Actors’ Playhouse brings the Gloria and Emilio Estefan story full circle
Written By Christine Dolen February 2, 2022 at 4:12 PM
Actors’ Playhouse ON YOUR FEET! cast members Natalie Caruncho, Hector Maisonet, Claudia Yanez, Jason Canela, Jeremey Adam Rey and Alejandra Matos pose in front of local artist Disem’s new mural of the Estefans located at La Casa De Los Trucos. (Photo/Brooke Noble)
Theirs is a 305 love story, one involving leaving behind a beloved homeland, forging a new life and achieving success on a scale beyond their grandest dreams.
That lived-in-Miami, made-for-Miami saga is about to be celebrated again in their Broadway bio musical, a show getting its first big regional production here thanks to Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables.
And while it’s true that most couples will never see their personal histories play out on a stage, most couples aren’t Grammy Award-winning, much-celebrated music superstars Gloria and Emilio Estefan.
“On Your Feet!,” the more-than-a-jukebox musical that played Broadway’s Marquis Theatre from 2015 to 2017 (to get specific, that’s 34 previews and 746 regular performances), was supposed to open at the Miracle in November 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic shredded that plan.
Rehearsals for the rescheduled production were to have started Jan. 4, 2022, but after the Omicron variant surged, the show got pushed back a couple of weeks. Now, “On Your Feet!” will preview Feb. 9-10 and open Feb. 11 for a run through March 9.
David Arisco, Artistic Director for “On Your Feet!” Photo credit: Alberto Romeu
“This is a huge, ridiculously complicated show,” says artistic director David Arisco, who is overseeing the production along with executive producing director Barbara Stein.
“We have 21 adult actors, two kids, two swing performers, a crew of about a dozen and 10 musicians – six of them from the Miami Sound Machine. We had to add wig specialists; rent a lighting package, a projection package, costumes and furniture; bring in a new sound board….Our usual production costs might be $450,000 for a big musical – this one, including marketing and all the people working in the building, is $750,000 and climbing.”
Beyond that monetary investment in a first-rate “On Your Feet!,” which has a book by Oscar winner Alexander Dinelaris (a former Barry University student) and music credited to the Estefans and the Miami Sound Machine, the choice of the show’s creative team and cast reflects the company’s deep commitment to honoring an iconic Cuban-American Miami story.
International Superstar Gloria Estefan with Andy Señor Jr. (Director), Natalie Caruncho (Associate Director & Choreographer/ensemble) and Clay Ostwald (Musical Director). Photo by Alberto Romeu.
Andy Señor Jr., associate director of the Broadway production and the history-making director of “Rent” in Havana, is staging the show at the Miracle. Natalie Caruncho, who performed in “On Your Feet!” on Broadway and was a performer and associate choreographer on the national tour, is choreographer and associate director of the Actors’ Playhouse production. Both artists were born and raised in Miami.
Clay Ostwald, the show’s musical director, is a University of Miami grad, original member of the Miami Sound Machine and a composer, lyricist, arranger and producer credited on many of the group’s hits starting in 1986. The musical’s title song (“Get On Your Feet,” written with the late Sound Machine bass player Jorge Casas, John DeFaria and Gloria Estefan), “Oye Mi Canto” and “Party Time” are all numbers Ostwald had a major role in crafting. Though he moved to New York when “On Your Feet!” went to Broadway, he has come home to be part of the Actors’ Playhouse production.
“I haven’t said no to Gloria and Emilio very often in the 36 years we’ve worked together. I admire them so much,” Ostwald says. “I’m amazed at the power of the theatrical art form. This was a way of getting people into this story, and not just Latino people who have had to stand up, struggle and overcome obstacles.”
Ostwald points out an unusual-for-theater challenge in the way the show’s music is performed.
“The music is crafted around pop conventions but also spontaneity, and it has jazz elements. It can’t be etched in concrete every night,” he says. “The actors have to do it word-for-word, but I’m talking about the actual playing. It’s fluid and creative. I’ve played these songs a million times. I know the ins and outs of every moment. And I get excited every time.”
Claudia Yanez stars as Gloria Estefan in the Actors’ Playhouse production. Photo credit: Guanchen Liu
Starring in the production are former Miamian Claudia Yanez and Hialeah-raised Jason Canela. Yanez played the superstar’s sister Rebecca and often stepped into the leading role on the national tour. Canela, a Los Angeles-based film and television actor, is the first Cuban American to portray music mogul Emilio Estefan in the show.
Also part of the cast, a mix of South Florida talent and performers based elsewhere, are Alma Cuervo, University of Miami grad Henry Gainza, Alejandra Matos and Hector Maisonet, all of whom appeared in the show on Broadway, on tour or both.
Andy Señor Jr. (Director). Photo credit: @lacostas
“My dad was the neighbor of Gloria’s mom and dad in Havana. When Gloria’s mom went into labor with her, my dad drove her to the hospital,” says Señor, a Florida International University grad who now lives in Barcelona. “My dad got into the music business in Miami and played parties with the Miami Sound Machine….Gloria called my dad ‘padrino’ [godfather]. They were a huge influence on me. Their success and Jon Secada’s success rewired my brain.”
As a kid, Señor took a fateful field trip to the original Actors’ Playhouse location in Kendall to see a production of the musical “Godspell.” That show gave him a preview of his future.
“It changed my life,” he says simply, acknowledging his happiness at working with Arisco and Stein, while noting their decades of hard work that made a difference in so many South Florida performers’ careers.
Señor, who played the luminous and tragic Angel Schunard in the long-running Broadway production of “Rent,” calls choreographer Caruncho the “MVP” in “On Your Feet!” at the Miracle.
“My understanding of the material has deepened profoundly since we did it on Broadway. But no one knows how it lives onstage like Natalie does. Without her, I can’t do it the way it should be done,” he says.
Natalie Caruncho, Associate Director & Choreographer/ensemble for “On Your Feet!” Photo credit: David Noles Photography
Caruncho made her Broadway debut in “On Your Feet!,” serving as dance captain and a swing performer who covered eight different ensemble roles – a challenge, yes, but a wonderful one.
“You learn all these parts, and you have to be the most flexible, focused, strong and malleable people in the building. I felt very useful,” she recalls, noting that she did eventually go on in all eight roles. “It’s just different from being focused on one track in a show and knowing that to perfection. It’s like being in ‘The Matrix.’”
The dance in the show is based on “authentic Cuban salsa,” Caruncho says, as well as pop concert performances from the 1980s and ‘90s. And after the first rehearsal, she knew the Actors’ Playhouse cast was ready for it.
“This is the most Miami, the most Cuban cast we’ve ever had. It almost feels like another first, the way we’re bringing it home. It sounds like us. Each person feels, ‘This is my family. These are my friends,’” she says. “This show has connected me more to my sense of being Cuban American. Living it on a stage fills me with a sense of pride…It’s such a joyful show, with conga, sequins and sparkles, but it’s also deep.”
Dinelaris’s script serves up plenty of the Estefans’ joy and success, but it also doesn’t downplay the tougher moments in their lives.
He includes the opposition that Gloria Fajardo, the singer’s mother, had to her future son-in-law, to her daughter getting into the music business and to the couple taking her younger daughter Rebecca on the road with them; the death of Gloria Estefan’s father José Fajardo, a Bay of Pigs and Vietnam veteran, from multiple sclerosis; the serious 1990 tour bus crash that fractured the singer’s spine, even as it led to a reconciliation and deeper relationship between the couple and Fajardo.
Certainly, the drama, singing and dancing have given Yanez and Canela a lot to work with as they approach opening night.
“I feel like I’ve been preparing for this my whole life without even knowing it. When I was eight, I took voice lessons from Gina Maretta, who was Gloria’s voice teacher,” says Yanez. “Most of the research I did was to watch video of Gloria’s concerts, listen to her recordings, watch how she takes up space.”
Yanez, who got her musical theater training in Boston, calls performing “On Your Feet!” a “magical” experience that almost feels like going to church, especially in Miami.
“Gloria and Emilio are such a part of the DNA of this city,” she observes. “I’m trying to stay true to how she’d phrase a sound. She’s such a beautiful performer, such a song writer through and through. It’s all about the lyrics for her.”
Jason Canela. Photo credit: Erika Perez
Canela, the younger brother of actor and musician Jencarlos Canela, studied acting at the New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. He’s been busy amassing credits in English- and Spanish-language television and film, but “On Your Feet!” marks his professional theater debut. To say he has fallen in love with the art form is an understatement.
“The first few days, I was just in awe. Everyone is so good,” he says. “They bring so much emotion, so much precision into every dance, every word spoken and sung…It really does feel like a religious experience. When I leave the theater, I count the minutes until I get to go back into that space.”
The actor jokes that the first four performances will be sold out because of his extended Miami family members who are planning to see the show. As a first generation Cuban American, he remembers how he felt when he first read the script.
“I saw myself. I saw myself, my mother, my father, my brother, my cousins. It felt like home,” Canela says. “I did all the research about who Gloria and Emilio are, what they’ve done, what they’re doing. But I felt like they were my aunt and uncle, even though I met them later in life. They’re a part of any Cuban kid who grew up here and anyone who knows Latin music.”
Señor and Caruncho second that sentiment and underscore the inspirational power of “On Your Feet!.”
“Gloria and Emilio’s music is an essential soundtrack to the history of Miami,” says Señor.
Adds Caruncho: “This is a high-level love story about music, the Cuban-American experience and following your dreams. It’s also about Gloria and Emilio’s tenacity and grit, their unshakeable belief that you take one step, then another. You keep pushing. You keep showing up.”
“On Your Feet!” is at Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, through March 6; previews 8 p.m. Feb. 9-10, opens 8 p.m. Feb. 11; regular performances 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; tickets cost $55 to $85 (seniors 65 and over get 10 percent off weekdays only, students 25 and under with valid student ID pay $15 for a rush ticket available 15 minutes before a weekday performance); proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test or COVID-19 Antigen test required; masks required except when eating or drinking in designated areas; 305-444-9293 or www.actorsplayhouse.org.
To read Christine Dolen’s review for this show, click here.
Review: Zoetic’s ‘GringoLandia’ brings the longing for home, laughs & much more in must-see world premiere
Written By Christine Dolen January 17, 2022 at 5:24 PM
James Puig as Carlos is comforted by Gabriell Salgado as Danny in the Zoetic Stage world premiere of “GringoLandia.” (Photo/Tony Tur)
You can’t go home again, or so novelist Thomas Wolfe observed in his posthumously published masterpiece of that title. Truth. And yet we try.
