A Break From Luck

Bad things happen to the Promethean Theatre, the resident theater company of Nova Southeastern University. It’s an awesome company, no question — headed by the brave and foxy Deborah Sherman, it has done soul-searing work on budgets so small they are literally invisible to the unaided eye — but in the last two years, every success rightfully enjoyed by Promethean has been accompanied by inexplicable cataclysm. First, there was the nightmarish “update” of Cyrano, which was bad enough to make you wish Edmond Rostand had been snatched from the cradle by small, French wolverines. Then there was the amazing world premier of Still The River Runs, by Barton Bishop, which was seen by, like, two people. Then, having snagged their biggest script in seasons — Kimberly Akimbo, by David Lindsay-Abaire — they found themselves unable to follow through when the appropriate cast proved unavailable. They recovered gracefully, scheduling in its place David Mamet’s Speed The Plow (which you’ll remember starred Madonna in its original smash Broadway run), only to learn that the play had already been secured by another South Florida theater. Very late, they scored a not-very-famous script called Dumb Show, by Joe Penhall: an examination of tabloid journalism, stardom, and privacy. Yet, despite coming as the result of SNAFUs piling atop SNAFUs, I suspect Dumb Show will go well. Promethean had great success with a previous Penhall script several years ago (Blue/Orange), and Dumb Show shall star the most recent winner of the Carbonell Award for Best Actor, the incomparable Gregg Weiner, who’s so good that just being in the same theater with the guy makes me giggle like a 12-year-old girl getting a foot rub from Zac Efron. Seriously.

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• Joe Penhall
• Nova Southeastern University
• Zac Efron
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Movie Stars

Dumb Show runs May 15 through 31 at the Mailman Theatre, 3301 College Ave. in Davie. Tickets cost $10 to $25. Call 866-811-4111, or visit prometheantheatre.org.
Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: May 15. Continues through May 31, 2009