AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Opening This Week at Community Players

Playwright Tracy Letts won the Pulitzer Prize for his blistering August: Osage County, a family drama laced with the kind of deep, dark humor that comes from people who've learned from birth how to push each other's buttons. August:Osage County pushed a few buttons of its own; after its premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater, it went to Broadway where it picked up five Tony Awards, including Best Play, and then made it to the big screen, with a star-studded cast that included Meryl Streep as Violet, the take-no-prisoners matriarch of the Weston clan, Sam Shepard as missing patriarch Beverly Weston, and Julia Roberts as their oldest daughter Barbara.

Since it first lit up the stage, August: Osage County has been quite popular, with theaters across the country anxious to dive into this story of three generations of family dysfunction. There are all kinds of good roles for actors to get their teeth into, and the three-story home that houses the disparate members of the Weston family and their in-laws, plus a Native American caregiver, a local sheriff, and an extra fiancé, is almost a character of its own. Although many theaters just don't have room for that much real estate, it doesn't stop smaller theaters, like the Station in Urbana, from getting creative. As it happens, August: Osage County is currently playing in those cozy confines, in a production directed by Mathew Green.

At Community Players Theatre, where the play opens this week, scenic designer Jeremy Stiller has a more expansive space to work with, and he's just the kind of designer who will make good use of it. Director John D. Poling is at the helm with a cast that includes Kevin Yale Vernon as viper-tongued Violet, Alan Wilson as her husband Beverly, and Abby Scott, Michelle Woody and Wendy Baugh as their daughters Barbara, Ivy and Karen. Len Childers appears as Barbara's estranged husband, who has left her for a younger woman, with Hannah Blumenshine as their teenage daughter, Brett Cottone as Sheriff Gilbeau, who dated Barbara when they were young, and John Bowen as Steve, Karen's shady fiancé. In another family unit, Anne Cook will play Mattie Fae, Violet's sister, with Randy Offner and Nathan Brandon Gaik as her husband and son. Connie Blick takes on the role of the Native American housekeeper who sees a lot more than is probably healthy.

This is not a sweet or gentle piece of work and you are advised that it contains adult language and situations. Community Players is asking for mature audiences only to attend this production.

August: Osage County opens at Community Players with a preview performance at 7:30 pm on May 3, with evening performances to follow at 7:30 pm on May 4 and 5 and 11 and 12, and Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm on May 6 and 13. For more information, click here. If you are ready to buy tickets, you can do that here.

Family Drama, Musicals and More at Community Players in 2017-18

Ready or not, it's time to think about fall seasons at area theaters. Community Players announced their 2017-18 season earlier this month, with season tickets now available. What's up at Players as we move into fall?

Arthur Miller's complex family drama, All My Sons, opens September 1, with performances through the 10th. Bruce Parrish will direct this "gripping classic by a master playwright," which "explores the father son dynamic and the corruption of the American Dream." Miller took the idea for the play from a newspaper account about a World War II scandal involving defective aircraft engines used in military planes. In the play, which is set in 1947, we meet Joe Keller, who was accused of selling a flawed part for aircraft engines that resulted in the death of 21 pilots. He was cleared, but that isn't the whole story. His wife Kate is in denial, both about Joe's part in the scandal and about her son Larry, who has been missing in action for several years. Younger son Chris also went off to war, but he has returned, and his realization that his father is not the man he thought he was forms the central conflict in the play. Parrish will hold auditions for All My Sons on July 17 and 18. You can see details on characters and casting here.

The November choice is the musical Sister Act, based on the 1992 movie with Whoopi Goldberg as a wannabe diva who goes on the lam -- hiding in a convent -- after she witnesses a crime. She is a force to be reckoned with in the confines of the convent, but her musical talent gives her a chance to bond with the sisters. Marcia Weiss will direct this one, with auditions in September and performances November 2 to 19. Alan Menken wrote the music for the Broadway musical version of Sister Act, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book by Cheri and Bill Steinkellner.

If you need to lighten up your January, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), may be just the ticket. This funny, fast and furious race through the works of Shakespeare, with the history plays as a football game and Hamlet in 30 seconds (and then in 30 seconds backwards), has been very popular since the three men (Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield) who created the Reduced Shakespeare Company and launched The Complete Works at Edinburgh's Festival Fringe in 1987. Look for auditions for this three-person (usually three-man) show in November and performances January 11 to 21, 2018. Brett Cottone will helm the Reduced Shakespeare madness for Community Players.