At the heart of Hannah Benitez’s wonderful, funny, smart new play, “GringoLandia,” is the longing to return, physically and emotionally, to that elusive place we call home. The realization that “home” as we remember it no longer exists, that we are a blend of the places, people and events that have shaped our lives — that comes in stages.
Commissioned by Miami’s Zoetic Stage, “GringoLandia” is getting an inspired world premiere production in the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater through Jan. 30.
Benitez — who grew up in Miami, went to high school at the New World School of the Arts and graduated with a degree in acting from Florida State University — is a rising playwriting star with projects in the works at multiple theaters around the country. “GringoLandia” provides plenty of proof that she’s the real deal, that the excitement surrounding her work is justified.
The play charts the fraught journey of Carlos Alvarez (James Puig), a Cuban-American whose family fled to Miami when he was a just boy, back to a homeland forever altered by Fidel Castro’s revolution. After his beloved mother’s death, Carlos brings his Miami born-and-raised kids, 26-year-old Michi (Alicia Cruz) and 25-year-old Danny (Gabriell Salgado), along on what is ostensibly a quest to track down a family heirloom.
Really, though, Carlos wants to reconnect with a place refracted through his memories. And he wants his grown-but-struggling children, both very much products of “Gringolandia” (as the United States is dismissively called by some), to experience firsthand the country that might have been theirs.
What the three encounter as they travel around the island will test and maddeningly frustrate them, even as the cumulative experiences deepen their bond.
Former homes are barely recognizable. Long-lost relatives reach out for help. A teen prostitute (Stephanie Vazquez) plies her trade, to Danny’s subsequent regret. A beyond-vintage car with Jerry-rigged parts strands the family in the middle of nowhere. La Bebé (also played by Vazquez), a “santera,” sees things in the spirit world and hustles in this one. The kids are sent on a quest very different from their father’s.
Alicia Cruz and Gabriell Salgado play a bickering sister and brother in the Zoetic Stage world premiere of Hannah Benitez’s “GringoLandia.” (Photo/Tony Tur)
Shaped with the collaboration of dramaturg Kathleen Capdesuñer, director Stuart Meltzer and the world premiere cast, “GringoLandia” is brimming with observant detail and outlandish-yet-hilarious situations (Danny and Michi’s wakeup call in a convent comes to mind).
The play is beginning its life in the ideal place, Miami, in front of audiences brimming with bilingual Cuban-Americans. But “GringoLandia” has plenty to say to everyone. If you don’t speak or understand Spanish, “no hay problema.” Neither does Danny, so in the brief instances when a character says something that isn’t restated or translated, you’ll be standing in his shoes.
The character wearing those shoes is, as actor Salgado describes him, a “Kendall bro” — aimless, expecting everything to come easily, an inadvertent goofball. If you saw Salgado as the Creature in Zoetic’s “Frankenstein” in October, you caught a tour de force debut melding an astonishing physical performance with the embodiment of a tragic soul abandoned by his egomaniacal creator. The actor is thoroughly different, yet creatively riveting, as the hapless Danny, naive and needy and a hot, hilarious mess.
Salgado’s Danny and Cruz’s Michi raise adult sibling bickering to an art form, though soon enough they’ll discover how important they are to each other. Cruz radiates the frustrations of the “good” kid who made sure to learn Spanish and got a college degree in order to pursue her dreams as a pianist — even if that still means three survival jobs to pay the bills. A particularly stellar scene takes place in a doctor’s office as Michi translates her suffering brother’s medical symptoms for La Doctora (Vazquez again) with horrified embarrassment.
A “santera” (Stephanie Vazquez) has a proposition for Michi (Alicia Cruz) in this enlightening and touching production. (Photo/Tony Tur)
Puig, a veteran actor with numerous New York and regional theater credits, shares a bit of Carlos’ history in that he arrived from Cuba as a child and then made Miami his home. Initially, Carlos is fairly low-key (if frustrated with his offspring) as he encounters one disappointment and frustration after another. But, oh, does that pay off near the end of the play when, drunk on too many mojitos and shots of rum, he encounters a clueless American tourist (another Vazquez role) in a smalltown bar. And there’s another tender, bittersweet payoff at the play’s end, as Carlos gets his homecoming, fleeting though it may be.
The oft-mentioned Vazquez, a Miami native who (like Cruz and Puig) is making her Zoetic debut, in many ways gets the showiest role(s) in “GringoLandia” and makes the most of them.
In addition to the “santera,” the doctor, the tourist and the prostitute, she plays a drunken dancing woman, Michi’s cousin, a cigar-smoking woman who drives the faulty car then abandons the family, a nun who is decidedly not amused by the hungover brother and sister. With just-right costumes from designer Marina Pareja, Vazquez becomes the quick-change artist she needs to be, creating women who look, sound and move distinctively.
Percussionist Yarelis Gandul, most often performing from a small platform upstage right, sometimes weaves in and out of the action, her energetic rhythms combining with Matt Corey’s sound design to create an aural portrait of Cuba.
Visually, Cuba is evoked through Michael McKeever’s weathered-building set design, Rebecca Montero’s tropics-inspired lighting design and Jodi Dellaventura’s props, as well as video and photos shot in Cuba by Meltzer and Salgado and projection mapped by Steven Covey. Nicole Perry has contributed intimacy direction, and Vanessa McCloskey serves as both resident stage manager and production manager.
Director Meltzer, the man with the steady hand and creative vision, has shaped “GringoLandia” into an enlightening, touching, stylistically uniform piece of theater — amid the Omicron surge, no less (though the Arsht employs state-of-the-industry safety measures). If you could use a laugh or a sigh of recognition, if you appreciate emerging young talent, “GringoLandia” is must-see theater.
To read Christine Dolen’s preview for “GringoLandia,” click here.
WHAT: Zoetic Stage’s world premiere of “GringoLandia: A Cuban Journey,” by Hannah Benitez
WHEN: Jan. 13-30, 2022
WHERE: Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
COST: $55 and $60
SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks and proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test or vaccination required.
Written By Christine Dolen January 11, 2022 at 10:08 PM
The Actors’ Playhouse production of the Gloria and Emilio Estefan bio musical — “On Your Feet!” — will now run Feb. 9-March 6. (Image courtesy of Actors’ Playhouse)
Despite widespread vaccinations and implementation of state-of-the-pandemic safety measures, the latest COVID-19 surge caused by the Omicron variant is forcing several Miami-Dade County theater companies to alter their seasons in ways large and small.
The key moves:
GableStage has pushed the run of Claudia Rankine’s “The White Card” to Feb. 25-March 27; delayed the world premiere musical, “Me Before You,” to the 2022-2023 season; and added Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” to the current season at Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel.
Actors’ Playhouse at The Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables is delaying “On Your Feet!,” the biographical Broadway musical about Gloria and Emilio Estefan, by two weeks; the show will now run Feb. 9-March 6.
Zoetic Stage is presenting its world premiere run of Hannah Benitez’s “GringoLandia” as planned Jan. 13-30 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center. But the company has opted to switch out its large-cast production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s “A Little Night Music” for the intimate revue “Side by Side by Sondheim,” which will run March 17-April 10.
Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach is winding up its world premiere run of the Louis Armstrong musical, “A Wonderful World,” on Jan. 16, with plans to stream the show soon. But the company is pushing back the runs of the rest of its season by two weeks, with Winter Miller’s “When Monica Met Hillary” now set for its world premiere on March 3-27 and the world premiere of Carmen Pelaez’s “The Cuban Vote” on April 21-May 15. Dates for the fourth show, “Papá Cuatro,” are still to be announced.
The GableStage South Florida premiere of Claudia Rankine’s “The White Card” is moving to late February. (Photo courtesy of John Lucas)
Changes and delays have not, of course, been limited to these four companies in Miami-Dade.
“Not Ready for Prime Time,” a play by Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sothers about the early days of “Saturday Night Live” at the new Westchester Cultural Arts Center, moved its run dates from Dec. 31-Jan. 16, 2021, to March 17-April 10, 2022. And “Prelude to 2100,” an immersive, futuristic, multidisciplinary piece created by Susan Caraballo and more than 30 artists, has shortened its planned run at Miami’s Deering Estate by a week and will now welcome outdoor audiences on Feb. 3-4 and Feb. 6.
Theaters in Broward and Palm Beach counties have been affected as well — with some delaying opening dates; Boca Raton’s Theatre Lab postponing its 2022 New Play Festival; and the Maltz Jupiter Theatre making major changes due to COVID-related construction delays on its $36 million building renovation.
The bottom line: Throughout South Florida, artistic directors have been challenged yet again to figure out ways to keep their colleagues, artists and audiences safe and their seasons financially viable.
Bari Newport, navigating her first season as GableStage’s producing artistic director, was concerned about having “The White Card” director Lydia Fort, the cast and creative team in rehearsal during the Omicron surge for the previously planned Jan. 14-Feb. 13 run.
“At the end of the day, it turns into a financial decision on par with questions of health, in terms of capacity and conditions,” Newport says. “There’s no way we could afford an understudy for every role, and I don’t want to put anyone in the position of having to start and stop a production.”
GableStage producing artistic director Bari Newport has shuffled her first season. (Photo courtesy of Magnus Stark)
“The White Card,” a searing play about a Black photographer and wealthy white arts patrons, also has a vital post-show audience engagement element led by Katie Christie of Voices United. Unlike the rest of GableStage’s productions, “The White Card” will not be streamed and must be experienced in person.
Moving “The White Card” into the slot intended for the world premiere musical “Me Before You” prompted other changes. The Janece Shaffer-Kristian Bush musical, about the effects of the hearings over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination on a long-married couple, will instead get an intensive nine-day workshop. Donors and potential sponsors will be able to get a first look during a staged reading at the North Beach Bandshell in Miami Beach on Feb. 2. The show would get its world premiere production next season.
The Florida premiere of Jessica Provenz’s “Boca” will go on as planned April 22-May 22, then GableStage will present the solo show, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” on June 3-26 in tribute to author Joan Didion, who passed away Dec. 23, 2021. In collaboration with the Abre Camino Collective, GableStage will present Cuban-American actor Ruben Rabasa in “Rubenology: The Making of an American Legend” on July 14-31. Tanya Saracho’s “Fade,” a Teo Castellanos-directed dramatic comedy about class and culture within the Latino community, is scheduled to close out the season on Aug. 19-Sept. 18.
For Newport, making most of the season available through streaming is significant in several ways.
“I think it is wildly important. There are a thousand reasons why people cannot physically come to the theater. Many have immune-compromised systems, or someone doesn’t want to come without his or her spouse,” she says. “It’s also a fantastic way to introduce a company’s work everywhere. Theater tourism is a real thing.”
