For The Theatre at Arts Garage’s first summer show, producing director Lou Tyrrell is reaching back to 1996, when Florida Stage — then known as the Pope Theatre Company — produced Cabaret Verboten, a satirical revue based on songs and sketches from Weimar Germany, leading up to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The show’s writer-director Jeremy Lawrence had been thinking about remounting the revue, “with a different spin on it for the election year.” as he puts it, “I wanted to take the same material, throw it back up in the air and allow it to speak to us directly now.”

Instead of recreating Berlin between the world wars, the new production opening tonight in Delray Beach has a more contemporary feel, with more pointed references to America. “My intent is to mock what is going on in our political scene in a way that we can laugh at it, instead of being so incredibly oppressed by the partisan politics that we find ourselves strapped in,” says Lawrence. “When people say, ‘Let’s take back the country,’ one way of taking it back is by laughing at the ridiculousness that’s going on.”

“It was very dark the first time we did it,” recalls actress Lourelene Snedeker, who returns to the show she performed 16 years ago. “I think there’s more humor brought to bear here.”

“Some of the criticism leveled at the old show was that it was a history lesson,” notes Lawrence. “This is not. And it is certainly not a museum piece.”

With his change of focus, he hopes to attract a younger audience to Cabaret Verboten. Toward that aim, he says, “I would describe the show as one part Lady Gaga, one part Saturday Night Live and one part True Blood.”

“With every song, you can’t escape that what happened then is happening now. That history has repeated itself once again,” says musical director Michael Yannette. Of the show’s lighter tone, he adds, “I think you’d have to walk out of the theater deeply entertained. It’s just hilarious, just flat-out funny.”

Light, offbeat summer fare … Also kicking off its first summer production tonight is West Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Co., known for choosing musicals its audiences cannot find elsewhere. Like Xanadu, whose area premiere continues through July 1.

“We wanted to be very frugal. To keep the cast small, a simpler production than we usually do, because you just never know who’s going to show up” in the summer, says co-artistic director Matthew Korinko.

“And a little more light-hearted fare,” chimes in co-artistic director Patrick Fitzwater, who has staged and choreographed Slow Burn’s entire season. “We’ve been giving our audiences something to think about all season, now it’s time to relax a little. But it will still be something off the wall that not everybody is doing.”

The 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie on which the show is based concerns a Greek muse who falls in love with an air headed artist whose ambition is to open a roller disco. One reviewer declared it “perhaps the greatest mess ever placed on film.”

“It’s messy, but the show is much better,” insists Fitzwater. “The stage show winks at the audience, it is in on the joke. I don’t think you can help but smile at it.”

Most of the cast spends the evening on skates, which adds to the fun and the potential for high-speed collisions. “We cast this a year ago with our season auditions and we asked people if they could skate,’ says Korinko. “Of course, everyone said yes. So if we cast you, you had a year to learn to skate.”

“It’s witty, it’s funny, it’s silly,” says Slow Burn veteran Renata Eastlick, who plays Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. “It’s an actor’s dream, because a lot of the time you’re not allowed to overact. Here we can.”

Caldwell’s playhouse re-opens … Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre Co. has gone under, but there is life left in the Count de Hoernle Theatre that the bankrupt troupe occupied. Two youth companies — Entr’Acte Theatrix and Palm Beach Principal Players — are joining resources to rent the venue next month for its production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. After all, notes producer Vicki Halmos, the show is about resurrection.

Superstar will run from July 5 to 15. Tickets are $25, available by calling (877) 710-7779.