Prolific South Florida playwright’s ‘American Rhapsody’ gets world premiere at Zoetic Stage
Since writing his firstproduced play, 1996’s “That Sound You Hear,” Michael McKeever has become a writer with a notably eclectic range and a prodigious drive.
In those 27 years, the South Florida playwright has written 35 full-length comedies and dramas that have been produced throughout the region, the country (Off-Broadway included), and in other countries. His subjects have included hate crimes, a hurricane, bullying, Hollywood secrets, artists, gay marriage, grief, hoarding, diverse Miami – well, you get the idea.
This week, McKeever is preparing to debut his 36th full-length. “American Rhapsody” was written for Sarasota’s Florida Studio Theatre as a commission during the pandemic, but it will get its world premiere Thursday, Jan. 12 through Sunday, Jan. 29 at Zoetic Stage, a company of which he is a co-founder, and will be staged by artistic director Stuart Meltzer. The play previews Thursday, Jan. 12 and opens Friday, Jan. 13 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center.
“American Rhapsody” – the “rhapsody” refers to an epic poem, not to a piece of music – is a play that weds the personal to impactful events and societal shifts.
It begins in 1969, as the Cabot family of Lawrence, Kansas, huddles around their television set to watch grainy video of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon. It ends in 2032, in a country forever evolving, an America and an extended family vastly changed.
“Sixty years is a lot of play,” says McKeever, who sports a T-shirt that reads “Write On” during a Zoom interview. “Stuart is keeping everything beautifully clear, so active and moving… Few people know my work better than Stuart; he knows my writing. He’s enormously insightful.”
That Meltzer connects so thoroughly with McKeever’s work is no surprise. Winners of multiple Carbonell Awards, Meltzer is also one of Zoetic’s five co-founders (Christopher Demos-Brown, Stephanie Demos-Brown and Kerry C. Shiller are the others). Meltzer and McKeever have worked together on multiple Zoetic shows, including the company’s first, “South Beach Babylon,” in 2010 and written by McKeever. Together for two decades and married since 2017, the artists’ lives are creatively and personally enmeshed; it was during a cross-country driving vacation with Meltzer that
McKeever hit on Kansas and its utter flatness as the location for “American Rhapsody.”
McKeever acknowledges the autobiographical underpinnings of his new play, though focal character Franky Cabot is a poet, not a playwright. Meltzer says that initially, the play was intended to be “a reexamination of the beaten-up American dream from a family’s perspective.”
As the script has evolved, the director says, “we’ve figured out a way to connect the milestones in one man’s life with the art of creation. You get family, events and the art of writing, all in one play.”
McKeever includes four
This cast, she believes, “is in tune with Nilo. It’s a magical connection with his text.”
Salgado, a 2019 New World School of the Arts grad who made his professional debut as the Creature in Zoetic Stage’s 2021 production of “Frankenstein,” has become one of the region’s most in-demand actors. He’s far younger than most who have played the lector (Jimmy Smits, now 67, starred as Juan Julian in the 2003 Broadway production), but Cruz believes Salgado has all the qualities needed for the part – plus an undeniable chemistry with Guillen’s Conchita.
“Gabriell is a very, very elegant actor. He has a sense of the language, a lyricism, and a sensuality. He is the quintessential gallant man – un galán,” says Cruz, who sees fire onstage between Salgado and Guillen. “He’s timeless. He is a theater creature with all the tools to deliver on his promise. I don’t see the age. I see a brilliant man, gifted in the same way Mozart was when he was composing at an early age. That intelligence has no age.”
Salgado acknowledges that chemistry with Guillen and believes she embodies the qualities in Cruz’s writing. At first, he found the playwright’s style to be “the most unique writing I’ve ever encountered. It’s the most poetic, and its spiritual component and magical realism excite me.”
Working with the author as director is also a new generations of Cabots: patriarch Franklin “Papa Frank” Cabot (Steve Trovillion), a distinguished jurist; his son “Big Frank” (Aloysius Gigl) and daughter-in-law Eleanor (Laura Turnbull); the couple’s offspring Jenny (Lindsey Corey) and Franky (Alex Weisman); and Jenny’s daughter Maddie (Stephanie Vazquez). Jenny’s husband Albert Bernal (Carlos Alayeto), family friend Nat Morris (Lela Elam) and six other characters also figure into the sweeping yet intimate story.
Weisman, who grew up in Davie and began acting in South Florida as a child, became an in-demand experience.
“He has such a confidence and a fluidity. He’s in his territory, on his playground. He’s such an incredible person, so kind, fascinating and extremely generous,” Salgado says.
Santiago, who grew up in Homestead and graduated from the University of Miami, and Miamian Falcon play the older generation in “Anna in the Tropics.” Both have a host of theater, television, and film credits; Santiago is arguably the best-known actor in the Miami New Drama cast by virtue of her role as detective Gina Calabrese on “Miami Vice” from 1984 to 1990.
“‘Anna in the Tropics’ was on Broadway at the same time I was doing ‘Nine’ with Antonio Banderas,” Santiago recalls. “I went to see Daphne Rubin-Vega (the original Mimi in ‘Rent’), who was playing Conchita, and I was blown away. I played so much attention to what she was doing and thought, ‘Oh, this is a good part for me.’ And now I’m playing Ofelia.”
Santiago has played powerful women and matriarchs in a number of shows, including Mama Rose in “Gypsy,” Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie” and the title role in “Evita.” Ofelia, she says, “keeps the factory running. She is always checking up on everyone. She loses her temper, has her faults, gets drunk. But she’s a typical matriarch, doing the best she can.”
Falcon wasn’t familiar with Cruz or his plays when he was hired to
Chicago actor after graduating from Northwestern University (he received the best supporting actor Joseph Jefferson Award for “The History Boys”), expanding his career to film, television (he plays the LGBTQ+ character Frank on “Sesame Street”) and Broadway (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”).
He has seen plenty of McKeever’s work and was part of a one-night Zoom reading of “Daniel’s Husband,” the writer’s play about gay marriage, from his New York apartment during the pandemic. When he read “American Rhapsody,” Weisman says, “I fell in love with it. It reminded me of Michael Cunningham’s ‘Flesh and Blood’ in its scope, its storytelling, and the Americana in it.”
Weisman also relished the idea of originating the complex role of Franky, “this queer figure who doesn’t have to be innocent and likable and funny all the time. He has allowed me to be flawed, even nasty. So many times when we play these characters, we have the shimmer of a halo around us. I appreciate how unhappy this character is.”
Meltzer argues that Franky is closer in spirit to portray Palomo in a production of “Anna in the Tropics” in 2010 at California’s small Sierra
Madre Playhouse near Pasadena. He was the only Cuban-American in the largely Mexican-American cast, and he remembers marveling at the script the first time he read it.
“I thought, ‘What is this? This is my family’s history.’ My grandma and her siblings were all cigar rollers in Cuba,” he says. “This is the fifth production in which I’ve been directed by Nilo. When he calls and says, ‘I want you to do this for me,’ I jump at the opportunity to work with him. It’s like life being breathed into me. Theater isn’t the bestpaying medium. But what it has done for my soul I can’t express in words.”
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IF YOU GO
WHAT: 20th-anniversary production of “Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz
WHERE: Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach
WHEN: Previews Thursday, Jan 12 and Friday, Jan. 13, opens Saturday, Jan. 14 (opening night sold out); performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Sunday, Feb. 5
COST: $46.50-$76.50 (includes service fee)
INFORMATION: 305674-1040 or miaminewdrama.org