At one end of Palm Beach County, at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, we are told that “Life is a cabaret, old chum.” At the other end, at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre, it turns out that life is actually more like professional wrestling.

The latter news flash comes from Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist that examines the scripted “sport” for what it has to say about contemporary America.

Of course there are winners and losers, as in every sport, but pro wrestling has athletes who make their living as fall guys. And not necessarily because they are less skilled, but because they have been cast as the loser to satisfy the blood-thirsty, xenophobic and often racist tendencies of the fans.

Diaz focuses on one such perpetual loser. No, not the title character, who represents all that is triumphant, if hollow, about America. Instead the play is narrated by the guy paid to make Chad Deity look good, a Bronx-born Puerto Rican named Macedonio Guerra -- a/k/a Mace -- a guy so destined for defeat that he doesn’t even rate an entrance, elaborate or otherwise, into the ring.

At the bone-crunching, brawny area premiere production at the Caldwell, Mace is played by Brandon Morris, who handles most of the substantial verbal chores and, almost as importantly, is quick with an ad-lib comeback to theatergoers, who are encouraged to talk back to the cast. By the first Saturday night of the run, Morris and the cast were not getting much response from the crowd to play off, though they soldiered on gamely nevertheless.

The play takes place on and around a Tim Bennett-designed wrestling ring, which is flanked by two giant-sized video monitors, on which are often projected closed-circuit live images of the matches produced and promoted by THE Wrestling, the dominant sports media circus in Chad’s world. Presiding over the ring is Everett K. Olson, owner and orchestrator of THE Wrestling, a man well attuned to the public’s hunger for ethnic stereotypes.

There Mace introduces a new fall guy, a Brooklynite of Indian extraction, turned into a cross-cultural villain known simply as The Fundamentalist. He too will know the faux-wrath of Chad Deity’s signature wrestling move, the “power bomb,” a slam to the mat from Chad’s shoulders. (Actors do have good hazard insurance, don’t they?)

As Chad, Donte Bonner gets by on his winning smile, offhanded manner and buff physique. Gregg Weiner oozes slime as Olson and Adam Bashian amuses as the Indian, whose career in wrestling seems doomed by his unfortunate habit of freezing up -- in the ring.

Ultimately, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is not as profound as its Pulitzer attention would suggest, but it is rock-’em-sock-’em theatrical and on target to gain the Caldwell a new younger audience.

THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Feb. 12. Tickets: $38-$50. Call: (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432.

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Chad Deity oozes originality, while the production of Cabaret at the Maltz Jupiter feels like what it is -- a recreation of a revival from almost 14 years ago.

It was a very effective reconsideration of the great John Kander-Fred Ebb-Joe Masteroff show about decadent pre-World War II Berlin, but virtually nothing has been added now by director BT McNicholls, who has staged this version many times over the years.

Perhaps that should not matter, particularly to theatergoers who have never seen Cabaret or never seen this darker, more chilling take on the material -- originally devised by Sam Mendes -- but such a cloned production hardly seems in keeping with the homegrown work on which this theater prides itself.

That impression is only compounded by the casting of a few key performers who are veterans of that Mendes revival. Kate Shindle played unstable, apolitical Kit Kat Club headliner Sally Bowles on Broadway, and Christopher Sloan has played the smarmy, androgynous Emcee on tour. She is quite good at the Maltz and he is even better, but if you have the impression that you are watching one more stop of a newly assembled road company, you are not alone.

More so than in other productions, the Emcee is at the center of the show, insinuates himself into most of the musical numbers, at least tangentially, acting as much stage manager as showman and fuzzing the line between onstage and off.

Even the conventional story numbers -- as opposed to the presentational club songs -- are often given a post-modern spin. Cabaret broke a lot of barriers originally, but the scenes between Sally and American would-be novelist Cliff Bradshaw, and especially those between Cliff’s landlady Fraulein Schneider and her beau, Jewish fruit seller Herr Schultz, still smack of musical theater formula. But that does not stop them from having deep emotional impact.

The score is quintessential Kander and Ebb -- tuneful, but usually with a knife twist. The opening number, Wilkommen, is sung here with as much aggressive anger as any mood-setting opening number in musical theater. Tomorrow Belongs to Me begins as an anthem of optimism, but ultimately portent of world domination. And the title tune sounds like an upbeat embrace of life, but is delivered with a diametrically opposite subtext.

