Keeping It Cool in July

July gets going early on the theatrical front, with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival offering a special one-woman show featuring Lori Adams as 19th Century Shakespearean actress Fanny Kemble tonight only.

Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble by Anne Ludlam takes the stage at Ewing Manor tonight at 7:30 pm, bringing you up close and personal with Fanny Kemble, an extraordinary woman who combined passions for acting and abolition with a tempestuous personal life.

The Normal Theater brings us a very interesting choice, a 2012 documentary called The Rep, from July 4 to 7. The film goes behind the scenes at movie theaters much like the Normal, where committed film lovers work to keep their art house cinemas alive, with the idea of bringing to life the world of repertory cinema "as a vibrant and culturally significant medium that needs to be preserved." I don't know about you, but I love that poster all by itself.

Illinois Shakespeare Festival mainstage shows The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth open in previews July 5 and 6, with the third show on this summer's schedule, Failure: A Love Story by Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins, previewing July 11. All three shows will officially open the following week, with Comedy bowing on the 12th, Macbeth wending its wicked way to the stage on the 13th and Failure showing up on the 14th. Options for special preshows, improv, Theatre for Young Audiences and backstage tours abound, so you're forewarned to check the complete calendar and the Festival homepage to make sure you get to see everything you're interested in. Tickets are available through the Illinois State University box office at 309-438-2535 and at Ticketmaster.

Heartland Theatre brings it New Plays from the Heartland project to the stage between July 11 and 14, with staged readings of Hear Me Now by Minnesota's Tim J. Brennan, Tangled Mess by Missouri's Stephen Peirick and Paper Cut to the Heart by Bloomington-Normal's own Terri Ryburn on Friday and Saturday, July 12 and 13, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, July 14, at 2 pm. Mary Ruth Clarke, resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists Guild, will conduct a workshop with the winning playwrights earlier in the day and offer remarks to the public in an open forum at Heartland Theatre on July 11 at 7:30 pm. There is no charge for the latter event. For all the New Plays from the Heartland details, click here.

Elton John and Tim Rice's pop-rock musical Aida, as opposed to the opera by Verdi, opens at Community Players on July 12, with performances continuing through the 28th. The story is much the same, with Nubian princess Aida captured and held as a slave in Egypt, where she falls in love with military man Radames, although their love is threatened by Egyptian princess Amneris, who also fancies the captain. The Linda Woolverton/Robert Falls/David Henry Hwang book adds a fantasy endless-love framing device, but the basic story of doomed love is still there at the center. Alan Wilson directs Aida for Community Players, with a cast that includes Jennifer Rusk as Aida, Austin Travis as Radames, and Jennifer Stevens as Amneris. To see the complete cast as well as ticket information, click here.

July 12 is a popular date, with New Route Theatre choosing that night, as well, to present readings of original works by area writers. New Route's Tapestries III: Word Weavers, directed by Irene Taylor, will take place at Blair House in Normal, and include an open mic for audience members who'd like to share their own poetry or prose.

On July 15, Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network will begin airing the first 40 half-hour episodes of All My Children and One Life to Live produced for The Online Network. Many daytime favorites, like Erika Slezak, Robin Strasser, Kassie DePaiva, Tuc Watkins and Robert S. Woods of One Life and Debbi Morgan, Darnell Williams, Vincent Irizarry, Thorsten Kaye and Julia Barr on All My Kids, are appearing on these soap reboots, although several key players, like Susan Lucci, Erica Kane herself, and Michael E. Knight, who played Tad the Cad, are MIA. Still, I've been enjoying seeing old faves like Todd and Blair, and some of the newbies are quite good, including Eric Nelsen and Denyse Tontz as troubled teens AJ Chandler and Miranda Montgomery on AMC and Robert Gorrie and Corbin Bleu as a SORAS'd* Matthew Buchanan and his new pal Jeffrey on OLTL. Kelly Missal, who played Dani Manning on the old show as well as the new one, seems much improved these days, as well.

One of the best movies of the 60s -- one of the best movies ever -- Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb comes to Champaign's Art Theatre Co-op July 5, 6 and 11 at 10 pm, and July 7 at 11:30 am. Kubrick directed and co-wrote this dark, snarky comedy about a renegade general named Jack D. Ripper, beautifully played by Sterling Hayden, who goes bonkers (he's paranoid about losing "precious bodily fluids") and engineers a nuclear attack on the Soviets. In the wake of Ripper's solo declaration of war, President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellars, in one of three roles, including Dr. Strangelove himself) scrambles to stop all-out nuclear war as General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) argues that nuking the Sovs may not be such a bad idea. Former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove, who has a mechanical arm and a wheelchair, is brought in to offer options, while Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) and Lieutenant Lothar Zogg (James Earl Jones) man the B-52 bomber speeding towards Soviet targets. Remember -- there's no fighting in the War Room!

The second Secret Garden of the summer begins July 26 at Miller Park, when the Missoula Childrens' Theatre brings the 1991 Broadway musical to Miller Park for the first of four performances. Lucy Simon wrote the music and playwright Marsha Norman did the book and lyrics for this stage adaptation of the classic childrens' novel about an orphan girl sent from India to the English countryside to live with her uncle. Click here for all the details on Miller Park Summer Theatre.