Making changes to the season was a difficult but necessary decision, she adds.
“I need to make sure the marathon can be run, not just the sprint,” Newport says. “I’ll have to manage the company’s ambitions long-term vs. making pragmatic moves going forward.”
According to artistic director David Arisco of Actors’ Playhouse, pushing the start of “On Your Feet!” performances was also a matter of safety and numbers.
“We’re back in pause-and-pivot mode,” he says. “We had planned a six-week run, so now we’ll do a four-week run, with the option of extending a week if sales are great.”
Claudia Yanez will star as Gloria Estefan in the Actors’ Playhouse production of “On Your Feet!” (Photo courtesy of Guanchen Liu)
The musical — directed by Miami native Andy Señor Jr. (who was associate director of the Broadway production) and choreographed by Natalie Caruncho (a member of the Broadway and touring casts) — will feature actors from Broadway, the national tour and South Florida, as well as musicians from the Estefans’ Miami Sound Machine. Claudia Yanez, who played Gloria’s younger sister and understudied the lead role on Broadway, will play Gloria at Actors’ Playhouse, and Jason Canela will portray Emilio.
“On Your Feet!” is the largest show Actors’ Playhouse has produced since COVID-19 hit, with 21 adult actors and two children, two swing performers and each role understudied by others in the cast, as well as a 10-piece orchestra.
“We’ve had time to get all our COVID safety protocols in place, and I think everyone feels better about coming here,” Arisco says. “Everyone in the company will be tested three days a week and will wear masks at rehearsals. I’m optimistic we’ll get through the season with quality and safety.”
The Actors’ Playhouse season also includes “Murder on the Orient Express” on April 6-24; “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” on May 18-June 12; and “Now and Then” on July 13-Aug. 7.
At the Arsht Center, Zoetic artistic director Stuart Meltzer didn’t consider moving the world premiere of Benitez’s “GringoLandia” because other productions (including Area Stage’s “Be More Chill” on Feb. 4-27) were already booked into the Carnival Studio Theater. But he did decide that doing the large-scale “A Little Night Music” on March 17-April 10 wouldn’t be the best move during a pandemic that had first shut down the show during rehearsals in March 2020.
“I was looking at what was happening at my colleagues’ theaters, at the challenges and realities,” Meltzer says. “I decided that something smaller and a bit more controlled would allow us to continue on the path of the Sondheim work to which we’re so committed.”
Miami New Drama’s Michel Hausmann is moving this season’s opening dates by two weeks. (Photo courtesy of Juancho Hernandez Husband)
Hence the scheduling of “Side by Side by Sondheim,” which includes three actors and Meltzer as the narrator. The show features songs from “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Anyone Can Whistle,” “Pacific Overtures” and other shows by the profoundly influential Broadway composer-lyricist, who died on Nov. 26, 2021. As planned, Zoetic will wrap up its season on May 5-22 with Alexis Scheer’s “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord.”
“These are incredibly challenging times. You have to remain agile and have a sense of humor and be prepared,” Meltzer says. “If not, you’ll land a little too hard.”
Being agile helped Miami New Drama cofounder and artistic director Michel Hausmann and his colleagues navigate through the world premiere run of “A Wonderful World.” Despite daily COVID testing, the musical about jazz legend Louis Armstrong, with a book by former Miamian Aurin Squire, had to cancel performances during a run that will end Jan. 16. Understudies and swing performers sometimes had to step in for ailing actors — and Hausmann was impressed.
“We sometimes performed with four swings, and the show is so solid you couldn’t tell. It was an eye-opener about the amount of talent here. They killed it with a few hours’ notice,” Hausmann says.
At the same time, not extending the run and giving the company some breathing room before the world premiere of “When Monica Met Hillary” seemed prudent.
“Not canceling, not pushing anything to another season was a matter of implementing systems and moving everything two weeks later,” he says, adding, “I’m trying to work to develop outdoor performance spaces, with the understanding that there’s a chance our world has changed for good. We have to pivot. We need to be doing more experiments to see what event-based storytelling will work.”
Two generations encounter Cuba in Zoetic’s ‘GringoLandia’ world premiere
Written By Christine Dolen January 10, 2022 at 9:50 PM
Stephanie Vazquez and Gabriell Salgado have the first of many encounters in the Zoetic Stage world premiere of Hannah Benitez’s “GringoLandia.” (Photo: Chris Headshots)
For theCuban-Americans who call South Florida home, Cuba remains a source of profound emotion. The island nation just 90 miles from Key West exemplifies a proud heritage, treasured memories, terrible loss and much more.
Hannah Benitez, a Cuban-American/Jewish playwright (as well as an actor, musician and novelist) who grew up in Miami, knows that each person’s Cuba is distinctive, that a homeland carrying so much beauty and sorrow may not resonate the same way for different generations.
That truth is at the heart of “GringoLandia: A Cuban Journey,” Benitez’s sometimes wild, observant and undeniably funny world-premiere family saga. Commissioned by Zoetic Stage, the multimedia play will preview on Jan. 13 and open Jan. 14 for a run through Jan. 30 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
The seeds of “GringoLandia” were planted backstage when Benitez appeared in Zoetic’s 2018 production of “Fun Home” as an actor. She had taken a trip to Cuba with her father the previous year and shared with artistic director Stuart Meltzer the idea that evolved into the play: A father who left Cuba as a child takes his Miami-born, twentysomething daughter and son to the island in search of a family heirloom.
“I thought she had such a gift, an understanding of how to drive the drama without forgetting about the humor, which is rare in a young writer,” Meltzer says. “She’s very dry, and you get that when she speaks. I fell in love with it and her excitement for it.”
In crafting “GringoLandia,” Hannah Benitez pulled from her own experience and observations. (Photo/Michael Eady)
Benitez studied playwriting in the high school program at Miami’s New World School of the Arts, under “Moonlight” Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney and “The Royale” playwright Marco Ramirez. She earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in acting from Florida State University. Now living in New York, she continues to perform (locally, her recent acting work includes the 2017 Main Street Players production of “Bad Jews,” Zoetic’s 2018 “Fun Home” and GableStage’s 2019 “Indecent”), while her concurrent writing career is soaring.
Her play, “The 6th, or, The Patriots,” a farcical adaptation of “Henry VI,” is a finalist for the Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries competition at Virginia’s American Shakespeare Center, and her play, “Adaptive Radiation,” will be presented next month at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In addition to having written 10 full-length plays, she’s working on a novel with the intriguing title, “Trains to Hell Go Faster.”
Benitez knows, however, that doing a play about Cuba in her hometown carries a particular weight.
“It’s really special to have a play done in Miami,” she says. “It does raise the stakes. It’s a very visceral subject in this town.”
“GringoLandia” follows the experiences – the adventures and misadventures – of a Miami Cuban-American family during a fraught trip to Cuba.
Father Carlos (James Puig) wants his Miami-born kids Daniel/Danny (Gabriell Salgado) and Michelle/Michi (Alicia Cruz) to better understand the place that holds so many memories and shaped his life in exile. Danny and Michi, young adults who are very much a product of their hometown, seem to be gringos out of water as they encounter a series of women (all played by Stephanie Vazquez) and the sometimes-maddening realities of life in Cuba circa 2017. Percussionist Yarelis Gandul Cabrera makes her own artful contribution to the piece.
In crafting “GringoLandia,” Benitez pulled from her own experience and from “other members of my family and friends who had done birthright trips to Cuba.” Her journey affected her in a variety of ways.
“It connected a lot of intergenerational behavior for me. I’ll think, ‘Oh, that’s why I act like that when I drop a glass,’” she observes. “Cuba has changed my relationship to Miami. It clarified within the first 15 minutes why Miami is the way it is, why there’s a hustle mentality – it’s the residue of survival. The sounds were familiar, too. Everybody sounds like my grandparents.”
Alicia Cruz, James Puig, Gabriell Salgado and Stephanie Vazquez journey through Cuba in Zoetic Stage’s “GringoLandia.” (Photo/Tony Tur)
Puig, who is making his Zoetic debut as Carlos, came to Miami from Cuba as a child. He’s never been back – “this is home to me,” he says – and after graduating from Barry University (then Barry College) and the University of Miami, he built a formidable theater career in New York (both on Broadway and Off-Broadway) and at major regional theaters, though rarely playing Latino roles.
He auditioned for “GringoLandia” before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and knew instantly that he wanted to be part of the world premiere production.
“I fell in love with Hannah’s play from the two small scenes I was given to prepare for the audition,” Puig says. “And auditioning for Stuart was so wonderfully unique that I vividly remember wishing and praying with tremendous intensity for God to let me work with Stuart on this play.
“That was over two years ago, and that hopeful joy of working with him on Hannah’s remarkable play has sustained me through the lonely isolation of COVID times.”
Puig calls Benitez “a major talent” and finds common ground with Carlos in the character’s love of family. Both the actor and the working-class character he plays were drawn to the world of the arts, though the paths they chose were different.
“He followed his head, whereas I followed my heart,” Puig says.
Cruz, a 2019 Florida International University graduate, can also relate to the play. Her father came to the United States in the 1960s as part of the Pedro Pan program. He returned to Cuba for a visit in the 1980s, and Cruz says the experience was bittersweet.
“Some smells and sights were the same, but the energy had changed. There was silence when he was riding on the bus. He saw lots of family members who missed and loved him, and others who didn’t want to speak to him,” she says. “There was a lot of pain. It brought back a flood of memories.”
Of her character Michi, she says, “Making the journey as the child of immigrants, you understand this place is part of your cultural identity, but you have had access to only a representation of it. It’s shocking to go to Cuba and realize your cultural armor. She begins thinking, ‘I am Cuban. It’s part of me.’ Then she comes to the hurtful realization that she’s a gringa in Miami.”
Salgado recently made his professional debut as the Creature in Zoetic’s “Frankenstein.” He has since regained the weight he lost to help him create a dazzling, physically complex performance that won him glowing reviews. His character in “GringoLandia,” Danny, is an altogether different role. But Salgado says if not for the New World School of the Arts, he could have been a guy like Danny.
“Oh, Danny is me if I’d never become an artist,” says the Miami-raised actor, who graduated from New World in 2019. “I used to be that bro. I had that energy, that complacency, that lack of ambition. If I’d never found my passion, I’d be as lost and immature.”
Zoetic Stage artistic director and cofounder Stuart Meltzer commissioned “GringoLandia” for the company. (Photo/Chris Headshots)
Just before COVID-19 hit, Salgado traveled with Meltzer, his artistic mentor, friend and former teacher, to Cuba to experience the country and to capture photos and videos that will be used in “GringoLandia.” As with Benitez, Salgado found the journey transformative.
