Boca Stage opens new season at Delray Beach Playhouse with ‘Wait Until Dark’

Boca Stage will now have double the space and a more traditional theater experience for this season’s Off-Broadway performances after making the move to the Delray Beach Playhouse.

The theater company sold out about half of the performances in its former Boca Raton location at 3333 N. Federal Highway, which has 70 seats. The Delray Beach Playhouse’s black box/cabaret hall, where Boca Stage will perform, seats 140, said Keith Garsson, Boca Stage’s artistic director and founder.

Aside from the bigger space, Garsson said there are many benefits to moving venues.

“With the new space, it’s a raised stage, as opposed to a raised audience so it’s a little more conventional kind of theater. People appreciated the old, crowded 70-seat black box, but not when it’s sold out, and not when we’re just coming out of COVID, so we needed more space,” he said.

Additionally, the move allows Boca Stage to utilize Delray Beach Playhouse’s marketing and advertising team as well as an in-house set design shop whereas the old Boca Stage location had to hire a company for set design, Garsson said.

“They have so many things that they do for so many different shows there, that they’re experts. They’ve been doing it for years. So, it’s a lot of things we don’t have to do anymore,” he said.

In the former location, they had to start each show from scratch and with the move to the Delray Beach Playhouse, they can keep recycling their sets, Garsson said.

“So we will have people who are dedicated to getting all the shows look great there and it’ll be less infrastructure work and less phone calls, and again we can focus on what we’re good at,” he said.

And what Boca Stage is good at is producing shows, Garsson said.

“(The audience) can expect the same quality shows, maybe even better because we’re not distracted doing a lot of extra infrastructure work that doesn’t help the show. You’ll have an upgraded commitment to better shows,” he said.

Wayne LeGette, an actor who’s been involved with Boca Stage since 2015, said the move to the Delay Beach Playhouse is “going to up Boca Stage’s game in every regard.”

“The more the actors can just focus on the work and not have to always be negotiating what’s happening in the audience, the better. We’ll all be working on a larger raised platform stage so the designers will be able to do more traditional sets… Overall, it’s going to be a more traditional theater experience for the audience, while still experiencing a much more intimate space than the Broward Center, or even the Delray Beach Playhouse’s own MainStage next door,” he said.

After the move, Garsson said he hopes the new space will “attract past subscribers back into the fold, and existing audiences at the new playhouse will take advantage of this wonderful new programming.”

The upcoming 2023-24 Boca Stage shows at the Delray Beach Playhouse, 950 NW Ninth St., in Delray Beach, include: “Wait Until Dark” by Frederick Knott, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Oct. 26 to Nov. 5; “Boeing Boeing” by Marc Camoletti, translated by Beverly Cross and Francis Evans from Jan. 19 to 28; and “America’s Sexiest Couple” (starring LeGette and Kim Ostrenko) by Ken Levine from April 19 to 28.

“We do works you don’t see very often, and we sprinkle in brand new plays that you wouldn’t have heard of, but you’d be sorry you’d missed,” Garsson said. “For example, the third show, ‘America’s Sexiest Couple,’ written by one of the writers for ‘MASH,’ but the play is only about a year or so old, and it’s very funny.”

“Wait Until Dark” has performances in the Cabaret Theatre at 8 p.m. Oct. 26, 27 and 28, Nov. 3 and 4; and 2 p.m. Oct. 28 and 29, Nov. 4 and 5. Tickets are $39 to $69.

The play is set in Greenwich Village in 1944 as “Susan Hendrix, a blind but capable woman, is imperiled by a trio of men in her own apartment. As the climax builds, Susan discovers her blindness just might be the key to her escape, but she and her tormentors must wait until dark to play out this classic thriller’s chilling conclusion,” according to Boca Stage.

Single tickets as well as subscriptions are available. Call 561-272-1281 or visit delraybeachplayhouse.com.