Arts@ICC Theater Season Opens Sept 29

Illinois Central College will open its 2017-18 theater season on September 29, when Steve Martin's crazy comedy The Underpants begins a six-performance run in the ICC Performing Arts Center.

Martin based his boisterous farce play on a 1910 satire of middle-class mores written by German playwright Carl Sternheim. The Underpants involves what happens after Louise Markes, the wife of a puffed-up civil servant, loses her undies as she's attempting to get a better look at the king during a parade. Her husband fears his reputation and his career are toast because of his wife's errant intimate apparel, while Louise is starting to get a lot of attention from smitten men who saw her panties drop in public. Those men include two would-be boarders in the Markes household. And hilarity ensues.

Tim Wyman directs The Underpants at ICC with a cast that includes Nathanael Anderson as the king, Darrell Kimbro as Louise, Noah Lane as Theo, Dylan McDonell and Creighton Peacock as the two men who want to rent rooms to pursue Louise, Max Rutschke as an elderly scientist and Adyson TerMaat as the upstairs neighbor.

Tickets for The Underpants are $8 for the general public and $6 for students and senior citizens. Performances run from September 29 through October 8, with Friday and Saturday shows beginning at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm. The show is rated PG for "mild adult situations."

In November, ICC Theatre will offer a dinner-theater option with Bullets for Broadway by David Landau, billed as "an audience participation whodunit that combines music, food….and murder!" Look for Bullets for Broadway and its "The Sopranos meet The Producers" antics November 10 to 19 in ICC's studio theater. The food will, of course, be Italian.

And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank by Jim Still is up next. This multimedia experience is "part oral history, part dramatic action, part remembrance" as it focuses on the world of Anne Frank, seen through the eyes of two Holocaust survivors. And Then They Came for Me will play for six performances between February 23 and March 4, 2018, in ICC's mainstage theater. Rated PG for intense material.

Keeping up the intensity level, Martin McDonagh's biting, bitterly funny The Cripple of Inishmaan comes to ICC's studio theater from April 13 to 22, 2018. This tragic comedy centers on an Irish boy whose body holds "a host of troubles." He is a square peg in his small village but dreams of becoming a movie star in Hollywood when a documentary film crew (Robert J. Flaherty's real venture to film The Man of Aran in 1933) comes calling. Let's just say things don't turn out the way "Cripple Billy" hoped. Rated R for adult language.

Both individual and season tickets are available to these shows. To get all the info on ordering, check out ArtsAtICC.com or call the ICC Performing Arts Center box office at 309-694-5136.

New in November!

A sweet Swedish movie called A Man Called Ove, with the quintessential "Get Off My Lawn" cranky neighbor as the main character, comes to the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign tomorrow and Thursday. A  Man Called Ove puts the curmudgeon, a retiree and a widower whose main pursuit in life is enforcing neighborhood regulations, in conflict with a noisy, disorderly family that moves in next boor. Rolf Lassgård stars as Ove; he earned two Best Actor awards, one at the Seattle International Film Festival, for the role. A Man Called Ove will be screened at the Art Theater tomorrow at 6 and 8:30 pm and Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 pm.

Community Players brings out the puppets in November with Avenue Q, the irreverent Broadway musical that mixes Muppet-like characters with adult situations represented in songs like "It Sucks to Be Me" and "The Internet Is for Porn." George W. Bush was president when Avenue Q opened in 2003 and he got a mention in the song "For Now," which celebrates the temporary nature of problems and annoyances. The lyrics to that song have changed since Bush left the presidency in 2009, including a Donald Trump reference earlier this year. No word on whether the Community Players cast will sing about Trump being only "For Now," but we can hope. Brett Cottone directs a cast that includes Aaron Wiessing as Princeton, the puppet who moves to Avenue Q and meets his neighbors, human and puppet alike, and Erin Box as Kate Monster, his love interest. Avenue Q opens at Community Players with a preview performance on November 3, with performances continuing through November 20. For information, click here, or to purchase tickets, click here.

Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, a creepy play from 1964 about a malevolent family and the son (and his wife) who visit, comes to Heartland Theatre beginning November 3. The last time I reviewed The Homecoming, I called it "a surreal domestic dumping ground." That's as good a description as any, I suppose. Since then, I've learned that Pinter thought it was a feminist play, while I fall more on the side of those who think it's really, really misogynistic. If you're a Pinter fan, you'll probably want to decide for yourself if the sole female character, Ruth, represents female power, a combination of the Madonna and the whore, or she's just a "disgusting, distinctively masculine, sexual fantasy." Sandra Zielinski directs a cast that includes guest actor David Kortemeier, who has played many roles for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and last appeared at Heartland in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1991. After a Pay What You Can Preview on Thursday, November 3, The Homecoming will run till November 19. For showtimes, check this link.

Emergency Prom will give freshman actors at Bradley University a chance to strut their stuff from November 10 to 13 at the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. And when I say "strut their stuff," I mean swaying to "Stay" or doing a little Bump N' Grind or whatever else was in fashion with outsiders in 1994. That's the premise of the play -- a group of not-exactly-popular kids in 1994 decide that last weekend's prom was so terrible that they need to stage a do-over, a new prom, an Emergency Prom. Check out the details here.

Arts at ICC presents David Landau's Murder at the Cafe Noir beginning November 11. As you might expect from the title, there are mysterious doings afoot in this play, involving a hard-boiled PI named Rick Archer. If you know your Bogart movies, both pieces of that name will sound familiar. Murder at the Cafe Noir is part Casablanca, part Maltese Falcon, and part Choose Your Own Adventure, with audience interaction to decide what Rick should do. If you're interested in seeing Murder at the Cafe Noir at ICC, pay special attention to the times of performances. Fridays and Saturdays, the curtain is at 6:30 pm, Sundays it's at 2:30 pm, and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the show opens at 7:30 pm.

