Florida Studio Theatre Kicks Off Summer Season with The Fabulous Lipitones
The cast of FST's The Fabulous Lipitones.
Florida Studio Theatre kicks off its mainstage summer season June 1 with The Fabulous Lipitones, a show The New York Times has described as “barbershop goes Bollywood.”
Written by Mark St. Germain and John Markus (former head writer of The Cosby Show), this comedy with songs focuses on a barbershop quartet suddenly faced with the loss of their fourth member. During the audition for a replacement, “Bob” sounds great over the phone…but when they all meet in person, he’s not quite what the other members expected. FST producing artistic director Richard Hopkins says the play is “about accepting ‘the other’”—but in a light-hearted way that makes the message easy to take.
Levin Valayil and D.C. Anderson. Photo by Matthew Holler
The Fabulous Lipitones runs through June 19 in FST’s Gompertz Theatre.
It will be followed this summer by playwright Jen Silverman’s The Roommate, onstage at FST’s Keating Theatre from July 6 to Aug. 7. This one is centered on a middle-aged Iowa woman looking for a “sensible” roommate who finds herself mismatched when she meets Robyn from Brooklyn. Hopkins describes it as “the odd couple meets Pulp Fiction, without all the violence.”
Closing out the summer mainstage season in the Gomperzt is the return of James Sherman’s The God of Isaac, which played here a number of seasons ago. It’s 1977 and a neo-Nazi group wants to stage a demonstration in the Jewish community of Skokie, Ill. (You may recall the real controversy from the news of the time). Second-generation American Jew Isaac finds himself asking questions about what his heritage means to him in light of the action. Onstage Aug. 3-21, The God of Isaac has been called “hilarious, shrewd and touching” by the Chicago Sun-Times.
FST also continues to entertain during the long hot summer with a cabaret season in the John C. Court Cabaret. Come Fly With Me! The Sammy Cahn Songbook, opens the season from June 14 to July 17; also on the schedule are the interactive sleight-of-hand show The CardShark, starring illusionist Jason Michaels (July 19-Aug. 21) and The GiGis, presenting a trio of female singers delivering hits from the likes of The Supremes, Carole King and Meghan Trainor. That’s onstage at the Court Aug. 23-Sept. 15.
For ticket info about all the shows, call (941) 366-9000 or go to floridastudiotheatre.org.
