The Waldo's Rite of Passage for Visiting Actors

Whenever a Riverside Theatre cast rolls into town, Lee Olsen doesn’t wait for opening night. He brings them straight to Waldo’s, sets Voodoo Buckets on the table, serves them dinner and lets the ocean do background.

Lee Olsen and Riverside Company Manager Laura Scott

Nineteen years into running Waldo’s, this is the part of the job he cherishes most: turning visiting actors into honorary locals.

With 9 to 5: The Musical, the ritual feels especially apt. A story about office workers rewriting the rules finds its offstage counterpart at a bar built by a man bent on ignoring them. The cast gets folded into the Driftwood’s long, eccentric narrative and told, in so many words, that this now home base and yours for the entire run of the show. 

He loves theatre, loves the tribe that travels with it, and it shows in the way he talks about the place. Waldo Sexton’s 1935 “family beach house” long ago evolved into a public institution. Part set, part clubhouse, entirely unto itself. One former lead actor put it simply: “You don’t just play Vero. Waldo’s makes you live here for a minute.”

Olsen has built a small tradition around that welcome. Each cast member leaves with his card, “RS cast” printed on the back — 20% off at Waldo’s for the length of the show, and a promise that if they call at intermission with a headcount, the bar will stay open until midnight. On paper, it’s a perk; in practice, it’s a standing invitation to come back, decompress, and claim the place as their own.

By the second week, they usually do. You’ll see them with Playbills and fries, swapping rehearsal stories, comparing notes on audiences, saying, almost on cue, “We had no idea Vero was so great!"

 Olsen sits on the Vero Beach Historic Preservation Commission, but his most persuasive preservation may be here, after hours, when visiting actors are being naturalized. He’s become the town’s unofficial dramaturg, making sure every Riverside cast understands that Vero isn’t just a stop on the schedule. For a little while, it’s their home.

9 to 5: The Musical runs April 16 through May 10 on Riverside. You may purchase tickets here.

Be sure you are buying directly from Riverside, not from third-party ticket resellers that often inflate prices—sometimes charging two or three times face value. Always double-check the web address before you purchase to make sure its www.riversidetheatre.com or my.riversidtheatre.com; sponsored links at the top of a Google search often lead to unauthorized resale sites instead of Riverside’s official ticketing page.