“My perception of that place was completely off. Some of the things my parents and grandparents told me just weren’t true, but they come from trauma when you’re forced to leave,” he says. “I know what it means to say I’m Cuban-American, the weight of it. It’s a beautiful place and so sad. It’s a weird dichotomy.”
In a playwright’s note at the beginning of her script, Benitez writes: “In many ways, Cuba is the antagonist of this story. Not because Cuba, nor the Cuban people, are the enemy, but because the systems of the country are what technically … provide our characters, including the Cuban-born ones, with their obstacles. Perhaps if we engage with the story keeping this in mind, we (I’m looking at you, citizens of the ‘developed world’) can fully exercise our empathy, political and global muscles. The saying goes, if you visited Cuba and had a ‘great time’ … you didn’t see the real Cuba.”
In Cuba, Meltzer says, he and Salgado spoke with people all over the island to gather research and images. He, too, felt the trip was eye-opening and often found himself speaking with Cubans about their families in Miami.
“There is not a political leaning in the play. The antagonist of the play is Cuba itself,” Meltzer affirms. “So much of our community will know these people.”
To read Christine Dolen’s review for “GringoLandia,” click here.
World premiere of made-in-South Florida ‘iMordecai’ to open Miami Jewish Film Festival
Written By Michelle F. Solomon January 5, 2022 at 1:14 AM
Judd Hirsch stars as Mordecai Samel in “iMordecai,” opening the Miami Jewish Film Festival at the North Beach Bandshell in Miami Beach on Jan. 13, 2022. (Photo courtesy of FeMor Productions)
How does a first-time film director and writer get A-list actors to star in his made-in-Miami movie?
To hear Emmy Award-winning star Judd Hirsch tell it, he was first taken in by director Marvin Samel’s chutzpah in wanting him for the title role in the film, “iMordecai.” Then he learned about the movie’s protagonist (and the director’s father), Mordecai Samel, a Holocaust survivor from Poland with a feisty sense of humor and self-assured hubris – and Hirsch was intrigued almost immediately.
“[Mordecai] was yanked out of Poland as a child,” Hirsch says. “People who have had this tragic beginning, they have such comedy in them that it really tells the story. I wanted to play this guy, I knew I could play this guy who survived and had a great sense of humor.”
(Video courtesy of Miami Jewish Film Festival)
The world premiere of “iMordecai” is expected to open the 25th edition of the Miami Jewish Film Festival, which will be offered in person and online from Jan. 13-27, 2022. “iMordecai” will be screened the first night at the North Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, with an encore presentation scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 22, at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center, 18900 NE 25th Ave., North Miami Beach.
The comedy, a story based on the director-and-father relationship, presents a slice of life about the family of a Holocaust survivor who was born in a different time. Mordecai, now a retiree living in Aventura, Fla., is facing the realities of the 21st century, including trading in his trusty “flip phone” for a device that has, as he laments, “no buttons.”
Mordecai Samel and son Marvin Samel, director and writer of “iMordecai,” during a day of shooting at the Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami. (Photo courtesy of FeMor Productions)
Upon learning Samel wanted to meet with him, Hirsch recalls setting a condition: If Samel came to his favorite New York City eatery, Nick’s Restaurant and Pizzeria on Second Avenue and 94th Street, he would speak with him.
“He’s in Florida, so I never thought he’d come,” Hirsch says. “Lo and behold, the day I told him to come up, he was there. He was sitting in that restaurant waiting for me.”
Bringing the true story to the screen was a seven-year-journey for Samel, the Brooklyn native who relocated his cigar business to South Florida in 2004. He created Drew Estate in 1996 with college fraternity brother Jonathan Drew, and they sold it to Swisher International Inc. in 2014.
“I have always been a storyteller,” Samel says, of the special skill he honed while promoting his product at stores and conferences around the country. “I did the cigar circuit for 20 years. What I learned was there is only so long that you can hold people’s attention about a cigar wrapper, leaf and filler.”
So he began telling stories about his relationship with his father, and it turned into a quasi-comedy routine.
“Then, as soon as I was finished at one place, I’d write down what story I told because I knew I was going to go back there again and I didn’t want to repeat the same routine,” he says.
Judd Hirsch as Mordecai Samel and Sean Astin as Marvin Samel in a scene shot in Aventura. (Photo courtesy of FeMor Productions)
After selling the cigar business, Samel was encouraged to compile his family stories, but it wasn’t an easy road.
“Then my twins were born, and my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And what should have been the happiest time of my life, well, it threw me into a tailspin,” he says.
At night, in between feeding the babies, he would hole up in his home office and commit the stories to his computer.
“I had never written anything but copy about my cigars,” Samel says. But he knew he had something.
He started writing a film treatment and found a screenplay writer named Rudy Gaines to work with him. That’s when things began to take off. Los Angeles film producers Allen Bain and Dahlia Heyman came on board, eventually persuading Samel that he should direct the film.
He dove into learning from directors including Ron Howard, Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese – spending 10 hours a day on the online teaching platform, MasterClass.com.
Judd Hirsch and Carol Kane, of “Taxi” fame, star as the director’s parents. (Photo courtesy of FeMor Productions)
“I took a deep dive and filtered out all the noise from my life for over a year,” Samel says.
During the Scorsese class, Samel got the message that gave him the confidence he needed: “Martin Scorsese said, ‘You have to make your story personal.’ I said to myself, ‘Well, that shouldn’t be a problem with ‘iMordecai’ because it’s about my life.’ ”
Samel enjoyed what he called surreal days on set, when he was interacting with his father and had Hirsch “on the other side” playing his father. It seems Samel’s two “fathers” really clicked.
“We just kind of loved each other in a second,” says Hirsch, who starred in TV’s “Taxi” and “Dear John.” “[Mordecai] was as genuine as could be. Because the son wrote the story, I wanted to find out how much of everything was true.”
Samel is played by Sean Astin, of “Lord of the Rings” fame, and another “Taxi” alum, Carol Kane, took on the role of Samel’s mother, Fela, who passed away just before shooting of “iMordecai” began.
(Video interview with Igor Shteyrenberg, executive director of the Miami Jewish Film Festival, is courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine. Find more videos with Shteyrenberg by clicking here.)
The other character in the film, Samel says, is Miami. Scenes were shot in Aventura, of course, as well as in South Miami, Wynwood and Miami Beach. In one of the most pivotal and poignant scenes, Mordecai and Fela walk along Lincoln Road, where the couple were known to spend their Sundays.
The Miami Jewish Film Festival will include world premieres of other made-in-Florida films, too, including the documentaries “Against All Odds: Surviving the Holocaust,” “Ezra, May His Memory Be a Blessing for All” and “Sylvie from the Sunshine State.”
For his film, Samel says they also looked at locations in Savannah, Ga., “but I wanted this to be a love letter to Miami. Every shot in the film that takes place in Miami has a personal relationship to my parents and me.”
WHAT: Miami Jewish Film Festival
WHEN: Jan. 13-27, 2022
WHERE: Live events will take place at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center, 18900 NE 25th Ave., North Miami Beach; the University of Miami, 1330 Miller Drive, Coral Gables; and three Miami Beach locations: the North Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Ave.; The Betsy Hotel, 1440 Ocean Drive; and the Miami Beach Jewish Community Center, 4221 Pine Tree Drive. Find virtual screenings at the official website.
COST: Virtual screenings are free of charge, while in-person range in price from $15-$36.
Joseph Papp gets a theatrical tribute at GableStage
Written By Christine Dolen December 21, 2021 at 4:53 PM
Avi Hoffman plays theater impresario Joseph Papp in the world premiere of “Joe Papp at the Ballroom at GableStage. Photo credit Magnus Stark.
The incomparable theatrical impresario Joseph Papp has been memorialized in different ways since his death in 1991 at the age of 70. Among the most notable: Helen Epstein’s hefty 1994 biography “Joe Papp: An American Life,” and the 2010 documentary “Joe Papp in Five Acts.”
Now, three decades after his passing, Papp and his legacy have become the subjects of an almost-solo show, “Joe Papp at the Ballroom.”
Debuting at GableStage through Dec. 31, the world premiere piece is the work of three adaptors: actor Avi Hoffman, director Eleanor Reissa and playwright Susan Papp-Lippman, eldest of Papp’s children. The show’s creators are listed that way because the text and song selection are largely drawn from several Manhattan concert appearances by Papp in 1978 at a SoHo venue called The Ballroom.
In other words – in his words, in the songs he chose – “Joe Papp at the Ballroom” conveys the hugely influential producer’s perspective on his life 13 years before his death.
Hoffman’s aim in co-creating and starring in the show is to remind audiences of the extraordinarily impactful role Papp played in the history of 20th century American theater. And given the ever-more-fleeting nature of collective memory, that’s a good thing.
Papp was, after all, the creator of the New York Shakespeare Festival, whose mission was presenting William Shakespeare’s plays for free. He prevailed over the mighty New York Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who demanded he charge admission to the shows in Central Park; as Papp put it, “David beat Goliath.”
The producer turned the former Astor Library into the Public Theater, a not-for-profit institution with seven stages, where cutting-edge, diverse work could be developed and premiered. Papp gave work to and influenced several generations of artists – actors, playwrights, composers, designers – and he found a way to help sustain the Public by giving shows like “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” to commercial Broadway runs.
Avi Hoffman plays theater impresario Joseph Papp in the world premiere of “Joe Papp at the Ballroom at GableStage. Photo credit Magnus Stark.
“Joe Papp at the Ballroom” explores the Brooklyn-born producer’s Yiddish roots (he was born Joseph Papirofsky), the poor but abundantly loving early family life with his Eastern European immigrant parents, his World War II crash course in showbiz (with young sailor and future legend Bob Fosse) putting on shows for the Navy in the South Pacific. Papp, the fighter who refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, also gets his due. And his own failings as a four-time husband and father of five also get fleeting acknowledgement.
That’s a lot of information to pack into a play-with-music, with a running time of around 80 minutes.
New play development is vital yet inevitably challenging. “Joe Papp at the Ballroom” is, at present, a piece with both potential and problems.
Structurally, it’s bifurcated. In the first part, Hoffman is dressed formally (top hat included) as he performs part of Papp’s Ballroom show in front of a filmy curtain, his pianist-music director Phil Hinton off to one side. In the second, he’s in Papp’s impressive office at the Public, dressed more casually, briefly puffing on a cigar as he ruminates on and evaluates his life.
Hoffman knew and worked with Papp, and his Yiddish background is every bit as strong as the producer’s. He understands Papp’s world on multiple levels.