Shindle handles that number powerfully, delineating Sally’s emotional breakdown, and she also grabs us by the throat with a simple, aching rendition of Maybe This Time. She succeeds in the role, though she comes off as too assured to be fully convincing as rudderless Sally. Instead the evening belongs to leering Sloan, whose seductive, crotch-grabbing edginess defines the production.

This is not the Cabaret that first took Broadway in 1966, but nor does it fully belong to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.

CABARET, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday, Jan. 29. Tickets: $43-$60. Call: (561) 575-2223.

The soprano who created the role of Magda in Giacomo Puccini’s La Rondine said late in life that the composer died “with the wound of ‘Rondine’ in his heart,” having never gotten over the opera’s mixed record of success and failure.

In its first-ever mounting of the bittersweet opera Puccini wrote for a Viennese commission, Florida Grand Opera has taken an important step toward healing some of that wound with an engaging, elegant staging that also should advance the careers of its principal singers.

Not everything works in this Rondine, but that’s mostly due to the third act of the opera and not the production, which is borrowed from New York City Opera and sets the action in the early 1920s, later than the original Second Empire backdrop. British director Nicola Bowie has managed the stage action well, with good business on the side in the first act, plenty of inviting action in the second, and a welcome dose of comedy and lightness in the third.

It’s the singing that matters most, though, in this lovely and unusual score, and in Elizabeth Caballero, FGO has found a soprano in its own backyard who owns the part and makes a very strong case for this opera. She has a big, powerful voice, and in her Chi bel sogno di Doretta in the first act, she laid claim to ownership of the stage with a super-soft high C, seizing the audience’s attention in good old-fashioned diva style.

A Cuban-American who came to Miami as a child on the Mariel boatlift, Caballero has long been a local favorite with FGO and area audiences, and she sang quite well on Saturday’s opening night. She showed her musical mettle in the third act particularly, making the most of the delicate gorgeousness of the passage in which she reads Ruggero’s mother’s letter (Figliuolo, tu mi dici), and just afterward, when she echoes her lover’s Ma come puoi lasciarmi in a higher key, and had plenty of vocal muscle left to do it.

Some of Caballero’s movements on stage were stiff, as if she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her body; her range of motion was less than it could have been, which made her character a little less compelling. And in her top register, particularly when she got louder, her voice got somewhat shrill and her vibrato quite wide. The largeness of her instrument compensates somewhat for that in what is a very difficult role to sing, but some of the vocal extremities here could use some more control.

As Ruggero, the Portuguese tenor Bruno Ribeiro has a thankless task in having to inhabit an underdrawn character, but he has a bronze-like, darkly colored voice that suited the earnestness of the young man who promises new love for Magda. This production includes the first-act romanza Parigi! E la citta de’ desidieri, which Puccini added later, and which deserves to stay.

Ribeiro sang a little under pitch here, especially at the end of the aria, and his singing in the rest of the opera, while admirable from the standpoint of good tone quality and secure placement, lacked suavity, which it needs for audience appeal and character veracity: he is, after all, a young, vulnerable man, and we need to hear that as well as see it. He was on the wooden side, in both singing and acting, but at his best his voice blended agreeably with Caballero’s, and the two made a good couple onstage.

La Rondine also is unusual in that it has two supporting tenor-soprano parts that have about as much work to do as the leads. And FGO has two excellent ones, which does a lot to make this production work.

As Lisette, American soprano Corinne Winters (whose memorable Sempre, libera at the Palm Beach Opera Grand Finals in 2010 stole the show), is marvelous, with a large, smoothly rounded voice that easily handled all the challenges of this role with aplomb. Only toward the end of the third act did her instrument weaken somewhat, but while it lost volume it didn’t lose accuracy.

She was a fine actress, too, in a fun part that allows her to be silly and sexy, and she made a wonderful foil for her Prunier. Winters looked great in her flapper and housemaid getups as well, and overall this was a most impressive performance.

