- April 3, 2025
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You’re a Sondheim fan and you’ve never seen “Road Show”? Well, actually you may have seen the musical about the buccaneering brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner. Over the years, the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical has been variously known as “Bounce,” “Wise Guys” and “Gold!”
But if you haven’t seen “Road Show,” you’re in luck. You can take a road trip to St. Petersburg for freeFall Theatre’s regional premiere.
FreeFall’s production, which runs through March 16, stars Sarasota’s Joey Panek as Addison Mizner and Robert Teasdale as his visionary brother Wilson.
According to his Wiki biography, Wilson Mizner was a playwright, raconteur and entrepreneur. Other accounts aren’t so kind, referring to the man about town during both the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s and the Florida land boom of the 1920s as a con artist, shyster and hustler.
Helping to put Wilson Mizner’s visions into material form was his talented architect brother Addison. During his career, Addison Mizner shaped the distinctive Med-Rev style of Palm Beach and neighboring communities in Florida.
To bring the Mizners’ story to life in freeFall’s black-box theater, Eric Davis, the theater’s artistic director and the play’s director, relies on video to create the shape-shifting world inhabited by the brothers over four decades.
Tom Hansen designed the set, which uses video columns to display the architectural styles created by Addison Mizner.
Like other Sondheim-Weidman collaborations (“Pacific Overtures,” “Assassins”) “Road Show” is steeped in history. But it has never made it to Broadway. Now that Sondheim’s 1981 flop, “Merrily We Roll Along” has been revived and adorned with Tony award glory, “Road Show” is the one that got away.
Sondheimologists can spend hours parsing debating various productions in a quest to imagine how "Steve" would have wanted things in the Mizner brothers saga. There's a great subReddit thread about the merits of "Bounce" versus "Road Show."
Asked why they think “Road Show” never quite landed, Davis and his music director, Michael Raabe, agreed that audiences were overwhelmed by the scope of the narrative. “There were just too many historical facts,” Raabe says.
By producing the musical in a small theater with a flexible cast (there are just five other actors besides Panek and Teasdale), Davis and Raabe think they can keep the audience focused. “In an intimate space, the musical becomes the story of two brothers trying to capture their slice of the American dream,” Davis says.
Panek was introduced to Sondheim as a teen through a production of “Into the Woods,” but hadn’t heard of “Road Show” until recently.
“There’s a reason why people keep coming back to it,” he says. “There’s something beautiful about this story of brothers. There’s a lot of heart in it, especially under Eric’s direction.”
In addition to Panek and Teasdale, the cast features Drew H. Wells as Hollis Bessemer, along with Greg Austin, Sara DelBeato, James Putnam and Julia Rifino, who each play a variety of character roles.
In line with the production’s intimate feel, musicians can be seen on stage during “Road Show.”
The costumes in the production are in neutral colors that are affected by lighting and are designed for quick changes, Davis says. Elaborate hats with feathers also help set the scene as the brothers chase their get-rich-quick schemes for nearly 40 years.
For Panek, who juggles broadcasting, marketing and acting jobs, “Road Show” represents a welcome return to the stage after a hiatus of about two years.
Although he’s a familiar face as a co-host on ABC 7’s “Suncoast View,” the last time he was on the boards was in Florida Studio Theatre’s cabaret show, “Up on the Roof.” The last-minute gig reminded Panek how much he enjoys performing, he said in a telephone interview.
A native of Syracuse, New York, Panek spent his teens performing in community theater before moving to New York City at age 18 to pursue his Broadway dreams.
Sarasota audiences first saw Panek’s talents in a 1999 touring production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” that ran at the now-defunct Golden Apple Dinner Theatre.
“It’s amazing, the number of people who came through there,” Panek says. A mainstay of Sarasota theater, the Golden Apple was in business from 1971 until 2011, when it was sold by owners and artistic directors Robert and Roberta Turoff. The space is now part of FST’s campus.
Like other Actors Equity members, Panek benefited from the Golden Apple’s long relationship with the union, which it ultimately severed due to financial difficulties. (Equity members get paid more than community theater players, who sometimes work for free.)
Panek has been a full-time resident of Sarasota since 2006. He was an early advocate of using social media platforms to promote the arts. The now-mainstream marketing strategy was viewed skeptically when he first suggested it, Panek says.
Perhaps because he’s on TV, Panek’s the kind of guy whom people greet when he’s walking around downtown Sarasota. The youngest of four boys born to a woman who was a politician, Panek is at ease with strangers. Someone who yells, “Hey, Joey!” is likely to hear, “Hey, you!”
Even though “Road Show” wasn’t a smash, it gave audiences a memorable song. Like “Good Thing Going” in Sondheim’s “Merrily,” “The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened” echoes through “Road Show.”
It’s a bona fide crowd pleaser, Raabe says, along with “Gold!” and “Brotherly Love,” where the two siblings let their guards down.
“The overriding theme is bookended by the way the play begins and ends — that is legacy,” Davis says. That’s a timely issue on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where many residents have the time and means to contemplate, “How will I be remembered?”
