'Fly' at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
Perhaps this weekend you want to take a last-chance trip down Memory Lane. You have that option as the Showboat Majestic is wrapping up its production of Showboat Follies, the final show that Cincinnati Landmark Productions will stage on the historic vessel. It's a revue of songs and skits that should be fun if not profound, but if you go (final performance is Sunday), you'll be able to tell you foriends that you were among the last to visit this nostalgic Cincinnati venue. (Unless the City of Cincinnati finds another operator — which they've been seeking with no success.) Tickets: 513-241-6550.
This weekend also offers the final performances of Oliver Twist at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. It's a tale of crime and child abuse from the Victorian era, and not terribly chipper — think A Christmas Carol without any holiday spirits. But as always with Cincy Shakes, there's some fine acting — and they've added some musical elements that keep things interest, too. Through Sunday. Tickets: 513-381-2273, x1.
The most engaging theater onstage right now (and sticking around until Oct. 4) is Fly at the Cincinnati Playhouse. It's a creative portrait of four aspiring African Americans striving to be Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. The challenges they faced — prejudice, rigorous training and life-threatening aerial combat — not only made them pioneers who addressed civil rights issues decades before the rest of America, it made them heroes, too. Making this production all the more interesting is a modern tap dancer who "underscores" many of the scenes with movement and rhythm. I suspect you've never seen anything quite like this. Tickets: 513-241-3888.
If you're a movie fan I suspect you've seen Carrie (based on Stephen King's novel about a bullied girl who unleashed her telekinetic powers) and Ghost (about a guy who's murdered but comes back with the help of a crazy psychic to save the lover he's lost). They've both been turned into unmemorable musicals that are onstage locally for you to see. I've seen them both, and I'm sorry to say that — despite some fine voices (in Carrie at the Carnegie, presented by Showbiz Players) and a lot of video and special effects (a touring production of Ghost at the Aronoff Center) — I believe you might be better off to pull out your DVD of either film to watch.
I haven't seen it, but I'm intrigued by Northern Kentucky University's production of Moby Dick Rehearsed. Herman Melville's great American novel is brought to life onstage when a company of Shakespearean actors stop rehearsing King Lear and consider a new play drawn from the tale of the Great White Whale. Theater elements become aspects of the Pequod as the crew is lashed along in Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for the beast that took his leg. Through Oct. 6. Tickets: 859-572-5464.