Equally good was American tenor Daniel Shirley as Prunier, a singer with a cutting spinto who made audience ears perk up with a walk-on in FGO’s Luisa Fernanda in November. Here he could be heard at evening’s length, and he did a stellar job, singing with clarity, forcefulness and charm in every bar.

Shirley’s Prunier was lovable-rouguish, the kind of gregarious guest everyone likes at a party, and easily believable as the kind of man someone like Lisette would fall for. He and Winters made an ideal team, and they help carry the show.

As Rambaldo, the American baritone Craig Colclough was rather bland vocally and dramatically. He delivered his admonition to Magda in Act II rather perfunctorily, and he left with a creepily angry glare that seemed at odds with the steadiness of the character.

There were some fine other voices on stage, with American soprano Brittany Ann Renee Robinson first among them as Yvette, with Courtney McKeown as Suzy not far behind. John Keene’s chorus sang the big second-act brindisi expertly, though conductor Ramon Tebar drove the tempo a bit hard. This set piece should sound opulent, and it should gradually grow, but here it sounded determined to be big, and it came off too rigidly.

But in general, Tebar conducted this work admirably, with the youthful fire that distinguishes his baton work, and just as generous a helping of sensitivity, particularly in the most delicate moments. His orchestra performed beautifully for him, critical in Puccini, in which, like Wagner, so much of the psychological commentary and emotional mood is depicted in the orchestra.

This is a handsome Rondine, nicely designed by Ralph Funicello, with four strong principals advocating persuasively for this neglected score. The third act, as always, remains a problem, but perhaps in future productions some of the later revisions could be added in to give the ending a little more heft. For my way of thinking, it’s missing about another five minutes of material; it reminds me of Manon Lescaut in that the first two acts are brilliant, but the rest is something of a botch.

Still, if you’re a true Puccini devotee, this is an opera you want to see, and FGO’s production is good enough to argue for its inclusion in the general repertory as more than a one-off visitor. Caballero lobbied FGO general director Robert Heuer hard for a local production of La Rondine, and it’s a good thing she did.

La Rondine can be seen at 8 p.m. Jan. 24, 27, Feb. 1 and 4, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, at the Ziff Ballet Opera House in Miami. Tickets start at $21. Call 900-741-1010 or visit www.fgo.org.

If it’s true, as Sartre said, that Hell is other people, it isn’t a message that will find much support at Ballet Memphis.

The dance company, now celebrating its 25^th year, brought four dances to the Duncan Theatre on Friday night in the first of two performances (the show is repeated tonight). Twelve members of the 23-person troupe from the blues capital were on stage for a modest, intimate show that generally celebrated togetherness in a variety of pleasing, effective movements.

This is a traditionally oriented ballet company, despite the modernity of some of the moves presented Friday night; what you got was good dance, quite decently done. Standout work came from Crystal Brothers as the focus of two pieces, Curtain of Green, a Eudora Welty-inspired piece choreographed by Julia Adam to etudes by Philip Glass, and S’Épanouir, a dance Jane Comfort and the company set to the music of saxophonist Kirk Whalum, himself a Memphis native.

Brothers, a petite redhead, has a strong stage presence that she reinforced in Curtain of Green with quick, precise motions of her hands, feet and torso, a crispness that was in deliberate sharp contrast to the accompanying dancers. The story of a widow who cannot come to terms with her husband’s sudden death, the ballet recounts the events by opening with Brothers in a solitary chair, facing upstage left, back to the audience, as her husband, danced by Steven McMahon, falls to the ground repeatedly.

Adam has underlined the repetitive returns in Glass’ minimalist etudes by having them coincide with Brothers placing a hand on McMahon’s leg, or jumping quickly into his arms, moves she performed expertly. This kind of visual punctuation worked well to underline the hopelessness of the woman’s situation, which Brothers further emphasized with rigid hand movements, somewhat like a broken machine that tries to keep working, and two new placements of her chair, always looking somewhere else but apparently seeing nothing.

Kendall G. Britt Jr. joined the dance in the second half, silently drawing a circle on the ground before the second Glass etude began, and like McMahon, added a few gentle, supportive moves, but it was Brothers’ dance to dominate. Adam brought a nice touch to things by ending with Brothers drawing the same circle Britt first introduced at the opening of the dance’s second half.

