The curtain rises on five new plays in Tampa Bay
Bay area theater aficionados will have some tough decisions to make, as no fewer than five new shows make their debuts between Wednesday and Sunday at professional playhouses on each side of the bay.
The Straz Center’s Broadway Series continues this week with a nationally touring production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, a staged interpretation of Australian film director Baz Luhrman’s acclaimed 2001 jukebox musical of the same name.
Moulin Rouge! The Musical won 10 Tony Awards in 2021.
As in the film, the events take place in Paris’ Montmartre Quarter at the turn of the 20th century. It’s a lavishly-executed love story that utilizes existing pop songs (from “Your Song” to “Nature Boy” to “Roxanne”) and blends them with original numbers.
It runs Nov. 6-10 in Morsani Hall, David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts, Tampa. Here’s the ticket link.
In “The Mountaintop” at American Stage: Brandon Burditt, right, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Kayland Jordan as Camae, a maid at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Photo provided.
Local productions
The Mountaintop. Brandon Bruditt plays Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Katori Hall’s dramatization of April 3, 1968, inside Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. American Stage’s production of this historical dramatization of the last night in the civil rights icon’s life is directed by Keith Arthur Bolden, who helmed the 2022 show The Colored Museum. It runs Nov. 6-24 in St. Petersburg. Find tickets here.
Ken Ludwig’s Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure. Eric Davis and Matthew McGee return as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Ludwig’s sequel to the comic mystery Baskerville, which broke all kinds of records at St. Pete’s freeFall Theatre a season ago. They’re betting on this one – Moriarty is scheduled for the longest run in the company’s history (Nov. 8-Dec. 15). Kelly Pekar and Robert Teasdale return to play (as they did in the earlier production) multiple roles; everybody’s joined this time around by Sara DelBeato. Tickets are at this link.
Matthew McGee, left, and Eric Davis return as Watson and Holmes in freeFall’s “Ken Ludwig’s Moriarty,” opening Friday. Image (2023): Thee Photo Ninja.
The Sound Inside. A Tony-nominated drama by Adam Rapp runs Nov. 7-17 at the Off-Central in St. Petersburg. Debbie Yones directs Roxanne Fay and Weston Allen Kemp in the story of the unlikely friendship that develops between an Ivy League professor and a brilliant but mysterious student. Tickets are available here.
Number The Stars. ThinkTank Theatre’s producing artistic director Georgia Mallory Guy directs a stage adaptation of Lois Lowry’s Newbery Award winning children’s novel about the escape of a family of Jews from Denmark during World War II. Dates are Nov. 9-17 (preview Nov. 7) at the JCC Cohn Campus, Tampa. The first Sunday matinee (Nov. 10) will be a Sensory Performance, geared for community members with special needs, their friends and families and any families with children 7 and younger. Find tickets here.
