Heartland Announces Cast for OTHER DESERT CITIES

Heartland Theatre and director Sandra Zielinski have announced who will be whom when they present Jon Robin Baitz's dysfunctional family drama Other Desert Cities in February.

Other Desert Cities involves the wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs, California, a family that enjoys access to the highest levels of American society. In their heyday, they dined at the White House and hobnobbed with Ron and Nancy Reagan. Patriarch Lyman Wyeth, an actor turned ambassador, probably went shooting for big game with Dick Cheney at one time or another, while his whip-smart wife Polly, who once wrote for a hit television show with her counterculture sister Silda, no doubt enjoyed cocktails with Charlton Heston on the way to the Golden Globes. On the outside, theirs looks like a charmed life.

But they have their secrets. And daughter Brooke, a writer getting over a breakdown, decides what she needs most in the world is to air her version of one of those secrets. When she comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about that particular, devastating incident in their past, push comes to shove in the wake of truth and lies and simmering conflict between parents and children, siblings, and political ideals.

The Broadway production of Other Desert Cities was nominated for five Tony Awards, winning Judith Light the first of two awards in the Best Featured Actress category. Her role as Silda, the sister who can't quite pull it together, earned her a Drama Desk as well as that Tony. Baitz was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play.

For Heartland, Connie de Veer, an Illinois State University professor who last appeared in Sirens and The Trip to Bountiful at Heartland, will play Polly Wyeth, with Joe Penrod, recently seen as Fredrick Egerman in A Little Night Music for Prairie Fire, as her husband Lyman. Carol Scott, who played Aunt Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace at Community Players back in September and took on memorable roles in Doubt, Woman in Mind and The Beauty Queen of Lenane at Heartland, will play Polly's sister Silda.

Polly and Lyman's daughter Brooke, the one who stirs up the hornet's nest, will be portrayed by Jessie Swiech, an ISU grad who appeared in The Women of Lockerbie, Julius Caesar and Major Barbara. MFA actor Joey Banks, who appeared in Spring Awakening to open ISU's fall season, will play Brooke's younger brother Tripp, someone who seems at times to be the only grounded member of the Wyeth family.

Heartland's production of this fierce, funny play will open with a Pay What You Can preview on February 20, 2014, followed by performances from February 21 through March 9th. For showtimes, click here. For reservation information, click here.

Community Players Announces the Cast of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

Community Players has announced the cast of their upcoming production of Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace, to be directed by Tom Smith. The 1939 comedy, involving a pair of sweetly homicidal ladies who poison elderly gentlemen, is scheduled to open September 6, with performances continuing through September 15.

Carol Scott and Tricia Stiller will lead the cast as Abby and Martha Brewster, the charming aunts who have a habit of sending gents off to a big elderberry wine party in the sky. Players' favorite Brian Artman has been cast as their one sane nephew, Mortimer, with Nathan Bottorff as Jonathan, the bad one, and Joel Baldwin as Teddy, the loopy one. Thom Rakestraw takes on the role of Dr. Einstein, Jonathan's nefarious partner in crime (and plastic surgery).

All of those characters come together when drama critic Mortimer returns home to tell his aunts about his fiancee Elaine, the daughter of the clergyman next door, but quickly discovers what his aunts have been up to. He also comes face-to-new-face with his creepy brother Jonathan and third brother Teddy, who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt and charges up the stairs as if they're San Juan Hill.

For Community Players, Hannah Kerns will play Elaine, with Andy Cary as her proper dad and Spencer Powell, Jeremy Stiller, Alan Wilson and Jim Woodward in the parade of cops who march through the Brewster household.

Watch this space for more information and to purchase tickets when the show gets a little closer.

OUR DAVID Coming Soon at New Route

Ian Mairs' Our David was a one-shot deal for New Route Theatre last year, but now it moves to the mainstage, with six performances from December 7 to 16 in the theater space tucked inside the YWCA on Hershey Road in Bloomington.

The move to the YWCA plus additional performances mean that director Bridgette Richard and her cast can dig a little deeper into the play's issues and take a little more room to do their digging.

When she directed the show originally, Richard wrote in program notes that the story of Our David was one "that most anyone can find some connection with. When you get down to the basics, it's two people who have dealt with loss, and also struggle with the human habit to stereotype and pass judgment on someone without knowing them."