If the large Duncan audience was cool to Curtain of Green’s somber colors and soundtrack, they were much happier with S’Épanouir, which musically travels from Eric Dolphy-like solo ruminations to a mildly funky jazz ditty that at last gives way to some gospel piano noodling. Comfort’s scenario for Whalum’s piece of the same name is about bringing a woman in crisis back into the community, and this was a dance that was suffused with warmth and good intentions.

Brothers was again wonderful to watch, believable in her sorrow, graceful and elegant in her traversals of the stage, and when lifted at the end from the floor by the company to finish the dance with a ride on a pair of shoulders, she was the embodiment of relief at the end of travail. The other seven dancers did fine work in bringing Brothers back into the human fold, dancing with her one on one, then pairing off in couples to further advance the message of solidarity. With Brothers in white and the other dancers in browns and burgundies, the piece had a sort of summer-of-love vibe about it, and its energy grew slowly along with the music. This was an energetic, often athletic dance with lots of ideas, which perhaps reflects the communal input into its choreography; it gradually warmed from the opening to the ending, getting busier and busier, and the ending was beautifully timed to the music and ideally expressive of it.

The evening opened with Being Here With Other People, a dance choreographed by McMahon, a young Scotsman, to the finale of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Eight dancers in cranberry pink smiled relentlessly through the dance, whether in couples or in the full ensemble. Various dancers came out to wave at the other dancers or the audience, and there was a kind of cutesy head tic that was repeated throughout as a signature mannerism.

This was a nice dance to watch, but it didn’t have much cohesion, either as a scenario or in the ensemble dancing, which was rather loose. It’s a charming idea, but it didn’t ingratiate, perhaps because it needed some sharper set pieces inside it to make it memorable and winning.

The program closed with In Dreams, Trey McIntyre’s reading of six songs recorded by Roy Orbison, the pop bard of the lovelorn during the last years before Beatlemania. This is a dance with real invention, and the company looked sharp and snappy throughout. The five dancers, garbed in black urban-cowboy-with-appliqué, slithered and strutted for the opening song, Dream Baby, and there were good solo moments for each of the women: Julie Niekrasz, Stephanie Hom and Virginia Pilgrim.

The difference in McIntyre’s style of choreography, at least as represented here, is that he designs his dances from core units, generally couples, rather than thinking of a scenario and adding dancers to it. The result is a dance that looks like a muscle, with a group of dancers packed tightly and acting off each other rather than off the whole group.

It’s intimate, sexy and powerful all at once, and that McIntyre, and Ballet Memphis, could sustain the audience’s interest even while two dancers moved in opposite directions off the stage over a recording of Orbison speaking rather than singing, is testimony to the power of dance to say something fresh even when the musical background is stagey, or not even that.

Ballet Memphis repeats this show tonight at 8 at the Duncan Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. Tickets are $37. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.

Art: The Norton Museum turns to the world of glassmaking this week, having opened three studio glass programs Wednesday. The centerpiece is an installation called One and Others, created by the Wisconsin-based artist Beth Lipman. It’s a large piece that evokes Old Master still lifes from the museum’s collections, and is on view in its European galleries.

The museum also is hosting the Hot Glass Roadshow, a touring glass studio operated by the Corning Museum of Glass. It’s a 28-foot trailer parked outside in the east courtyard the West Palm Beach museum in which glassblowers from Corning present eight public programs a day, six days a week, through March 25. (there’s an additional $3 fee to see the roadshow.)

Also, the museum has added to the festivities by offering an exhibit of glass works from its collection, which of course includes pieces by Dale Chihuly, perhaps the best-known of all glass artists working today. Other artists include William Morris and Toots Zynsky.

Admission to the museum is $12; hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.

Dance: Dorothy Gunther Pugh founded a ballet company in her native Memphis some 25 years ago, and the 23-member troupe is now among the nation’s most highly regarded. The ballet comes to the Duncan Theatre tonight and tomorrow for a four-dance program that includes Being Here With Other People (McMahon/Beethoven), Curtain of Green (Adam/Glass), S’Epanouir (Comfort/Whalum), and In Dreams, Trey McIntyre’s paean to six songs by Roy Orbison. This is a young, athletic company, and it’s won fans all across the nation, helping Memphis become recognized in the national common wisdom for more than Beale Street and barbecue.

