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Weekend forecast: Theater news and a whole lotta blues
Opening Friday at freeFall Theatre in St. Pete, For Closure! is a comedic farce by South Florida writer Hannah Benitez, who appeared onstage in the company’s productions of Pippin in 2019, and White Fang in 2017.
Renata Eastlick and Sara Delbeato play partners who operate a struggling real estate agency in the small Florida coastal town of Gulfpalm. Matthew McGee stars as an “enigmatic” psychic named Camille Chevalier Milk (described as “a mix of Rip Taylor, Leslie Jordan and Walter Mercado”).
Directed by freeFall artistic director Eric Davis, For Closure! – a world premiere – also features Kelly Pekar (just onstage in freeFall’s Moriarty and Baskerville), Glenn Girón and Francine Wolf.
Benitez’s other works include Dyke, Saint Brigid, GringoLandia, Ashe In Johannesburg and others.
For tickets and additional information, visit the freeFall website.
In freeFall’s “For Closure!”: Renata Eastlick, left, and Sara Delbeato. Image provided.
It’s also the inaugural weekend of K.T. Thompson’s offbeat comedy Love Bird at the Off-Central. Roxanne Fay and Katherine Yacko play birds – or are they? – lost and alone on a desert island, with flotsam and jetsam as their only companions. Here’s the Catalyst story from earlier this week, with ticket link.
At The Studio@620, there’s a staged reading tonight and Friday of an in-development play by St. Petersburg’s Anthony Gervais. Directed by Patrick Arthur Jackson, Maybe … a Love Story starts at 7:30 each night. Tickets are here.
The American Stage production of the musical Hair continues nightly at Demens Landing Park, on the St. Petersburg bayfront. Several members of the cast will guest on our Arts Alive! podcast Friday.
Who could forget that HMS Titanic hit that iceberg and sunk April 15, 1912? To commemorate (if that’s the word) the 133th anniversary of the maritime disaster, Tampa Fringe is launching a pair of one-woman shows April 11-13 at its home space, the Kress Contemporary at 1624 E. 7th Avenue in Tampa. Bridget Bean’s Mrs. Bliss’s Titanic Adventure is paired with Katie Thayer’s A One Woman Titanic Parody In 59 Minutes Or Less.
Of course, there was nothing funny about the Titanic disaster. Both of these hour-long shows, however, are comedies. Both are past Fringe Festival award winners.
For information on “A Titanic Double Feature,” including showtimes and tickets, visit the Fringe website.
The Broadway Series at Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts, which is where the big touring shows stop in the bay area, continues this week with The Lion King, the Tony-winning adaptation of Disney’s animated 1994 classic. This is director Julie Taymor’s six-time Emmy-winning version of the story, with human actors, dancers and singers, albeit with the aid of elaborate costumes, masks and puppetry. Find showtimes and tickets here (it’s in Morsini Hall through Sunday).
Roxanne Fay in “Love Bird” at the Off-Central. Photo provided.
Blues in the park
Blues festival co-headliner Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. Publicity photo.
Luther Dickinson, one of the South’s most incendiary, down and dirty electric blues guitarists, is at the Palladium Theater tonight with his brother, multi-instrumentalist Cody Dickinson, along with Joey Williams and Ray Ray Hollowman. This long-lived “hill country blues” aggregation is known far and wide as the North Mississippi All-Stars. The band shares tonight’s bill with singer and guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks.
Tonight’s Palladium concert is a pre-show event for the annual Tampa Bay Blues Festival in Vinoy Park. Over three days (Friday through Sunday) there will be music, food, full liquor bars, the works. Stage entertainment starts in the afternoon and goes until 10 p.m. daily.
Both the North Mississippi All-Stars and Ronnie Baker Brooks are performing again, as part of Friday’s festival lineup.
Here are this year’s names: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Tab Benoit, JJ Grey & Mofro, Walter Trout, Taj Farrant, Ana Popovic, Curtis Salgado, Ruthie Foster, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Selwyn Birchwood, Mathias Lattin, Tad Robinson, DK Harrell, Sierra Green & The Giants.
Blues festival tickets are here.
Check ‘em out
Jimmy Buffett’s longtime onstage right-hand man, singer-songwriter Mac McAnnally, plays Ruth Eckerd Hall Saturday with fellow Coral Reefer Scotty Emerick, who was Toby Keith’s longtime musical partner. Mac spoke with the Catalyst about the “Margaritas and Memories” show and more; read the interview here.
Micky Dolenz is at the Capitol Theatre tonight with “Songs & Stories.” The Catalyst spoke with the last living Monkee earlier this week; read that story here.
Chicago is back to play the BayCare Sound amphitheater Friday. Find the Catalyst interview with founding trumpeter Lee Loughnane here.
Friday brings twin brothers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson to the Central Park Performing Arts Center for Ricky Nelson Remembered, a musical tribute to their father. Matthew spoke to the Catalyst this week; read that story here.
More concerts
Jazz vocalist Scotty Wright. Photo provided.
Tonight: Mexican singer/songwriter Carin León (banda, mariachi, norteño) and his band at Amalie Arena. Tickets are available at this link.
Friday: Comedian Angela Johnson-Reyes at the Mahaffey Theater. Find tickets here.
Friday: “The Art of The Piano Trio” (jazz) with ARConnection and Mauricio J. Rodriguez, at New Tampa Performing Arts Center. Tickets.
Saturday: Veteran standup comic Kathleen Madigan at the Mahaffey Theater. Find tickets here.
Saturday: Trey Songz, Omarion, Bow Wow and others (hip hop) at the Yuengling Center. Tickets are here.
Saturday: Electronic dance music (EDM) from Lane 8 with Otherwish at the BayCare Sound. Tickets.
Sunday: Tampa jazz vocalist Scotty Wright at the Palladium Side Door, 3 p.m. Find tickets here.
Sunday: Air Supply at the BayCare Sound. Find tickets here.
Sunday: Bay area jazz trio La Lucha at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center. Tickets are available at this link.
The classics
Soprano Susan Hellman Spatafora is Musetta in Opera Tampa’s “La Boheme.” Photo provided.
Roll over, Robert Johnson. The protagonist of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale makes a deal with the devil in disguise (he trades his old violin for a magic book that can tell the future and make him rich). Which, of course, probably won’t turn out so well. With Chelsea Gallo conducting, The Florida Orchestra is performing Stravinsky’s groundbreaking work in three small-scale “Soundwaves” concerts this weekend: Tonight (7:30) at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center; Friday (7:30 p.m.), Church of the Ascension, Clearwater; and Saturday (2 p.m.), Palladium Theater, St. Petersburg. All tickets are available at this link.
Members of the Florida Orchestra will also play Friday and Sunday in the Straz Center’s Ferguson Hall, as the pit musicians for the Opera Tampa production of Puccini’s La Boheme. Find showtimes and tickets at this link.
Your Weekend Spotlight appears every Thursday in the Catalyst’s CREATE section.
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