Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like A Man”, “Rag Doll” and “December 1963(Oh, What a Night)”. These are all songs that will never be forgotten and Valli’s solo career that included “My Eyes Adored You” and “Grease” was the icing on the cake.

For many years, Valli always saw himself as part of a group and it wasn’t until his later years that Valli became the front man, eventually pursuing a solo career.

See Frankie Valli in March | See Jersey Boys at the Broward | Visit this writer’s website

Since I mostly review live concerts I’ve often wondered if the passion and happiness we see on the stage from performers continues off stage. We, the audience, assume this life of fame and money leads to a trouble-free, easy-going life, but at what price? Truth is, any career we choose to pursue affects all areas of our life and these are the sacrifices we make for the choices we’ve made. So what really happens once the band leaves the stage?

The musical Jersey Boys now playing at the Broward Center gives you that insight. Watching the cast reenact situations that occurred in the lives of Valli, Tommy Devito, Nick Massi and Bob Gaudio — the original members of the Four Seasons — you can’t help but be drawn into the drama. Seeing it unfurl on stage makes it seem so much more personal than just reading about it. I was so taken in I shed a tear for Valli when he lost his daughter, but I don’t want to give any more away. This is a musical you just need to see especially if you plan to see him in concert in March.

I guarantee if you see Jersey Boys and then Frankie Valli in concert you will feel a personal bond with the man and admire his determination and ambition over all these years. The only thing the musical doesn’t tell me is how Valli feels today, at the age of 77, singing these songs that are full of emotions and memories.

For those who don’t know it, Jersey Boys is a chronological musical of the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and their rocky road to success, which landed them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. From under the streetlamp in New Jersey to five No. 1 hits that took the music world by storm, Valli and The Four Seasons have a very interesting story.

Jersey Boys is not your typical musical but rather a mini-concert featuring the Four Seasons’ biggest hits, all the while telling a story. The entire cast is so spot-on and Joseph Leo Bwarie, who plays Valli, has such a beautiful range in his voice, it’s as he was singing the original. I like the way one of the cast actually talks, not sings, like a narrator between songs. I was engrossed from the minute it began and found myself asking “Did this really happen to him?”

Here we were idolizing a singer who never once let on to the fact that off the stage his life was in turmoil. Now, not everything in his life was horrible and most would say that is the price you pay for fame. Jersey Boys has been a smash-hit since it first came out on Broadway and thanks to Broadway Across America, we get to enjoy it here in Florida. Jersey Boys has received the Tony Award for Best Musical, accolades in London and Australia and was named the No. 1 show in Las Vegas.

Jersey Boys at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale continues until Sunday with matinees on both Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are still available.

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons perform live at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood March 2-3.

Historians may even note that the intersection of the two began at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse with a demographically targeted – and punctuation-challenged – trifle called Divorce Party The Musical.

Its prototype is the wildly successful Menopause The Musical, which began a decade ago in Orlando before being cloned across the country, pulling in $300 million. No wonder producer Mark Schwartz has been in search of another celebration of female empowerment, fueled by existing pop songs with parody lyrics.

So he initiated Divorce Party with the aid of divorce coach/author Amy Botwinick and lyricist/director/choreographer Jay Falzone. They have each cribbed from Menopause, and while none of the creators aims very high, there is every reason to assume they have another commercial hit on their hands with this slight, but ingratiating show.

It concerns a recently uncoupled woman named Linda who has sought solace from her marriage in containers of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and bags of taco chips. Enter the intervention team of her divorced therapist sister Carolyn, her playing-the-field lesbian cousin Courtney and her close friend Sheila, whose marriage is shaky at best.

You see, after 16 years of marriage, Linda discovered that her husband is gay, so her support circle tries to cheer her up with a party, some gifts, tango and yoga lessons and a beauty makeover. And lots of chipper musical numbers.

The Kravis, which has booked the world premiere of Divorce Party for a bullish six weeks, emphasizes that the show is "intended for adults only." Oh, they would probably sell you a ticket for a minor, but then you would have to answer questions from the adolescent theatergoer about vibrators and other sex toys, which are featured prominently in several scenes and songs.

To ensure that the audience does not rush out to its cars when the show appears to be over, a male strip act is tacked on just after the finale. That is presumably for those with no interest in yoga lessons.

As with Menopause The Musical, Falzone’s lyrics opt for fairly predictable rhymes and rarely develop past the single joke of the initial verse. In truth, none of the audience members I observed seemed to mind the uninspired writing, but nor were they whipped into a frenzy as they were for Menopause.

The cast is younger and more trim than the plus-sized baby boomers of Menopause and each is more than up to the show’s demands of voice and movement.

As Linda, Janna Cardia is appealing, even if she spends most of the show moping about, encased in padding that suggests the character’s post-marriage added weight. Felicia Finley (Carolyn) delivers well a number celebrating herself as a cougar and Scott Ahearn keeps popping up in various guises as the assortment of male roles.

No doubt the makers of Divorce Party The Musical do not intend their show to be anything other than a lightweight entertainment, so you could say it meets its goal. It would be nice if its intended audience demanded more than that, but they probably will not.

R E V I E W

Divorce Party

The Musical

B-

Where: Kravis Center Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.

When: Through Feb. 19.

Tickets: $25-$32. Call: (561) 832-7469 or (800) 572-8471. The verdict: A ‘girl’s night out’ musical that aims low in emulating Menopause The Musical and hits its target.

Adam Bashian, Donte Bonner and Brandon Morris in 'The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.'

Because professional wrestling is rigged, with pre-determined outcomes and designated winners and losers, some participants make their living as fall guys.

And in Kristoffer Diaz’s crafty, rock-’em-sock-’em, highly theatrical look at the scripted "sport," The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, the focus is on one such perpetual loser.

No, not Chad, but the guy whose job it is to make Chad look good, a Bronx-born Puerto Rican named Macedonio Guerra – a/k/a Mace – a skilled wrestler so typecast for defeat that he does not even rate an entrance into the ring, elaborate or otherwise.

Yet Mace, the most fully dimensional character, narrates the play that is receiving its thought-provoking, bone-crunching area premiere in a brawny production at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre.

Chances are you already knew that the fix is in in pro wrestling. Fortunately, playwright Diaz has more on his mind than that. After all, Chad Deity was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010, for what the play has to say about us as a nation, our faux-reality show mindset, society’s pervasive racism and our collective suspicion of all things foreign.

Directions, nearby dining, invite a friend

On another clever Tim Bennett set, dominated by a wrestling ring at center stage and two huge video and projection monitors on the sides, Mace clues us in on the inner workings of THE Wrestling. That is the corporation that broadcasts and promotes these televised "bread and circuses" for the bloodthirsty, xenophobic masses.

All such patsies are fodder for the buff Deity, clad in red, white and blue and symbolizing all that is triumphant, though hollow, about this country. To serve up a new opponent for the champ, Mace recruits a promising Brooklynite of Indian extraction, turned into a cross-cultural villain known simply as The Fundamentalist.

As Chad, Donte Bonner has a winning smile, a very buff body and a knack for his signature wrestling move, the "power bomb," a slam of his opponent from his shoulders to the mat.

Brandon Morris (Mace) handles most of the considerable verbal chores and is quick with an ad-lib to theatergoers, who are encouraged to talk back to the cast. Gregg Weiner is aptly oily as Olson, though the part is underwritten, and Adam Bashian has fun as the Indian with the unfortunate habit of freezing up in the ring.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity may not be as profound as it professes to be, but it is unlike anything seen locally and deserves to find an adventuresome audience for the Caldwell.

R E V I E W

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

B+

Where: Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton.

When: Through Feb. 12. Tickets: $38-$50. Call: (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432.

The verdict: A bone-crunching satire of pro wrestling as a metaphor for America, given a flashy, tongue-in-cheek production.

