Sondheim’s ‘Road Show’ arrives at freeFall Theatre

Stephen Sondheim was the Shakespeare of musical theater – brilliant, prolific, complex and something of an acquired taste for some. The composer and lyricist, who died in 2021, contributed dozens of classic works to the theatrical lexicon – a very short list would include West Side Story (with Leonard Bernstein), Gypsy, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Company and Sunday in the Park With George.

Opening Friday at freeFall Theatre, Road Show is one of Sondheim’s last, and least-known, shows. The story of real-life brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner, who capitalized on the Florida Land Boom in the 1920s, it premiered off-Broadway in 2008.

With book by John Weidman (he and Sondheim wrote Assassins and Pacific Overtures together) it began life as Wise Guys. The authors re-tooled it as Bounce, then re-tooled it again under its present title.

Michael Raabe, freeFall’s musical director, co-wrote 2023’s Oz, the company’s musical biography of author L. Frank Baum. He believes he understands the reasons Sondheim and Weidman kept going back to the drawing board.

“Having written a true-life biopic as well, you have to focus on ‘What’s the part of the story you’re trying to tell?’” Raabe said. “Hearing the different versions, the songs in the final production are so much more dynamic, I feel, than in the version right before this.

“The two of them had also collaborated on multiple pillars of the American theater, I think there’s a pressure too, ‘we have to deliver.’ This was going to be held against those, so they wanted to get it right.”

The freeFall production stars Robert Teasdale (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater) as Wilson, and Sarasota-based actor Joey Panek as Addison.

Panek, left, and Teasdale.

Addison Mizner was a visionary architect who designed many of the unique, Mediterranean-style mansions in Palm Beach and environs; Wilson was a snake-oil salesman and a con man, by all historical accounts. They needed one another.

“Both of these characters do some very unlikeable things, and you need to have very likeable actors to bring the audience in,” Raabe said. “Otherwise they’ll be like ‘Why should I care about this person?’”

Together, he opined, the actors “are perfect. It’s amazing when you get in the room and see that connection right away as brothers. And they’re singing the heck out of the score.”

Road Show, he explained, “is a show about family. It’s a show about brothers. It’s about trying to take your stake of the American Dream, sometimes leaving people and things by the wayside. But it’s a very human look at what that can mean.”

Also in the cast: Drew H. Wells, Greg Austin, Sara DelBeato, James Putnam and Julia Rifino. Eric Davis is the director.

The score, Raabe said, is vintage Sondheim, from the first notes to the last.

“He writes so much about human emotion. And the way he layers that with music – when he was asked which comes first, the lyrics or the music, he said both. They’re so intertwined, especially coming from one person. He’s not afraid to use dissonance, to play with that.

“And like many composers, his use of motifs and themes is incredible, coming in new and interesting ways and layered throughout. As we’ve been going through the score, someone will say ‘Yep, this sounds like Sondheim.’ It’s hard to put into words.

“I’ve heard actors say that once you learn the music, it’s incredibly easy to act, because he really writes from emotion. From the human state.”

For showtimes, tickets and more information, visit the freeFall website.