SOPHIE, TOTIE & BELLE (2003) - Sun-Sentinel Review

Gary Waldman & Jamison Troutman presented SOPHIE, TOTIE & BELLE, a musical by Joanne Koch & Sarah Blacher Cohen at the Atlantis Playhouse, W. Palm Beach, FL (2003) ... the following is a review published in The Sun-Sentinel ...

Three Old Gals Get Another Run
Sophie, Totie & Belle Still Funny After All These Years.

July 22, 2003 | By Jack Zink Theater Writer

The best R-rated act at the Friar's Club, Heaven branch, is still Sophie, Totie & Belle, though the old gals need a bigger push to get rolling than in the past.

Director Gary Waldman and producing partner Jamison Troutman have revived the show for its fifth local outing at their new Atlantis Playhouse in south-central Palm Beach County. The musical revue that puts Sophie Tucker, Totie Fields and Belle Barth together in heaven's waiting room is now more than a decade past its world premiere here in South Florida (and had its off-Broadway certification in New York in '02). (Note: the off-Broadway production was actually in 2000)

STB is among a few celebrity musical tributes that's a little more than a revue but still less than a full-blown musical -- dubbed a revuesical by some marketing types. Joanne Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen bring the three late comedians together at heaven's doorstep to audition for a show that the Almighty is putting together. He only needs one act, so the girls are forced to compete for a place in the upper kingdom.

The conceit allows the show to roll out each character's original jokes and routines, including some of Barth's purpler prose. Whole sections of the original stars' acts are reprised. If the material seems dated and corny at first, it's because the performers don't warm up fast enough. By the end of the show, the suburban mall playhouse is rollicking like the old Miami Beach clubs that Fields and Barth frequented, and Tucker was known to visit.

SOPHIE, TOTIE & BELLE at the Atlantis Playhouse
Pictured: Sharyn Bingham as Totie Fields

Angela Thomas is in her best voice to date as Tucker. She peels off Some of These Days, My Yiddishe Mommeh, Red Hot Mama and others with elan. Sharyn Bingham is the relentlessly cheery Totie Fields, and Raquel Marmor the relentlessly relentless Barth. Bingham also is an accomplished singer, and Marmor has more than enough chutzpah to deliver Barth's blue material. Just don't expect them to be celebrity look-alikes; the actresses are in character, not impersonators.

The downside is that their voices tend to be light and bell-toned, becoming shrill when going for broke (which is often) in the Atlantis Playhouse's acoustically lively environment. Another disappointment is Floyd Nash in the multiple roles of the men in the ladies' lives; he never rises above the level of a doormat.

Accompaniment is provided by Phil Hinton, a top-notch musical arranger and director, on keyboards, with Tom Hinton on percussion. Sets and lighting are by David Sherman and John Wade, respectively, but the show's eye-appeal is in Floyd Nash's cabaret-garish costumes.

Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.

THEATER REVIEW

Sophie, Totie & Belle

Musical revue, through Aug. 17 at Atlantis Playhouse, 5893 S. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach. Shows 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2, 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $26.50-$29. Call 561-304-3212 or toll free 800-690-1863.

PAVED WITH GOLD (1996) Sun-Sentinel Review

Jewish Musical Glistens With Gold For All

January 10, 1996

By BILL von MAURER Special to the Sun-Sentinel

Say "ethnic theater" and its promoters and enthusiasts have a Pavlovian reaction: Despite this or despite that (usually the language problem), they say, you don't have to be this or that "to enjoy it."

In the case of the musical Paved With Gold, "you don't have to be Jewish" is the appropriate buzz phrase to reassure the general public that it is safe to risk $26 for its special brand of entertainment. Not that Paved With Gold needs wider box office support. It is a hot ticket among South Florida's Jewish theatergoers.

