Straight Outta Florida Throwing Shade on the Sunshine State at Norris Center Theatre

It’s Not the Heat…It’s the Hilarity!

Compton & Bennett are proud to announce the debut of their latest comedy hit, Straight Outta Florida: Throwin’ Shade on The Sunshine State.

Compton & Bennett are the authors of Assisted Living: The Musical®, the long-running national touring musical comedy.

Straight Outta Florida opens January 13, 2026 at The Norris Center Theatre and runs every other Tuesday through April.

Straight Outta Florida is a 90-minute, song-and-sketch comedy romp. Betsy Bennett and Rick Compton play six characters. While the nation sees outrageous headlines that barely scratch Florida’s sunburnt surface, these characters take their audiences on a deep dive into Florida’s Sea of Surreal.

C&B have delighted sold-out national audiences for years with social satire. Straight Outta Florida features some of their most loved characters. There is Earlene, a fifth generation Florida Cracker. She was the title character in A Cracker at The Ritz, the longest running show in Southwest Florida.

In Straight Outta Florida, Earlene and her piano playing sidekick Gazpacho (“He’s cooler than soup!”) check in on Florida’s checkered past. Look inside the swamp land scams where the Noah’s Ark Special gets two lots for the price of one. Watch the catch-of-the-day square grouper earn a trip to the pokey. And laugh a lament when “Snow Bird Come, and He Won’t Go Home”.

Florida’s own John Morgan -“…for the Morgans”- has chased ambulances into all 50 states. In Straight Outta Florida, he shows his class…by bringing lawsuits into the theatre.

Retirees Ben Younger and Naomi Lipshitz-Yamamoto-Murphy have set up shop in Florida. Fans remember them from C&B’s hit show Assisted Living; The Musical®. These days Naomi loves to hate on the state she’s grown to love. Ben, a retired Catskills comic, delivers one-liners and plays ragtime piano. Naomi outwits an HOA. They one-up each other with absurdities from Florida flea markets.

The show is bookended by Betsy and Rick as their somewhat normal characters as Betsy offers a list of PG-appropriate obscenities that help her get through Florida traffic. They cap it all off with the jaunty earworm “The Alligator Alcatraz Rag”.

Tickets are available at www.eventbrite.com or call The Norris Center at 239-213-3049

www.StraightOuttaFlorida.com for more information.