*SORAS refers to Soap Opera Rapid Aging Symdrome, a common technique used on daytime dramas to turn toddlers into hunky teens and 20-somethings overnight to make them more useful in ongoing plotlines.

Verdi's AIDA from MIO Today at 3

The Midwest Institute of Opera will offer a concert version of Verdi's Aida this afternoon at 3 pm at the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts.

Verdi's four-act opera about a pair of ill-fated lovers in ancient Egypt has been an audience favorite since its first performance in 1871. Over the years, Aida has seen notable performances by sopranos Teresa Stolz, Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price and Montserrrat Caballé as Aida; tenors Richard Tucker, Jussi Björling, Jon Vickers and Placido Domingo as her lover Radames; and conductors like Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti and Zubin Mehta with the baton.

For the Midwest Institute of Opera, Cara Chowing conducts, with soprano Tracy Marie Koch in the role of Aida; tenor Tod Kowallis as her Radames; mezzo soprano Allison Robertson as Amneris, the daughter of the Egyptian king and a thorn in the Aida/Radames romance; baritone John M. Koch as Amonasro, Aida's father; bass baritone Anthony Gullo as high priest Ramfis, and bass Richard Schacht as the Egyptian king. Pianist Byul Nim La will accompany this concert staging of the opera.

The MIO version of Aida will be sung in Italian with English supertitles. Tickets are $10 and are available at the door. You may also call the ISU CPA Box Office at 309-438-2535 an hour prior to the show. Note that tickets purchased at the door must be paid for in cash.

Community Players Out of the Gate Fast Announcing 2013-14 Season

Now that it's 2013, Community Players isn't wasting any time. Yesterday, they made their big 2013-14 announcement, cluing everyone in on what they'll be performing on Robinhood Lane through July 27, 2014.

What do they have planned? A challenging season, mixing stage classics with some spiffy new musicals.

When I saw the first two choices, I thought maybe they going to do a whole season of Plays Beginning with A. That might be fun, but for right now, they'll start with the musical Aida in July, 2013, and head on to Arsenic and Old Lace in September.

This Aida (as opposed to the Verdi opera) is a power ballad bonanza, with music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls, and David Henry Hwang. It's a love story about the transcendent connection between an Egyptian military man, one Radames, and a Nubian captive named Aida. On Broadway, Aida won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical Score and Best Performance by a Leading Actress for Heather Headley, who played Aida.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a totally different kettle of fish. This comedy classic, performed by countless theaters, schools and community organizations, has great roles -- Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha -- for ladies of a certain age. Mortimer Brewster's two aunts are lovely and sweet, providing both the lace and the arsenic, as it happens, knocking off old older gentlemen who stop by their parlor with poisoned elderberry wine. They're only doing it to be kind to these lonely souls, and also to provide "yellow fever" victims for their brother Teddy, who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt, to bury in the basement, where he thinks he is digging the Panama Canal. It's dark humor and decidedly funny, as poor Mortimer gets put through the wringer by all the nonsense going on in the Brewster household.

In November, Players will unveil Monty Python's Spamalot, the musical version of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail that won the Tony for Best Musical on Broadway in 2005. Monty Python member Eric Idle wrote the book and the lyrics and contributed to the score with John Du Prez and Neil Innes. Spamalot is a decidedly irreverent retelling of  Arthurian legends, with a little Fish Slapping, some Laker Girls and Las Vegas style entertainment, as well as jokes at the expense of Broadway itself.

That will be followed by a radio play version of It's a Wonderful Life, in December, of course, and the drama The Diary of Anne Frank to start 2014. The original stage version of Anne Frank, adapted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett from the diaries the young schoolgirl wrote while hiding out from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War II, played on Broadway in 1955. A new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman also came to Broadway, this time in 1997, with Natalie Portman in the title role. The newly adapted Diary of Anne Frank is scheduled for performances from January 17 to 26, 2014, at Community Players.

The March musical choice is Dolly Parton's 9 to 5: The Musical, the show IWU performed last semester. Dolly wrote the score, while Patricia Resnick contributed the book of this female empowerment musical that takes a leap back to the late 70s to show the comical side of revenge against a male chauvinist pig. Remember when we said "male chauvinist pig"? I do!

9 to 5 will be followed by Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, with performances from May 16 to 25. The Odd Couple is a perennial favorite, with the original stageplay, film and TV versions, scripts written for men and for women playing the mismatched roommates, and a 2002 updated Odd Couple (called Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple) that includes more current references. Which one is Community Players performing? We'll have to wait till we're a little closer to find out. (The image at right is from the film version, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. A little bit of trivia: Matthau was also in the Broadway original, where he played Oscar opposite Art Carney's Felix.)

The last show of this ambitious season will be Shrek the Musical, a Broadway show about a sweet green ogre and the enchanted princess he falls in love with. Lots of fairytale humor in this one, with a prince who is not at all charming, exiled fairies and elves and Pinocchio, and a talking donkey who becomes Shrek's best pal. Jeanine Tesori wrote the music for Shrek the Musical, while playwright David Lindsay-Abaire contributed both the lyrics and the book. The wonderful Brian d'Arcy James and Sutton Foster played Shrek and his beloved Princess Fiona on Broadway. And Christopher Sieber, one of the original cast members of Spamalot, took on the diminutive Prince Farquaard, the bad guy in the mix.

For schedule details and audition dates for all these shows, check out the Facebook announcement from Community Players here.