Avi Hoffman (right) with Sy Fish in 'Brooklyn Boy'. (Photo by R.J. Colman)

While his wife, Laura Turnbull, continues at Palm Beach Dramaworks in The Effect of Gamma Rays in Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds in a role she insists has little in common with herself, Avi Hoffman is preparing to appear in the opening show of Boca Raton’s Parade Productions in a part he finds has numerous similarities to himself.

"In many ways, it’s not far off from me," Hoffman says of Eric Weiss, the title character in Donald Margulies’ Brooklyn Boy, the dramatic comedy of a best-selling author at middle-age, battling with his ethnic roots.

"What I don’t talk about a lot in my one-man shows" – Too Jewish? and its sequels – "is for how long I tried to escape from my Jewish background," he concedes. "I was doing more and more projects with some kind of a Jewish content, and it was becoming a trap.

“In a similar way, Eric Weiss "has been spending his life trying to get away from himself. The show is about how do you accept who you are and where you’re from."

After two critically admired novels that virtually no one bought, Eric writes about his Jewish roots and suddenly he has a best-seller on his hands. "And I think he struggles with the idea that this may be a sellout," says Hoffman. "He’s also talking a lot about success, and while unfortunately I have yet to experience the kind of success that Eric Weiss is experiencing, hopefully one day I’ll be able to say that that too preys on my mind."

Parade’s artistic director Kim St. Leon also has thoughts of success on the brain as she readies her theater’s debut in Mizner Park . Asked why she chose Brooklyn Boy to kick off her theater company, she says, "My father and the producer’s (cast member Candace Caplin) father were from Brooklyn, and that didn’t hurt. We both thought it was beautifully written and yet still very funny.

"The story takes place within the realm of this Jewish family," says St. Leon. "This is not my background, but I can relate so much to what happens in the play. The bottom line, it speaks about families in a universal way. It speaks to me, and I’m the biggest shiksa," a female non-Jew, "there is."

"Margulies tackles tough subjects," adds Hoffman. "I think whether you’re Jewish or not, which is the beauty of this piece really, you will recognize yourself in these characters."

Another offbeat musical from Slow Burn Boca Raton’s Slow Burn Theatre Company does not produce conventional musicals, as the group proves again this evening when it opens the area premiere of Urinetown. The Tony Award-winning show from 2001 is the faux-Brechtian tale of a greedy corporation that buys up all the public toilets and charges exorbitant prices for people to, um, relieve themselves.

Yes, we’ve come a long way from Oklahoma!, in one direction or another. Explaining the selection, co-artistic director Matthew Korinko says, "I love its intelligence, its wit, its willingness to pull the curtain back a little bit and make fun of itself. And strangely, its relevance right now."

You see, a small group of citizens band together to topple the toilet monopoly. Squint and you can almost see the prototype for Occupy Wall Street. Except that Urinetown does not have a serious bone in its body. "It’s satirical," says Korinko. "I don’t think it means to be dark, even though dark things happen. It’s very self-aware, very tongue-in-cheek."

The only thing left for Slow Burn to decide is whether it will carry the show’s theme offstage and charge the audience for using the bathrooms at the theater. "Yes, we’ve toyed with that and we still may. We hope, in the spirit of the show, people will play along," says Korinko.

So go see Urinetown, but you may want to go before you go.

BROOKLYN BOY, Parade Productions at The Studio at Mizner Park, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. Thursday through Feb. 12. Tickets: $30. Available online at www.parade productions.org.

URINETOWN, Slow Burn Theatre Company at West Boca High School, 12811 West Glades Road, Boca Raton. Tonight through Jan. 29. Tickets: $35. Call: (866) 811-4111.

After gigs in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and all over the country, New Jersey’s most famous quartet is back onstage at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. And oh, what a night the guys deliver. Matinees too.

Jersey Boys, the hit-packed story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, is one of those musicals that could and should tour for years. More than six years after its Broadway opening, the best of the jukebox musicals is still doing great business in New York and on tour, for so many reasons.

The show features a terrific streets-to-stardom script by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, craftsmen who are adept at weaving facts, drama and laughs into a compelling whole. Director Des McAnuff keeps the show flowing as flawlessly as a Four Seasons classic, building to the moment when Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi don matching jackets and blast into pop music’s stratosphere with “Sherry”. Then, just as the hits kept coming for Valli and the Seasons, Jersey Boys keeps on thrilling the audience for the rest of its 2½-hour running time.

Directions, invite a friend

Told from the shifting perspectives of each original group member, Jersey Boys explains how four different guys coalesced into hitmakers now enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Producer-lyricist Bob Crewe (still being played on tour by the wry Jonathan Hadley) had plenty to do with the Seasons’ success, certainly. But Jersey Boys argues that it was the magical combination of Gaudio’s music and Valli’s voice, with its huge range and distinctive falsetto, that set the group apart.

The real Valli is still out there entertaining his fans at 77, singing solo and with four younger Seasons, as he will at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood March 2-3. But Jersey Boys has its own impressive version of the singer in actor Joseph Leo Bwarie, who has played Valli for almost four years. Bwarie can alter his natural voice (which you can hear on his debut CD Nothin’ but Love, produced by former Four Seasons member-arranger Charles Calello) so that he sounds much like Valli, whether singing in a normal register or that soaring falsetto. He’s a fine actor too: Watch as he registers Valli’s thrill when the crowd goes wild for the Four Seasons, a moment Bwarie has played hundreds of times.

Michael Lomenda is back as the funny, slightly eccentric Massi, the bass player who abruptly quit and group and has since passed away. John Gardiner is a brash, controlling Tommy DeVito, the group member who was exiled to Las Vegas after getting the Seasons into double trouble over huge loans and delinquent taxes. Preston Truman Boyd, last seen on tour as the monster in Young Frankenstein, is a beguiling boy genius as Gaudio.

Because of the era it re-creates, Jersey Boys is the quintessential Baby Boomer show. But like so many of the hits it revisits and celebrates, it’s timelessly appealing.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was nominated for nine Carbonell Awards, including Best Musical Production and Best Actor in a Musical for John Pinto Jr. (center)

The Maltz Jupiter Theatre had far and away the most nominations in the upcoming Carbonell Awards for local theater, picking up 25.

All but one were for three Maltz musical productions — The Sound of Music, Crazy For You and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The other was for Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

Joseph led the way with nine, while The Sound of Music had eight and Crazy For You seven.

Director Mark Martino is nominated twice for Best Director for a Musical for both Crazy for You and Joseph, and the theater also has at least one nominee in all four musical acting categories.

Among Palm Beach County theaters, Palm Beach Dramaworks had 10 nominations, the Caldwell Theatre had six and the defunct Florida Stage had two.

Palm Beach County theaters had the most nominations with 43, while Miami-Dade had 28 and Broward 27.

The full list of nominees is below:

Best New Work

Brothers Beckett, David Michael Sirois, Alliance Theatre Lab; Captiva, Christopher Demos Brown, Zoetic Stage; The Cha-Cha of the Camel Spider, Carter W. Lewis, Florida Stage; Stuff, Michael McKeever, Caldwell Theatre Company

Best Production of a Play

All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; August: Osage County, Actors’ Playhouse; Clybourne Park, Caldwell Theatre Company; The Pillowman, Infinite Abyss; Stuff, Caldwell Theatre Company

Best Director of a Play

Joseph Adler, Red, GableStage; Jeffrey D. Holmes, The Pillowman, Infinite Abyss; J.Barry Lewis, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Stuart Meltzer, Captiva, Zoetic Stage; Richard Jay Simon, Side Effects, Mosaic Theatre

Best Actor in a Play

Ken Clement, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Actors’ Playhouse; Scott Douglas Wilson, The Pillowman, Infinite Abyss; Avi Hoffman, Superior Donuts, GableStage; Kenneth Tigar, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Gregg Weiner, Red, GableStage

Best Actress in a Play

Kati Brazda, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Elizabeth Dimon, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Annette Miller, August: Osage County, Actors’ Playhouse; Deborah Sherman, Side Effects, Mosaic Theatre; Laura Turnbull, August: Osage County, Actors’ Playhouse