After that, it's Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's fractured fairytale musical that offers a different look at the magical obstacles facing Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (the one with the beanstalk), a childless Baker and his Wife, a pair of charming Princes, and a Witch who has a thing about her garden. Into the Woods premiered on Broadway in September 1987, with a well-received revival in 2002. Those two productions earned a total of 20 Tony nominations; the show was named Best Revival along with awards for its score, book and lighting design, and best actress Joanna Gleason, who played the Baker's Wife in the original production. Into the Woods will be on stage at Players from March 8 to 25, under the direction of Sally Parry.

Then we're back to scalding family drama -- with some very black comedy at its heart -- in the form of Tracy Letts' blistering August: Osage County, focusing on the messed-up members of the Weston family. Entertainment Weekly called it "Southern-fried familial dysfunction" and that's as good a description as any. August: Osage County premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater in 2007, followed by a Broadway run that earned five Tony Awards, incouding Best Play. It also won a Pulitzer Prize for Letts. August takes the stage from May 8 to 14, 2018, directed by John D. Poling.

The season finishes up with family-friendly Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the perennial favorite from Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice that tells the Biblical story of Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob, who can read dreams to predict the future. His 11 brothers are not happy about their dad's favoritism, spurring a nasty plan that sends Joseph into Egypt as a slave. He may start out with nothing, but he ends up interpreting dreams for the Pharaoh and rising to power and influence before once again coming face to face with his brothers. Aimee Kerber will direct this pop-rock musical in performance from July 5 to 22, 2018.

Season tickets are now available, either by downloading the order form at the top of this page or this page. For more information, you can try the box office at 309-663-2121 or email boxoffice@communityplayers.org.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Has a Cast at Eureka College

Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is one of the most celebrated plays of the 21st century. After the 2007 Steppenwolf production in Chicago, the play took home seven Joseph Jefferson Awards and went straight to Broadway, winning six Tonys and nine other New York awards, plus a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Anna D. Shapiro, who was recently named Steppenwolf's Artistic Director, directed August: Osage in Chicago and New York.

Joel Shoemaker, a Eureka College alum, will direct August: Osage County for his alma mater with performances in April, 2015. Shoemaker's cast will include Christopher Tam and Stephanie Sager as Beverly and Violet Weston, the patriarch and matriarch of a deeply troubled Oklahoma family.

The plot of August: Osage County kicks in when Beverly Weston disappears and the three Weston daughters, Barbara, Ivy and Karen, along with Violet's sister Mattie Fae and various other in-laws and offspring arrive, ostensibly to offer support to Violet.

For Eureka, the three sisters will be played by Kayla Pulliam, Alexis Godbee and Emilie Dierks. Austin Bristow II will take on the role of Barbara's husband, with Ashleigh Feger as her teenage daughter. Nathan Bottorff will play Steve, Karen's fiance, along with Sarah Hall as Mattie Fae, Drew Carter as Mattie's husband Charlie and Austin Travis her son Little Charles. Completing the cast are Isabella Anderson as a caretaker for Violet and Jason Punke as the local sheriff who also happens to be Barbara's high school boyfriend.

If you are curious to see how all three stories of Weston family dysfunction will fit on the stage at Eureka College's Pritchard Theatre, you will have to wait till April. But you'll want to keep an eye on Eureka's Facebook page and theatre webpage to stay current in the meantime.

SAG Award Nominations: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Nominations are in for the first two big awards shows of the seasons. The Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes give out their awards to movie and television excellence, making them fun for the people who do one, the other, or both. They may share that trait, and they almost always have some nominees in common, but they couldn't be more different in terms of their tone and general outlook. After all, SAG is inside and industry, while the Foreign Press Association runs a sillier, boozier affair with their Golden Globes.

First up: The Screen Actors Guild nominations. So who is included in the wealth this time out? Who's egregiously overlooked?

As you might expect, the Screen Actors Guild focuses on acting, and their award for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture" serves as the equivalent of Best Picture. Their nominations recognize 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, August: Osage County, Dallas Buyers Club and Lee Daniels' The Butler. If you're keeping track, that's four films based on real events and one piece of absolute fiction. August: Osage County, based on the Tracy Letts' play, is the fictional one.

Overlooked? Captain Phillips, Fruitvale Station, Gravity, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Saving Mr. Banks, The Wolf of Wall Street and the Coen Brothers' newest, Inside Llewyn Davis, all expected to vie for Oscar recognition.

Chiwetel Ejiofo, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o, the hero, villain and love interest in 12 Years a Slave, are also nominated in individual categories as lead actor, supporting actor and supporting actress, putting their film at the top of the list for SAG awards.

Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts were nominated for their roles as a mother and daughter (Meryl as lead and Julia as supporting) in August: Osage County, while Lee Daniels' The Butler got  nods for lead actor Forest Whitaker and supporting actress Oprah Winfrey and Alexander Payne's low-key road picture Nebraska scored nominations for lead Bruce Dern and supporting actress June Squibb.

Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi are both in the race for their performances as the captain and the pirate in Captain Phillips, joining Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, who play two very different men affected by AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club.

Joining Streep in the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role category are Cate Blanchett as a woman on the edge in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, Sandra Bullock as an unmoored astronaut in Gravity, Judi Dench as a mother looking for the son taken away from her in Philomena, and Emma Thompson as author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks, the Walt Disney/Mary Poppins story.

The late James Gandolfini has been honored for his supporting role in Enough Said, with German actor Daniel Brühl rounding out the supporting actor category for his role in Rush, and American Hustle's lone individual nominee, Jennifer Lawrence, finishing up the supporting actress category.

Among the actors who didn't get a look are Christian Bale (American Hustle), Chris Cooper (August: Osage County), Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) and Robert Redford (All Is Lost), with Amy Adams (American Hustle), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said), Naomie Harris (Mandela), Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station) and Kate Winslet (Labor Day) also shut out.

The remaining nominations for movies are for their stunt crews, with All Is Lost, Fast & Furious 6, Lone Survivor, Rush and The Wolverine included.

And what about the television side of the aisle? Let's just say there was no love for Mad Men or Parks and Recreation and leave it at that.

Drama ensembles nominated include the casts of shoot 'em up Boardwalk Empire from HBO, AMC's addictive Breaking Bad, high-toned Downton Abbey from PBS, swords-and-sex potboiler Game of Thrones, also on HBO, and Showtime's dark spy epic Homeland. Whither Mad Men, The Good Wife and Scandal? You may very well ask that question.

The major broadcast networks did better with comedies, as NBC's 30 Rock, ABC's Modern Family and CBS's Big Bang Theory all scored nominations for their casts. HBO sneaked in one more nod with Veep, along with Arrested Development, reborn on Netflix. I'd put Parks and Recreation ahead of all of them, thank you very much. But it was certainly a good day for Tony Hale, who appears in both Arrested Development and Veep and is thus double nominated.

The five actors individually nominated for their performances in dramas were Boardwalk Empire's Steve Buscemi, Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad, Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, Kevin Spacey for the Netflix drama House of Cards, and inexplicably, Jeff Daniels for the really-pretty-terrible Newsroom on HBO. That's two twisted crime lords, two twisted power brokers and one namby pamby misogynist newsman.

The actresses nominated for dramas play characters who are, for the most part, less evil than their male counterparts. For the most part. There's Jessica Lange as a "Supreme" witch in American Horror Story: Coven, Anna Gunn as the desperate wife of the meth mastermind in Breaking Bad, Maggie Smith as the dowager countess with the withering putdowns in Downton Abbey, Claire Danes as a bipolar CIA analyst in Homeland, and Kerry Washington as the ultimate Washington insider trying to balance her career as a fixer with a very messy personal life in Scandal.

No, I can't believe they didn't nominate The Good Wife's Juliana Margulies or Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany, either.

Comedy actors include old favorite (cough*enough already*cough) Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock, Jason Bateman for Arrested Development, Don Cheadle in House of Lies, Ty Burrell in Modern Family and ultimate nerd Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory.

Mayim Bialik (Big Bang Theory), Julie Bowen (Modern Family), Edie Falcon (Nurse Jackie), Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) are the women nominated for comedies. Nothing to say there but same old/same old and what is Amy Poehler, chopped liver?

SAG also hands out awards for miniseries or TV movies, with familiar names like Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, both nominated for Behind the Candelabra, Jeremy Irons ( Henry IV in The Hollow Crown), Rob Lowe (Killing Kennedy) and Al Pacino (Phil Spector) on the male side and Angela Bassett (Betty & Coretta), Helena Bonham Carter (Burton and Taylor), Helen Mirren (Phil Spector), and Holly Hunter and Elisabeth Moss (both in Top of the Lake) nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.

Oddly, the TV stunt nominees are much the same as the "best ensemble" nominees, even though there was no crossover like that with movies. That means Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and Homeland all show up as stunt crew nominees, along with The Walking Dead. It also means that the Screen Actors Guild likes television shows with plenty of violence and action, since those are the ones you need stunt crews for.

Watch out for Blacklist next time up. That show out-violences and out-actions all of 'em.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony will be broadcast on Saturday, January 18,  at 7 pm Central time on both TNT and TBS.