The company performs at 8 tonight and 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $37. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.

Film: Actor Michael Fassbender is everywhere this weekend, appearing in three new films, Shame, Haywire and, the best of the three, A Dangerous Method, the match-up of psychoanalysis pioneer Carl Jung (Fassbender) and his mentor. Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). They clash over the most effective way or cure the mentally unstable and have a tug-of-war over a comely, but crazy patient (Keira Knightley) who eventually becomes Jung’s lover and then his treatment colleague. The screenplay is by Christopher Hampton, based on his own stage play, and while the script is dense with therapy jargon, the dialogue is fascinating and involving. In area theaters.

Theater: Yes, the title Urinetown kept away enough theatergoers to sink this Tony Award-winning musical’s national tour, but that hardly stops West Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Co., which jumps head first into this tongue-in-cheek show about a water shortage and a greedy corporation head who amasses a monopoly on public toilets, then charges obscenely for their use. Fortunately, there is a crusading young hero who rouses the downtrodden -- read that as “Occupy Wall Street,” even though the show dates back to 2001 -- to rebel and pee for free. The score has a Brecht-Weill tone to many numbers and the production numbers, choreographed by the company’s co-artistic director Patrick Fitzwater, are send-ups of other, more popular musicals. Opens this evening and runs through Jan. 29. Tickets available by calling 1 (866) 811-4111.

Music: A bitter strike of six months put the fate of one of the country’s best orchestras, the Detroit Symphony, temporarily in limbo until it was resolved last April.

The group’s principal cellist, Robert deMaine, is happy everyone’s back at work. “I’m glad the symphony survived mostly intact,” he said. “I hope it emerges stronger eventually, because Detroit deserves a world-class symphony orchestra.” DeMaine, 42, who gave a memorable two-concert survey of the complete Beethoven works for cello and piano at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boca Raton a couple seasons back, reunites this Sunday afternoon with his partner in that series, pianist Heather Coltman.

Coltman, head of the music department at Florida Atlantic University and interim dean of its College of Arts and Letters, will accompany deMaine in the Sonata No. 1 (in E minor, Op. 38) of Brahms, the Fantasy Pieces (Op. 73) of Schumann, and the second of J.S. Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba (in D, BWV 1028), here played on the cello. DeMaine also will play five of his own solo Etudes-Caprices, from a set of 12 he composed in 1999.

“I compose a lot, just because I enjoy doing it. And if I deem something worthy of playing in a concert, I’ll do it,” he said.

DeMaine’s recording projects include a disc for Naxos in May of the Cello Concerto by filmdom’s John Williams, which will be recorded with the DSO and conductor Leonard Slatkin. “[Williams] has revised the concerto for this particular event,” deMaine said. “He’s actually made the solo part considerably more difficult.” The recital is set for 3 p.m. Sunday at the University Theatre on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Suggested donation is $10 at the door. Call 297-3853 for more information.

The stars will be out in force tonight and Sunday afternoon to celebrate Palm Beach Opera’s 50^th anniversary. Renowned baritone Sherrill Milnes, who just turned 77, will be the host for the program, which features Denyce Graves-Montgomery, Ruth Ann Swenson, Lauren McNeese, Brandon Jovanovich, Sarah Joy Miller, Attala Ayan and Daniel Sutin.

The bill of fare features selections right out of the Big Book of Favorite Operas: La Traviata, Aida, La Boheme, Carmen and Die Fledermaus, and will be accompanied by Bruno Aprea and the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra.

Milnes, a Palm Harbor resident who was an artistic adviser at Opera Tampa for four years with his wife, soprano Maria Zouves, said tough times are especially hard on artistic organizations. Over the past month, Boston Lyric Opera and San Antonio Opera have closed down, and New York’s City Opera is in the middle of difficult union negotiations that have forced the company to cut performances.

“Whenever there’s a recession, they get hit hard. They all get clobbered,” he said.

But Milnes, who founded an opera-training program called VoiceExperience in 2000, says the art form itself may be doing better in the United States. “I think there is renewed interest in opera. We Americans are slowly getting over our cultural inferiority complex,” he said.

