Here’s what’s behind the curtain this week in Tampa Bay theater…
THE PARROT SKETCH, BY AUGUST WILSON: Savvy, thrifty local theatergoers haunt preview performances ahead of opening night, in part for the cut ticket price and in part because they know said performances are technically dress rehearsals, wherein anything can and will happen. In the preview last week for August Wilson’s Radio Golf at American Stage Theatre Company, previewgoers got to hear celebrated all-lowercase actor ranney improvise the following monolog when he became bumfuzzled on a line about being held back in the fourth grade: "If you had 17 parrots and you gave Suzie 12 parrots? How many parrots would you have left? Who in the hell has 17 parrots? And, who the hell is Suzie?" The actor reports that the ad lib received a huge laugh from audience members, none the wiser for having not read the script. Also a popular stand-up comic and writer, ranney is a veteran of nine productions of Wilson’s work, including his BotB-winning appearance in The Piano Lesson.
THE EGG WHO HAD TWO DADDIES: Speaking of previews, proceeds from Thursday’s final dress of Stageworks Theatre Company’s penguin-bending comedy Birds of a Feather will benefit Metro Wellness & Community Centers, which provides social networking and health and wellness resources for members of the LGBT community. The four actors in the play portray 25 different characters, some (not all) of whom happen to be birds, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
BETHANY LITANY: The “darkly comic thriller” Bethany, produced by Tampa Repertory Theatre’s lab company TRT2, is notable for a variety of distinctions, including but not limited to: 1) It features the first of the four recent pairings of actors Greg Thompson and Nicole Jeannine Smith in which the former did not play the latter’s father, 2) Smith was late to a rehearsal because she was nursing an injured rooster, 3) There’s apparently a very funny bit involving inhaled helium (and when is helium-voice ever not funny?), 4) It features the Bay Area Renaissance Festival’s perambulating Katherine Parr, Caroline Jett, in one of her regrettably rare indoor appearances, and 5) It marks the Tampa directorial debut of Dan Granke, who will direct Macbeth for the new Tampa Shakespeare Festival in Water Works Park this spring. Bethany runs at the Silver Meteor Gallery through Feb. 8.
THE SNOW MUST GO ON: Yesterday evening, Jobsite Theater’s Twelfth Night played a one-nighter in the parking lot at Sarasota’s Home Resource, possibly the world’s only contempo furniture store that doubles as a live performance venue (in your face, IKEA). The only problem: Cast member Ami Sallee had flown Sunday to NYC for an audition, and snowmageddon buried her return flight. Veteran Bay Area actress/chanteuse Becca McCoy (Disenchanted) zipped into Sallee’s fringed dress, and the show came off without a hitch. Sallee snagged a pre-dawn flight to arrive just in time for a school-group matinee today in the Shimberg Playhouse, where the Shakespeare comedy remains through Sunday.
JUST KEEPIN’ IT ROSSINI, DAWG: According to longtime St. Petersburg Opera Company lighting designer Keith Arsenault, the cast of the company’s new production of The Barber of Seville got so tired and giddy at last Sunday’s tech rehearsal that they broke out in a group twerk, which is not something you see every day from a professional opera company. Arsenault assures SCENE BREAKER there will be no twerking, krumping, Harlem shake, snap dance, clown walk, Wu-Tang or gangsta walking in the public performances, which start Friday.
Got a tip for SCENE BREAKER? Email Scene Breaker in care of A&E Editor Julie Garisto, julie.garisto@creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2015.