Janice Waldman & Gary Waldman in PAVED WITH GOLD

Seventy-five percent (my estimate) of the songs and dialogue in Paved With Gold are in Yiddish. No need to worry. They could be in Tibetan for that matter, thanks to the two-character cast of the man and wife singing and dancing team of Gary and Janice Waldman. Their great voices, dynamic energy and whirlwind personalities knock down all barriers, ethnic or linguistic, to two hours of sheer pleasure.

Paved With Gold is a tribute to Yiddish theater excerpted from three beloved musicals: The Golden Land; On Second Avenue and Those Were The Days, all created by Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld.

The result is never mired in sentiment or nostalgia. This is get-up-and-go entertainment with the Waldmans' always having their eyes on the show's amazing pace.

They tell the story of two young Jewish refugees from Russia - who fall in love, of course - and their sometimes bruising encounter with their new surroundings in "Amerike."

They take the audience on a tour of Ellis Island; remind them of the pushcart struggle that many endured in early 1900s New York.

They pay a visit to the legendary Yiddish theater that once existed on Second Avenue; recall the Great Depression (Brother Can You Spare A Dime, sung in English) and express their pride in overcoming adversities to achieve success in a land whose streets they discovered, woefully, were not paved with gold. They even do the "Tcharleston!" along the way.

The windup is a stirring patriotic salute: Amerike, Hurrah for Uncle Sem.

Music is by the eight-piece Golden Land Klezmer Orchestra which, for some reason, remains out of sight behind the minimal set.

Bill von Maurer covered theater for more than a decade for The Miami News and is a frequent contributor to The Sun-Sentinel.

PERFECT HARMONY (1997) - Sun-Sentinel Review

Sister Act Offers Perfect Harmony

October 19, 1998|By BILL VON MAURER and Special to the Sun-Sentinel

Is Perfect Harmony: The Barry Sisters Story a memory-drenched journey into the past?

Hardly. Michele Ragusa and Kelly Briscoe are the Barry sisters. Not literally, of course, but they're as close to the real thing as you will probably ever get.

And as for that weary word, nostalgia, Perfect Harmony has no time for that. It's too vibrant, too alive, too electrifying. There's no need to go wandering off into the land of long ago.

"PERFECT HARMONY - The Barry Sisters Story"
Pictured: Kelly Briscoe & Michelle Ragusa

The musical tells the story of a beloved Jewish singing duo who rose from obscure beginnings in the Bronx to international fame as radio, TV and nightclub performers.

Ragusa is cast as the younger sister, Claire, and Briscoe is Merna, who died in the '70s. Their career spanned four decades, from the '40s to the '70s. In a way, Perfect Harmony has one foot in the past and one in today, because Claire is still performing.

The book by Barry Kleinbort and David Levy is lean and fast-paced. These writers never lose sight of the fact that the sisters were entertainers first and foremost, and that we want to hear them sing.

There was disharmony at times in the lives of the sisters. Claire's divorce earned Merna's disapproval; Merna's spouse (Avi Hoffman) was an unproductive dream-spinner.

Hoffman, a Yiddish theater star in his own right, undertakes multiple roles, as does Timothy Martin Kashuk, who also plays Bob, Claire's new husband.

The musical has hilarious moments with a dash of satire, such as the young sisters' appearance on the Jewish Children's Hour radio show. And there are poignant, dramatic scenes such as the one in which the sisters, now famous, are banned from the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas because they refuse to drop the song My Yiddishe Mama from their routine.

Perfect Harmony is told in flashbacks with Kay Brady, in a solid performance, as the present-day Claire. We meet her preparing for her first solo performance in a New York nightclub.

But it is Ragusa and Briscoe, with the radiant, energetic blend of their voices, who light up Perfect Harmony for a dazzling tour de force.

Their songs leave us entranced as they pour forth, one after the other: Tzena, Tzena, Who's Sorry Now, Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, and Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn, which became a hit for the Andrews Sisters.

Gary Waldman directs this delicious reliving of a legend; Michael Larsen directs the musicians.

Bill von Maurer covered theater for more than a decade for The Miami News and is a frequent contributor to the Sun-Sentinel.