When you think of songwriters Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, something like "My Funny Valentine," "Blue Moon" or "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" may be the first song that comes to mind. But the Rodgers and Hart score for The Boys from Syracuse is pretty swell, too. This musical version of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors has "Falling in Love with Love," "This Can't Be Love" and "Sing for Your Supper," songs which were popular at the time and are still popular enough to show up often in revues and concerts. George Abbott directed the first Broadway production in 1938, with Eddie Albert starring as Antipholus of Syracuse. (That's the poster you see at left.) Classic material with a sparkling score is perfect for Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts and its talented students, and also perfect for IWU Associate Professor Scott Susong, who directs the production opening November 15 at the Jerome Mirza Theatre inside MacPherson Hall. Susong's cast includes Conor Finnerty-Esmonde and Tim Foszcz as the two Antipholi, Eli Miller and Kenny Tran as their identical twin servants, both named Dromio, Jackie Salgado as Adriana, who is married to the Antipholus from Ephesus but mistakes his twin bro for her husband, and Yuka Sekine as her sister, Luciana. The Boys from Syracuse will play at IWU for six performances between the 15th and the 20th. For more information or to reserve tickets, contact the School of Theatre Arts box office at 309-556-3232.

Arts at ICC Goes for the Absurd, Mysterious, Scary and Grungy in Theater for 2016-17

I haven't seen an official announcement, but I've pieced together Illinois Central College's upcoming theater season by using their monthly calendar for Arts at ICC events. Here's what I've found on the schedule for theater at ICC in 2016 and 2017:

The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare
September 23-25 and 30; October 1-2
"John Guare's poignant Obie Award-winning comedy unfolds in New York City on the day the Pope is expected to visit. Hearts are palpitating in the sleepy borough of Queens, but not entirely on account of His Holiness. Bunny Flingus, a femme fatale from Flushing (or thereabouts) is stirring things up in the quiet, unfulfilled life of aspiring songwriter Artie Shaughnessy. Artie longs to leave his unhappy marriage, elope with Bunny, and write a hit song that will top the charts."

Murder at Café Noir by David Landau
November 11-13 and 15-20
"The most popular mystery dinner show in the country, Murder at Café Noir has enjoyed weekly productions coast to coast since its premiere in 1989. This forties detective story come to life features Rick Archer, P.I., out to find a curvaceous runaway on the forgotten island of Mustique, a place stuck in a black and white era. The owner of the Cafe Noir has washed ashore, murdered, and Rick's quarry was the last person seen with him. He employs his hard boiled talents to find the killer. Was it the French madame and club manager, the voodoo priestess, the shyster British attorney, the black marketeer or the femme fatale? The audience votes twice on what they want Rick to do next and these decisions change the flow of this comic tribute to the Bogart era."

The Bone House by Marty Chan
February 24-26 and March 3-5
"An audience comes to hear a lecture about serial killers. Self-proclaimed mind hunter, Eugene Crowley, recreates gruesome murders to convince the audience that a serial killer is on the loose. As the lecture progresses, the audiences suspects Crowley might actually be the killer himself. But before they can act, members of the audience are shuffled throughout the lecture hall so that they sit beside strangers. Crowley presents his final proof, an inkblot that the audience must scrutinize for a full minute. The lights are turned off and the negative image of the inkblot forms the face of the killer. However, in the blackout, the true killer makes his presence known and proceeds to eviscerate Crowley, leaving the audience’s imaginations to create the picture to go along with the sounds and sensations in the dark. This play is a psychological experiment about the nature of fear, imagination, and deification of serial killers."

Suburbia by Eric Bogosian
April 14-15 and 18-23
"In the parking lot of a convenience store in the suburban town of Burnfield, a group of 20-year-olds get together one autumn night to welcome an old pal, now a star returning from a successful national tour with his rock band. His arrival in a limousine replete with entourage precipitates an all-night whirlwind of drinking, sex, and violence. As the sun rises over the convenience store parking lot, tragedy and comedy have laced through these nine young lives and changed them forever, some of the group have found their way out of Burnfield while the rest are left to deal with a tragedy and its lasting consequences."

House of Blue Leaves, Murder at Cafe Noir and The Bone House will be performed on the Main Stage in the ICC Center for the Performing Arts in East Peoria, while Suburbia will be performed in the Studio Theatre in the CPA. For ticket information, visit Arts at ICC's online ticketing page or call the box office at 309-694-5136.

Cool Off Your Summer With SNOW WHITE for a Dollar at ICC on July 29

How long has it been since you saw Walt Disney’s animated classic Snow Whiteand the Seven Dwarfs? Fairytales on film and TV continue to be popular -- Snow herself is one of the main characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time, plus Kristen Stewart played her in 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman and the Internet Movie Database shows over a hundred other pieces with "Snow White" in the title -- but it's the 1937 version of Snow's story that sets the standard. This Snow White was, after all, the first full-length animated feature film released by Walt Disney Studios and the first movie to release a soundtrack album. That album reflected how popular the movie's charming score became, with memorable songs like "Whistle While You Work," "Heigh-Ho," and "Some Day My Prince Will Come," written by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey just for the movie.

