<\/p>\n
I was late getting around to seeing the Winter Park Playhouse<\/a> production of \u201cForever Plaid\u201d \u2014 but not as late as the characters in the show were in getting to their debut concert.<\/p>\n \u201cForever Plaid\u201d is somewhat unique in the theater canon that all of its characters are dead.<\/p>\n Stuart Ross\u2019 helping of nostalgia was first performed in New York in 1989. It tells of a 1950s singing group, the Plaids, who embody the cleancut vibe and close harmonies of the era. The four young men are killed in a car accident before they can make their big debut.<\/p>\n We\u2019re told the fatal crash occurred on Feb. 9, 1964 \u2014 but the only significance of that date is that it seems to have been chosen just so Ross could squeeze in the Beatles\u2019 \u201cShe Loves You,\u201d which wasn\u2019t released until \u201963.<\/p>\n And now, direct from somewhere in the Great Beyond \u2014 the theology of this is hazy \u2014 the quartet is back to give the performance it missed out on. (Toni Chandler\u2019s clever piece-by-piece costumes neatly match the Plaids\u2019 growing confidence.)<\/p>\n Really, the whole show is an excuse to revisit such \u201950s hits as \u201cThree Coins in the Fountain\u201d or \u201cLove Is a Many Splendored Thing\u201d or the 1952 chart-topping \u201cHeart and Soul\u201d \u2014 yes, that catchy piano ditty everyone knows and in this show serves as the somewhat risky basis for an interlude of surprisingly successful audience participation.<\/p>\n If this music is your jam, well, that\u2019s reason enough to go. These four guys can sing, I mean really sing, and music director Christopher Leavy has done a bang-up job of guiding them through the harmonics of this style. The blend is so smooth that you may find yourself, like I did once or twice, unsure of which guy is singing which note. It\u2019s just one beautiful wall of sound.<\/p>\n The show\u2019s comedy doesn\u2019t hit the same heights. Director Steven Flaa has engineered a sweet and believable camaraderie among the men of his cast. But he\u2019s hampered by the fact the show has only two basic running jokes: The maladies of the men (nosebleed, ulcer, asthma), and the fact that they aren\u2019t quite ready for prime time \u2014 a missed entrance here, a misstep in the choreography there.<\/p>\n Critic\u2019s Pick: Nonsense is afoot in delightfully daffy \u2018Baskervilles\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Ross goes to those two wells too many times over the course of the relatively short show, though Flaa does his best to provide some variation where he can and with some success, in part because of the charms of his cast.<\/p>\n Adorably earnest Adourin Jamelle Owens shares a soaring tenor that\u2019s the star of the song \u201cCry.\u201d Blake Rushing Mitchell has lovely tone quality when he takes the lead on \u201cCatch a Falling Star\u201d and others.\u00a0 Lynford Martin Parries is stuck playing the most socially awkward Plaid, but he makes the most of it in a touching reminiscence about old jukeboxes. And his voice goes down deep on old favorite \u201cSixteen Tons.\u201d Jameson Stobbe has the right light touch, especially with the silly \u201cPerfidia\u201d (I had to look that one up; it actually dates back to the 1940s).<\/p>\n Speaking of looking things up, I found myself wondering how much longer this show will resonate. Many of the songs are fading into obscurity, and an extended \u201cEd Sullivan Show\u201d segment \u2014 the comic highlight of the musical \u2014 is full of references to performers who even now are hazy in my mind.<\/p>\n I fear that although hope springs eternal for the Plaids, with the way cultural trends ebb and flow \u2014 and disappear \u2014 this show may have a shelf life. Better catch this one while you can.<\/p>\n Follow me at facebook.com\/matthew.j.palm<\/a> or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com<\/a>. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com\/entertainment<\/a> or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n What:<\/strong> Winter Park Playhouse production of the musical comedy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Length:<\/strong> 1:35, no intermission<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Where:<\/strong> Mandell Theater at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center, 812 E. Rollins Ave. in Orlando<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was late getting around to seeing the Winter Park Playhouse production of \u201cForever Plaid\u201d \u2014 but not as late as the characters in the show were in getting to their debut concert. \u201cForever Plaid\u201d is somewhat unique in the theater canon that all of its characters are dead. Stuart Ross\u2019 helping of nostalgia was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[392615,392616,339574,392617],"class_list":["post-2085593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-forever-plaid","tag-plaids","tag-stuart-ross","tag-winter-park-playhouse"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2085593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2085594,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085593\/revisions\/2085594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2085593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2085593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2085593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Forever Plaid\u2019<\/h3>\n
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