I WRITE THE SONGS (2003-2004) Sun-Sentinel Review

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Manilow Writes The Songs, Atlantis Puts 25 Of Them Into A Revue

South Florida Sun-Sentinel December 17, 2003

By Bill Hirschman Staff Writer

George Gershwin. Harold Arlen. Johnny Mercer. Tin Pan Alley gods whose repertoires are Olympian enough to provide the foundation for an entire evening's musical revue.

And now ... Barry Manilow?

Surprisingly, the Atlantis Playhouse's martini-smooth songfest I Write the Songs proves that while the Baby Boomers' Irving Berlin may not be anywhere near his predecessors' league, the Manilow oeuvre is capable of supporting a thoroughly entertaining if not enrapturing evening.

Atlantis' producer-director Gary Waldman has poured 25 Manilow ballads into the mouths of a quintet of earnest, attractive and soulful singers.

The original production not only lacks a book, it lacks a discernible throughline, other than lovesick twentysomethings at a Manhattan penthouse cocktail party taking turns singing about regret and longing.

Up to a point, this show is precisely what you expect, presented with a good deal of talent. A lot of Boomers secretly dust off a Manilow album occasionally because he gloriously and unapologetically wraps himself in sentiment like a warm winter coat.

But what makes this far more satisfying than a cloned greatest-hits album, a la Billy Joel's Movin' Out, is the contribution of Waldman and music director Phil Hinton. Their re-arrangements deconstruct the songs, studiously and ingeniously avoiding the Top 40 sound.

Leah Springer in I WRITE THE SONGS - A Celebration of the Music of Barry Manilow
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For the treacly Can't Smile Without You, Waldman orders his singer to deliver the chart topper with an angry resentment that neutralizes the saccharine lyric. For Mandy, the performers only sing the verse, not the overly familiar chorus.

That gives the songs enough distance that we can evaluate them on their own merits. Thus, Waldman and Co. reveal Manilow's desire to create decade-defying standards, ripe with lush romanticism running rampant in a field of lyrical melody. Whether he achieves that aim should fuel some after-show debates.

The keyboards by Hinton and Jeff Hess are note-perfect. The choreography is serviceable, although the Girl Scout campfire movements accompanying Daybreak will induce cringing and two disco numbers revive nightmares best left buried. The only sour directorial note is that the cast serenades over the audience's heads to the back wall.

The cast may be younger than the songs, but most are blessed with lovely voices and ample charisma. Rachel Klein, Don Febbraio and Dean Swann wring every ounce of heartache from an all-too-steady diet of blue-tinged laments for lost loves. Leah Springer, a brunette Reese Witherspoon with a searchlight smile, scores with Let Me Be Your Wings. Sarah Wolter, terrific in three musicals for Broward Stage Door Theatre, is breathtaking in the torchy When Love Is Gone. But the show may be strongest when the ensemble sings the kaleidoscopic arrangements, notably a touching One Voice split among five.

Bill Hirschman can be reached at 954-356-4513 or bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com.

THEATER REVIEW

I Write the Songs

Revue, through Jan. 25 at Atlantis Playhouse, 5893 S. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach. Shows 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday; 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $26.50-$29. Call 561-304-3212.

PENSACOLA GARDEN STREET PLAYHOUSE (2007) - Independent News Feature Story

by Joani Delezen 

THE SOUNDS OF SIMON (a) hit touring musical set to open as debut performance at first professional regional theater on the Gulf Coast!

Nationally-known Director/Producer/Playwright/Composer & Stage Performer, GARY WALDMAN announced today that he, his longtime partner, JAMISON TROUTMAN and childhood best friend DAVID GERSON have signed a lease for a 4,000 square foot property on West Garden Street and that they are currently preparing to construct and open an off-Broadway style, professional theater in downtown Pensacola.

THE SOUNDS OF SIMON, the premiere production at this incredible new facility is set to open in just a few weeks, this coming January 30th.