In recognition of the movie's place in film history, and also to determine if there's interest in offering more child- and family-friendly events at the Illinois Central College Performing Arts Center, Arts at ICC will show the 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on Friday, July 29 at 6:30 pm. Tickets are a little more than 1937 prices, but at $1 for everybody over two, you still can't beat the price. Anybody younger than two can get in for free. They will also be offering concessions, although there's no word on whether those will follow the $1 theme.

Because this event is a test to gauge general interest in Arts at ICC doing more family-oriented events that appeal to smaller children, they will be handing out a survey at this movie. If you don't make it to the movie, but you want to give them some input on the subject, you can find the survey online at ArtsAtICC.com/kids.

For tickets or more information, visit ArtsAtICC.com or call the ICC Performing Arts Center Box Office at 309-694-5136.

Leaping into March

As we vault over the end of February into March, there are a few shows which made the leap with us. And after that, plenty of shows to keep March roaring like a lion all the way to the end of the month.

Illinois State University continues its production of Street Scene, an opera version of the Elmer Rice play about the denizens of a tenement on a hot day in New York City, with the action shifted to 1946. Kurt Weill wrote the music, with poet Langston Hughes providing the lyrics for this look at the overlapping lives of ordinary working people of different ethnicities and clashing personalities.  Street Scene opened last week, but there are four performances left this week. You have a choice of tonight, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday at 7:30 pm at the ISU Center for the Performing Arts. Click here for more information on upcoming ISU productions or here for ticket info.

Also continuing this week is Dead Guy, a darkly funny play about the dangers of reality television written by Eric Coble, on stage at Illinois Central College in East Peoria. You can tune in to Dead Guy March 4, 5 and 6 at the ICC Performing Arts Center.

Eurydice opens tomorrow night at Eureka College, with performances through the weekend. This surreal, lyrical Sarah Ruhl play takes a different look at the myth of Orpheus, putting Eurydice in the center of the story. Instead of a look at a man who ventures into Hell to find his bride, Ruhl's play takes us along with Eurydice, the woman who dies on her wedding day, as she acclimates to a new world -- the world of the dead -- and how she reacts when her groom comes in search of her. Click here for more information on Eurydice in Eureka's Pritchard Theatre.

You'll find the funny science fiction/horror musical Little Shop of Horrors playing at Community Players in Bloomington from March 11 to 26. The sci-fi and horror come in the form of a "mean green mother from outer space," a bloodthirsty plant known as Audrey II. Little Shop started as a super-cheap black-and-white movie supposedly made in two days by legendary director Roger Corman, with Jack Nicholson in a small role as a dental patient who loves to feel pain. That cult classic spawned an off-off-Broadway musical (that quickly moved off-Broadway and eventually got to Broadway) with music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. The stage musical was turned into a bigger-budget* movie with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin in the cast, along with Ellen Greene, who'd played Audrey I when the show was off-off and off-Broadway.  For Community Players, Chris Terven plays Seymour, the lowly floral shop clerk who loves a girl named Audrey (Aimee Kerber) from afar and raises Audrey II (voice by George Jackson III) from a sprout into a giant green monster. For more information on all things Little Shop at Community Players, click here.

If you've enjoyed Sticky in the Sticks -- pop-up theater in the form of ten-minute plays set in and performed at a bar -- you'll want to make sure you get to the newest edition, Spring Sticky on March 11. As always, Sticky plays at the Firehouse Pizza and Pub in Normal. This time out, you'll see actors like Connie Blick and J. Michael Grey, co-founders of the B-N "in the Sticks" version of Sticky, along with Ben Gorski, Kari Knowlton, Anthony Loster, Wes Melton, Joshua Miranda, Nancy Nickerson, Terry Noel, Keaton Richard, Jared Sanders, Maureen Steerenburg, Cathy Sutliff and Lucian Winner. Plays performed include work by local author Terri Ryburn and Libby Emmons, Sticky's original New York founder. Admission is $8 for everyone -- you don't have to be over 21 to get in, but you should be aware that the material performed may have mature themes and language. The show will begin at 8 pm, with local folk/blues duo River Salt as the opening act. Be advised to be there early to get a good seat, since the space in the bar is limited.

Illinois State University's Department of Theatre and Dance brings ¡Bocón!(The Big Mouth) by Lisa Loomer to Westhoff Theatre March 25 to 27, 29 to 31 and April 1 and 2. Dr. Cyndee Brown directs this "imaginative fable for the whole family, interweaving fantasy with the violent reality of the 1980s war in El Salvador." Although the show is intended for all ages, the issues involved are deep and real, as a boy named Miguel loses his parents to "enforced disappearance" for opposition to the political regime. Miguel, too, is silenced, and he must take a long journey to find his voice and himself.  Joshua Pennington plays Miguel in this production, with Daniel Esquivel, Vanessa Garcia, Johanna Kerber, Natalie Kozelka, Gabrielle Muñoz, Samantha Peroutka, Thomas Russell and Nick Scott in the ensemble.

Those are the events that rose to the top of my list, but I'll have more about the Normal Theater and its Hitchcock/Truffaut pairings, the University of Illinois's Grapes of Wrath and In the Blood, and whatever else crosses my desk.

*The story goes that the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors was made for about $25,000 while the 1982 musical movie was budgeted at about $25,000,000. That's 25 thou to 25 mil.

It's That Time Again -- February Fever!

I'm late out of the gate, but February entertainment options are not. They're starting up soon, and you need to know to get your tickets, your DVR fired up, or your snacks ready.