Best Supporting Actor in a Play

Antonio Amadeo, The Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider, Florida Stage; Marckenson Charles, Superior Donuts, GableStage; Mark Della Ventura, Brothers Beckett, Alliance Theatre Lab; Ryan Didato, Red, GableStage; Todd Allen Durkin, Captiva, Zoetic Stage

Best Supporting Actress in a Play

Barbara Bradshaw, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Renata Eastlick, Eclipsed, The Women’s Theatre Project; Elvire Emmanuelle, Eclipsed, The Women’s Theatre Project; Angie Radosh, Stuff, Caldwell Theatre Company; Laura Turnbull, Lombardi, Mosaic Theatre

Best Production of a Musical

Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Song of the Living Dead, Promethean Theatre

Best Director, Musical

Michael Leeds, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Margaret M. Ledford, Song of the Living Dead, Promethean Theatre; Mark Martino, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Mark Martino, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Marc Robin, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Actor in a Musical

Matt Loehr, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; John Pinto, Jr., Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Michael Sharon, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Dylan H. Thompson, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre

Best Actress in a Musical

Colleen Amaya, The Music Man, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Joline Mujica, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Vanessa Sonon, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Gabrielle Visser, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Catherine Walker, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Supporting Actor in a Musical

Clay Cartland, Song of the Living Dead, Promethean Theatre; Michael Brian Dunn, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Avi Hoffman, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Bruce Rebold, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Ryan Williams, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Supporting Actress in a Musical

Julie Kleiner, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Avery Sommers, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Lara Hayhurst, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Natalie Ramirez, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; April Woodall, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Musical Direction

Helen Gregory, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Kim Douglas Steiner, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Aaron McAllister, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; David Nagy, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Garrett Taylor, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre

Best Choreography

Chrissy Ardito, The Music Man, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Chrissy Ardito, Song of the Living Dead, Promethean Theatre; Barbara Flaten, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Mark Martino, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Shea Sullivan, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Scenic Design (Play or Musical)

Michael Amico, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Tim Bennett, Stuff, Caldwell Theatre Company; Douglas Grinn, Lombardi, Mosaic Theatre; Sean McClelland, August: Osage County, Actors’ Playhouse; Michael Schweikardt, The Sound of Music, Maltz Jupiter Theatre

Best Lighting Design (Play or Musical)

Paul Black, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; John Hall, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Andrew Myers, The Light in the Piazza, Broward Stage Door Theatre; Jeff Quinn, Red, GableStage; Patrick Tennent, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Actors’ Playhouse

Best Costume Design (Play or Musical)

Brian O’Keefe, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks; Jose M. Rivera, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Ellis Tillman, Hairspray, Actors’ Playhouse; Ellis Tillman, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), GableStage; Ellis Tillman, Song of the Living Dead, Promethean Theatre

Best Sound Design (Play or Musical)

Victoria Deiorio, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Alexander Herrin, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Actors’ Playhouse; Keith Kohrs, Crazy for You, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Marty Mets, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Rich Szczublewski, All My Sons, Palm Beach Dramaworks

Best Ensemble

Brothers Beckett, Alliance Theatre Lab; The Brothers Size, GableStage; Clybourne Park, Caldwell Theatre Company; The Irish Curse, Mosaic Theatre; Masked, GableStage

Kate Shindle, Miss America 1998, stars in 'Cabaret' (right, with Christopher Sloan) at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. (Shindle photo by Richard Graulich / Palm Beach Post; 'Cabaret' picture by Alicia Donelan)

That waving, smiling, tiara-laden walk of victory taken each year by the new Miss America has led to many places – anchor desks, Gotham City, even a gig as a "Desperate Housewife."

But right now, that walk has landed Kate Shindle alone and bleak at the edge of a stage in a slip, her eyes blackened with smudged makeup and desperation, singing an ominous song.

And it’s exactly where she wants to be.

"People have the misconception that (a pageant queen) must not be very smart, who just wants to be famous and get married, who is content with having peaked at 22," says Shindle, Miss America 1998, who for the next two weeks stars as deluded songstress Sally Bowles in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre production of Cabaret.

Directions, nearby dining | Review: Life is a ‘Cabaret’ at Maltz

The South Jersey native, 34, calls herself an unlikely beauty queen, having been a self-described awkward theater kid, but is proud of having used her time in the sash as a social platform.

And she wants to challenge the notion of the women in that system as just vapid, pretty girls who blather on about world peace.

"When you’re done, it’s hard to do something that’s bigger. But it just made me think ‘I gotta get to it,’ " says Shindle.

This isn’t her first Cabaret. She appeared in director Sam Mendes’ celebrated London revival of Kander and Ebb’s famous portrait of pre-WWII Berlin and the dying embers of its supposedly free-wheeling society as Nazism took hold.

She has also appeared on Broadway in Jekyll and Hyde, in the movies The Stepford Wives and Capote, and as a correspondent on NBC’s Today show.

The most famous Sally Bowles is Liza Minnelli, of course, who won an Oscar in the film version of Cabaret. Shindle says that she found the best thing was to discover her own path to Bowles, an English cabaret performer past her prime and clinging to hedonism so she doesn’t have to face reality.

"I first did the show when I was 23 and thought I knew everything, and now I know that I do not," she says. "It’s an incredibly challenging role. For me the trickiest part is understanding that the show was built around the fact that Sally doesn’t have to be a tremendous performer. You can do that either by singing badly, which is stupid, or by saying ‘If she was really talented, why is she still here (at this crumbling club)?’ "

Grew up around pageant

The gracious Shindle is still surprised that she became Miss America, but admits she’d been fascinated with the pageant as part of growing up in the shadow of Atlantic City, Miss America’s former home.

Each year, "everybody converged to pull off the pageant. My dad did security and my mom was a hostess. She guarded the bathroom where Miss America was doing her makeup. I grew up looking at these women as ideals."

But still, it wasn’t something she considered for herself initially. Unlike many of the women who’ve worn the crown, she didn’t start in the pageant system. "Postcards used to come in the mail (advertising pageants) and I’d say to my mom ‘Do you think I could do this?’ and she’d say ‘No. Now read a book.’ "

So her first stage experiences were theatrical – Shindle went to a Catholic school where her performance and violin skills landed her a plum role as the titular fiddler in its production of Fiddler On The Roof. ("Nothing better than Fiddler performed by a bunch of Catholic kids.")

She also did extemporaneous speaking as part of forensics competitions, a skill that would come in handy both in theater and as Miss America, although "I was terrible at it."

Shindle admits that to this day, she’s not sure why she entered the pageant – "Maybe it was not being popular in high school and having something to prove" – but all the same she entered and won Miss Illinois as a student at Chicago’s Northwestern University.

The pageant allowed her to perform – she sang “Don’t Rain On My Parade” as her talent – but found that the crown gained her entree into places where her message needed to go, but might not have been welcome otherwise.

"It’s an unparalleled platform. AIDS activists fight to get into these communities that they couldn’t get into. But I could. (In some towns) the principals would say ‘Well, our kids don’t really do those things, so you can’t say ‘needle’ or ‘condom’ or ‘gay.’ But once we got to the Q&As and the kids could ask questions, they opened up," she says.

Shindle returned to Northwestern to finish her degree after her year as Miss America, and then moved to New York to audition. "Out of boredom more than anything else (and) being tired of being behind a podium in a suit," she got a job at a deli that lasted for about six weeks "until the press found out" when she mentioned her new profession to a local newspaper.

"I thought ‘Who reads the Courier Post (in New Jersey)," she says. "Turns out, the AP does!"

Fortunately, there was a theater career waiting for her when she put her apron down. She’s particularly proud of her association with Cabaret, a show "which hasn’t dated at all, even though it’s been 15 years since the revival opened, and it’s every bit as relevant and interesting as it was then," she says of its themes of anti-Semitism, sexuality, politics and the danger of societies that choose to ignore the very real threats that loom over them.