 The theater will feature some of the best talent (performers and designers) from all over the World, from New York, California, Las Vegas, London and whomever is here on the Gulf Coast with the talent and experience to work on the professional stage.

THE SOUNDS OF SIMON 

at the Garden Street Playhouse, Pensacola (2008)

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SIMON stars KENNEY GREEN, returning from the original production of the show in Palm Beach and fresh from of-Broadway having just starred opposite Barry Williams (Greg BradyThe Brady Bunch) in Growing Up 70s. KENNEY is a performer in high-demand having worked with countless show business legends including Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, Harolyn Blackwell, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marvin Hamlisch and Gladys Knight.

Also featured in SOUNDS OF SIMON will be Producing Artistic Director, GARY WALDMAN who also conceived, starred in and directed the original production. Gary will, once again, take the helm as Director as well as featured performer.

Well-known off-Broadway and touring performer MICHAEL INDEGLIO is also flying in from New York to add to a cast that also features two Pensacola local professionals:

CAMILLE PETRILLO, a highly accomplished musical theater star in her own right with a degree in Musical Theater from Alabama State University joins the cast along with KATRINA WASHINGTON who has performed in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Kenya. KATRINA is also founder and President of Guiding Youth to Success and Pretty in Pink a local program designed to empower youth academically and economically.

Waldman, 42, in the biz since childhood and Troutman, 30, who partnered with him ten years ago, moved to the Gulf Coast from Palm Beach earlier this year to produce their touring musical, I Write the Songs at the I.P. Casino in Biloxi. Having recently closed their longtime theater operation in West  Palm Beach, they fell in love with Pensacola, moved into a waterfront home in the Perdido Key area, and have been scoping out commercial properties since late June. Their original plan was to open a very small studio theater in which they would mount new musicals to tour nationwide after debuting to pocket-sized audiences downtown.

In October, Waldman, by total coincidence, reunited with his childhood best friend, David Gerson, also 42, now an independent businessman and professional social worker in rural Pennsylvania. Gerson, long wishing to carry on the traditions of his family (his maternal grandfather was a well-known New York City entrepreneur and one of the last formidable producers of the now bygone Yiddish Theater, once an entertainment staple of Second Avenue on the Big Apples lower East Side).

So now the project got a bit bigger. With the Saenger Theater closed for at least two seasons, Waldman and Troutman obviously recognized the dearth of professional live entertainment in the Panhandle areaand the Gulf Coast in general and have partnered with Gerson to open an actual, open to the public performance space. The tintimate space on West Garden  Street will feature 125 best seats in the house! Tickets are currently on sale for a mini-season Waldman has planned for the coming winter and spring.

Were opening with The Sounds of Simon, says Waldman of a musical he created three years ago with longtime musical collaborator Philip Hinton of Fort Lauderdale. We did a workshop production at our old theater in West  Palm Beach and it was one of the best things we ever did. Ive been waiting for an excuse to put up a fully developed production ever since. Waldman will also play one of the characters himself and direct the production based on the music of Paul Simon and the recordings of Simon & Garfunkel.

Following Simon will be The Last Session, a meaty off-Broadway and Los Angeles musical-comedy-dramatic hit that garnered almost every award imaginable in its big city runs yet has rarely been performed on the regional circuit.

Closing out the season will be the show that took Waldman and Troutman to the Gulf Coast in the first place, I Write the Songs. The show began as a musical tribute to master balladeer, Barry Manilow, but when originally produced by the team in 2003 at their theater in West Palm Beach, the show became such a phenomenon that Waldman developed it into a full-fledged rock opera and has been producing the show in city after city ever since.

Were actually putting it last in the season because we know it will probably extend through the entire summer! adds Waldman.

Also housed at 1625 Garden Street  West will be the new offices of Sandy Gee III Productions, Inc., Waldman, Troutman and Gersons new touring production company. Since the space will offer a full, state-of-the-art production facility for the off-Broadway style musicals the company produces, Pensacola may well be the original home of some of the futures HOTTEST SHOWS IN NEW YORK!    

