A salute to richness of South Florida theater

By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com

Excerpted from an article published Thursday, December 13, 2001

At the Biltmore in Coral Gables, GableStage's Joseph Adler is opening his company's first musical production this weekend. And though the show's running time is less than 90 minutes, Adler calls it his "biggest undertaking" so far, one involving 13 actors and four musicians.

It's not the sort of fare Adler usually embraces. But James Joyce's The Dead, a piece with script and lyrics by Richard Nelson and music by Irish composer Shaun Davey, is based on a superb short story the director has loved since he first read it as a teenager.

"I wanted to do a play for the holiday season, and this is about a family gathering together near Christmas in Dublin in 1904. It isn't about death. It's incredibly touching, a celebration of life," Adler says.

"The embodiment of the theme is in this wonderful speech by the narrator: 'The world, I've come to think, is like the surface of a frozen lake. We walk along, we slip, we try to keep our balance and not to fall. Once day there's a crack, and so we learn that underneath us is an unimaginable depth.' That's what life is -- finding out what's going on beneath the surface."

Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.