Weekend forecast: Country’s Tim McGraw, Chris Janson
Country music superstar Tim McGraw is atop our weekend concert listing; Mr. 25 No. 1 singles appears Friday at Amalie Arena, in Tampa’s Channelside District, with Carly Pearce opening. McGraw is on the road in advance of Standing Room Only, his first album in four years. Find tickets here.
Country singer Chris Janson (“Good Vibes,” “Buy Me a Boat”) has a gig Saturday that’s not quite as big as Tim McG’s Amalie Arena show; Janson is the headliner at Country in the Park at England Brothers Park in Pinellas Park. The free event starts at noon; proceeds from food and drink sales People Helping People of Pinellas Park, The Pinellas Park Boys & Girls Club and others. The park is at 5010 81st Avenue N.
Tonight at the Mahaffey Theater: Comedian Andrew Schulz. Tickets.
Friday at the Mahaffey Theater: Godsmack. Tickets.
Friday at the Capitol Theatre: Men at Work frontman Colin Hay. Tickets.
Friday at Largo’s Central Park Performing Arts Center: Wishbone Ash. Tickets.
Saturday at the Baycare Sound: Blues guitar great Joe Bonamassa. Tickets.
Saturday at Amalie Arena: Comedian Tom Segura. Tickets.
Neil Berg’s 115 Years of Broadway makes its annual appearance at Ruth Eckerd Hall Sunday. Tickets.
Festivals
Downtown St. Petersburg will most likely hopping this weekend, with Reggae Rise Up Florida at Vinoy Park (read all about it here), and Paddy Fest at Williams Park (ditto).
St. Petersburg Opera Company opens a production of Puccini’s “Turandot” Friday at the Palladium Theater. Photo: Jim Swallow.
The classics
St. Petersburg Opera Company is at the Palladium Theater Friday, Sunday and Tuesday with a production of Puccini’s Turandot. As always, Mark Sforzini conducts the orchestra. The cast of the three-act opera includes singers Kelly Slawson, Simon Lee, Chelsea Lehnea, Erik Kroncke, Ai Ra, Sejin Park and others. It’s performed in Italian with English translations projected above the stage. Find tickets here.
And PBS travel expert Rick Steves joins The Florida Orchestra for a left-of-different concert experience this weekend; Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey will find the famous wanderer narrating stories of his travels through Italy, England, France, Norway and beyond; as the screen fills with HD images and TFO (conducted by Michael Francis) plays music by Beethoven, Elgar, Grieg and Verdi. Performances are at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater. For info and tickets, click here.
At the Cirque
Cirque du Soleil is still in residence in the Tropicana Field parking lot (through March 24) with BAZZAR. Tickets.
Katrina Stevenson, left, and Roxanne Fay in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” opening this weekend at Jobsite Theater. Image: James Zambon Photography.
On theater stages
Sebastian Gonzalez, left, and Jim Wicker appear in the Stageworks production of “The Immigrant.” Image: Stage Photography of Tampa.
Both Stageworks and Jobsite, downtown Tampa playhouses, have new shows opening this week. Stageworks is debuting Mark Harelik’s The Immigrant, based on the true story of a Yiddish-speaking Russian Jew who arrives in a conservative, Christian Texas town in 1909. Here’s our feature story on the show, from earlier this week.
At Jobsite, it’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, an extremely dark comic drama from Irish playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (In Brujes, The Banshees of Inisherin, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri).
In Leenane, a village in hilly County Galway, 40-year-old spinster Maureen Folan lives a miserable life with her domineering, verbally abusive mother. The story revolves around the appearance of eligible bachelor Pato Dooley, and how her mother’s malicious meddling gets in the way of things.
The cast consists of familiar Jobsite faces Katrina Stevenson (Maureen), Roxanne Fay (Mother Mag), David M. Jenkins (Pato) and Blake Smallen (Pato’s brother Ray). The show runs March 13 through April 7; tickets are here.
Stevenson, meanwhile, is our guest on Friday’s Arts Alive! podcast.
Your weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst.
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