'Mormon' highlights 2015-16 Van Wezel Broadway season in Sarasota
The folks at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota are calling their 2015-16 Broadway season their best ever.
A lot of musical theater fans will likely agree.
The biggest news by far: "The Book Of Mormon," the most acclaimed musical of recent years, will make its area debut. Tours have stopped in Tampa in each of the past two years, but never in Sarasota.
"Mormon" is almost supernaturally funny, but it's not for all tastes. It's profane and it pokes fun at religion (not just the Mormon religion). But it's also full of great songs and amazing stagecraft, and it has an ultimately positive and even heartwarming message.
It's scheduled for Feb. 9-14.
The Broadway season was announced Monday. Priority seating is available now to series subscribers, but the rest of us will have to wait a while.
"Mormon" isn't the only award-winning, big-name musical on tap. The season also includes "Disney's Beauty and the Beast;" "Million Dollar Quartet," about the legendary impromptu studio session that included Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis; and the stage version of Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway."
Here's the entire lineup:
"Disney's Beauty and the Beast," Oct. 14
"The Producers," Dec. 30
"Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story," Jan. 6, 2016
"42nd Street," Jan. 20-21, 2016
"The Book Of Mormon," Feb. 9-14, 2016
"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," March 3-4, 2016
"Saturday Night Fever," March 16, 2016
"Bullets over Broadway," March 20, 2016
"Million Dollar Quartet," March 26, 2016
"Mamma Mia!," April 19-20, 2016
Special shows include "Neil Berg's 107 Years of Broadway" (Feb. 17, 2016), "Stomp" (March 22, 2016), "Linda Eder and Robert Cuccioli" (March 24, 2016) and "Broadway: The Big Band Years," (April 4, 2016).
Subscription packages are available now. Prices start at $200 for packages that include about half of the Broadway musicals, and $355 for packages with all 10 shows.
Call 941-953-3368 or go to vanwezel.org.
Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.
This story was originally published March 31, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "'Mormon' highlights 2015-16 Van Wezel Broadway season in Sarasota."