WHAT:  THE SOUNDS OF SIMON  to open The Garden Street Playhouse
WHERE:  1625 Garden Street West (between I & J Streets), Pensacola, FL  32501
WHEN: The Sounds of Simon & playhouse Grand Opening, January 30th
CONTACT: GARY WALDMAN/JAMISON TROUTMAN, 850-438-9399
www.gardenstreetplayhouse.com

Gary Waldman & Jamison Troutman (Fort Myers 2010) FLORIDA WEEKLY COVER ARTICLE

A New Performing Arts Hall Takes the Stage

Edison 8 movie theater becoming Victory Center for the Performing Arts

BY NANCY STETSON nstetson@floridaweekly.com

THE SOUNDS OF SIMON

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Gary Waldman has high hopes. He and his partner, Jamison Troutman, are opening a performing arts theater in Fort Myers.

They’ve taken over the Edison Park 8 Cinemas movie complex located across the street from the Edison Mall. The multi-plex has been shuttered for four years. After renovating, they plan to open in July, then start their 2010-2011 season in late September.

He knows it’s a tough time for arts organizations. And on the east coast, he says, actors with talent left the state, because there isn’t any work for them.

But theater’s in his blood.

Besides, he believes he can fill a niche in the Fort Myers area that no one else is. For example, he’s not planning on putting on yet another production of “Nunsense” or “Footloose.”

“We looked at the big guys in town we have to compete with, those who are big size-wise or reputation-wise,” he says, naming the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre and the Florida Repertory Theatre.

“What we do is right in-between…not at any of those three venues.”

The Mann Hall brings in touring Broadway shows and one-night concerts, he says. “And the Florida Rep is more artistic. It’s a nonprofit. They sell out like crazy. They do very well, so they can be riskier. They do more plays than musicals. The Broadway Palm? It’s not what we do. You’ll never see ‘The King and I’ here,” he says, referring to the musical currently playing there that closes April 10. “You’ll see things you haven’t seen before: a lot of original work, all musicals.”

“Shenandoah” and Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion” are two of the shows planned for next season. And he’ll open in July with “I Write the Songs,” which he calls “A Celebration of the Music of Barry Manilow.” It’ll preview July 7-9, and open on July 10. And later in the season, a year from now, the theater will present another show Mr. Waldman conceived: “The Sounds of Simon,” featuring the music of Paul Simon.

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For the thousands of patrons who he hopes come to see the shows, he has a pledge.

“I promise that if they come here, they’re going to have fun,” Mr. Waldman says. “I swear I’ll never bore them and that they’ll not see something they’ve seen 55,000 times before. Always be prepared to see something you might never have seen before.

“That’s what I like to do,” he says.

But right now, he’s standing in the lobby of the garishly decorated Edison movie theater. The concession stand has been torn out to make room for a bar. The old carpeting is still down — it’s Barney the Dinosaur purple, with oversized yellow and blue stars.

The walls, too, have all the subtlety of a clown outfit: bright purples, glowing greens, flamingo pinks and overly sunny yellows.

“It’s like a pre-school,” Mr. Waldman says, looking around. “We have to tone this town. We’ll paint it one color, with an accent. We’re bringing in top-quality management from New York who’ll turn this into nightclub chic.”

Although Victory Center for the Performing Arts isn’t a dinner theater, he also plans to open a restaurant, though it hasn’t yet been determined whether it will be within the theater itself, or in the Cachet Bar and Grille next door.

The large movie theater in the rear, where he plans to put the main stage, will seat approximately 350 people. Then, for the following season, he plans to knock down the wall between the two main theaters to create one larger space that will seat anywhere from 650 to 800 people.

He also wants to turn one of the smaller, 150-seat theaters into a bridal chapel. (It has a center aisle, he points out.) He plans to keep the red cloth movie seats with gray plastic trim. He envisions it as a multi-purpose space, being used for meetings, as well as chamber music and a jazz series.