Although she maintains that she’s not a typical pageant queen, Shindle says she’s incredibly proud of her Miss America experience, even though it hasn’t always been to her advantage – "I’ve done auditions when everything is going well, and when it was time to walk out of the room, they look at my résumé and say ‘Oh. I see you were Miss America.’ "

But, she reminds people, it sent her more often to auditoriums and to Capitol Hill to talk about AIDS than it did to autograph signings.

"Nobody cares about somebody who’s just famous for being pretty," she says. "I wanted to dedicate myself to something that was much bigger than (promoting) myself. I didn’t realize when I was 20 all the details of the mantle I was taking on, and the great history of it."

Someone on Broadway is finally taking a leap of faith on “Leap of Faith.”

Producers announced Thursday that the much-delayed musical based on the 1992 film starring Steve Martin as a shady preacher will start performances April 3 at the St. James Theatre.

The show had its world premiere in late 2010 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and has been a work in progress ever since. It boasts music by Alan Menken and will be directed by Christopher Ashley.

The Broadway version will again star Raul Esparza, who plays Jonas Nightingale, a fraudulent faith healer ready to scam residents of a dusty, down-and-out Kansas town.

The cast will also feature Jessica Phillips from “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” and Kendra Kassebaum of “Wicked.”

Janet Dickinson and Janna Cardia star in 'Divorce Party: The Musical' at the Kravis Center.

Dr. Amy Botwinick of Boca Raton has had four careers. First she was a chiropractor, then a divorce coach, which led to her third life as an author of the self-help book Congratulations on Your Divorce – The Road to Finding Your Happily Ever After.

But she is having the most fun with her fourth job, turning her knowledge of the pitfalls of divorce and its aftermath into a stage show. Tonight, Divorce Party The Musical has its world premiere at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, where it plays through Feb. 19.

Directions, invite a friend, nearby dining

The musical might never have happened if Botwinick had not struck up a conversation with a complete stranger at a reception at The Breakers. He turned out to be Mark Schwartz, producer of the wildly successful off-Broadway hit, Menopause The Musical. He not only saw the potential in a show about divorce parties — those popular rite-of-passage celebrations of uncoupling — but he taught Botwinick how to write a musical, using Menopause as the template.

You take four female characters, add a dozen and a half familiar pop songs with parody lyrics, stand back so you are not trampled by the crowds of women looking for an entertaining "girls’ night out," and then giggle all the way to the bank.

"This is a world premiere, so no one has ever seen it," notes Schwartz. "And yet on the title alone, and the words ‘Brought to you by the producer of the off-Broadway hit Menopause The Musical‘, we’ve sold about half of the available seats for a six-week run already."

Certainly there is a ready audience for the show since, by one estimate, there were 14 million divorced women in the United States in 2011. And Botwinick is one of them.

"My divorce was incredibly challenging. It went on for three years, because of lawyers. We wasted a lot of financial and emotional resources," she says.

The divorce of Linda, her show’s main character, "is not too bad, nothing like what I went through. But even if it’s easy, it’s still going to be a nightmare. There’s definitely plenty of drama in the show."

Theater presenters that made windfall profits from Menopause The Musical will be heading to the Rinker to take a look at the new show. If Divorce Party manages to follow the Menopause model, there will be a tour booked by the time the run here is over, followed by a New York production and franchised spin-offs afterward.

To date, Menopause The Musical has made $300 million at box offices around the world. Divorce may be the best thing that ever happened to Amy Botwinick.

Caldwell tries artistic headlock: Under artistic director Clive Cholerton, the Caldwell Theatre’s fare has grown more contemporary and offbeat, but perhaps never as much as with its current play, Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. Set in the world of professional wrestling, this Pulitzer Prize finalist is both bone-crunching and cerebral, for the "sport" is a metaphor for today’s global politics.

Even the title character is a metaphor. "He stands for the American dream, for the illusion we all have that if you work hard you’ll be rich," says Donte Bonner, who plays Chad Deity here after originating the role in the East Coast premiere last year in Philadelphia. "Chad is a young, hip, cool black guy, rich. He’s got everything he could possibly want — muscle cars, everything – in the kind of America that America likes to see."

Directions, nearby dining, invite a friend

A fan of World Wrestling Federation matches since he was a kid, Bonner was ready for the physical workout the play demands. "I do a ‘bulldog,’ which is where I have a guy in a headlock and I leap in the air and smash his face to the ground. And there’s a ‘power bomb,’ which is Chad’s trademark move, where I put a guy up on my shoulders and slam him down on his back," he says. "You’re going to wonder how we can do it eight times a week."

The answer is the coaching and wrestling choreography of WWF veteran Pablo Marquez, who says the key is knowing how to take a fall. "That’s probably the toughest thing to overcome, the fear of falling backward without panicking and trying to put your hands down. That’s when you get hurt," he cautions. "My art is to make it look like it is hurting you, but in reality it’s really not."

Bonner calls Chad Deity "a very current play with very current characters and enormous relevance to today," but he suspects that audiences will leave the Caldwell talking about the wrestling moves. "We’re going to be doing for-real serious pro wrestling that will make you really uncomfortable," he says. "That’s a 100 percent promise. That’s my one purpose in this show, to make my wrestling matches as bad-ass as possible."

If you go:

DIVORCE PARTY THE MUSICAL, Kravis Center Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Feb. 19. Tickets: $25-$32. Call (561) 832-7469 or (800) 572-8471.

THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Opens tonight and runs through Feb. 12. Tickets: $27-$50. Call (561) 241-7432.

Laura Turnbull, Skye Coyne and Arielle Hoffman star in Paul Zindel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, 'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds'. (Photo by Alicia Donelan)

Playwright Paul Zindel took to heart the adage "write what you know," and in 1971, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Effect of Gamma Rays in Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It’s a drama in the well-trod tradition of dysfunctional family plays, and Zindel said the work has autobiographical roots.

He soon left the theater behind for a career in young adult fiction, but Palm Beach Dramaworks has dusted off the anguished tale of embittered, alcoholic Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her two daughters, giving it a well-acted production that deserves to be seen. Whether or not it deserved the Pulitzer is debatable, but the theatrical impact of the show at the new Don & Ann Brown Theatre makes us wish Zindel had written more for the stage.

Directions, invite a friend

Chief among the production’s assets is a full-throttle performance by Laura Turnbull as Beatrice, a sour woman frustrated by life, deserted by her husband and left to raise two girls. The older, Ruth, has a wild streak and a history of stays in psychiatric hospitals, as well as emotionally triggered seizures. Tillie, the younger, more neglected child, escapes from her mother’s abusiveness into science books, with her only affection coming from a pet rabbit.

The play’s title refers to Tillie’s science fair project, an experiment involving irradiated flower seeds. She not only earns much-needed recognition for the project, but Tillie represents the positive mutation that can survive and even blossom despite exposure to gamma rays. As metaphors go, it is a bit too tidy, though you will probably be rooting for Arielle Hoffman’s introverted Tillie to bloom, and appreciate the way she demonstrates the character’s inner strength in her science presentation.

Turnbull imbues Beatrice with just enough humanity to keep us from despising her, as she keeps lashing out at her daughters for her own miserable existence. She is a jumble of pipe dreams, one minute yearning to open a nursing home and the next a tea room, but her hopes can be quickly short-circuited with the mere mention of her childhood nickname, "Betty the loon."

If the evening belongs to Turnbull, she gets fine support from the teenage cast members. Hoffman, her real-life daughter, skillfully conveys Tillie’s inner turmoil, and Skye Coyne vividly embodies her older, willfully bratty sister. Even Gracie Connell makes a favorable impression in a brief cameo as one of Tillie’ competitors for the science prize. Credit director William Hayes with pulling such assured performances from this trio of young actresses.