The two characters who inhabit Our David are Velma and Clyde, neighbors who do not see eye to eye. Each is vulnerable after a recent loss and not interested in making friends with someone from such a different background. But Velma, a widow who has spent most of her life in North Florida, and Clyde, a gay New Yorker who has just moved there as part of his attempt to nurse his wounds after losing his lover and most of his friends to AIDS, may have more in common than they care to admit. Still, neither would've guessed that a bad copy of Michelangelo's David, shown on the poster image above, would be the force that brings them onto common ground.

Mairs shows a light approach to dark subject matter, and the humor and heart in Our David were noted in reviews for its premiere production in Florida in 2000.

With Richard at the helm as director, Nathan Bottorff returns to the role of Clyde while Carol Scott plays Velma this time out.

Tickets range from $8-10, and you have a choice of 7:30 pm performances on December 7, 8, 14 and 15, and 2:30 pm matinees on December 9 or 16, all held at the YWCA at 1201 North Hershey in Bloomington.

For more information about New Route's Our David, check out the Facebook page for the event.

"Southern Comforts" Opens at Heartland Theatre

Is love really lovelier the second time around? Playwright Kathleen Clark offers a definitive yes in “Southern Comforts,” currently on stage at Heartland Theatre.

Clark’s play involves Amanda, the Southerner in the title, and Gus, a more taciturn Yankee in New Jersey. They’ve both loved and lost in the past, and neither is looking for any kind of romantic entanglement at this late stage in their lives. But when Amanda stumbles into Gus’s sparsely decorated home trying to drop off some church envelopes, they discover they have more in common than they might’ve guessed.

On the outside, it’s a classic match-up of opposites beyond just the Southern/Northern thing. She’s chatty and perky while he’s laconic and reserved. She dreams of traveling to other countries, while he prefers to stay within sight of his garden. She likes to fill her life with lace curtains and soft pillows, while he wants his house and his life to stay virtually empty. She loves books and used to be a librarian, while he’s a retired stonemason who’s very good at putting up walls.

Initially, all they have in common is baseball. Soon, however, they discover that they share a yearning for companionship and warmth, for a love that could be eminently more satisfying than their first marriages.

“Southern Comforts” is a sweet, gentle play – there are no huge bombs or explosions, literal or metaphorical, in this script – about the difficulties and transformative power of love, no matter the age of the lovers. It’s about being set in your ways, and yet flexible enough to accommodate change, a scary proposition even if you go in with your eyes wide open. That’s illustrated on stage when Amanda and Gus discuss her moving in with him. He knows she’ll be bringing a lot of baggage – books, pictures, knickknacks – but the reality is something else altogether. And in the end, it’s his baggage that’s the problem. I can pretty much guarantee that “Southern Comforts” is the only play you’ll ever see where choosing a headstone is both an obstacle and a sweeping romantic gesture.

Heartland director Mike Dobbins chooses to set the play in 1986, which makes Amanda and Gus somewhere in their early 60s by my calculation. That works well for his actors, Carol Scott and Michael Pullin, who certainly wouldn’t be realistic as 80-somethings if it were given a contemporary setting.

Dobbins emphasizes the humor in the script, keeping the tone playful and light, and that also keeps the story skimming along without too many sticky moments. He notes in his opening remarks that “Southern Comforts” is a perfect play for this Valentine’s season, and I think he’s got that exactly right.

His actors are also on target. Scott and Pullin play well together; she shows a nice touch of mischief under Amanda’s Southern charm, while he gives Gus a heart under the American Gothic, no-nonsense exterior.

Pullin also designed the set, and it looks good both in its initial spare phase as well as the girlied up version later on.

“Southern Comforts” runs through March 7th at Heartland Theatre. For reservations or more information, you can click on that link over there on the left.

Heartland Theatre Company presents
“Southern Comforts,” a romantic comedy by Kathleen Clark
Sponsored by George & Myra Gordon
Donor Advised Fund – Illinois Prairie Community Foundation

Cast
Carol Scott and Michael Pullin

Production Staff
Director: Mike Dobbins
Scenic Designer: Michael Pullin
Costume Designer: Gail Dobbins
Lighting Designer: Jesse Folks
Properties: Victoria Hill
Sound Designer: Robert LaSalle
Sound Engineer: Christopher Jaynes
Stage Manager: Ben Layman
Dramaturg: Christopher B. Connelly
Sound Board Operator: Brock Watkins
Floor Manager: Kevin Woodard
Dressers: Gayle Hess and Jaron Myers
Photography: Jesse Folks
Publicity & Program: Gail Dobbins
Niche Marketing: Ann B. White