Right now, Champaign's Art Theater Co-op is offering Trumbo, the biopic about blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston in the title role. A big part of the Dalton Trumbo story involves the Oscars, as his work won two of them during a time he couldn't take credit for it. An English writer named Ian McLellan Hunter "fronted" for Trumbo on the 1953 film Roman Holiday, which won an Academy Award for its writing, while Trumbo used the pseudonym "Robert Rich" for The Brave One in 1956, another Oscar winner for its story. And this year, Cranston is nominated for his work as an actor in Trumbo. You'll find the film at the Art tonight and tomorrow at 10 pm, with showings at 11:30 am on Saturday the 6th and 2:30 pm on Sunday the 7th and Wednesday the 10th. Yes, those are odd times, but Trumbo is worth a look.

On February 5, Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts presents Sarah Gancher's Klauzal Square, a ghostly story of bullying, religion, and the power dynamic among preteens, inspired by a real Budapest playground built on top of what was once a Nazi mass grave. IWU senior Tyler Stacey directs a cast of five, including sophomore Libby Zabit, who plays Klara, the one with a ghostly friend, along with Hailey Lechelt, Jackie Salgado, Kristin Solodar and Brooke Teweles. Performances of Klauzal Square run from February 5 to 7 in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre on the Wesleyan campus. Call the box office at 309-556-3232 for ticket information.

Next week, Heartland Theatre kicks off the winter part of its season with Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris's Pulitzer, Tony and Olivier-winning play from 2010. The play, which functions as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning A Raisin in the Sun, uses events in one Chicago house, shown in 1959 and then 2009, to illuminate the racial issues underlying where and how we live in America. In the 50s, Clybourne Park is a white, middle-class neighborhood, and a white couple named Bev and Russ are selling their home to a black family. When we see it again in 2009, it has become an all-African-American neighborhood, but white people are trying to move back in, pushing all the black people out and razing houses to the ground in the name of gentrification. The same actors play different people in the two timelines, giving them a chance to take on more than role, in some cases on opposite sides of the issues raised. Heartland Theatre's Artistic Director Rhys Lovell is at the helm of Clybourne Park, with a cast that includes John Bowen, Anastasia Ferguson, John Fischer, Joshua McCauley, Elante Richardson, Michelle Woody, Tim Wyman and Kristi Zimmerman-Weiher. For show dates and times, click here. For reservation information, try this page.

The musical Ragtime takes the stage at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on February 11 for just one show at 7:30 pm. It's not clear from the BCPA site who is performing this Broadway musical, which played for two years before the turn of the 21st century and earned three Tony Awards, including a Featured Actress win for Audra McDonald, who only had two Tonys back then. Ragtime was her third, but she has six now, if you're keeping track. Ragtime is based on the E. L. Doctorow novel, showing a swirling series of events in American history that involve people from disparate parts of society -- the upper and lower classes, a jazz musician, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe -- against a backdrop of a very American form of music. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty wrote the score, while Terrence McNally wrote the book.

The Illinois State University School of Theatre and Dance also kicks off its 2016 theatre season next week, with Illinois Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Kevin Rich directing... Shakespeare! It's Romeo and Juliet this time, that timeless tale of star-crossed lovers who fall for each other in spite of parental disapproval and a climate of feuds and fighting in old Verona. Romeo and Juliet opens in Westhoff Theatre on February 12, with James Keating and Kaitlyn Wehr as R and J. Performances continue through the 20th, including a 2 pm matinee on the 14th if Romeo and Juliet is your idea of a cool Valentine's date. For more information (including a link to buy tickets), check out this ISU press piece.

If Hamlet is your favorite Shakespeare play (and it is mine), you're in luck. Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts is putting Hamlet on stage at the Jerome Mirza Theater in McPherson Hall on February 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 at 8 pm and February 28 at 2 pm. IWU professor Christopher Connelly directs Shakespeare's longest play, the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark as he muses on life, death, revenge, and what to do about the rotten state in which he lives. No poster for this one that I could find, so let's content ourselves with a picture of David Tennant as Hamlet on a British stamp from 2011.

Street Scene on Broadway in 1947.

ISU Theatre is back on February 26 with the opera version of Elmer Rice's Street Scene, directed by new faculty member Robert Quinlan. Rice wrote the book of the musical, too, moving the action from a sweltering day on the front steps of a tenement in a "mean quarter of New York" in the 1920's to the same hot spot in 1946. The plot involves various residents of the building, as they gather to gossip, flirt, fight and generally push against each other in their small square of real estate. The opera's music was written by Kurt Weill, while poet Langston Hughes provided the lyrics. The 1947 Broadway production won Tonys for Weill and its costume designer, although it has never been revived on Broadway. When casting was announced, Quinlan's ensemble included Rebecca Crumline as Anna Maurrant, an unhappy woman who lives in the tenement behind the stoop; Joshua Ramseyer as her violently jealous husband; Morgan Melville as their daughter, Rose; and Kevin Alleman as Sam Kaplan, a Jewish boy who's in love with Rose. Street Scene is scheduled for performances in the ISU Center for the Performing Arts from February 26 to March 4. 

Closing out the month, Arts at ICC will present The Dead Guy by Eric Coble, with performances from February 26 to March 6. Coble's 2005 play looks at the continuing appetite for reality TV and the moral price we pay, focusing on a show (also called The Dead Guy) with a shocking premise. Contestant Eldon Phelps gets a cool million dollars to appear on the show, but... There's a big but: Eldon is required to spend the entire amount during one week, with his death looming at the end of it, live and on TV. As he goes through his spending-a-million week, the audience is busy voting on how he should kick his reality TV bucket. Ouch. ICC Theatre is giving you six performances to catch The Dead Guy, with shows on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm starting February 26. I am also without a poster for The Dead Guy at ICC, but Proper Hijinx Productions in Texas has a nifty one for their current production that you can see here.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like December

There's a lot to stuff in your stocking this month, with some interesting not-so-holidayish items, (like a very special trio of staged readings) to go along with the classic Nutcrackers (and more Nutcrackers) and Christmas concerts.