But despite some moving moments – his lovely version of Irving Berlin’s “A Russian Lullaby,” his thought-provoking rendition of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” come to mind – he comes across more as the engaging song-and-dance man of his own “Too Jewish” shows than the fierce, transformative producer. Director Reissa could push him harder on that front.
To work more powerfully as a theatrical portrait, the script could use a rewrite. Better integrating both parts of the show would help, as would deepening the look back at Papp’s accomplishments to more compellingly explore what made him tick. At present, the British-born Hinton (who sports a truly bad wig) delivers a few lines, most designed to spur Papp’s memory. His delivery is fine, but the device works better in a concert than a play.
The show’s three adaptors are not, of course, the only collaborators involved in “Joe Papp at the Ballroom.” GableStage is presenting the world premiere, as the program states it, “in alliance with” the Hoffman-founded not-for-profit Yiddishkayt Initiative.
Set designer Lauren Helpern necessarily pushes the action downstage for the Ballroom concert sequence, with those filmy white curtains taking on meaningful colors (green when Papp sings a lyric about money, for instance) thanks to Tony Galaska’s lighting design. Her truly impressive work appears when the curtain parts to reveal Papp’s office, its famous Paul Davis posters on the walls, a vintage radiator and architectural details conveying the sense of an historic space.
Avi Hoffman plays impresario Joseph Papp in the GableStage world premiere of “Joe Papp at the Ballroom.” Photo credit Magnus Stark.
Sound designer Sean McGinley achieves a nice balance between Hoffman’s singing and Hinton’s piano accompaniment, although a few distracting mic blips marred opening night. Costume designer Emil White makes Hoffman-Papp look elegant in the Ballroom part of the evening, but his office attire – blue suit, white polo shirt, white sneakers – says Florida condo casual, not theater mogul in the seat of his power (whether or not Papp ever wore that precise outfit).
Without doubt, Joseph Papp, the man behind so many significant pieces of theater in the latter half of the 20th century, deserves a show of his own. “Joe Papp at the Ballroom” has some promise, but its developmental process needs to continue.
ArtburstMiami.com is a non-profit source of theater, dance, music, film and performing arts news.
“Joe Papp at the Ballroom” is at GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables, through Dec. 31; 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (no Christmas performance; special performance times 2:30 p.m. Dec. 24, 6:30 p.m. Dec. 31; streaming available Dec. 22-31); tickets cost $50 to $65 (includes $5 processing fee, $5 COVID cleaning fee); ticket discounts for students, groups, artists, military, veterans and Biltmore staff members; masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test required; 305-445-1119 or www.gablestage.org.
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Theater legend sings and reminisces in GableStage world premiere
Written By Christine Dolen December 16, 2021 at 1:34 AM
The GableStage world premiere of “Joe Papp at the Ballroom” aims to remind audiences of the influential impresario’s legacy. (Graphic courtesy of GableStage)
Just looking at actor-singer Avi Hoffman — creator and star of the popular “Too Jewish” shows, as well as a Carbonell Award winner for playing the adoring hubby in “Hairspray” at Actors’ Playhouse — you wouldn’t necessarily think of casting him as visionary New York Shakespeare Festival founder Joseph Papp.
After all (yes, this is superficial), Hoffman has sandy hair, bright blue eyes and a ready smile. He was born almost four decades after Papp, who died in 1991 at age 70, so they grew up in different eras.
Papp, born Joseph Papirofsky in Brooklyn, had dark brown hair and piercing brown eyes. You can find pictures of him smiling, sure. But mostly he sported the intense look of a man determined to shake up the theater world.
Still, if you come to GableStage’s “Joe Papp at the Ballroom,” a world premiere play-with-music, it’s Hoffman you’ll find onstage as Papp.
The show, which previews at 8 p.m. Dec. 17 and opens at 8 p.m. Dec. 18 for a run through Dec. 31, is a collaborative effort by Hoffman, Tony Award-nominated director and playwright Eleanor Reissa, and Susan Papp-Lippman, one of Papp’s five children.
“Joe Papp at the Ballroom” aims to enlighten as it entertains. Hoffman, who won rave reviews for playing Willy Loman in a 2015 Yiddish-language production of “Death of a Salesman” by New York’s New Yiddish Rep, considers Papp “the most important producer of the 20th-century.” In celebrating his legacy through the show, the actor wants to remind audiences of the groundbreaking ways in which Papp shaped theater in New York and beyond.
In brief: Papp created the New York Shakespeare Festival to share free performances of William Shakespeare’s work with one and all, a practice that continues at the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He established the multistage Public Theater in the former Astor Library, developing and showcasing both plays and musicals, with several winning a Pulitzer Prize. He cast Black and Latino artists in leading roles decades before the conversation about opportunities in theater intensified. He championed the work of multiple playwrights, and in transferring Public-developed hits like “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” to Broadway, he found a way to ensure the survival of his vitally important and influential nonprofit theater operation.
“I love that this project, a true American theatrical love letter and history lesson, is a world premiere that we developed and [are] originating at GableStage,” says Bari Newport, the company’s artistic director. “I really love the script! It is a theatrical, inspirational and triumphant everyman story: one ordinary man who accomplishes the extraordinary.”
Produced in conjunction with YI Love Jewish (a division of the nonprofit Yiddishkayt Initiative founded by Hoffman), the project took off after Hoffman became aware that Papp had done a week of concert appearances at The Ballroom in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in 1978. Papp-Lippman had audiotapes which she shared with the actor, who was impressed with the quality of Papp’s singing.
“He was a great singer. You’d be shocked at how good he was,” says Hoffman. “It wasn’t for lack of talent that he didn’t pursue a singing career. It was lack of desire.”
Avi Hoffman is a co-author and star of the GableStage world premiere, “Joe Papp at the Ballroom.” (Photo courtesy of George Schiavone)
Hoffman met Papp through his mother, now-retired Columbia University professor Miriam Hoffman, who’d interviewed the impresario in the early 1980s. Papp spent the years before he started school speaking only Yiddish, and Miriam Hoffman reportedly reminded him of his mother. In 1989, when Miriam Hoffman wrote the book for the Yiddish-language musical, “Songs of Paradise,” Papp presented it at the Public Theater in a production directed by Avi Hoffman and musically staged by Reissa, both of whom appeared in the show.
Papp-Lippman, who spends part of the year in Delray Beach, entered the picture after she attended a Florida Atlantic University lecture Miriam Hoffman delivered in 2016 about her relationship with Joe Papp. The women became friends, and after Papp-Lippman met Avi Hoffman – whose work, she confessed, she hadn’t known – she thought, “OK. This is a performer.”
Hoffman went on to do several performances of a nearly word-for-word concert version of Papp’s Ballroom appearance, but he wanted to develop the show further.
“Avi is so passionate about keeping my father’s legacy alive,” Papp-Lippman says. “He wanted to do a show, to add something, so he brought in Eleanor, who had a spin on it. As a reference librarian, I love the steps along the way … We wanted to get at the heart of this man, to hear the back story of what made this genius tick.”
Papp-Lippman sees her father’s life as “a Jewish Horatio Alger story.” Although he left when she was a baby and didn’t come back into her life until she was 16, she says, “I called him perfectly imperfect. He was a flawed man, but flawless in his beliefs.”
Director Reissa, who appeared on Broadway in “Indecent” (Hoffman was in GableStage’s production) and who is the former artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in New York, has also been recording the audiobook for her upcoming memoir when she’s not in rehearsal for“Joe Papp at the Ballroom.” (“The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey” is expected to be published on Jan. 18, 2022.)
Director Eleanor Reissa helped write and shape the script of “Joe Papp at the Ballroom.” (Photo courtesy of Adrian Buckmaster)
“Avi and I met decades ago. We did three pieces together. He said his mother had written this thing based on ‘Songs of Paradise,’ and he told me, ‘Ya know, Joe Papp is coming.’ Lo and behold, Joe Papp shows up. And we moved to the Public,” she says. “He was an awesome guy. He really evoked awe because of his accomplishments. I knew him as a boss and an inspiration. What would we have done without Joe Papp?”
Reissa, who came up with a way to tell more of the impresario’s story in “Joe Papp at the Ballroom,” is as committed as Hoffman to conveying their subject’s legacy.
“Fame is fleeting, and history seems to be something people are not paying attention to that much,” she says. “This was a man who was brave and bold and forward-seeing … People may not remember him, but when he performed at the Ballroom in 1978, everybody knew who he was. In [this show], we get to see his journey and experience him evaluating his life and time.”
In “Joe Papp at the Ballroom,” Hoffman will perform alongside pianist Phil Hinton, his longtime musical collaborator, singing songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Irving Berlin and others, as well as fragments from “Hair” and “A Chorus Line,” and Yiddish tunes that reflect a key part of who Papp was.
Of the man he’ll be portraying, Hoffman says, “He was a magnificent force and a fallible human.”
And like Papp, Hoffman is a dreamer and a doer.
“Any strong singing actor could do this,” he says. “I think about Kevin Kline, Martin Sheen, Nathan Lane, Mandy Patinkin [all actors who worked with Papp]. Let them take their stab at it on Broadway. I want it to run forever.”
WHAT: “Joe Papp at the Ballroom,” adapted by Avi Hoffman, Susan Papp-Lippman and Eleanor Reissa
WHEN: Preview 8 p.m. Dec. 17, opens 8 p.m. Dec. 18; regular performances Wednesdays to Sundays, through Dec. 31, 2o21 (no Christmas Day performance)
WHERE: GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables
COST: $35-$65 (plus $5 processing fee and $5 COVID cleaning fee); ticket discounts available for students, groups, artists, military, veterans and Biltmore staff members
SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test are required.
STREAMING: A streaming option is available Dec. 22-31; cost is the same as the price of a regular ticket. Check with the box office for details.
Review: Long-awaited ‘A Wonderful World’ is wonderful in every way
Written By Christine Dolen December 14, 2021 at 6:18 PM
From left, Christina Sajous, Allison Semmes, Juson Williams, Darlene Hope and Nicole Henry tell Louis Armstrong’s story in “A Wonderful World.” (Photo courtesy of Ernesto Sempoll)
From the first words they utter in Miami New Drama’s world premiere musical, “A Wonderful World,” the women Louis Armstrong loved — the four that he married, at any rate — memorialize different versions of a flawed, complicated genius propelled by all kinds of desire.
To Daisy Parker, a hot-tempered New Orleans prostitute, he was passion and turmoil. Chicago pianist Lil Hardin helped transform him from a country boy with “a $5 smile in a $2 suit” into a slick, in-demand musician. Alpha Smith developed a taste for the finer things during his Hollywood years but never fully sated his restless passion and domestic desires. And former Cotton Club performer Lucille Wilson, the savvy partner in his longest-lasting marriage, found a way to make her deal with the wanderlust-driven devil work.
