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.

ALL MY KIDS and ONE LIFE TO LIVE Are Resurrected

Pardon me while I try to tamp down my excitement.

I watched ABC daytime dramas from approximately 1971 till All My Children and One Life to Live got canceled in 2011 and 2012, respectively. General Hospital, my one-time favorite, was the only one of ABC's soaps not to get the ax, but by that point, it was a dreary mess of mobsters and misogyny, and I had no desire to stick with daytime TV just for that.

So I gave it up cold turkey. Then there was talk that production company Prospect Park would bring All My Kids and One Life back from the dead, with all-new episodes broadcast only on the internet. I had a healthy dose of skepticism it would ever happen, but guess what? It did, it has, and both soaps showed off their first new episodes today exclusively on Hulu.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE! It's really, really nice to have them back.

The shows are now broadcast in 30-minute episodes, like soaps of yore, instead of the hour-long shows you'll remember from the pre-2011 bloodbath. Some of your favorite actors and characters are back, from Viki, Clint, Bo, Nora, Blair, Todd (albeit briefly), Natalie, Cutter, Tea, Dorian and David on One Life, to Angie, Jesse, Adam, Brooke, a different David (the evil doctor instead of the Boy with the Chipmunk Tattoo), Opal, Dixie, Bianca, Zach, and relative newcomers, sister and brother Cara and Griffin, on AMC.

Missing is, of course, Erica Kane, as played by Susan Lucci, along with Tad the Cad, played by Michael E. Knight, and (at least so far) Erica's daughter Kendall, last played by Alicia Minshew.

From One Life, the missing list includes Michael Easton's John McBain and Kristen Alderson's Starr Manning, both of whom had moved on over to General Hospital's Port Charles in the wake of the cancellation. There's been talk both will be back at some point, just like Starr's daddy Todd, played by Roger Howarth, who'd also shipped out to GH only to be pulled back.

Personally, I already like the new One Life eons better than General Hospital, but I also like Todd Manning, a guy who totally puts the anti in antihero, so I hope he sticks around. Seriously. How much better is it to come back and mix it up with Blair one more time instead of getting stuck in the cesspool named Carly over on GH?

In any event, no matter who's staying and who's going and who's never coming back, the new shows look spiffy, with very nice production values, scripts that are working for me so far, cheekier dialogue than you can get away with on network TV in the afternoon (including swear words), more daring situations (AJ all grown up and playing guitar nude? Destiny transformed into a much taller, much skinner girl in a tube top, with legs for days?), actors I'm happy to see, some interesting newbies, and some fun surprises. What happened after we last saw JR in that closet in Pine Valley? What are they all avoiding talking about? What in the world is Kelly and/or Kitty (Francesca James) doing back in town, only now called Evelyn? How are they going to explain Destiny and Matthew being so much older when Dani and Jack aren't? What happened to bust up Natalie and John? And what about that last-second reveal, you know, the guy in the hoodie whose name I don't want to give away in case you haven't seen it yet?

I admit it. I'm hooked. Thanks, Prospect Park! Thanks, Hulu! It's awfully nice to have my soaps back.

Is there life in ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN?

Deadline is reporting that there may be life in One Life to Live yet. One Life to Live and its sister soap All My Children, both longtime ABC daytime dramas filmed in New York, were axed in 2011, although production company Prospect Park was supposedly trying to put a deal together to bring them both to the internet as web soaps with some of the same actors. All of that fell through, which meant AMC aired for the last time in September 2011, while OLTL bowed out in January 2012. Two of One Life's most famous characters, father and daughter Todd and Starr Manning, have since resurfaced on General Hospital, the lone ABC soap left.

And now, out of the blue, Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz, the guys behind Prospect Park, are back in the news with their soap-operas-on-the-web deal apparently rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Deadline's Nellie Andreeva writes, "I hear Frank and Kwatinetz never lost hope, and had been quietly working since the summer on putting their plan back together and had been talking with the guilds, resulting in agreements with SAG-AFTRA and DGA. (The status of talks with WGA is unclear.) I hear there are preliminary discussions with actors from All My Children and One Life To Live to rejoin the revived shows. Prospect Park refused to comment."

Andreeva also notes that this is a good time to revive soap operas, since the four left on TV (The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives and General Hospital) have been going up in the ratings within the last year. Before it was canceled, One Life to Live was routinely beating GH in the ratings (and it was a much better show than GH, as well.)

Time will tell whether there's anything in these new rumors. Wary viewers know better than to trust Prospect Park after the last time. But still... Hope springs eternal. And that last (Hope Springs Eternal) just happens to be the name I made up for a soap opera I put in a romance novel way back in the 80s. My fictional daytime drama was loosely based on Santa Barbara, my fave at the time. But, you know, if the soaps really do come back strong and somebody needs a name for a new one... I still think Hope Springs Eternal has possibilities.

"All My Children" Actors in Ottawa for "Harvey"

Actor Walt Willey, who played Jackson Montgomery on the daytime soap "All My Children," has a history of coming back to Ottawa, Illinois, to put on shows for a hometown crowd.This year's choice is "Harvey," the 1944 classic written by Mary Chase about a man who has a large and quite invisible bunny friend.

"Harvey" was a hit back in 44, playing 1775 performances at Broadway's 48th Street Theatre, and again this year, with Jim Parsons from TV's "Big Bang Theory" in the lead role of Elwood P. Dowd, the guy with the rabbit habit.

In Ottawa, Willey himself will play Elwood, with his WilleyWorld Productions partner Kim "Howard" Johnson and several Ottawa actors playing opposite him. Also of note in the cast: Vincent Irizarry, another "All My Kids" star.

Irizarry played heartthrob Lujack on "The Guiding Light" before appearing in the movie "Heartbreak Ridge" and then soaps "Santa Barbara" and "The Young and the Restless." On "All My Children," he was the evil (and yet very sexy) Dr. David Hayward, mad scientist who brought dead people back to life and fixated on certain women he couldn't have.

He will also be playing a doctor -- Dr. Lyman Sanderson -- in "Harvey," as the other people in town try to get ol' Elwood committed because he believes in an imaginary six-foot rabbit.

"Harvey" opens at the Ottawa High School Auditorium on Friday, July 27, continuing through the 29th. For performance details, visit the WilleyWorld Facebook page.