This week, Heartland Theatre is doing something a little different -- a staged reading of a completely new (updated and contemporized) version of an "undiscovered Ibsen classic" in collaboration with Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance. Although Ibsen's title was originally translated as A League of Youth, this new version by playwright Nigel O'Hearn is called An Alliance of Brats. It's political and timely, with a cast led by ISU MFA actor Joey Banks, directed by Sandra Zielinski, with talkbacks on political topics scheduled after every performance. You can see An Alliance of Brats for a $5 donation from December 4 to 6, with the playwright himself in house on Friday the 4th. Click here to check out the schedule and the lineup of guest speakers after the show.

Turner Classic Movies is offering way too many holiday movies for me to enumerate them. But you can peruse the list here, with a choice of Scrooges (Albert Finney and Reginald Owen) as well as the cream of the holiday film crop with Meet Me in St. Louis, Christmas in Connecticut and The Shop Around the Corner. The holiday parade at TCM starts on Thursday at 8 pm with It Happened on 5th Avenue, a slight but sweet romantic comedy about GIs solving the post-World War II housing crisis for themselves by moving into a posh but empty 5th Avenue mansion while its millionaire owner summers in warmer climes. TCM finishes up December with a whole lot of Marx Brothers and Thin Man movies on December 31.

Hayao Miyazaki’s much-beloved Spirited Away makes the lineup at Champaign's Art Theater Co-Op this month, with screenings from December 5 to 10. This beautiful piece of animated fantasy sends a young girl named Chihiro deep into an enchanted theme park, battling demons, witches and sorcery to save herself and her parents. Spirited Away ranks No. 30 among IMDB's list of the all-time best movies. To see showtimes and a trailer for this Oscar-winning film, click here.

Music for the Holidays at ISU December 5 and 6

Illinois State University’s annual Music for the Holidays concerts will take place at 3 and 7 pm on December 5, and 3 pm December 6, in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall on the ISU quad. Music for the Holidays includes traditional holiday music performed by instrumental and vocal ensembles from ISU's School of Music at ISU, with orchestral pieces such as Russian Christmas Music and Hanukkah Festival Overture, choral arrangements of the Christmas Waltz, "Pat-a-Pan" and "Still, Still, Still," and an arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Audience members are encouraged to join and sing along. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for faculty/staff and $10 for students and seniors.

Illinois Wesleyan's annual Christmas Choral Concert takes place December 6 at Holy Trinity Church. This special holiday concert will feature IWU’s Collegiate Choir, University Choir and Chamber Singers, conducted by Professor of Music J. Scott Ferguson. The Lincoln-Way East High Schol Chorale, conducted by Matthew Granger, will also perform. For more information, click here.

The Normal Theater is branching into live theater with a special staged reading of Lillian Hellman's gripping family drama, The Little Foxes, directed by Patrick O'Gara, on Tuesday, December 8, at 7 pm. The role of Regina Gibbons, the scheming matriarch of a poisonous family, has been played by Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, Anne Bancroft and Elizabeth Taylor, but O'Gara has put together an all-star cast of his own, including local powerhouses Lori Adams, Dean Brown, Gregory Hicks, Kyle Fitzgerald, Don Shandrow, Claron Sharrieff and Todd Wineburner, along with all three members of the de Veer acting family. Yes, this Little Foxes includes Connie, Gwen and Mark de Veer on stage at the same time. I would say it's not to be missed, but that should be apparent from the cast without any input from me. The Normal Theater will follow that up with a screening of the 1941 movie version of The Little Foxes, starring Bette Davis, with a screenplay penned by Lillian Hellman herself. (Note that the image accompanying this paragraph is from the 1997 Broadway revival with Stockard Channing.)

New Route Theatre's According to John on December 11

New Route Theatre is up and running in December with According to John, a new piece based on the Gospel of John in the New Testament, written and performed by Ron Roman, another of Illinois State University's third-year MFA actors. This solo performance, a staged reading, takes place at the First Christian Church of Bloomington on December 11 at 7 pm. Tickets are available at the door on the night of the performance. There is no set ticket price, but donations are encouraged. Email new.route.theatre@gmail.com for more information.

This month they're busy rehearsing The Crucible, their January show, at Community Players, but in the meantime, Players is also offering a "Holiday Movie Night" double feature with The Muppet Christmas Carol, where Michael Caine plays Scrooge alongside Kermit as Bob Cratchit (with songs!) and Christmas Vacation, with Chevy Chase tied up in lights as the crazy Griswolf family gathers for the holidays. Players' "Holiday Movie Night" is set for December 12; doors open at 4:30, with the Muppets starting at 5 and Chevy Chase & Co. taking over at 7. And it's free!

Singer Sal Viviano comes to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on December 12 with his tribute to Frank Sinatra called Perfectly Frank: Celebrating a Century of Sinatra. December 12 happens to be Mr. Sinatra's birthday -- his 100th, as a matter of fact -- so you are promised cake if you attend this concert, which will cover Sinatra hits like "Luck Be a Lady" and "My Kind of Town." Viviano doesn't sound a great deal like Sinatra (you can hear a lot of him on the long teaser video posted on the BCPA site) so this is clearly not intended as an imitation.