Scenic designer Michael Amico again contributes a visually stunning set, the dreary, colorless, two-story Hunsdorfer home. If Dramaworks has made a smooth artistic transition into its new playhouse — and it certainly has — Amico is largely responsible. Sean Dolan’s lighting is also expert, most notably on a thunderstorm and the subsequent power outage.

But there is no lack of power in this production of Gamma Rays, from a company that has grown increasingly assured in recent seasons. This is a fragile play which can be quickly thrown out of kilter, but you would never know that from the work of Hayes, his cast and his design team.

R E V I E W

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

A-

Where: Palm Beach Dramaworks at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach

When: Through Jan. 29

Tickets: $55. Call: (561) 514-4042.

The verdict: A 40-year-old Pulitzer-winning drama of a dysfunctional family, with a fine all-female cast led by Laura Turnbull as the embittered mother.

'Hair' continues at the Kravis Center through Sunday. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

In 1967, when the creators of Hair, the so-called “American tribal love-rock musical,” brought the anti-Vietnam War counter-culture to Broadway, the show had an undeniable urgency. The last thing on their minds, surely, was whether the material might be revived some 40 years later.

But return it did in 2008, in a Tony Award-winning production that is now playing the Kravis Center through Sunday in all its drug-toking, flower-power glory. If the political message of the show now takes a back seat to the tuneful Galt MacDermot-Gerome Ragni-James Rado score, and if the songs seem like old familiar friends rather than the profane shockers they once were, that is just the nature of a time-capsule show.

Hair now comes across as a nostalgia piece that helped define the tumultuous ‘60s. That is not meant as a put-down of the impressive work by director Diane Paulus, who gives the show more dramatic teeth than it ever had. Encountering Hair after all these years — and perhaps for those viewing it for the first time — one is struck by the score’s profusion of pop standards and also by the flimsiness of the script.

Directions, nearby dining, invite a friend | Protesting hippies take over Kravis for ‘Hair

While it involves the lives of a scruffy tribe of hippies, it centers on Anglophile Claude Hooper Bukowski, who faces his draft notice at a time when that meant a probable death sentence in Southeast Asia. Claude’s potential fate remains powerful, particularly with the final image Paulus devises, but the revival never manages to make the intended leap to contemporary parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Still, credit Paulus and her inventive choreographer Karole Armitage with turning a cast of 30, too young to have been born in the ‘60s — and judging from their program bios, not a single Broadway credit among them — into a tight, credible tribe.

The depth of talent can be measured by the bench, for understudy Marshal Kennedy Carolan went on as Claude at Tuesday’s opening performance and proved very impressive in the vocal and acting departments. Sara King revealed lung power to spare on the finale, “Let the Sun Shine In”, and on the score’s best number, “Easy to be Hard”, even if its dramatic motivation — a rejected gift shirt — has always seemed trivial compared to the life-or-death issues elsewhere in the show.

Kaitlin Kiyan put a countrified spin on her solo, “Frank Mills”, and hirsute Steel Burkhardt warmed up the audience well as Claude’s buddy, Berger.

The content of this revival is somewhat different from the original Hair, with a few minor songs from subsequent productions added. Similarly, the political quotient has been increased, most notably in a description of an anti-war demonstration and tear-gassing on the streets of the nation’s capital that occurred after Hair premiered.

Nevertheless, the impression you are mostly likely to come away with from this production is of the energetic cast and their full-voiced rendition of the exuberant, and occasionally defiant, score. And just when you thought you would not be moved by Hair, there is a lump in your throat at the final curtain.

The national tour of 'Hair' makes a stop at the Kravis Center for five days. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

In the same way that Hair was a surprise hit in the 1960s, bringing the counter-culture into Broadway’s lap, the success of the Tony Award-winning 2009 revival startled even its creative team.

It too began humbly, as a semi-staged concert version in Central Park, but the show’s appeal could not be denied.

"It had such a humble beginning, we were thinking we’re just going to do Hair and glory in it. I had no idea of the interest in this show," says the revival’s director, Diane Paulus, who made her Broadway debut with the show.

"But the crowds in Central Park were huge and I would watch them mouthing all the words, and I realized that this show is a phenomenon. It has a connection with people."

Explaining Hair‘s appeal, she focuses on the score. "First of all, hands down, no argument, the music in that show is fantastic. And it was part of our popular culture, it had multiple No. 1 hits, so it was beyond musical theater."

And as she watched audiences, Paulus saw that the show spoke to all ages. "I think it was relevant, to many generations. To people who were living it, to my generation who missed it but knew the music," she explains. "And then the happiest discovery was the younger people, the 18-year-olds, who came because their parents dragged them or whatever. And they were looking at the show as if it were written for them yesterday. It was very gratifying."

Hair, written by the scruffy, subversive trio of Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot, follows the fate of Anglophile hippie Claude Hooper Bukowski, grappling with his draft notice as the divisive Vietnam War was raging.

Instead of the usual musical escapism, Hair brought the nightly newscasts and the youth movement to the Broadway stage, sending shock waves to conventional theatergoers.

"Oh, my god, men with long hair. Oh, my god, ripped bluejeans. Oh, my god, they’re getting naked," notes Paulus.

"None of those things shock us anymore. So I actually felt like the story and the heart of the piece had a chance to be moving and emotional in a way that it just couldn’t back then."

Paulus was intent on the show having an atmosphere of authenticity. At the initial rehearsal, "I remember saying we’re going to do the hippie thing from the inside out – no makeup, no bras – and we’re all going to jump off the cliff together. It was like no holds barred, and I think that set the tone for the show."

Being new to the commercial theater, Paulus had no team of collaborators, but the producing Public Theatre suggested she bring onboard choreographer Karole Armitage, a modern dance world fixture who had launched her theater career a season earlier with Passing Strange.

But Paulus had an unusual assignment for her. "I said to her, ‘There can be no unison movement.’ I’m talking to the choreographer and telling her, ‘They can never look like they’re dancing.’ "

Armitage had long been an avid Hair fan. "I grew up with that cast album and I knew every word to practically every song," she says. Not only was she eager to do the show, she agreed with Paulus’s vision for the choreography.

"It was incredibly important that it looked personal, spontaneous, these feelings welling up inside every single person," says Armitage. "So there was a common bond, but complete individuality. And because of the underlying architecture, it still was coherent in a way that you could not actually see.

"My signature was treating the tribe," the hippie ensemble, "almost like a flock of birds. Which is to say, they’re never in unison, but they all have a common purpose. They’re moving together, but they’re doing it in their own way," she says. "It’s kind of like cubism in motion."

Hair in 2012 is both a time capsule and a reflection of today’s world. "Hair makes you feel alive," says Paulus. "When you come to Hair, you have an experience of getting in touch with what it means to cherish the moment and feel invigorated, and feel with passion, with tears, with ecstasy, with joy. It puts you in contact with the present moment, because it’s a happening.

"And that’s what live theater should do."

If you go:

HAIR, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 801 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Tuesday – Jan. 15. Tickets: $25 and up. Call: (561) 832-7469 or (800) 572-8471.

Hugh Jackman liked his record-setting Broadway run so much this winter that he’s handcuffing himself to a future musical about Harry Houdini.

Producers said Wednesday that Jackman, best known as the hairy Wolverine in “The X-Men” franchise, will star as the famed illusionist in “Houdini.” It’s scheduled to reach Broadway during the 2013-14 season.

Academy Award and six-time Emmy Award winner Aaron Sorkin of “West Wing” fame will write the story, and three-time Academy Award and four-time Grammy Award winner Stephen Schwartz of “Wicked” fame will write music and lyrics.

Jackman’s one-man, 10-week Broadway concert show closed Sunday at the Broadhurst Theatre after having earned more than $2 million in its final week. It was the highest weekly gross recorded by the Shubert Organization, which owns the Broadhurst and 16 other Broadway theaters.

'Hair' leads off the year at the Kravis Center.