Celebrated as a jazz genius, remembered for his larger-than-life personality and gravel-infused singing, the offstage/offscreen Armstrong was a man with a gift for getting into and out of trouble. His contradictions and complexities — the good, the bad and the ugly of an extraordinary American life — are woven artfully through the storytelling in “A Wonderful World,” thanks to an uncommonly layered, nuanced and contextually rich book by playwright Aurin Squire.
Juson Williams, left, as Louis Armstrong and Jason Holley as Lincoln Perry have a dance-off in “A Wonderful World.” (Photo courtesy of Stian Roenning)
The songs in the show’s glorious score are mainly standards associated with Armstrong. Brilliantly arranged by musical supervisors Michael O. Mitchell and Annastasia Victory, the numbers (some full, others fragments) have been placed so that the lyrics amplify or comment on the drama of the moment.
After a 638-day pandemic pause between the final 2020 preview performance and the opening of the 2021 version of the piece, “A Wonderful World” is at long last up and running at the Colony Theatre on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road.
For anyone who loves musicals, new work and thrilling theater, that’s wonderful news indeed.
Getting “A Wonderful World” to this point in its evolution — a word that implies it will have an ongoing, larger life in many cities, which it should — has presented Miami New Drama with myriad challenges, not the least of which was the long COVID-19 shutdown. Some roles had to be recast. Illness hit several actors during the most recent previews, and an understudy performed as Daisy on opening night. Two different rounds of enhancement money were necessary to pull off the most lavish show in the company’s history.
But finally, the creative and financial investments have paid off.
As director, Broadway and West End veteran Christopher Renshaw has worked with his inspired creative collaborators to deliver a highly entertaining, engrossing portrait of a great Black artist shaped by his environment, American society and his own seemingly insatiable desires.
(Video interview with actor Juson Williams is courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine. Find more videos with Williams by clicking here.)
This iteration of Louis Armstrong, played by Juson Williams with abundant charisma, torment and an undercurrent of menace, isn’t just the influential jazz innovator and smiling trumpet virtuoso familiar from his days as a Hollywood performer and later-life American icon. The Armstrong of “A Wonderful World” is a warts-and-all, fallible human being — in great part because of Squire’s choice to present him from the perspectives of the four women he loved and hurt.
Armstrong’s early life in New Orleans comes first, with Squire touching on his rough upbringing in a neighborhood called the Battlefield, his constant hustle to survive, his time in a reformatory for firing a gun. At the Colored Waif’s Home, bandleader Professor Davis (Jason Holley) changes the course of Armstrong’s life by teaching him to play the cornet; later, playing aboard Mississippi riverboats, Armstrong learns to read music from bandleader Fate Marable (Paul Louis).
But his relationship with Daisy Parker (understudy Dori Waymer, subbing for an ailing Christina Sajous) is the connecting thread in that chapter of his life.
Allison Semmes as piano player Lil Hardin belts out a number in the latest Miami New Drama production. (Photo courtesy of Stian Roenning)
Beautiful, volatile, knife-wielding Daisy works in a brothel and at first sells her services to the rough-edged musician. (“People say I have a little bit of a temper,” she observes dryly, more than once.) After relentless wooing and a spirited duet on “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” they wed. But a working musician’s home is on the road (or in the young Armstrong’s case, the river), so before long he proves to be a love-’em-and-leave-’em husband.
In Chicago in the 1920s, he starts working with bandleader King Joe Oliver (a charismatic Gavin Gregory), tries to duck gangsters on his tail, and woos piano player Lil Hardin (Allison Semmes). Armstrong’s relationship with Lil begins on the bandstand and ends in bed, with Lil polishing his style and image, and Armstrong making her his Mrs. #2. Daisy isn’t entirely out of the picture, though, and when she shows up in the Windy City to confront her ex and his ambitious spouse, the women engage in the vocal equivalent of a knife fight as they sing a fierce version of “Mack the Knife.”
After a row with Lil, who has grander ambitions for herself and her unfaithful husband, he meets two key figures in the next chapter of his life.
As a nightclub singer (Kareema Khouri, a stunning vocalist) delivers an irresistibly seductive rendition of “Body and Soul,” bartender Joe Glaser (the magnetic Stephen G. Anthony) delivers some unwanted career advice, and a seemingly shy knockout named Alpha Smith (Nicole Henry) stirs his libido.
Before too long (because that’s how things flow in musicals), Glaser will violently “persuade” Armstrong’s perpetually inebriated, ineffectual Irish manager Johnny Collins (Daniel Barrett) to let him guide the rest of the musician’s career. Armstrong decamps with Alpha for Hollywood where, after a rough start, he breaks into movies bigtime — and the now-glamorous Alpha spends money like there’s no tomorrow (whenever she’s not making him the rice and beans he craves, or trying to help him realize another dream by making him a daddy).
After Alpha, impatient with her husband’s constant touring and betrayals, turns the tables on him and leaves, Armstrong embarks on his life’s last chapter in New York. By his side on and off from their marriage in 1942 until his death in 1971, ex-showgirl Lucille Wilson (Darlene Hope) weathers his frequent infidelities and proves herself an indefatigable “researcher,” getting the goods on greedy Joe Glaser’s personal life and Armstrong’s extracurricular activities to ensure she’ll get what she wants: a home in Queens, if not a family.
(Video interview with Nicole Henry is courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine. Find more videos with Henry by clicking here and more videos with the cast by clicking here.)
That’s a lot of content to pack into a 2 ½-hour musical, but Squire does much more. He contextualizes what happens to Armstrong, his choices, his failures, his triumphs, within the Black American experience.
An innocent young riverboat musician is lynched after a false accusation by a white woman, and the memory haunts Armstrong for life. In a dazzling meta moment, Armstrong learns from masterful millionaire Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit (also played by Holley, in a brief but undeniable tour de force), how to turn what white audiences love about Black entertainers into big bucks he can keep instead of giving his dough to exploitative managers. After the civil rights movement takes off, he publicly — and explicitly — unleashes his rage.
Thanks to enhancement money, Miami New Drama has been able to give “A Wonderful World” the artistic sendoff it deserves.
The large cast, a mixture of out-of-town and local talent, deliver knockout moments, shocking ones, intimate interludes.
Williams is, of course, the focal character, and his transformation from a gullible New Orleans innocent into an artist who pours his aching soul into each word of “Black and Blue” is a wonder. So, too, is the way he delivers the moment when he alters his normal higher singing and speaking voice — Armstrong is hacking from cold nights on the riverboat — into the lower, grittier sound he uses for the rest of the show.
Jazz singer Nicole Henry plays the only wife who left Louis Armstrong, Alpha Smith. (Photo courtesy of Stian Roenning)
Substituting for Sajous on opening night, Waymer is a wary, alluring and dangerous Daisy. Semmes is chic and all business as Lil. Henry, best known in South Florida as a virtuoso jazz singer, is a visually and vocally gorgeous Alpha. Hope brings her deeper voice, gravitas and intelligence to Lucille. When the four sing “St. James Infirmary” to the ailing man they all have loved, the number is as good as anything you’ll hear in any musical.
From the leads to the ensemble, everyone in the show is at the top of his or her game, including Lindsey Corey (who has a trio of comic moments as a Chicago lady of the evening, an eager reporter and an appalled White House assistant), Ashley McManus, Alysha Morgan, Khadijah Rolle, Brett Sturgis, Kevin Tate and Donesha Rose.
The live musicians meet the score’s myriad stylistic challenges — and, crucially, trumpet players Jean Caze and Luvens Lubin deliver the goods for Williams, who mimes playing but actually doesn’t.
Rickey Tripp’s choreography and musical staging require great dancers, and “A Wonderful World” has them in abundance. Sometimes in musicals, dance sequences can feel like fillers, but Tripp’s are worth savoring.
Adam Koch’s scenic design, dominated by piled-high trunks and platforms, is transformed by Steven Royal’s equally important projections from a brothel to a riverboat to Chicago, Hollywood and New York City. Cory Pattak’s lighting sets every mood, and Kai Harada’s sound design is responsive and clear. Ari Fulton’s era-spanning costumes are flat-out gorgeous.
Even erasing the pandemic from the equation — not possible, of course — the making of a new musical is a hugely challenging collaborative endeavor. Under artistic director Michel Hausmann and managing director Nicholas Richberg, Miami New Drama has devised one about a music and showbiz icon, a piece with a powerful point of view, a show that deserves to be seen in the spot where it was created.
For the holidays and beyond, that is something wonderful.
WHAT: Miami New Drama production of “A Wonderful World,” by Aurin Squire
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 16, 2022
WHERE: Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
COST: $51.50-$91.50 (includes $6.50 service fee)
SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks required, plus a negative COVID-19 PCR test, negative COVID-19 antigen test or proof of vaccination. For more details, visit miaminewdrama.org/show/a-wonderful-world.
Play finds ties in Miami, becomes a made-in-South Florida film with a Latin flair
Written By Michelle F. Solomon December 8, 2021 at 3:12 PM
Directors Oscar Ernesto Ortega and Carlos Rafael Betancourt on the set of “Borrowed” in Miami Beach’s Normandy Isles neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Jose Rovira)
Movie lighting shines bright outside a home in the Normandy Isles neighborhood of Miami Beach. It’s around dusk in August, and passersby in cars slow down to catch a glimpse of what’s going on behind the spotlights.
Inside, a chef sets the table for a dinner scene, while an actor gets prepped in a room-turned-makeup-and-costume-area. The home’s original furniture has been moved into a corner to make way for original artwork that will be an integral part of the movie’s plot, as well as other set pieces. Camera equipment is everywhere.
The film is “Borrowed,” a psychological thriller based on a play by Jim Kierstead that was presented as a streamed Zoom reading during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plot concerns a lonely older artist named David who connects online with a younger man, Justin. The latter agrees to meet David at his bungalow, with the implication of a sexual encounter. But after Justin arrives and decides not to move forward, the story takes dark twists and turns.
(Video courtesy of Oscar Ernesto Ortega and Carlos Rafael Betancourt)
The play found ties in Miami and became a film made in South Florida with a Latin flair — produced by Broadway United’s Kierstead and William Fernandez, who joined forces with El Central Productions, which is helmed by filmmakers Carlos Rafael Betancourt and Oscar Ernesto Ortega. Between the four of them, they represent Miami Beach, New York City and Los Angeles.
Kierstead and Fernandez have had a string of Broadway successes as producers, most recently receiving a Tony Award this year for Matthew Lopez’s “Inheritance,” which made history as the first time a Latino playwright won for best play.