Carols in the Courtroom on December 15

Illinois State University's Civic Chorale hosts Carols in the Courtroom on December 15 at 7:30 pm in the Governor Fifer room of the McLean County Museum of History. And hot cocoa and Christmas cookies will be available, as well. Once again, admission is free, but donations to help support ISU's Civic Chorale will be accepted. Professor John M. Koch is conducting, with Patricia Foltz at the piano and Julia Kay Jameson at the harp. The event has a Facebook page here.

On December 18, Illinois Central College's Guest Artist Series celebrates a different musical superstar when "tribute artist" Carla DelVillaggio and pianist Chris Rottmayer present Simply Streisand: Holiday Memories to put the spotlight on Barbra. No word on what songs DelVillaggio will be performing, but it could be anything from "Jingle Bells" to "Ave Maria" to "It Must Have Been the Mistletoe," all of which have appeared on Streisand's Christmas albums. For performance and ticket information, you can visit ICC's page for the event.

If you need a Christmas gift for somebody who likes Shakespeare (and specifically the Illinois Shakespeare Festival), the Festival is offering subscription packages now, with plenty of time to stick Viola and Orsino, Hamlet and even a little Peter Pan under the tree. Individual tickets won't go on sale till February, but this is your chance to get your choice of seats with your season tickets now. All the details are available at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival website.

Plenty of opportunities to give yourself the gift of theater this December!

November News

Everybody's gearing up for drama (and comedy and music) as we head into that long slide toward the holidays. What exactly are area theaters up to before the December madness begins? Read on!

The Trojan Women, adapted by Ellen McLaughlin from the tragedy by Euripides and directed by Connie de Veer, opens November 6 in ISU's Westhoff Theatre. The play's focus is on the collateral damage from a lengthy, devastating war, specifically on the women left in pieces when the battles are done. Performances of The Trojan Women will take place at 7:30 pm on November 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14, with a matinee performance at 2 pm on Sunday, November 8. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for students and seniors; call the Center for the Performing Arts Box Office at 309-438-2535 to buy tickets or get them online at ticketmaster.com.

Still have a hankering to see Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet? Tomorrow and Wednesday, the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign will screen the National Theatre Live presentation of the London stage production, directed by Lyndsey Turner (Posh, Chimerica) and starring the Cumberbatch himself. Others in the cast include Sian Brooke as Ophelia, Anastasia Hille as Gertrude, Ciaran Hinds as Claudius and Jim Norton as Polonius. The Art has Hamlet set for 6:30 pm on Tuesday the 3rd and 1:00 pm Wednesday the 4th. Click here for info on this "event screening."

Heartland Theatre's November show is Intimate Apparel, a beautiful play about a woman named Esther, an African-American seamstress who makes exquisite undergarments for high and low society in turn-of-the-century New York City. Esther dreams of love and respect, but both things are hard to come by in her world. Playwright Lynn Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize (for Ruined) and a MacArthur "genius" grant. Don LaCasse directs Intimate Apparel for Heartland Theatre, with third-year Illinois State University MFA actor Faith Servant as Esther, Elante Richardson as her pen pal from the Panama Canal, Fania Bourne and Megan Tennis as two very different customers, Jennifer Rusk as her landlady, and Rhys Lovell as the Jewish fabric merchant she forges a connection with. LaCasse and Servant also teamed up for Nottage's Meet Vera Stark last year at ISU, when the playwright herself spoke on campus. Intimate Apparel runs from November 5 to 22; click here for ticket info or here to see a schedule of performances.

If you're in the mood for some blonde ambition, Legally Blonde the Musical may be just the ticket. This musical version of the book and movie about a fizzy sorority girl who follows her ex to Harvard Law School opens with a preview performance on November 5 at Community Players. The Players cast features Breeann Dawson as Elle Woods, the pink-loving blonde who tries to prove she has a brain, with Aaron Wiessing as the uptight boyfriend who dumps her for law school, Colleen Rice as his new (more serious) girlfriend, Jacob Deters as the sweet TA who helps her out at Harvard, Joe McDonald as a mean professor, Sharon Russell as her new friend, a hair stylist named Paulette, and Kim Behrens Kaufman as a client accused of murder. Legally Blonde runs through November 22, with weeknight performances at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm. 

Also coming up this month at the Art Theater in Champaign: Suffragette, the new movie starring Meryl Streep, Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter as women fighting for the right to vote in Britain in the early 20th century, and two hugely influential pieces of American cinema in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II. Follow the links under the titles of the movies to see times and dates. In general, Suffragette is playing from November 7 to 12, The Godfather has showings between November 6 and 12, and The Godfather Part II runs between November 13 and 19.

ISU's annual Fall Dance Concert takes the stage at the Center for the Performing Arts November 18 to 21, under the direction of Sara Semonis. Keep an eye on the ISU CPA Facebook page or check in with the box office at 309-438-2535 for more information.

Illinois Central College Theatre presents Adam Bock's The Drunken City beginning with a 7:30 pm performance on November 13. Bock has a sharp, highly theatrical voice that matches up perfectly with this cynical, funny look at three brides-to-be embarking on "the bar crawl to end all crawls." You can see ICC's calendar of November events here and click through for tickets and more information.

You'll find a very different kind of musical at Illinois Wesleyan University when the School of Theatre Arts presents Giant, a musical version of Edna Ferber's novel spanning several generations of Texans trying to make their mark. This is quite a coup for IWU and director Scott Susong, since the show has only been seen in development and in an Off-Broadway production at the Public Theatre in 2012. Michael John LaChiusa (Hello Again, The Wild Party) created the music and lyrics, while Sybille Pearson (Baby, Sally and Marsha) wrote the book. IWU's Giant plays for six performances from November 17 to 22, and ticket information is available here or by calling the box office at 309-556-3232.