RED
Feb. 14-26, Maltz Jupiter Theatre
Emboldened by the success last season of Twelve Angry Men, the Maltz ventures further into the realm of drama with the 2010 Tony-winning Best Play by John Logan about abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko and his creative process. Conflicted about a new commission to paint a series of canvasses for the then-new Four Seasons restaurant in New York, Rothko rants to his new assistant on the art of making art. A must-see for lovers of intense, articulate theater.
Information: (561) 575-2223 | Directions, nearby dining

THE PITMEN PAINTERS
Feb. 17-March 11
Palm Beach Dramaworks, West Palm Beach
Dramaworks tends toward 20th-century American classics, but when artistic director Bill Hayes saw Lee Hall’s factual tale of British miners who take an art appreciation course, and, improbably, become world-famous painters, he knew he had to bring the play to South Florida. In the company’s first season in its new larger home on Clematis Street, the production will have more room to breathe.
Information: (561) 514-4042 | Directions, nearby dining

WORKING
Feb. 26-April 1
Caldwell Theatre Company,
Boca Raton
Jobs and the lack of them are on the nation’s mind, which led artistic director Clive Cholerton to select this cult musical revue from 1974, a celebration of working men and women adapted from interviews by Chicago’s Studs Terkel. The show lasted only 25 performances on Broadway initially, but regional productions have kept the show alive.
Information: (561) 241-7432 | Directions, invite a friend

Maria Luigia Borsi plays Cio-Cio San in Palm Beach Opera's 'Madama Butterfly'.

Giacomo Puccini designed Madama Butterfly in two acts, the second of which was about 90 minutes long, with the heroine waiting through a sleepless theatrical night for the return of her husband from overseas.

After the disastrous Milan premiere of the opera in 1904 (thought to be sabotaged by a rival publisher who hired hecklers), the opera was changed to three acts, with a break in the middle of Butterfly’s wait. I’ve never seen it work persuasively, and so it was a joy to see the Palm Beach Opera production this past weekend, which was in two acts (though nominally in three, according to the program) and restored Cio-Cio-San’s vigil to its rightful centrality.

On Dec. 16, Italian soprano Maria Luigia Borsi gave a strong and well-sung performance, with nice touches such as an Un bel di that began almost as though she were another instrument of the orchestra, and built steadily from there. She acted well amid the confines of Ron Daniels’ stage vision, which had the cast operating in a tightly controlled environment that was distinctly redolent of traditional Japanese tropes of body movement and stylized gesture.

Tenor James Valenti, as Pinkerton, certainly looked and acted the part, and at times, particularly in his bluff Dovunque al mondo, sang with a large, attractive sound that was well-suited for the character. But his voice didn’t hold up throughout, weakening after that and recovering somewhat for the great love duet that closes Act I. It was stronger in his final appearance, and for his Addio, fiorito asil, but it would have been better had he been firing on all cylinders for all of Act I.

At least two of the supporting roles were exceptionally fine (and audience approval was clear at curtain). Baritone Michael Chioldi sang Sharpless, the American consul, about as well as it can be sung, with a rich, powerful voice that filled out the back story for this secondary figure. And mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts was excellent as Suzuki, with a commanding, dark voice that was every bit Borsi’s equal, and not just during their lovely take on the Flower Duet.

Korean tenor Julius Ahn made a most effective Goro, again with a big sound that drew your attention, and repeat Young Artist member Kenneth Stavert added an agreeable shade to his baritone voice I’ve not heard him use before in his role as Prince Yamadori. Romanian baritone Valentin Vasiliu was adequate as the Bonze, and the Canadian-Iranian mezzo Shirin Eskandani showed a pleasing vocal quality in her few lines as Kate Pinkerton.

The production, borrowed from the San Francisco Opera, looked beautiful, with Butterfly’s house changing mood with the different screens as they were moved around by seven kurogo, the masked stagehands of Japanese theater. The women’s chorus sang expertly in their appearance at Butterfly’s wedding party, and the whole thing looked like a Renoir boating party scene just before the Bonze burst in.

Bruno Aprea led his orchestra and singers with his usual ferocious energy, and his orchestra responded beautifully, with a wonderfully flexible reading of the score, played with almost no blemishes throughout, and an extraordinary pianissimo during the Humming Chorus.

But it was Daniels’ staging of the long second act that I especially admired. Borsi stood completely still through the end of the nominal Act II and the orchestral intermezzo of Act III, and when the action finally resumed, the tension in the hall relaxed along with her. This is the way the opera is supposed to work, and it added a good deal to the effectiveness of the drama’s tragic denouement.

Lukas Poost stars in the title role of Shrek in the musical version of the popular film.

Shrek The Musical ushers in the holidays with fairy tale characters, ogres and princesses coming alive on stage.

With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanne Tesori, this show is both humorous and entertaining. Based on the 2001 Dreamworks film and William Steig’s book Shrek!, it is part twisted fairy tale and part romantic comedy.

The opening scene gives us the backdrop to both Shrek (Lukas Poost) and Princess Fiona’s (Liz Shivener) early life (Alexa Kerner & Rachel Khutorsky play Young Fiona/Young Shrek).

Directions, nearby dining

The story continues with the fairy-tale characters, including Papa Bear (Willie Dee), Ugly Duckling (Annie Fitch), Witch (Susan Leilani Gearou), Big Bad Wolf (Adam Steiner), and Pinocchio (Luke Yellin) showing up in the swamp.

They are met by the titular ogre who will do whatever it takes to keep his swamp quiet and void of trespassers.

But as the fairy tale characters plead for help, Shrek unwillingly accepts his journey to help them return home.

Donkey — performed by Andre Jordan in a fantastically funny way — joins in on the quest with Shrek to rescue a princess and slay a dragon in return for his swamp, a commitment he makes to the ruler of the kingdom of Dulac, Lord Farquaad (Merritt David Janes).

The mission to help the fairy tale characters return to their home leads to adventure and fun as Shrek continues on his way to find the princess who has a secret of her own.

Favorite scenes include songs by a gingerbread man, “Gingy” (with Schuyler Midgett in that part), and “Big Bright Beautiful World”.

Best vocals of the show go to Shivener’s Princess Fiona.

Shrek continues at The Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami through December 11.

Louis Tyrrell headed up Florida Stage for 24 years, and now is working with Delray's Arts Garage. (Allen Eyestone / Palm Beach Post)

The void in the local theater scene caused by the sudden closure of Florida Stage may soon be filled. By the founding producing director of Florida Stage.

Louis Tyrrell, who began the nonprofit company that grew in 24 years to become the nation’s largest professional theater dedicated to producing exclusively new and emerging American plays, has found a new artistic home. He is joining Delray Beach’s 7-month-old Arts Garage, a multidisciplinary cultural hub on the ground floor of a city parking lot in the Pineapple Grove neighborhood, to create and run the organization’s professional theater component.

"Picture Florida Stage, but more intimate," says Tyrrell, 61. "Just as devoted to producing new plays and developing new playwrights, but with less emphasis on production values. The space – and it is a great space — will dictate the kinds of plays we will be able to do here. Plays with smaller cast sizes, usually only one set, but that leaves plenty of terrific scripts that we can serve up, many that I already have in hand."

Arts Garage executive director Alyona Ushe is enthusiastic about what will be called The Theatre at Arts Garage and about bringing Tyrrell on board as its artistic director. "Theater encompasses so many arts – music, dance, visual arts – that it is a necessary part of what we do," she says. "And to have someone of Lou’s talents and reputation with us takes us closer to the world-class program we want to become."

Tyrrell estimates The Theatre’s operating budget for its first season to be in the range of $150,000. He plans to inaugurate it this February with a Master Playwright Series: four weekly play-readings/lectures on Tuesday evenings. Already committed to participate are such nationally known dramatists as Israel Horovitz, John Guare and William Mastrosimone, who will talk about the featured works, the creative process and the state of theater today.

During the first week of March, Tyrrell will unveil The New Play Festival, comprised of readings of six evolving scripts, playwriting workshops and a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman. The four-day festival is similar to Florida Stage’s 1st Stage Festival, from which several works were selected for mainstage production.