“Real jazz, not jazz lite,” he clarifies. “I’m a jazz nut. I love jazz vocals, especially. I want it to be like the Village Vanguard in New York, which was a breeding ground for talent.”

Musicians played there, then would later get booked at The Blue Note and make more money, he notes.
“I want to create things,” he says, noting that he was a concert promoter before he was a theater director. Perhaps he’ll start a chamber group from scratch, or a jazz society, he says. Maybe both.

He and Mr. Troutman looked at various small multi-plexes around the country. They were interested in one in Charlotte, N.C., but when that fell through, they concentrated on South Florida. They were looking in Orlando, but decided to come to Fort Myers. The Edison 8 theater was bigger and “had more promise,” he says. “We were able to do more here.”

Also, “competition is much lower on this side of the state. Business is cutthroat on the east side. The entertainment business there was extremely clique-ish. We’re in business to work hard. We work night and day. We didn’t want to become part of the clique. Every theater left and right were leaving the business, actors were leaving the area.”

They decided to leave too.

Mr. Troutman handles the business end of things, while Mr. Waldman is the artistic director.
“I perform, produce, direct,” he says. “I usually have more than one role.”

For example, he conceived the Barry Manilow and Paul Simon shows.

They’re not revues, he says.

“What I did, I put together what is legally considered a nightclub act,” he says. “There’s no speaking. It resembles (a revue) very much, but it’s not. I arranged the songs (so they’re) presented in a whole new way. I took the songs apart and put them back together in new ways. I made fast songs slow and slow songs fast.”
For example, he says, the music for “I Can’t Smile Without You” doesn’t match up with the lyrics.

“If you listen to the words, it’s an angry ballad,” he says. So he gave it a stronger arrangement to express the anger.

The show, he says, takes place in a penthouse setting and is “very martini smooth — all gowns, tuxedos. There’s no storyline at all. I make the cast comment with what they’re singing, and there’s a beginning, middle and end, somehow.”

As for his “Sounds of Simon” Paul Simon show, “it takes place in a park where everybody is a bum…

There’s not a style (of music) he hasn’t touched upon. I’ve totally reinterpreted his music. I break them up and make them production numbers with multiple persons singing them.”

But before he can start hiring actors and running rehearsals, he has to renovate the building.

“It’s four months to opening,” he says. He has to put in lights, a sound system, a stage, and make the space more acoustically friendly. But he figures the first major hurdle’s already been jumped.

“It’s already a theater,” he says. 

THE LAST SESSION (2005) - Palm Beach Post Review

MUSICAL 'SESSION' NOT PERFECT, BUT FULL OF POIGNANCY

Palm Beach Post, May 20, 2005 | by HAP ERSTEIN Palm Beach Post Theater Writer

You could see the life-or-death decision facing singer- songwriter Gideon in the musical drama The Last Session as a metaphor for any dire crisis we each must come to grips with. But for composer-lyricist Steve Schalchlin, Gideon's real life alter ego, it is barely fictionalized autobiography, how he weighed the imminent physical ravages from AIDS and became determined to commit suicide.

Gary Waldman stars in THE LAST SESSION Click HERE for video

Prospective audience members who believe that musicals should be about nothing weightier than who gets to take Miss Laurie to the Oklahoma church social have probably already turned the page.

The rest of you should head to the Hollywood Playhouse, where Gary Waldman and his newly created Florida Musicals, Inc. - a spin- off of his quickly closed-down Atlantis Playhouse - has produced another emotionally potent ride, far removed from his original mission of for-profit, entertainment-only theater.

The Last Session, which first surfaced off-Broadway in the late '90s and has slowly been building a national reputation in small regional theaters, is hardly a perfect musical. Schalchlin's score varies from songs of honest, earned anger to mawkish tunes with lyrics that would be at home inside a greeting card. Jim Brochu's script clearly wants to be comic relief from the dark-toned musical numbers, but the strain for laughs is all too evident.

Still, when it works, which is often, its impact is as moving as any area show in several seasons.