Sticky in the Sticks, the pop-up theatre that does its popping once a month at the Firehouse Pizza and Pub in Normal, will be back November 20th with another program of 10-minute plays. Sticky features local talent, led by founders Connie Blick and J. Michael Grey, putting on short plays which happen to be set in a bar and are therefore performed in a bar. Local playwrights like John Poling, John Kirk and J. Michael Grey himself have seen their work bellied up to the bar at the Firehouse. Doors open at 7:30 pm, the musical guest usually starts at 8, and the shows go on about 8:30 pm. It's first come, first seated, so you are warned to get there early to get the best view. Bottoms up, lights down!

At the end of the month, note that Community Players will hold auditions for The Crucible, Arthur Miller's searing indictment of the Salem witch trials, on November 23 and 24, and Heartland Theatre will hold auditions for Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris's Pulitzer Prize winner, on November 30 and December 1. Players has a list of roles they're looking to fill here, while director Rhys Lovell should be posting what he needs for Clybourne Park here sometime before the 30th.

November is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) if you'd like to participate in this "write the novel you always said you wanted to" project. And all month long, Heartland Theatre is accepting submissions in its two New Play initiatives -- 10-minute plays set in an Art Gallery and one-acts on the theme "A Key" -- with all the details on what they're looking for and how to enter here for 10-minute plays and here for one acts. Feel free to use NaNoWriMo to write a play instead of a novel if you're more inclined that way.

That ought to keep you busy in November!

It's Neil Simon Weekend

Neil Simon owns more Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer, at least according to PBS and their American Masters documentary about him. They also say that he's the only writer ever to have four simultaneous Broadway productions. The New Yorker, meanwhile, says that "since 1970 almost no day has gone by without a professional production of a Neil Simon comedy playing somewhere in the country."

According to my count, he has 14 Tony nominations plus three wins, four Oscar nominations, and four Emmy nominations dating from 1957 to 2001. Oh, and he has a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Lost in Yonkers.

If you're curious about what four plays were running at the same time, a quick check of his Internet Broadway Database credits show Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity (for which Simon wrote the book), and Star-Spangled Girl all playing from December of 1966 to June of 1967. That's what you might call running the Broadway table.

Right now, you have two opportunities to see Simon's work in person, with Brighton Beach Memoirs, the semi-autobiographical piece about a teen boy in Brooklyn in the late 1930s, at Illinois State University's Center for the Performing Arts through the 27th, and The Odd Couple, the perennial favorite about mismatched roommates that's spawned two movies and two TV series, at Illinois Central College in East Peoria this weekend and next.

And if that isn't enough Neil Simon, you can top it off with the movie version of The Prisoner of Second Avenue, starring Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft as a married couple adapting to major changes when events conspire against them. Turner Classic Movies will air The Prisoner of Second Avenue at 7:15 am on Monday, September 28.

But before that...

Third-year MFA director Jonathan Hunt-Sell is at the reins of Brighton Beach Memoirs, one of Simon's most successful plays both artistically and financially. The play's original production spent three years on Broadway and earned Tony Awards for director Gene Saks and actor Matthew Broderick, who played Eugene Jerome, the stand-in for Simon. For ISU, Garrett Douglas takes the role of Eugene, with Jimmy Keating as his brother Stanley, Gloria Petrelli and Graham Gusloff as his parents, Christina Duris as Aunt Blanche, and Cassandra Conklin and Megan Tennis as his two teenage cousins, whose presence causes Eugene even more tsuris in the crowded Jerome household.

Tickets are available at the College of Fine Arts box office at 309-438-2535 or through Ticketmaster. Four performances remain, with tonight's curtain at 7:30 pm, 2 pm and 7:30 pm performances tomorrow, and another matinee on Sunday at 2 pm. Tickets are also available through ticketmaster.com.

Over in East Peoria, ICC presents The Odd Couple starting tonight at 7:30 pm. The original production of The Odd Couple ran for 964 performances from 1965 to 67, winning four Tonys, including awards for Best Actor Walter Matthau, Best Director Mike Nichols, Best Scenic Designer Oliver Smith, and a Best Author Tony for Neil Simon himself.

For ICC, Robin Berkley directs, with scenic design by Rob Fulton, who most recently did the spectacular set you see at Heartland Theatre for the play Tribes. Berkley's cast includes Chris McHenry as Felix, the fussy neat freak roommate, and Alek President as Oscar, the messy one.

Tickets to The Odd Couple are priced at $5 for students and $7 for adults. Call 309-694-5136 for more information.

Loading Up Your April Basket

April always seems to be a big month for entertainment -- it's when people peek outside looking for shows after a winter spent inside, when theatre companies announce their new seasons and start hawking subscriptions, when TV shows gear up for spring sweeps, and new work starts cropping up at festivals around the country.

First, let's just get Mad Men out of the way right off the top. AMC's amazing piece of television history begins its final season this Sunday night, with ad man Don Draper and his colleagues, wives, lovers and kids taking a trip to the 70s. Watch out for polyester, plaid and a major infusion of facial hair. Where will Don and Peggy and Roger and Joan end up? Given what we've seen so far, happily ever after doesn't seem likely. Neither does Don ending up as D. B. Cooper, but that doesn't stop people from continuing to guess it.

Speaking of new work... I will be making my annual trip to Louisville for Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American plays next weekend. No better spot to wallow in theatre for an entire weekend. There will be six full-length shows, a program of three new 10-minute plays, parties, panels and impromptu discussions. I'll let you know what I thought about all of that as soon as I get back. But in the meantime...