The third attraction of The Theatre at Arts Garage’s first season (March 16-April 8) will be a fully produced musical play, Woody Sez, based on the music of Depression-era folk troubadour Woody Guthrie. This new show, which celebrates the American character in tough economic times, has just returned from an acclaimed tour of England, in time for the 100th anniversary of Guthrie’s birth in 2012.

"This should be a very Arts Garage production, mixing theater and music, entertainment and education," says Tyrrell. Long a proponent of arts education, he hopes to expose young students to the Guthrie show and use it to inspire them to compose their own songs and skits.

Subscribers to Florida Stage left with tickets for canceled shows can use them for admission to Woody Sez, on a space-available basis. And while details have not been worked out, Ushe hopes to allow Florida Stage ticket holders to attend jazz, dance or film performances at the Arts Garage.

Expanded programming is expected for Tyrrell’s theater program in subsequent seasons, leading to the opening of the Arts Warehouse, a yet-to-be-renovated 15,000 square-foot facility that the Arts Garage’s umbrella corporation, Creative City Cooperative, hopes to open in fiscal year 2014. The Warehouse, four times the size of the Garage, would become the permanent home to Tyrrell’s operation, but he does not expect to go back to elaborate production values even then.

Intimate theater "is the new normal," says Tyrrell. "Even when the economy recovers, we expect our business model to remain simple and text-oriented. But I am excited about being a part of the Arts Garage and what follows it. I think Delray Beach is the center of a vibrant arts scene and I’m just really excited and gratified that I have this opportunity."

Jodie Langel, who plays the narrator, is surrounded by some of the kids who'll be part of the youth chorus in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre's production of 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'. (Photo by Alicia Donelan)

Mark Martino is the director and sometime choreographer that the Maltz Jupiter Theatre often taps for its large-scale musicals, such as La Cage aux Folles and Crazy for You in recent seasons.

So at the end of last season, artistic director Andrew Kato offered Martino the assignment of helming a major production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But with a catch.

The catch was he had to use 240 youngsters from the community, divided into eight choruses of 30 kids each, that would rotate performances throughout the three-week run.

"I will tell you I was taken aback, like ‘Oh, my Lord, what do I do?’," Martino recalls . "But what looked to me at first like a logistical nightmare, actually turned out to inform every element of the show for me, gave me the hook that the show needs."

Directions, nearby dining, invite a friend

Lloyd Webber and his then-lyricist Tim Rice adapted the Old Testament tale of a young interpreter of dreams and his 11 envious brothers back in 1968, as a simple, whimsical show to be performed at a British prep school. Since then, the show has grown into a Broadway-sized extravaganza, often with the human special effect of the kiddie backup singers.

Once he saw that the rotating chorus could be manageable, Martino warmed to the notion. "What I’m excited about here, when you project the show through children’s eyes, that allows you, I think, to create a more honest, innocent piece, a little more naïve," he says.

As Maltz theatergoers have seen over the years, Martino’s strength is juggling production values with a show’s core emotional tug. "What I love to do is take a large show, with a lot of sets and a lot of costumes, and dive inside of it and find where its heart lives," he says.

"Because the danger with Joseph is that it is only color and light. For me, though, it is a very powerful family story."

Lloyd Webber and Rice used a variety of song styles – calypso, western, French chanson and ’60s pop – to illustrate the familiar Bible tale. "For me, the joy of it is finding the fun of the show," Martino says. "It’s written for children and we are encouraged to tell the story in the most amusing, delightful, colorful way you can. At the same time, we deliver a very honest sentiment, I hope."

Even without the kids, Joseph would be the largest show ever performed on the Maltz stage. It has a cast of 18, including Broadway veteran Jodie Langel, last seen at the Maltz in 2009 in the title role of Evita. Since then, Langel has had a daughter and has moved from New Jersey to West Palm Beach, where she heads the theater arts department at the new Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches.

This will mark Langel’s fourth production of Joseph, each time in the featured part of The Narrator. She has been in productions large and small, with kids and without.

"Telling the story of Joseph to these kids, you realize how special this show is," she says . "Now seeing these innocent faces it comes more easily because I’m just telling this story, and being a mother and trying to entertain and care for them."

Joseph is a musical about family and an ideal family musical. "This show works on every level. And it’s a show that you can bring every single member of the family to," Martino says . "It’s perfect for the holidays, Thanksgiving into Christmas in particular, because that’s the time we have family in mind."

Caldwell 2, Strike 2 . . . The Caldwell Theatre’s much-ballyhooed second stage series has suffered another setback. Artistic director Clive Cholerton has scratched another attempt to launch the program, canceling previously announced plans to open this month at the new Mizner Park Cultural Center.

According to Cholerton, "revenues from (the recent mainstage offering) After the Revolution fell short of expectation and that was what we had earmarked as our production money for this show." Nor did it help that program coordinator Kenneth Kay has a full plate at the moment, appearing in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ All My Sons and conducting acting and auditioning classes at the Maltz.

Still, Cholerton remains hopeful that he can green-light two Caldwell 2 productions in the new year.

If you go

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Continuing through Dec. 18. $43-$60. Call: (561) 575-2223.

With music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice and book by Linda Woolverton,this is one Disney musical that captivated the audience. Theatergoers receive tiaras and roses and have the opportunity to have their pictures taken with a prince-and-princess castle set, but the real treat here is the well-cast stars of the show.

Emily Behny as Belle is fabulous with an angelic voice and face that rivals the original Belle. Dane Agostinis plays a scary, funny and simply charming Beast. Florida native Logan Denninghoff plays Gaston with confidence galore. The adorable characters of Mrs. Potts (Julia Louise Hosack), Lumiere (Michael Haller), Cogsworth (Nov. 15-17, played by Benjamin Lovell and Nov 18-27, James May) and Chip (Noah Jones, Jordan Moore) at certain times are incredible.

Act One opens with a village scene and Belle, the Silly Girls, and Townspeople draw us into their world.  Favorite numbers include “Belle”, “Gaston” (Lefou, Gaston, Sily Girls and Tavern Patrons) and the famous “Be Our Guest” with Lumiere, Mrs. Potts, Enchanted Objects and Ensemble. Act Two continues to enchant with “Something There”, “Human Again”, and “Beauty and the Beast.”

A fairy tale celebration for the entire family that indulges the senses in every way, Beauty and the Beast plays through Nov. 27.

Logan Denninghoff, who grew up in Florida, plays Gaston in the national tour of 'Beauty and the Beast'.

For once, Gaston might be getting some of the loudest cheers in Beauty and the Beast, when it comes to the Broward Center.

The vain antagonist will be played by Logan Denninghoff, a Florida native who went to school at Merritt Island High School and Florida State University.

Denninghoff is no newcomer to the stage, with credits in Sweeney Todd (Anthony), Into the Woods (Cinderella’s Prince), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Trevor Grayson), On the Town (Pitkin J. Bridgework) and Signing in the Rain (Cosmo Brown).

Directions, invite a friend

But it is in his role as Gaston where he has started to broaden his horizons and is learning even more as he transitions as a villain.

Denninghoff loved the fact that Gaston’s character starts out as the most handsome in the village, the one the ladies all love, but goes on a journey to the opposite extreme where he destroys the village to try and manipulate Belle to marry him.

“Playing the bad guy was different,” Denninghoff said. “I have been used to the pompous over the top role, but this was a new learning experience for me.”

Denninghoff mentioned that his favorite part of the show — which includes several big production numbers — is “Gaston”, a spectacle that rivals “Be Our Guest”.

Beauty and Beast starts Nov. 15 and runs through Nov. 27.

Palm Beach Dramaworks will hold a grand opening on Nov. 11 in its new theater. (Damon Higgins / Palm Beach Post)

Conservative in its business decisions offstage, while taking artistic risks onstage.

That has been the formula for success of Palm Beach Dramaworks, the 12-year-old West Palm Beach stage company that tonight will make its biggest, riskiest and most artistic move ever.