The show's premise is contrived, but just go along with it. Long HIV-positive and starting to experience some of the misery that lies ahead for him, Gideon (Waldman, in a touching, well-sung performance) decides to record an album of songs about his life for his longtime companion, the unseen Jack, then kill himself the next evening.

He confides his plan to sound engineer Jim (Jamison Troutman), but not to his ex-wife Vicki (Jeanne Lynn Gray) or friend Tryshia (Lyrehc Jordan), both of whom he hires to be back-up singers on the disc.

Even more of a credibility stretcher is the unexpected arrival at the studio of Buddy, who happens to idolize Gideon until he learns the once-popular troubadour is gay. You see, Buddy is a devout - devoutly bigoted - Christian, a straw dog for Brochu's message machine, who will gain a worthy lesson in tolerance, though his enlightenment seems overly contrived.

Go instead for Schalchlin's songs - driving, insistent compositions with punchy lyrics, in a variety of genres from pop to jazz to gospel to light rock. The Group is a sobering description of a gathering of AIDS therapy patients, Friendly Fire bitterly sings of the hazards of AIDS drugs, which can be as devastating as the disease, and Connected is a forceful ballad of interdependence that Waldman delivers with authority.

Most of his supporting cast comes from the Atlantis production of The Life and they again impress with their impassioned vocals. Waldman takes them over-the-top in their dialogue scenes, where a more understated approach would have been more effective, but theatergoers open to the show's viewpoint are likely to find the experience affecting.

How ironic that Waldman, who used to take pride in valuing commerce over art in the theater, has now produced two shows - The Life and The Last Session - that no other company in South Florida is adventurous enough to touch, and done so with such artful poignancy.

hap_erstein@pbpost.com

REVIEW

The Last Session

B+

Where: Florida Musicals, Inc. at the Hollywood Playhouse, 2640 Washington St., Hollywood.

When: Through June 19.

Tickets: $27.50-$30. Call: (954) 426-2040 or (800) 655-1773.

The verdict: An emotionally potent, musically moving look at a singer-songwriter with AIDS, weighing his options.

Copyright 2005

THE SOUNDS OF SIMON (2005) Broward-Palm Beach New Times

Stagebeat

Capsule reviews of current area stage shows.

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By Rachel Galvin Thursday, Jan 27 2005

The Sounds of Simon cast light on master songsmith Paul Simon's poignant words. Five players on a darkened stage make Simon's music come alive through a mix of defiance and stillness. Songs like "I Am a Rock," "Hazy Shade of Winter," and "American Tune" show frustration at the world's condition. "You Can Call Me Al," "Loves Me Like a Rock," and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" are lighthearted; the cast joins in loosely structured choreography with do-si-dos and Latino grooves. But the silent moments are brilliant. Pieces of "The Sound of Silence" are appropriately sung throughout, begging the audience to ponder. Eeriness encompasses the set; gentle fog rolls over sloped hills on an Astroturfed stage. A few benches sit solemnly like gravestones, and a chainlink fence serves as a barrier to a painted sky. This is holy ground, and the performers sing like angels. Abby Lynn Pantalone's operatic melodies and fearful eyes show torment as she portrays a drugged-out hippie in a sunflower dress withdrawing drug paraphernalia from a small, clasped purse -- a mixture of optimism and hopelessness. Don Febbraio, a soldier in camouflage, holds each note tenderly while reflecting fear, regret, and loss of innocence. He lovingly croons "Still Crazy After All These Years" and gives new meaning to "Scarborough Faire" as a woundedVietnam veteran. Gary Waldman's suit and tie would be powerful, but his lost, unblinking eyes show despair. His best moment is during "The Boxer," when anguish overcomes him. But Kenney Green conquers the show. Obviously a trained dancer, Green's passionate performance escalates into the spine-tingling final number, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." (Through February 20 at Atlantis Playhouse, 5893 S. Congress Ave., Atlantis, 561-304-3212.) Now Showing