Fernandez, who is on the board of directors of Zoetic Stage at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, was instrumental in having the play shown during the pandemic. “Borrowed” initially streamed on Broadway Virtual, another of his business partnerships with Kierstead, then as part of Zoetic Stage’s Virtual Play Reading Series.
The story of how it became a film started before the pandemic shut everything down, however. Fernandez attended the Miami Film Festival screening for Betancourt and Ortega’s film, “The Last Rafter,” at the Tower Theater in March 2020 — and struck up conversation with Ortega, which led to more conversations about potentially partnering on future projects.
The play “Borrowed” immediately came to mind, Fernandez says.
“I showed them the Zoom version of ‘Borrowed,’ and they liked it,” he says. “Carlos and Oscar said they had a window of time for a second project that they could do in August of 2021 … They sat me down and said they wanted their second project to be ‘Borrowed.’ ”
Actors Hector Medina, left, and Jonathan Del Arco infused their own backgrounds into the characters. (Photo courtesy of Jose Rovira)
Being a producer, Fernandez’s first thought veered toward fundraising.
“But Oscar and Carlos said something that was magnificent. They said, ‘If you guys are willing to do this, let’s fund it ourselves,’ ” he recalls.
Fernandez called Kierstead and, within an hour, they had a deal. They split the costs and ended up making the film for just under $500,000, according to Fernandez.
Turning “Borrowed” from a play format to screenplay was the next order of business. The playwright and the two filmmakers started to adapt the story.
“I trusted the play to these professionals and their vision,” Kierstead says. “They are beautiful filmmakers, and the story unfolds in such a lovely way.”
The setting was moved from New York City to the Florida Keys. David, who is played by Jonathan Del Arco, is an artist living a secluded life in the Keys, kept company only by his paintings. If Del Arco’s name sounds familiar, it’s likely for his roles in the “Star Trek” television franchise, including his most recent, playing Hugh on “Star Trek: Picard,” which streamed on Paramount+.
Justin, who meets David through a dating app, is played by Hector Medina who starred in Betancourt and Ortega’s “The Last Rafter.”
Betancourt explains that working with two Latinx actors played into the film’s identity: “The first idea was that Justin would be Latino and would speak Spanish or Spanglish. And then we cast Jonathan, who is from Uruguay, and that elevated David’s character, so that he is also Latino.”
Filmmaker Oscar Ernesto Ortega in the middle of shooting. He and Betancourt had founded a film production company in Cuba before moving it to the United States. (Photo courtesy of Jose Rovira)
The filmmaker says the actors infuse their own backgrounds into the characters.
“David’s character never says where he is from, but he gives the vibe of someone who is clearly from South America — Argentina, Chile, Uruguay. Justin has more of the Caribbean or Venezuelan vibe,” he says. “David is also a man of his generation and has been shaped in a way that there are certain things that you don’t violate. Justin is challenging all that.”
It was a very conscious decision on the filmmakers’ part, Betancourt adds, to explore the characters’ identities in a Hispanic context.
“There is LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning, asexual and/or ally) subject matter and exploration of themes around that, and then there is the Latino and Latinx experience, the immigration experience, and the fish-out-of-water in bigger worlds. There’s a lot in ‘Borrowed’ that we explore,” says Betancourt, who in 2008 founded a film production company in Cuba with Ortega, before they moved it to the United States.
Now that the movie has finished filming in Miami Beach, on Key Largo in Tavernier, and in Los Angeles, the foursome of Fernandez, Kierstead, Ortega and Betancourt are actively working to get “Borrowed” into film festivals across the United States, in Europe and Latin America. It’s possible the movie could follow the same course as “The Last Rafter,” being shown in festivals and then on a streaming platform. In the case of “The Last Rafter,” the independent film was picked up by HBO and shown on its HBO Max and HBO Latino platforms.
“We are actively seeking film distribution,” Betancourt says, “but we do not want to go straight to streaming. We are defending our festival round as much as possible unless we get an offer that we just can’t refuse.”
Review of ‘Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol’: A captivating one-man performance in a heartwarming production
Written By Christine Dolen December 7, 2021 at 7:06 PM
Among his many roles, Colin McPhillamy portrays the Ghost of Christmas Present in “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)
Since time immemorial, theater has been a storytelling art form. Just now, a potent and sometimes poignant reminder of that truth is onstage in Miami at the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater, where “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” is running through Dec. 19, 2021.
City Theatre’s production of the play by Tom Mula stars actor Colin McPhillamy in 18 distinct roles: that of the title character as well as a host of others from the 1843 Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol.”
Although a short intermission affords him a wee break (as his Scottish-accented character, Bogle, might put it), the British actor spends nearly two hours doing the theatrical equivalent of running a marathon. The solo show tests the stamina, skills and interpretive invention of even the most experienced performer, but the captivating McPhillamy quickly immerses the audience in his version of a beloved holiday tale.
Playwright Mula’s wrinkle is to share the Dickens story from the perspective of Jacob Marley, the late business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge. Marley, though dead, appears in “A Christmas Carol,” of course, but here he’s the star of the show.
Playing the titular Jacob Marley, actor Colin McPhillamy gets ready to scare Scrooge. (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)
Dealing with the Record Keeper, an embodiment of everlasting fate, Marley gets a final chance to avoid going straight to hell. He’ll have 24 hours to get the old skinflint to repent, to change Scrooge’s heart. Otherwise, he’s doomed.
Accompanying Marley on his fool’s errand is the Bogle, a tiny troublemaker of a spirit. He’s impishly portrayed by McPhillamy, who glues his upper arms to each side, rapidly flapping his hands as though they were miniature wings.
Using his malleable voice, movement and facial expressions, McPhillamy shifts instantly from Marley to Scrooge, evoking scenes from “A Christmas Carol.” Likewise, he becomes a Cockney kid as the Ghost of Christmas Past, a warm presence as the Ghost of Christmas Present, a frightening figure as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
In theater, bringing even the best solo storytelling to life takes a village, and McPhillamy has an impressive group of collaborators.
Artistic director Margaret M. Ledford has helped the actor to define and clarify each character, precisely differentiating the emotional moods of the script. Sometimes, she has him scurry over the faux stone steps and ramps of Norma Castillo O’Hep’s nostalgic set. She has him dip into a trunk to pull out the chains Marley forged in life, then brings him briefly to rest behind a podium or a small table.
British actor Colin McPhillamy plays 18 distinct roles in the City Theatre production. (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)
Matt Corey’s soundscape is a vital part of the production, serving up church bells, a swirling wind or a closing door at precisely the right time. Likewise, Eric Nelson’s lighting helps define location shifts, and his tight green-lit focus on Marley’s face as the old man begins his terrorizing of Scrooge is priceless. Though multiple costume changes aren’t possible with the lightning pace of McPhillamy’s character transformations, designer Ellis Tillman simply and effectively suggests the Victorian era with one look and several add-on pieces.
At a matinee over the weekend, McPhillamy’s often spell-binding performance was interrupted a number of times as audience members – sometimes several people at a time – decided that they just had to walk out right then for a bathroom break or a snack or maybe because they got tired of listening to an artist telling them a story. Trouble is, beyond that rudeness, leaving the Carnival Studio Theater mid-performance is a noisy proposition, as the theatergoer thumps down the audience riser, then click-clacks over the wooden floor to the exit door.
The actor, the heartwarming production and your fellow audience members deserve better.
To read Christine Dolen’s preview for this play, click here.
WHAT: “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” by Tom Mula
WHEN: 7:30 p.m Thursdays-Fridays, 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays (no matinee Dec. 11), and 3 p.m. Sundays; through Dec. 19, 2021
WHERE: City Theatre production in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
The COVID-19 pandemic put so much of life on hold, world premieres included. But now, after almost two years of down time and a fresh week of previews at Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre, “A Wonderful World” is set to open at last, on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021.
With a book by former Miamian Aurin Squire, and more than three dozen songs orchestrated by Annastasia Victory and Michael O. Mitchell, the musical follows the innovative and hugely influential Armstrong from his boyhood in New Orleans to his 1971 death in New York City at age 69.
(Video courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine. Aurin Squire discusses how development of the play, “A Wonderful World,” came about. Find more video interviews with Squire by clicking here.)
Squire, a writer-producer on the CBS television series “The Good Fight” and “Evil,” tells Armstrong’s story in chapters, each from the perspective of one of his four wives: Daisy Parker, a volatile New Orleans prostitute; Lil Hardin Armstrong, a Chicago pianist who helped polish his image; Hollywood-glamorous Alpha Smith, the only wife who left him; and former Cotton Club singer Lucille Wilson, whose home with him in Queens is now the Louis Armstrong House Museum, a National Historic Landmark.
Of the man himself, Squire says, “He led a quintessential American life. He was the best at balancing the white audiences who paid his bills but not losing his credibility among Black audiences … His almost 70 years as a jazz musician was like 140 years for a normal person.”
Adam Koch’s set for “A Wonderful World” has been sitting on the Colony Theatre’s stage for the past 21 months, awaiting the return of the artists who would bring Armstrong’s world to life. But aspects of the production, its resonance and the artists themselves have changed during the long pandemic pause.
Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann remained determined to get “A Wonderful World” back to the Colony Theatre. (Photo courtesy of Juancho Hernandez Husband)
“Aurin packed a knife into Louis Armstrong’s trumpet case. This is a very politically and socially astute play about America,” says Michel Hausmann, cofounder and artistic director of Miami New Drama. “This is the right play for the world as it begins again. But certain things should not be seasonal. Confronting the oppression of non-whites, especially Black people, is urgent.”
About half of the original “Wonderful World” cast was unable to return to the show due to other commitments.
“Some things allow you to be nimble, but a musical isn’t one of them. We had to coordinate the schedules of at least 50 people,” Hausmann says. “We also decided to push the show closer to the end of the year, because we thought the fall would be an experimental period with people going out again. I’m glad we waited.”
Juson Williams, who appeared with his JW’s Inspirational Singers on “America’s Got Talent” in June, is still starring as Armstrong, the jazz genius and gravel-voiced singer whose engaging public persona made him an international star with crossover appeal. Miami jazz singer Nicole Henry is back as Alpha Smith, and Homestead-born Darlene Hope is again playing Lucille Wilson. New to principal roles are Christina Sajous as Daisy Parker and Allison Semmes as Lil Hardin.
“When I came back, I started to give him more grace,” Williams says, of the Armstrong role. “Those types of people have been hurt. He hurt people and didn’t realize it. Finding that was healing.
“I’m bringing a new level into the show, from not being in theater for two years. I believe that.”