After a $2 million renovation, the company opens tonight in the Don & Ann Brown Theatre at the foot of Clematis Street, in the former space of the Cuillo Centre for the Arts. It’s only about one block over from its initial, 84-seat space on Banyan Boulevard.

While some theater companies haven’t survived moves to new digs, the managers of Dramaworks are confident they have mapped out every contingency.

Dramaworks opening with ‘My Three Sons’ | Directions, nearby dining

"We never do anything we can’t afford," says managing director Sue Ellen Beryl, who is understandably proud that the company has never had an annual deficit.

Savvy business moves

Adds Beryl’s husband, Bill Hayes, the company’s producing artistic director and a former executive manager for a shoe manufacturer, "We apply a lot of the same principles to running a theater as to running any corporation."

For theatergoers, though, the plays are the real bottom line. Dramaworks has become famous here for its well-performed productions of recent classics by such thought-provoking playwrights as Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Miller.

It is the sort of heady fare that is rarely seen in South Florida but on which Dramaworks has thrived. "People would not be responding to it and coming back if we were not giving them the kind of work that they want," says Hayes.

In fact, while other area theater companies have been struggling financially, Dramaworks logged a $323,000 surplus for the fiscal year just ended. And subscriptions for the new season in its larger, but still intimate, theater now total 3,500, a record level for the group.

Eight years ago, Dramaworks moved into its playhouse on Banyan Boulevard, and quickly outgrew it. Searching for new quarters, the company looked as far away as Palm Beach Gardens, but West Palm Beach’s then-Mayor Lois Frankel was determined to keep the organization in town.

City invested in arts

"The bottom line is we had an administration here in the city that was willing to invest in the arts," says Hayes. "And it recognized the economic impact that a good cultural organization could have on downtown."

The Downtown Development Authority got involved, identifying the dormant Cuillo Centre for the Arts at Clematis and Narcissus as a potential new home for Dramaworks. Still, it took three years, from 2007 to 2010, before the city was able to hammer out a deal with car-dealer-turned-theater-owner Bob Cuillo.

The city bought the theater for $2.85 million, and will be renting it to Dramaworks for the next five years at $60,000 annually — the same rent the company was paying on Banyan — with an option to buy.

To date, Dramaworks has raised $4.2 million, including a $2 million naming rights gift from Don and Ann Brown of Palm Beach Gardens and Washington, D.C., enthusiastic boosters of the troupe. "I just think the caliber of their work is superb," says Ann Brown. "I didn’t like everything I saw, but even the things that I didn’t adore were interesting, adventurous choices. It really is, I would say, the jewel in the crown down here."

The Browns’ $2 million equals the amount Dramaworks is spending to transform the Cuillo space into a more audience-friendly, more intimate playhouse. Of its former configuration, Hayes says, "It was not comfortable for a patron and it was very limiting for an artist. I needed to bring it down to the dirt and start over again."

Intimacy – and space

He brought in Zeidler Architects, designers of the Kravis Center, to transform the 375-seat Cuillo into the 218-seat Brown Theatre. "We were trying to, as much as possible, re-create the magic of Dramaworks, which has to do with intimacy," says Beryl.

Call it intimacy, but with six times the stage space, the move allows Hayes to present plays that would never have fit in Dramaworks’ previous theater. Plays such as Arthur Miller’s 1947 All My Sons, which will inaugurate the new playhouse Friday.

"With the first show, we want to demonstrate what we can do now," he says. The production and set will feature "10 actors, an exterior, the effective representation of a home, not just a room. You’re going to be wowed."

The rest of the season will include two Pulitzer Prize winners (The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Proof) and two acclaimed international works (South Africa’s Master Harold … and the boys, and Great Britain’s The Pitmen Painters). Each will run for at least four weeks, and five in some cases, which means Dramaworks will be able to accommodate many more theatergoers.

"We were literally maxed out for every show this past season," says Mark Perlberg, chairman of the company’s board of directors. "People were turned away, which is a sign of success, but it did not gain us many friends. In the new theater, we will be better able to serve the community."

Fundraiser just starting

Dramaworks is approaching the point where it will have enough money to purchase the theater from the city, but its fundraising has barely begun.

It also plans to build an endowment fund to generate income for operating expenses.

"We have not yet launched our capital campaign," says Beryl, noting that it will begin with the theater’s grand opening Friday. "We have raised this $4.2 million from 40 people in our very, very inner circle of friends. Our board members, our advisory board members and our highest-level donors."

But she assures the rest of the extended Dramaworks family that they have not been forgotten. "To the rest of our constituents, hold onto your wallets," Beryl says. "The request is coming."

Arthur Miller's classic 'All My Sons' opens Palm Beach Dramaworks' newest season. (Photo by ALICIA DOWNLAN)

Throughout its 12-year existence, Palm Beach Dramaworks has had to defer producing many plays that fit its mission of doing American classics, but did not fit its theater. Either the cast size or the scenic requirements were too large or, in the case of the opening play in its new theater, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, the emotions cried out for more breathing room.

As the company’s resident director J. Barry Lewis says of the 1947 family drama, Miller’s first commercial success on Broadway, "The events that take place are powerful events. They’re almost Greek in their strokes. He deals with what our responsibilities are to ourselves, to our family, to our community.

"On the surface, this seems to be about a family in trouble, but ultimately it’s about much more. Because it is about our ideologies, what we believe in and what we stand for."

Cr/a> | Directions, nearby dining

Like many of Miller’s plays, the central family in All My Sons is headed by a morally flawed patriarch. Joe Keller is an airplane parts manufacturer who profited from World War II, but whose shoddy goods led to the death of 21 pilots and, perhaps, a human loss closer to home.

Long on producing artistic director Bill Hayes’ wish list, the play will open the company’s new roomier Don & Ann Brown Theatre Saturday evening. "There are simply some works that I, as a director, think need breadth," says Lewis. ‘Because of the grand scale of the work, the sheer scope of the issues, the themes that are involved."

Although it was written more than 60 years ago, Lewis believes that theatergoers will find startling parallels to today, Still, he says, "We are doing it absolutely the way it was written on the page, and letting the audience make its own correlations. Whether it be into the (Bernard) Madoff scenario, whether to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are always looking at how we take responsibility for who we are. These are timeless themes."

Get out your checkbooks . . . If you are on the Caldwell Theatre Co.’s electronic mailing list or if you have attended its current production of Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, you have probably received the Boca Raton troupe’s public appeal for money. As the letter signed by artistic director Clive Cholerton puts it, "We are at a crucial point where we must raise $100,000."

With reports circulating about the Caldwell being behind on payments to some of its vendors, as well as on the mortgage for its theater, the question becomes how dire is this new fundraising appeal?

"We heard that, too," says Cholerton. "People going, ‘Oh, my god, how desperate is it?’ No, not at all." Yes, the Caldwell has debts, but this alarming cry for help is just a version of the group’s standard year-end appeal. "It was an aggressive number that we thought would just be great to have. God knows we need it."

Cholerton insists that the Caldwell is not in jeopardy of going under. "We’re not in any imminent danger of going away," he emphasizes. "We’re not ‘Florida Staging’ it," a reference to the West Palm Beach company that suddenly declared bankruptcy in June. "We are surviving, we are making it, but just barely and this would really help us."

There is good news from the Caldwell. In July, it received a complete mortgage modification from its bank that lowers the group’s monthly payment by one-third. And it has already gotten $60,000 from the current appeal, including a sizable donation from the developer who is back at work building a parking garage for theater patrons.

So if you were considering a gift to the Caldwell this year, you need not wait for the holidays. Why should theatergoers give? "Because what you’ve seen in the last year is what we’re going to continue to build on," says Cholerton. "That’s what seems to be resonating for people, and it’s only going to get better."

If you go:

ALL MY SONS, Palm Beach Dramaworks at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Saturday through Dec. 11. Tickets: $55. Call: (561) 514-4042.