The gala concerts are set for 7 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets start at $20. Call 832-7469, 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.

Don’t men go to the theater anymore?

Scan the current audiences at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, or the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale, and you would swear the answer is a resounding “No.” Not only are there almost no men in attendance, but the shows on view -- Divorce Party The Musical and Love, Loss and What I Wore -- are so female-centric, so calculated for “girls’ night out” group sales, that guys seemingly need not apply.

Still, there are distinct qualitative differences between the two shows. The former, a raunchy intervention bash for a recent divorcee, is the brainchild of the producer of Menopause The Musical, one of the most artistically impoverished stage pieces to ever become an international commercial success. The latter is great theatrical literature by comparison, though it is actually just a pleasant string of monologues and group readings about the clothes women allow themselves to be defined and confined by.

Based on a book by Ilene Beckerman, then filtered through the sensibilities of sisters Nora and Delia Ephron, Love, Loss has been playing off-Broadway since October 2009, with a rotating cast of female performers who sit on stools and read, from music stands, reminiscences about fashion anguish that strike undeniable chords with the crowd.

The mere mention of a Kelly bag -- that high-priced Hermes-level purse popularized by Grace Kelly in the 1950s -- sent murmurs of recognition through the audience. But even the completely fashion-challenged, like me, can appreciate the show’s gentle comic manner and well-calibrated poignancy.

The touring production at the Parker Playhouse is a little short on box office name power, but not on talent. Loretta Swit of TV’s M*A*S*H is probably the biggest name of the quintet, though she seemed removed from the group, reduced largely to announcing the titles of subject segments and playing one continuing character, a serial bride and divorcee.

Sesame Street veteran Sonia Manzano delivered a touching monologue on surviving breast cancer and the indignities of breast reconstruction. Daisy Eagan (Tony Award winner for The Secret Garden) and Emily Dorsch were well-paired on a piece about the difficulties of finding a suitable wedding dress, and Myra Lucretia Taylor was a standout with a rant against purses. Either it was the best-written segment of the show or she made it seem so.

Love, Loss and What I Wore is hardly a must-see event, but pleasant enough that you will not mind having taken the plunge. And that goes for male theatergoers, too.

On the other hand, Divorce Party The Musical seems cynically devised to attract the Menopause audience and cash in on that earlier show’s success. It too relies on parody lyrics to existing pop songs to celebrate female empowerment.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the new show manages to make its predecessor look good, sinking as it does to even crasser depths, with songs and skits about shaving one’s pubic hair and the joys of battery-operated vibrators and other sex toys. As if that were not titillating enough, Divorce Party features a male stripper going full monty just after the show’s finale, which is one way to eliminate the usual Kravis stampede to the exits during the curtain calls.

The show stems from a book by Boca Raton divorce coach Amy Botwinick, titled Congratulations on Your Divorce -- The Road to Finding Your Happily Ever After. Whatever the message of that self-help book may be, it is reduced here to bonding with your female friends, have a makeover and start living again.

The stage show concerns recently uncoupled Linda (Janna Cardia), who has sought solace from her marriage in containers of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and bags of Doritos. Enter her divorced therapist sister Carolyn (Felicia Finley), her playing-the-field lesbian cousin Courtney (Janet Dickinson) and her close friend Sheila (Soara-Joye Ross), whose marriage is shaky at best.

They try to rouse her from her stupor, in part by introducing her to a male yoga teacher, a tango instructor and a beauty consultant, all played by Scott Ahearn, who also gets the stripper assignment.

As with Menopause The Musical, director/lyricist Jay Falzone opts for fairly predictable rhymes and rarely develops anything past the single joke of the initial verse. In truth, none of the audience members I observed seemed to mind the uninspired writing.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about Divorce Party is that the audience appeared to be adequately entertained by it, so there is reason to believe it could become as successful as Menopause.

LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE, Parker Playhouse, 707 N.E. 8th St., Fort Lauderdale. Continuing through Sunday. Tickets: $37-$57. Call 954-462-0222.

DIVORCE PARTY THE MUSICAL, Kravis Center Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Continuing through Sunday, Feb. 19. Tickets: $25-$32. Call: (561) 832-7469 or (800) 572-8471.