Tracy Letts Is Taking Over the Universe

Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

Tracy Letts has been big news for Chicago and Steppenwolf Theatre for quite some time, what with his play August: Osage County tearing it up all over the place (Pulitzer Prize, five Tony Awards, six Jeff Awards) and then getting made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Before that, plays like Killer Joe and Bug also did quite well, with lots of productions and movie versions of their own, Superior Donuts also made it to Broadway, and Man from Nebraska garnered him his first Pulitzer nomination.

Letts' playwriting is one thing, but he's also an actor to be reckoned with. His appearance opposite Amy Morton in the Steppenwolf production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (shown above) that transferred to Broadway last year has earned him a Drama Desk Award and a Tony nomination in the Leading Actor category. A lot of pundits are assuming that Tom Hanks will win the Tony, but given the Drama Desk... I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Letts took home off that one, too.

And now he and actress Carrie Coon, who played Honey in that Virginia Woolf, have announced their engagement.

You might think there isn't anything else Mr. Letts could possibly fit into his schedule, but you would be wrong. Come September, Letts will be starring on Showtime's Homeland, the Emmy magnet about spies, moles and international terrorists. He'll be playing a tough United States Senator who heads up a committee trying to piece together what happened that blew the lid off U.S. intelligence in the previous season.

Amy Morton, Letts' costar in Virginia Woolf, also Tony-nominated, will appear on Homeland, as well, playing a lawyer assigned to represent Claire Danes' CIA agent Carrie Mathison. That should make for a very Steppenwolfy season of Homeland.

So far, Letts has the Pulitzer and a Tony as the playwright behind August: Osage County. All he needs is an Oscar for the August screenplay and an Emmy for Homeland, and he'll have scored EPOT status, which is a lot better than the usual EGOT, anyway, right? Or maybe Letts can pull a Grammy out of his pocket, too, and put himself in the lofty EPGOT category currently occupied by only Richard Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch.

Tom Hanks, his rival for this year's Tony, is working on an EGOT from the other side, since he already has the Oscar and the Emmy. Maybe the two can collaborate on something Grammy-worthy together...

To find out which one gets the Tony for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play, watch the Tony Awards airing Sunday.

First Peak at Meryl, Julia, Ewan, Etc. in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (the Movie)

Tracy Letts' angsty family drama August: Osage County was a barnburner as a play, winning the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as six Joseph Jefferson Awards for the original Chicago production at Steppenwolf and five Tony Awards and a host of other prizes for the subsequent Broadway version. After all the acclaim, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood got ahold of the play and, well, Hollywoodized it.

With director John Wells (The Company Men) at the helm, August: Osage The Movie is gearing up, with a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, the man with the best name in entertainment history -- Benedict Cumberbatch -- and Mr. American Icon himself, Sam Shepard.

The movie isn't slated to be released till November, which is primo Oscar turf, but a trailer is already circulating on the internet. And creating speculation as to how exactly this star-studded movie version will resemble the play everybody loved so much. For one difference in tone, you can compare the movie poster above to the Broadway lobby card at right.

Doug George at the Chicago Tribune is worried that the trailer looks way too sweet and heartwarming to be the caustic August: Osage County that made such a splash, while Deadline calls it "cheery" and Margaret Lyons at Vulture thinks it has a "knowing quirk-factor" that doesn't really fit the play. You can judge for yourself by watching the trailer at any of those links.

If you'd like to keep track of who's been changed to whom from Broadway to Hollywood, here's a handy chart of the roles and who's playing what:

                                                        Broadway                      Movie
VIOLET WESTON              Deanna Dunagan           Meryl Streep
BEVERLY WESTON              Dennis Letts              Sam Shepard
BARBARA FORDHAM         Amy Morton               Julia Roberts
BILL FORDHAM                     Jeff Perry                Ewan McGregor
JEAN FORDHAM               Madeleine Martin         Abigail Breslin
KAREN WESTON              Mariann Mayberry         Juliette Lewis    
IVY WESTON                        Sally Murphy          Julianne Nicholson
STEVE HEIDEBRECHT     Brian Kerwin           Dermot Mulroney
CHARLES AIKEN               Frances Guinan             Chris Cooper
LITTLE CHARLES               Ian Barford           Benedict Cumberbatch
MATTIE FAE AIKEN           Rondi Reed              Margo Martindale
JOHNNA                             Kimberly Guerrero         Misty Upham

Feel free to read the play, create your own fantasy cast, and be all primed to compare/contrast by November.