Pompano Beach's own professional theater company opens its season on Nov. 6 with the South Florida premiere of Gutenberg! The Musical!, the two-man spoof whose Broadway revival was nominated for the 2024 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. It runs eight performances over two weekends at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center, and it is the first of six shows the Pompano Players will stage downtown between now and May.

The company's lineup is the headline of a city arts calendar that runs nearly a full year: concerts and theater at the Cultural Center on West Atlantic Boulevard, plus a run of national acts at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater that includes CAKE this month, a K-pop show that has already sold out, and one of the last chances to see Little Feat on tour.

A resident company, six shows, one stage

Gutenberg! is a musical about two hopeful writers pitching a wildly inaccurate Broadway musical about the inventor of the printing press. It is a show about loving show business more than understanding it. One bit of trivia from its New York run, noted on the Pompano Beach Arts listing: each Broadway performance ended with a surprise celebrity walking out wearing a yellow trucker hat. Whether Pompano gets a local version of that gag is anyone's guess.

Performances are Nov. 6 at 7 p.m.; Nov. 7 at 2 and 7 p.m.; Nov. 8 at 2 p.m.; then the same pattern the following weekend, Nov. 13 to 15. Tickets start at $55.

The rest of the Pompano Players season leans into music and nostalgia, all at the Cultural Center:

Never Can Say Goodbye: A 70s Beehive Musical, Jan. 15 to 24, a disco-era revue. My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra, Feb. 12 to 21, which works through more than 50 Sinatra songs. Sh-Boom! Life Could Be a Dream, March 12 to 21, a doo-wop comedy about a young singing group. Sisters of Swing: The Story of the Andrews Sisters, April 2 to 11. And Honky Tonk Angels, May 14 to 23, a country jukebox musical about three women headed to Nashville.

The company is selling three-show and six-show subscriptions, which is the move if you already know you will be back for Sinatra in February.

The Cultural Center's other nights

Between Players productions, the Cultural Center's 2026 to 2027 season fills the calendar from Oct. 23 through Aug. 6 with tribute concerts and variety shows. It starts fast: a Traveling Wilburys tribute on Friday, Oct. 23, and December '63, a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons show, on Sunday, Oct. 25 at 2 p.m. (from $45).

Further out, the list reads like a jukebox: Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire on Nov. 20, Billy Joel on Dec. 18, the Eagles on Jan. 29, Carole King's Tapestry on Feb. 26, a Tony Bennett songbook on March 5, Barbra Streisand on May 30 and the Allman Brothers to close things on Aug. 6. There is stand-up, too, with Funny Women of a Certain Age on March 26.

The most unusual entry is a long one. Comedian Sommore is curating the Chandelier Lounge Residency, an intimate night of stand-up, a live band and a vocalist, scheduled at the Cultural Center from Dec. 11 through June 30. Tickets are not on sale yet.

Over at the Amp

The Pompano Beach Amphitheater on NE 6th Street, the almost 3,000-seat venue under the tensile-fabric roof, has its own run of shows, and these are the ones that will sell.

CAKE plays Monday, Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. (doors at 6:30). The band's most recent album, Showroom of Compassion, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and ten days from now it is playing a few minutes from the beach.

BOYNEXTDOOR on Sunday, Nov. 1 is already sold out. The six-member group is the first boy band from KOZ Entertainment, the label founded by artist and producer ZICO, and the Pompano date is part of its first world tour. A sold-out K-pop show at a city-owned amphitheater in Broward is its own small sign of who is buying tickets here now.

Then the big classic-rock nights arrive in late winter. Foreigner plays an acoustic set on Feb. 19. Little Feat comes on March 5 as part of what the band calls its Last Farewell Tour, with Old Crow Medicine Show, the group behind Wagon Wheel, as special guest. The band's own note says it is retiring from touring rather than from playing, and that the wind-down will take a few years, but a Little Feat date in a South Florida amphitheater is not something to assume will come around again. Led Zeppelin tribute Get The Led Out follows on March 12.

How to buy without overpaying

Amp tickets are sold only through AXS, and the venue warns that tickets from other resellers may not be valid. There is one fee-saving trick worth knowing: the Amp box office opens on the first Thursday of each month, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the north entrance across from the city aquatic center, specifically so buyers can skip the online fees. It also opens three hours before every show.

Cultural Center tickets run through Pompano Beach Arts. The center sits at 50 W. Atlantic Blvd., next to City Hall, and the box office line is 954-545-7800.

What it adds up to

Tribute nights are easy to book. A resident professional company that opens with a regional premiere of a Tony-nominated show is a different kind of commitment, and it is happening next to City Hall. For anyone in Pompano Beach, that means a real night of theater, a cult-favorite band and a farewell-tour legend are all on the calendar without a drive to Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach.