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Holmes and Watson to return in freeFall’s next season
Single tickets and subscriptions have just gone on sale for freeFall Theatre’s 2024-25 season. It’ll be the 15th for producing artistic director Eric Davis’ St. Petersburg pro playhouse, and as usual, the productions are anything but predictable.
Fable (Aug. 9-Sept 8. 2024). In the words of playwright Doug DeVita, “Fable is a fable about the creation of the musical Gypsy, as remembered by the aging June Havoc, Gypsy Rose Lee’s younger sister, a child star on the vaudeville circuit in the early years of the 20th century. June was famously unhappy with the show, going so far as to try and stop the production from happening at all.” Gypsy, of course, premiered on Broadway in 1959, another blockbuster for Ethel Merman (as domineering stage mom Mother Rose). Actress Emilee Dupré, whose last freeFall appearance was in The Turn of the Screw in 2019, is in the cast.
Ken Ludwig’s Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure (Nov. 8 – Dec. 15, 2024). Instead of a Christmas show, freeFall is returning to comic playwright Ludwig, whose Baskerville in 2023 introduced freeFall honcho Davis as Holmes, and perennial favorite Matthew McGee as Watson. Five actors play more than 40 roles in another rough and tumble, riotous adventure-mystery.
Road Show (Feb. 14 – March 16, 2025). A late-period Stephen Sondheim musical, with book by John Weidman, Road Show re-counts (with some degree of truth) the tale of adventuring brothers Wilson and Addison Mizner, and their search, in the late 19th century, for the American Dream. Sondheim and Weidman had previously collaborated on Assassins and Pacific Overtures.
For Closure (April 11 – May 11, 2025). A farce written by Hannah Benitez, a New York actress and playwright last seen locally in freeFall’s Pippin in 2019. Set in a small Florida seaside town, Raven and Amanda are trying to keep the family real estate agency afloat in trying times; joining forces with eccentric psychic Camille Chevalier Milk, they attempt to expose a threat to the town. Benitez’s other well-received works include Dike and GringoLandia.
The House of Future Memory (June 13 – July 13, 2025). From freeFall’s season announcement: “Devised by Eric Davis, the ensemble, and you. This surprising and innovative performance will bring together the talents and imagination of the performers with the dreams, fears and desires of the audience to create a unique evening of storytelling and theater that can only happen once. Through improvisation, traditional storytelling, and innovative effects, the audience will be transported to an uncanny place where anything is possible – where dreams become real and the future looms like a memory waiting to take shape.”
Still to come as part of freeFall’s 2023-24 season is Nollywood (April 12-May 12), a romantic comedy set against the 1990s Nigerian film industry; a cabaret performance April 25 from Broadway singer/actress Becky Gulsvig; and the evergreen musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown June 6-16 – a limited run produced and presented by Tampa’s ThinkTank Theatre and directed by its CEO, Georgia Malloy Guy.
Tickets and all other information about the theater are at freefalltheatre.com.
