Albert Gutierrez

This new approach to the storytelling of Hadestown helped make me appreciate some of the compromises on the tour. And to further appreciate what they still maintained from the first tour and Broadway production. The set’s slightly modified (Hades’ door is more centered, for one), but we get to keep the band onstage. We get that dingy café feeling through the layout. We hold on to the iconic props – the rose, the candle, the guitar, the lamps – as well as the steampunk design of the costumes. The Workers are still a core five that inhabit both worlds and create their own, unspoken storylines through their movement and couplings. And the characters themselves are still the same, timeless figures that make Hadestown always feel like a new experience every time.

The 2024 production earned seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, which I feel is an earned acknowledgment that speaks more to the craftsmanship, the ambition, and the emotional journey present in the show. The stage production’s direction, choreography, puppetry design, and ensemble synergy create moments of theatrical awe that are impossible to deny. What the songs lack in dramatic momentum, the production more than makes up for in its combination of narrative intimacy with large-scale visual storytelling.

The benefit of a stage production means it will always be malleable to change, always willing to look at how a story written in the past can still be relevant in the present, and remain timeless for the future. What follows in this new production of The Wiz is a recontextualization of our favorite characters. While the structure of the story is faithful to the Baum novel and MGM film, it comes with small, but noticeable details that reframe this familiar story not just as a fantastical quest, but as a bildungsroman and revenge tale at the same time.

Drag culture in La Cage aux Folles isn’t just the “bold face” of the gay community; it’s a celebration of visibility itself, a way of inviting even those on the periphery to understand more deeply what it means to live authentically, unbothered, and unashamed.

At its heart, Sister Act: The Musical is a celebration of sisterhood and the unexpected bonds formed in the most unlikely places. While Deloris Van Cartier begins her journey chasing fame, her time with the nuns reveals a deeper calling: not spiritual in the traditional sense, but rooted in connection, community, and self-worth.

For anyone who’s seen Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a lot of the familiar story beats remain here. However, this local production by Encore Performing Arts takes a unique approach to their mounting of this stage musical.

One would think a musical all about corn would be a one-trick pony with the same tired joke made again and again. Corny jokes about corny people in a corny town. That’s exactly what SHUCKED wants the audience to expect. The very first song, aptly titled “Corn,” extols the virtues of the vegetable, the expected jokes about how it can be used for anything and everything, and how this little town in the middle of nowhere relies so heavily on it that it literally becomes their entire identity. However, hidden within this opening number also lies the subversive nature of the musical itself. This is not just a celebration for all things corn. Rather, it’s a commentary on how small towns in this country suffer from preconceived notions of backwards values, of tradition over innovation, and of hyper-conservative rural voters who nowhere near as bright as a high noon sun on a summer day.

Life's greatest tragedy is the passage of time. It is a lesson we all must learn eventually. Within the proverbial circle of life, there is only a beginning and an end that occurs in the immediacy of our own lifetime. Yet, the cyclical nature of birth, death, and rebirth ensures that our spirit will carry on in legacy rather than in flesh. If we are loved, then we are remembered. And if we are remembered, then we live forever. Disney’s The Lion King transposes this message from screen to stage through an international collaboration of talent that supercedes the strength of the 1994 animated film from which it came.

When SOME LIKE IT HOT began on Broadway, it was celebrated for updating a classic film to modern audiences in ways and themes not readily apparent from the original source material. After having played a successful year-long run on Broadway, the show concluded on December 30, 2023. Nine long months later, it finally mounted a national tour within the greater United States. And now, for a spectacular pre-Christmas week, Central Florida gets to bear witness to the storied spectacle as Broadway visitors did. Much of what’s been seen on Broadway has been lovingly transferred to this touring production, making it a show not to be missed.

At the height of its fame, the musical Les Misérables was the Dorsia of Broadway, a hot-ticket event that reached Hamilton levels of excessive prices, elite A-list attendees, and legions of fans who’d revisit the show through repeat viewings, memorization of the cast recording, and fierce debates of West End vs. Broadway performers.

Encore! Performing Arts’ production of HELLO, DOLLY! leans heavily into the relentless optimism and good time that’s made the musical a classic. They’ve crafted together a show which takes advantage of every aspect of its production, from the costumes to the orchestrations to the simple power of a Look from the lead.

Encore Performing Arts has a long and varied history of selecting projects for their appeal to the audience, both within the immediacy of the moment, as well as in the endurance it will hold in the memory for years to come.

A record 16 of the 17 credited cast members are transplants from the Broadway run, including an astounding 97% of its behind-the-curtain crew. In essence, we are getting the bona fide Broadway show, from its stars to its set decorators, here in the heart of Florida. I cannot fathom a better way for local audiences to experience INTO THE WOODS.

“I haven’t laughed so much in my life,” the audience member me behind remarked as curtains drew to a close. A fellow patron to my right turned around and declared, “Neither have I!” The two instantly bonded over how much they loved SORDID LIVES, a self-proclaimed “black comedy about white trash” - the latest production from Encore! Performing Arts.

Unlike the traditional figures in Greek mythology, Orpheus is a hero, but not a warrior. He's an artist, but not a celebrity. He's a man, just a man, and one whose entire literary journey is focused on the love of a woman. Compared to Perseus or Achilles or Jason, Orpheus's tale almost always depicts how love drives him.

Much in the same way most students know about the Salem Witch Trials through the dramatization found in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, it’s safe to assume virtually every student of U.S. history from 2015 onward may better know the intimate details of this Founding Father through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s HAMILTON.

Although it’s been romanticized and idealized in sitcoms like “Friends,” the wilderness years of the modern twentysomething has been most accurately captured in Jonathan Larson’s seminal work RENT. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1996 and subsequently became a phenomenon that’s influenced virtually every musical to follow in its wake.

As a concert, SIX maintains the momentum and energy for its audience with a consistently good set list of songs, the brazzle-dazzle of lights on the stage, and playful choreography that add up to an exciting ninety minutes of sheer, unadulterated fun.

Director Joseph Walsh has mounted this production fifteen years previously in the UK and Ireland, but he's brought a new production to Central Florida during a year that has been, to say the least, a difficult challenge for both the LGBTQ+ and local theatre communities.