“Crazy for Gershwin” is a homegrown production; the salute to the incomparable songwriting brothers was conceived by the Winter Park Playhouse’s Roy Alan, Christopher Leavy and Todd Allen Long.

So maybe that’s why everything about the show just feels so right for the Playhouse. “Crazy for Gershwin” is the kind of zippy little revue the Playhouse can do so well — and this time does exceptionally well.

No characters, no story line, just two hours of musical bliss with interesting information and some of the best songs ever written.

 

Without defined roles to inhabit, the performers have to channel their own personalities through the music, and director Alan has found a crackerjack cast to do just that.

The show also seems written to be performer-friendly. Often in revues such as this, each actor has a moment to shine. But here, the performers have moment after moment after moment to win over the audience. They’re helped, of course, by Ira Gershwin’s clever and funnier than you may remember lyrics, as well as George’s catchy melodies.

But, most impressively, these performers excel not only musically but at comedy, with even a bit of heartstring-tugging thrown in.

 

No one exemplifies that versatility better than Anastasia Remoundos, who turns a performance of “But Not for Me” into a full-blown tragic tale before our eyes. But she’s also adept at the frisky comic numbers, as she proves in a sprightly “I Don’t Think I’ll Fall in Love Today,” alongside Russell Stephens — no slouch in the comedy or vocal department himself.

Johnathan Lee Iverson turns on the comic charm in a kicky “I Got Rhythm,” but he and Caila Carter really shine in two songs from “Porgy and Bess.” Iverson fills “It Ain’t Necessarily So” with a wink-wink bonhomie, while Carter provides a sultry “Summertime,” with a percolating Latin beat coming from music director Leavy and his ensemble.

The final two cast members contribute their own brand of magic: Tay Anderson doesn’t hold back as she clowns around while bemoaning “Vodka” or turns “Embraceable You” into a silly seduction. And Adam T. Biner, so good as a comic goofball in the Playhouse’s recent “Five Course Love,” is a scene stealer here as … well, a comic goofball. But a comic goofball who taps!

 

Alan not only gets the pacing and ratio of humor to serious musicianship right throughout the show, his choreography adds a whole new dimension to the fun. Yes, it’s old-fashioned song-and-dance. Yes, it’s glorious.

The other theatrical elements do their part — Monica Titus’s costumes are a patchwork of color and pattern that joyously work together, CJ Sikorski’s musical-motif scenic design is simple and effective. But it’s the music at the heart of all this — with Leavy’s delightfully surprising arrangements — that’s the true star of the show.

‘Crazy for Gershwin’

• Length: 2:05, including intermission
• COVID-19 info: Mandatory masks for audience, performers wear clear acrylic masks
• Where: Winter Park Playhouse, 711 N. Orange Ave. in Winter Park
• When: Through Aug. 22
• Cost: $36-$45 (student, military, entertainment-industry professional discounts)
• Info: winterparkplayhouse.org

Find me on Twitter @matt_on_arts, facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Want more theater and arts news and reviews? Go to orlandosentinel.com/arts.

Matthew J. Palm

Orlando Sentinel

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Matthew J. Palm has watched hundreds of plays, ballets, symphony concerts, operas and other staged shows since first seeing “Les Miserables” as a teenager in Upstate New York. A graduate of Syracuse University, he is the Orlando Sentinel’s arts writer and theater critic.

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Evidently, this poor lizard wasn’t so lucky. As I looked at it, it occurred to me: “this is exactly how fear plays out.” If you’ve ever seen a dead lizard, it is completely devoid of life. It literally dries up and appears to be frozen in time. It’s quite fascinating and sad, as one is not immediately sure if it is actually dead. It simply looks still, as they usually don’t expire limp bodied as other living things do when they die.

Who would have thought the simple act of preparing for my day would yield me a lesson from a dead lizard ? An invaluable one at that! This is how fear plays out. Somewhere in that lizard’s venture into our home it became convinced that it was trapped or limited. The thought of escape or something more likely became an after thought or even impossible. I can imagine every thump and bump or the very sight of we large humans was “evidence” that its peril was assured and thus, it would be best to be still and quiet and simply survive.

That lizard mirrors the lives of so many us. Gripped by fear and seduced by circumstance, we find ourselves in a cycle of survival where we only appear to be alive. Day after day whatever aspirations we might have had or worse, whatever dreams we’ve never had the privilege to know of are driven farther and farther away from our consciousness, all in the name of fear, until one day, much like that lizard we simply appear to be alive, but are in fact mere shells of what might have been.

Fear’s magic is deception its power is our belief. Unlike the lizard, we two legged mammals do have a choice. The process of nature essentially determined that lizard’s lot. The survival instinct is programmed into a lizard. It isn’t designed to imagine life beyond the basic tenets of its own survival. Its only purpose is to stay alive. Yet, we know better. We who bear the image of a boundless Creator are not at all bound to such laws. Instinctually, we know, no matter our origins or circumstances, that we are capable of far more than simply staying alive or surviving. Sadly, like that lizard far too many of us forget. Far too many of us are taken in by fear. In fact, fear’s most prolific apostles are in our own home. Often times with the best of intentions, they pilfer fear’s gospel from one generation to the next. It becomes the way we think. It becomes the way we speak and sadly, it becomes the pattern in which we live our lives, until we merely exist.

Had that lizard dared to peek out from where it believed it would find safety, it would have realized, like so many other lizards before it, that those very large humans had no ill intent, whatsoever. That lizard would have been safely returned to be among its own scurrying about the limitless outdoors. But, alas fear is the ultimate seductress and our belief in it is what gives it dominion over so much of our lives, particularly our imaginations – leaving us stuck, stifled, limited, and lifeless.

We are not reptiles. We are made of far greater stuff. Our instincts aren’t set. In no way are we slaves to impulse or the whims of nature. We are endowed with the intelligence, power, and imagination to set our own limitless course. Fear’s only power over us is our consent. We are not meant to simply survive, but to truly be alive! 

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