I don't think there is any particular Tennessee Williams anniversary or event that we're celebrating this month, but it's not like the work of this quintessentially American playwright ever goes out of style. Thomas Lanier Williams, AKA Tennessee, was born March 26, 1911, and here he is, 104 years later, with his plays still a hot item on the stage. In fact, from Normal to Urbana, there is a Tennessee Williams Trifecta available this month. You can easily do all three if you have a hankering to compare/contrast, from the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire to perennial favorite The Glass Menagerie and upstart Not About Nightingales, all within a 50-mile radius.

Elia Kazan's 1951 movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire was nominated for a dozen Oscars, winning four, including Best Actress for Vivien Leigh as Blanche, Best Supporting Actress for Kim Hunter as Stella and Best Supporting Actor for Karl Malden as Mitch. Kazan had also directed the Broadway version of Williams' steamy drama, with Marlon Brando, Hunter and Malden in the same roles. There is much to admire and much to chew on in the movie, too, with Leigh almost translucent as poor, fading Blanche, and Brando giving a Method acting clinic as crude, sexual, red-meat-eating Stanley Kowalski. When Blanche and Stanley are thrown into conflict in a tiny, stifling, much-too-crowded New Orleans apartment, something's got to give, and we all know it won't be pretty. This Streetcar plays four times on the screen at the Normal Theater, 7 pm each night between April 2 and 5.

Streetcar on film is a perfect appetizer for The Glass Menagerie, which will be live on stage at Heartland beginning April 9. ISU professor Connie de Veer portrays Amanda Wingfield, another faded Southern belle fallen on hard times. Unlike Blanche DuBois, Amanda has children. But her relationship with theme is just as constricted and unsuccessful as anything Blanche attempts. Son Tom wants nothing more than to get out of the apartment to live a life of his own, but if he goes, he will have to leave his fragile sister Laura behind. Don LaCasse director Glass Menagerie for Heartland, with Joe Faifer as Tom, Elsa Torner as Laura and Patrick Riley as the Gentleman Caller. Performances continue through April 26, with a talkback with the cast scheduled after the Sunday matinee on April 19. For all the details, click here.

The Urbana part of the Tennessee Williams equation is a lesser-known work called Not About Nightingales, directed by Tom Mitchell at the Studio Theatre inside the University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Nightingales opens April 9, as well, with performances through the 19th. Williams wrote this play in 1938, supposedly inspired by a real-life Pennsylvania case of abuse and death inside a prison. In the fictional prison, inmates go on a hunger strike and eventually riot as conditions become unlivable.

Illinois State University moves far away from Tennessee Williams, into a land of fantasy and folklore with Selkie: Between Land and Sea a lyrical drama by Laurie Brooks, directed by Jessika Malone for ISU's Westhoff Theatre from April 9 to 18. Olivia Candocia plays the mystical girl/seal creature called a Selkie, while Dave Lemmon and Eddie Curley portray the men in her story. For more information, try this link.

David Ives' All in the Timing is pretty much a perfect program of 10-minute plays, combining humor, commentary on modern relationships, and even a few barbs pointed in the direction of 20th century Russian politics. I'm looking at you, Leon Trotsky! Illinois Central College in East Peoria takes on All in the Timing April 10 to 19, with the Ives' collection directed by Rob Fulton, Julie Peters and Doug Rosson for the Studio Theatre in ICC's Performing Arts Center.

Eureka College's Pritchard Theatre is a fairly intimate setting, making it an interesting choice for Tracy Letts' sprawling, messy, dark family comedy August Osage County. There is a very large house at the center of August as well as several generations of the Weston family. Will that fit at Pritchard? Time and Eureka's production will tell the tale from April 14 to 18. Joel Shoemaker directs the Westons and their swirl of family troubles.

The Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts is big on improv, which means Broadway's Next Hit Musical, an improvised piece of musical comedy, is right up their alley. You can offer your own suggestions and see if the improvisers spin a new show out of your idea on April 16 at the BCPA.

If you like being involved in the show, you may be able to take it a step farther than just pitching ideas out of the audience. You can act, too! Or at least audition. Heartland often uses its annual 10-minute play festival to widen its pool of actors. And why not? There are more than 20 roles up for grabs in nine short plays, with characters ranging from a pair of 18-year-old high school students to a 90-year-old nun. Auditions for Heartland's 10-minute play festival will be held from 7 to 9:30 pm on April 20 and 21 at Heartland Theatre.

Appropriate, a firecracker of a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, brings its creepy post-Colonial sins of the father to Urbana's Station Theatre from April 23 to May 9. Is its title referring to the verb "appropriate," meaning to steal, to seize, to convert to one's own possession? Or the adjective "appropriate,"meaning suitable or fitting? I think it's the former, given the plantation setting and thhe echoes of its racist past that continue to plague it. Like August: Osage County, Appropriate centers on a large family home. And the Station Theatre is even smaller than Pritchard over in Eureka. How will the overgrown plantation fit? It's a mystery! Appropriate is directed by Mike Prosise for the Celebration Company at the Station Theatre.

Back home in Bloomington-Normal, New Route Theatre offers Black N Blue Boys/Broken Men by Dael Orlandersmith. Look for Black N Blue April 24 to 26 and May 1 to 3 at New Route's new space at 814 Jersey Avenue in Normal. Don Shandrow directs Claron Sharrieff in this one-woman show, an examination of "the captivating life stories of six unforgettable male characters of diverse backgrounds whose inescapable connections tie them together through traumatic pasts."