Darlene Hope, a Homestead native, is back in the role of Lucille Wilson, fourth wife of Louis Armstrong. (Photo courtesy of Michael Cairns)
Director Christopher Renshaw has seen growth in Williams.
“Juson has more wisdom. He’s thinking more deeply. He has changed in a good way,” Renshaw says.
Hope, grateful to be back, has also undergone a shift in perspective.
“Some of the tactics I was using before feel stale now. You have to find fresh reasons for what you do, have to listen more deeply. Acting is being. Acting is living,” she says. “Coming out of the pandemic, where we’ve all lived 1,000 lifetimes in a year and a half, you have more to draw from than before … I feel more connected to Lucille. She’s not a monument; she’s a human being.”
Henry — whose eclectic newest CD, “Time to Love Again” — was recorded during the pandemic, kept her music career going while doing periodic artistic check-ins with her “Wonderful World” role.
Miami jazz singer Nicole Henry plays Louis Armstrong’s third wife, Alpha Smith. (Photo by Rafael Balcazar)
“Character development can be endless. I tried to visit Alpha every now and then,” she says. “Being a vocalist is such singular work. It’s wonderful to be back here, to be part of a unit. Everybody is so joyous. We feel even more connected.”
Asked about Sajous and Semmes, the two new “wives” in the show, Squire calls their contributions “remarkable” while appreciating the work of their predecessors.
“They give their roles a completely different tone, [refreshing] some of the thoughts I had. They bring all these colors to the roles. It’s like comparing Picasso to Matisse,” he says.
Sajous, who has been in five Broadway shows, was drawn to “A Wonderful World” and the character of Daisy Parker — about whom little is known — because of Squire’s script.
“The story feels very linear, especially for musical theater. I’m impressed with how Aurin uses time – he injects a lot of story into small scenes,” she says. “It feels so full of life. The pacing is amazing. This is something I had to do … Working from the inside out, I had to figure out how to integrate a woman I don’t know, other women and myself to bring her to life in a relatable way.”
Semmes, a singer-actor who performed in two Broadway shows and toured as Diana Ross in “Motown the Musical,” says “A Wonderful World” made her rethink her pre-pandemic decision to walk away from musical theater.
“This story feels so familiar, and it’s like all the stars have aligned … The writing got me … it’s yummy. I connected with Lil Hardin. I’m from Chicago and a family of jazz musicians. My grandmother knew or interviewed Lil,” Semmes says.
(Video courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine. Actor Darlene Hope answers the question: “Do you think that most Millennials will know who Louis Armstrong was?” Find more video interviews with Hope by clicking here and more videos with the cast by clicking here.)
Hausmann thought the original “Wonderful World” cast was “outstanding,” but he sees the value in coming back to the show with new artists in the mix.
“The new cast allows us to revisit the play in a completely new light,” he says. “It’s been a blessing to have some cast members discovering the play for the first time, and the creative team has also been looking at the show with fresh eyes … Hopefully, this will become a part of the American theater canon.”
“A Wonderful World” began as an idea dreamed up by the show’s Tony Award-nominated British director Renshaw and writer Andrew Delaplaine, whose sister Renee and brother-in-law Thomas E. Rodgers Jr. are major investors and retain the commercial rights to future productions of the musical. Hausmann introduced Renshaw and Squire, who hit it off creatively and made a show.
Renshaw, who lives in Miami Beach near the Colony, has directed a “King and I” revival and “Taboo” on Broadway. He says he was in denial at first when “A Wonderful World” closed abruptly, but that Hausmann “kept the faith and promised me it would reopen.”
The director has found he’s enjoying the work more as he blends the performances of original and new cast members. Given the lessons of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the push for greater equity, diversity and inclusion in theater, Renshaw thinks the musical “feels more relevant, more important. I have the privilege of directing a family of Black artists in a special piece that can help with the healing the world still needs. Even in the first number [the title song], the lyrics have a resonance as a vision for a better world.”
While keeping up with his demanding TV writing career, Squire spent time during the pandemic tightening the script: “We changed some music, tones, transitions.”
Juson Williams stars as jazz great Louis Armstrong in Miami New Drama’s “A Wonderful World.” (Photo courtesy of Stian Roenning)
Squire hopes that “A Wonderful World” will endure and have a life, whether in London, New York City or elsewhere, but his current goal is to “have a great production fully realized here,” so that in the future the typical route of musicals coming from Broadway to Miami can sometimes be reversed.
The set was already built, but labor, personnel, a large cast and seasonal housing in Miami Beach before, during and after Art Basel will make “A Wonderful World” the most expensive production in the company’s season of four world premieres, according to Miami New Drama managing director Nicholas Richberg.
“It wouldn’t have been possible to produce something on this scale without Tom Rodgers,” he says.
Rodgers, a local entrepreneur who became interested in the musician’s story after reading Laurence Bergreen’s hefty biography, “Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life,” calls Squire’s script “fabulous.”
“He came up with the angle of telling his life story through the eyes of Louis’ four wives. The biography just follows him around,” Rodgers says. “Most people will recognize every song in the show. I hope we can take it another step farther. I think [the creative team] has bigger visions this time around … It’s a very worthwhile story about music history and jazz history.”
WHAT: Miami New Drama production of “A Wonderful World,” by Aurin Squire
WHEN: Through Jan. 16, 2022. Remaining previews are 8 p.m. Dec. 9-10, then it opens 8 p.m. Dec. 11. After opening, performances are 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays.
WHERE: Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
COST: $51.50-$91.50 (includes $6.50 service fee)
SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks required, plus a negative COVID-19 PCR test, negative COVID-19 antigen test or proof of vaccination. For more details, visit miaminewdrama.org/show/a-wonderful-world.
City Theatre offers a solo take on a Christmas classic
Written By Christine Dolen November 29, 2021 at 5:53 PM
Actor Colin McPhillamy plays Scrooge’s late business partner and 17 other roles in City Theatre’s production of “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.” (Photo courtesy of Morgan Sophia Parker)
Ever since Charles Dickens dreamed up his evergreen tale of greed and redemption in 1843, “A Christmas Carol” has remained a beloved part of the holiday zeitgeist.
Along with “The Nutcracker” ballet, “A Christmas Carol” has entertained countless generations, reminding readers and audiences of the need for compassion, the importance of gratitude and the possibility of change – themes from a story that has continued to resonate as the world evolves.
Authors and actors have put their stamp on the story thanks to stage, movie and television versions of “A Christmas Carol.” Now it’s Colin McPhillamy’s turn to demonstrate how one artful actor can bring Dickens’ entire novella to life.
McPhillamy is the star of – and only actor in – “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol,” an 18-character play by actor-playwright Tom Mula. This version began as a 1995 novel, then got an audio treatment that aired on National Public Radio for seven seasons, then became a play that could be done by either one actor or four performers in 1998.
Miami’s City Theatre is making its return to the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater with “Jacob Marley” as part of the Theater Up Close series. Previewing Dec. 2, opening Dec. 3 and running through Dec. 19, the family friendly solo show will serve as a transformational showcase for the erudite McPhillamy, who will portray not just the about-to-be-damned Marley but also the man’s miserly former partner, Ebenezer Scrooge, as well as Scrooge’s put-upon employee, Bob Cratchit, and every other familiar “Christmas Carol” character, including the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come.
The London-born Colin McPhillamy is the star of – and only actor in – “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol,” playing at the Arsht Center through Dec. 19. (Photo courtesy of Morgan Sophia Parker)
In learning and differentiating all those characters, McPhillamy is “trying to channel the spirit of Robin Williams,” he says with a laugh.
Born in London to Australian parents, McPhillamy has worked in theaters throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, appearing five times on Broadway where his wife, Patricia Conolly, is now performing in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He also has a rich South Florida history, having worked at Palm Beach Dramaworks, Florida Stage, the Promethean Theatre, Actors’ Playhouse and the Maltz Jupiter Theatre – 14 productions total in this region.
“Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” also marks his third time working with Margaret M. Ledford, now City Theatre’s artistic director.
“I’m here to guide Colin, to say, ‘This is what I’m seeing.’ I love watching him play and discover things,” Ledford says. “When I called him about it, he said, ‘Don’t send me the script. I’ll talk myself into it.”
McPhillamy remembers telling Ledford, “‘That sounds like a lot of words.’ Having done almost nothing for 20 months, I wondered if I could still do it.”
The answer, say Ledford and City Theatre’s cofounder-literary director Susan Westfall, is that McPhillamy has lost none of his inventiveness due to the pandemic layoff.
Watching the actor run through the play and in a rehearsal room “made me profoundly joyful and grateful,” Westfall says. “Who knew a decision made in January 2020 to do a play that wouldn’t be produced until two years later would turn out to be so timely and relevant?
“By the time we’re done in three weeks, Colin’s going to have cooked up 8 million more pieces to it. To watch an artist on his game do something like this – it’s just a relief.”
Adds Ledford: “Actors tend to be kinesthetic learners. You put movement with dialogue in a way that supports the dramatic action of the play.”
Colin McPhillamy has a rich South Florida history, having worked at Palm Beach Dramaworks, Florida Stage, the Promethean Theatre, Actors’ Playhouse and the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. (Photo courtesy of Morgan Sophia Parker)
McPhillamy says he’s found that the plays of William Shakespeare can be easier to memorize than those of playwrights like Edward Albee or Alan Ayckbourn.
“With Shakespeare, the rhythm of iambic pentameter makes it easier. Albee or Ayckbourn is difficult because they insist on observing every ellipsis,” he says. “What Tom Mula has written is derivative of Dickens’ style, very keen on language … Dickens is a particular thing. His language is much more ornate.”
A piece such as “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” needs neither an elaborate set nor myriad costumes – the performer changes characters so quickly that he doesn’t have time to swap out clothing. Voice, stance, gesture, movement, facial expression: Those serve as the actor’s tools.
“This is theatrical storytelling at its finest. It’s supported by technical elements, but at its core, it’s good storytelling,” says Ledford.
McPhillamy believes fervently in the need for and power of stories, including the one he’s about to tell about Jacob Marley’s last chance for redemption.
“Why do people tell stories? Why do people need to hear stories?” he muses. “The good practice of theater is as essential to society as the practice of medicine, law or engineering. The world becomes monochrome without stories.”
To read Christine Dolen’s review of this play, click here.
WHAT: “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” by Tom Mula
WHEN: Preview 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2; opens 7:30 p.m. Dec. 3; regular performances set for 7:30 p.m Thursdays-Fridays, 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays (no matinee Dec. 11), and 3 p.m. Sundays; through Dec. 19, 2021
WHERE: City Theatre production in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
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