LITTLE WOMEN the Musical Opens Tomorrow at Bradley

Bradley University Theatre opens its fall season tomorrow night at 7:30 pm with the Broadway musical version of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's classic story that has remained popular (especially with young female readers) since the two volumes were first published at the end of the 1860s. The show will run through October 29 at the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts in Peoria.

You may be aware of various dramatizations of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women novels, with play versions on Broadway as early as 1913, and movies ranging from the 1933 film starring Katharine Hepburn to one with June Allyson in 1949 and another with Winona Ryder in 1994. All of the actresses mentioned here played the role of Jo March, the writer at the center of Alcott's story. When Little Women begins, Jo and her three sisters are living in Massachusetts during the Civil War, with their father away in the war and their mother, called Marmee, attempting to hold the household together. Jo writes dramas (with the accent on drama) to keep her sister entertained, while a neighbor boy named Laurie joins in. As time passes, Jo grows and changes, as do her and her sisters' circumstances

The musical version features a score by Jason Howland (music) and Mindi Dickstein (lyrics), with book by Allan Knee. It ran on Broadway for 137 performances in 2004 and 2005, earning a Tony nomination for leading actress Sutton Foster along with three Drama Desk nominations.

For Bradley, Cassy Lillwitz will play Jo, with Rebekah Farr, Noelle Mefford and Leslie Allen as her sisters Beth, Meg and Amy. Derek Baunach will play Laurie and Trevor Baty will play Professor Bhaer, a professor Jo meets when she moves to New York.

This Little Women is directed by guest director Chad Bradford, with Chad Lowell designing the set and lights, Becki Arnold designing costumes and Michelle Rice designing the sound.

Click here for more information or call 309-677-2650 for tickets. You can also see snippets of the Broadway show here.

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.

Bradley Announces Its 2016-17 Theatre Arts Season

Bradley University's Department of Theatre Arts has announced its 2016-17 season, with four shows that mix a surreal dystopic fantasy with comedy horror, heartbreaking history and a little Shakespeare just for fun.

On tap are Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, where future survivors of some sort of apocalypse comfort themselves with performances of an old episode of The Simpsons. That will be followed by Emergency Prom by Steve Moulds, with a high school dance thrown by the kids who didn't fit in at the regular old prom; Melanie Marnich's These Shining Lives, a look at the short, tragic lives of "Radium Girls," who endangered their lives while painting watches that glowed in the dark; and Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy with mismatched lovers, identical twins and the triumph of chaos over order.

This is how they're describing the upcoming 2016-17 season:
 
Mr. Burns:  A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn. Music by Michael Friedman and lyrics by Anne Washburn.
September 22 - October 2, 2016
Part thriller, part musical, Mr. Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are. In a near future where a cataclysmic series of nuclear disasters has left America without electricity, infrastructure, or mass communication, a small group of survivors huddles around a fire trying to remember the dialogue from a popular episode of The Simpsons. Seven years later they have become a theatre troupe, traveling the lawless, ravaged country to stage bits of The Simpsons in exchange for food and shelter. 75 years later still, the epic story of the nuclear disaster has become myth, enacting in musical theatre form the creation story of a new society and the dimly recalled saga of a revered hero named Bart.

Emergency Prom by Steve Moulds
November 10 - 13, 2016
A play featuring our fabulous freshman class It's 1996, a time before texting, Tinder, and Snapchat, and the misfits of Glen Burnie High hated last weekend's prom. What's an unlikely band of outsiders to do? Throw the prom they should have had, a do-over prom, an emergency prom, where Gus and Corey won't break up, where Stephanie and Billy will finally get together, where Patrick might get lucky, Manuel will have the "high school moment" he dreams of, and Melissa will get to dance with the secret love whose silence is breaking her heart. A hilarious, heartfelt look at a group of friends taking destiny into their own hands.

These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich
February 16 – 26, 2017
In the 1920s and 30s, hundreds of Depression-era women in Central Illinois enjoyed well-paying jobs for the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, about 70 miles from Peoria. There they painted faces onto watches and clocks with luminescent paint made from radium—an element whose toxicity was never explained to them—until their hands began to glow in the dark and their health problems grew too serious to ignore. Based on the historical record this haunting, inspirational play celebrates the bonds of friendship and solidarity that unite four young working women; the conflicts they share; and the vindication they seek that may or may not come in time. "Perfect, touching, and wistful..." —Talkin' Broadway

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
April 20 – 30, 2017
"If music be the food of love, play on..." The perennial favorite and arguably Shakespeare's most transcendent comedy. A tale of young love in all its excess diverse, abetted by mistaken identity, gender confusion, unforgettable songs and exquisite poetry—not to mention some of Shakespeare's most vivid clowns and one of the greatest practical jokes in theatrical history. Originally written to celebrate the end of the Christmas season in the court of Queen Elizabeth, our production will herald the end of the school year and the beginning of summer.

OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD Puts on a Play for Bradley University Theatre

Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good has been a popular choice for theatres ever since Wertenbaker wrote the play in 1988. The script may be catnip for directors and actors because it's about theater, about the power and danger of bringing drama to people at the bottom of the social ladder, but it also delves into colonialism, the long reach of the British Empire, crime and punishment, sex, class and love, and how human beings try to keep their humanity alive.

All of that is wound around the story of a group of convicts in 18th century Australia putting on a play -- George Farquhar's Restoration comedy, The Recruiting Officer -- as directed by their British overlords. The convicts, all sent to an Australian penal colony for offenses back in England, are very different people, but they're all in desperate straits, with nothing to call their own. It's how they interact with and affect the Royal Marines who are in charge of them that forms the drama in Wertenbaker's play, with one indigenous Australian who keeps a watchful eye on the proceedings.

Bradley University's production of Our Country's Good opened last night in the Meyer Jacobs Theatre in the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. Assistant Professor Susan Felder directs a cast that includes Trevor Baty, Cody Cornwell, Amanda Dacks, Chris Dolphin, Cassy Lillwitz, Kyle Peck, Ali Pinkerton, Aris-Allen Roberson, Ellie Stamper, Derek Yeghiazarian and Samantha Zucker in multiple roles, crossing over between officers and convicts. The cast and crew shared mug-shot style photos of themselves that you can see here:

Click on the photo to see it larger size.

Performances of Our Country's Good continue at Bradley through May 1 at 8 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2:30 pm on Sunday. For ticket information, call 309-677-2650, visit www.bradley.edu/theatre or check out the production's Facebook page.