SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, HENRY V and MERRY WIVES Set for Illinois Shakes 18

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival and new artistic director John C. Stark have just announced what's in store for the summer of 2018, with all kinds of intriguing developments on the horizon.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's domestic comedy about frisky housewives, their husbands and how they interact with Falstaff, a rowdy, blustering rascal, will open the Festival on Friday, July 5. The Merry Wives of Windsor was last performed at the Festival in 2010, in a sparkling production set in the 1920s. Deanna Jent, whose play Falling moved from St. Louis to New York with great acclaim and then back to Normal at Heartland Theatre, will direct this Merry Wives, which will get the theater at Ewing to itself that first week. Jent is an alumna of Illinois Wesleyan University, a professor of theatre at Fontbonne University, and artistic director of the Mustard Seed Theatre in St. Louis. This is her first directing assignment at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival.

The second play in the line-up, Henry V, the stirring "once more unto the breach" history play, wherein (spoiler alert) the same Falstaff we saw in Merry Wives kicks the bucket. Off-stage, though. Henry V was last staged here in 2007. This time, the immensely talented Karen Kessler, who directed the only production of The Taming of the Shrew I ever liked, set in 1950s Little Italy, will be at the helm of Henry V.  It's set to open one week after Merry Wives, on July 12, also at the theater at Ewing Cultural Center.

And the third play, which will be performed on campus at the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts, bows on July 19. This one will be one of the most popular plays of 2017, Shakespeare in Love, adapted by Lee Hall from the screenplay of the Oscar-winning film by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. It will be directed by Marti Lyons, another IWU alum and another in-demand director with credits ranging from Lookingglass and Chicago Shakespeare in the Windy City to Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. Shakespeare in Love premiered on stage in London in 2014. Its North American premiere took place last year at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, and it's been going gangbusters across the United States ever since.

In addition to the staggered start indicated above, Illinois Shakes' managing director William Prenevost announced that changes are in the works across the ticketing side of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Subscription choices, seating levels and prices are getting a makeover, online ordering will be added, and the special perks that used to come with Platinum Plus tickets will now be offered to Illinois Shakespeare Festival Society members, as the Platinum Plus level of tickets is phased into plain old Platinum. All the details will be unveiled on the Illinois Shakes website as we get closer to the summer season.

Celebrating the Year of the Female Playwright in B-N in 2014

There has been a lot of controversy about the lack of representation for female playwrights on American stages. I don't know if it was on purpose or just a happy accident, but Bloomington-Normal knocked it out of the park when it came to showcasing the work of female playwrights in 2014. From The Diary of Anne Frank back in January to Falling by Deanna Jent, which closed just before Thanksgiving, from stories told in ten minutes to one acts and full-length plays, we had a chance to see -- right here in Bloomington-Normal -- 21 different plays written by women, two plays co-written by women, and three musicals with music, lyrics or books written or co-written by women.

Last spring, Illinois State University gave us Diana Son's Stop Kiss, directed by Leah Cassella for Westhoff Theatre, followed by Exonerated, a "true crime" documentary piece written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and directed by Cyndee Brown, and Mrs. Packard, a look at a particularly dark moment in women's history written by Emily Mann and directed by Vanessa Stalling for ISU's Center for the Performing Arts.

This fall, ISU came back with In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl, directed by David Ian Lee for the CPA, with an amazing set design by Jen Kazmierczak; Water by the Spoonful, Quiara Alegria Hudes's 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, directed by Cassella in Westhoff; and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, from Lynn Nottage, another Pulitzer winner, directed by Don LaCasse for the CPA.

Over at Heartland, the April play was Iron, by Scottish playwright Rona Munro, a searing look at a daughter trying to reconnect with the mother she can't remember, a mother who is in prison for killing Dad fifteen years ago. Claire BonEnfant, Nancy Halper and Brigitte Viellieu-Davis won slots in Heartland's 10-Minute Play Festival, while Lori Matthews and Pamela Devon Lovell wrote winning one-acts produced as New Plays from the Heartland. And this fall, Heartland staged Julia Cho's The Language Archive, directed by Kathleen Kirk, and Deanna Jent's Falling, directed by Lori Adams, who had also directed the play in its St. Louis premiere and its off-Broadway transfer. Jent's intensely personal play was a shot right to the heart of playgoers.

New Route Theatre continued its mission to showcase underrepresented voices by bringing back The Mountaintop, Katori Hall's play about the last night in the life of Martin Luther King, and then offering Johnna Adams' mother/teacher showdown Gidion's Knot; Full Bloom, a reunion play by Leola Bellamy, Erica Thurman's Flashbacks; and Walking with My Ancestors, a journey into the past told in song, dance and the spoken word, written by ISU professor Ama Oforiwaa Aduonu.

Community Players brought us The Diary of Anne Frank, an adaptation of Anne's own words for the stage originally written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and updated by Wendy Kesselman; the musical 9 to 5, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, and Shrek: The Musical, with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by David Lindsay-Abaire.

Illinois Wesleyan University offered 12 Ophelias by Caridad Svich and The Drowsy Chaperone, a delightful 1920s musical spoof with music and lyrics co-written by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison.

The newest theatrical venture in town, the bar plays called Sticky in the Sticks, also featured work by women, in the tradition of Sticky founder Libby Emmons. The Normal version of Sticky gave us pieces by Emmons herself as well as Jeanine Jones in its December show.

All in all, it was a very good year.  More than two dozen different women with very different voices, all represented on stages in our home town.

The work isn't done, of course. It seems unlikely this will happen two years in a row, let alone three or four. But for now, for Bloomington-Normal in 2014, we can congratulate ourselves on quietly, happily getting it done. Here's to moe of the same in 2015!

Heartland Welcomes IWU WEEKEND WITH DEANNA JENT

Heartland Theatre's production of Deanna Jent's Falling continues this week, with performances at 7:30 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and a 2 pm matinee on Sunday. Although it's standard operating procedure for Heartland to do three weekends of performances, Falling stands out for Heartland in several ways.

For one, this production features the same director (Lori Adams) and scenic designer (John C. Stark) as the productions in St. Louis (the play premiered at the Mustard Seed Theatre) and New York City (off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre).

For another, there are short talkbacks -- post-scripts -- after almost every performance, allowing audience members a chance to hear more about how families and society deal with autism, since that is the challenge for the family in Falling, and to allow a backstage look at how director Adams, scenic designer Stark and the cast and crew have brought Falling to life in Bloomington-Normal. The complete schedule of post-script topics and speakers is available here.

Deanna Jent

But the biggest news about Falling this weekend is that playwright Deanna Jent, an alumna of Illinois Wesleyan University who now lives in St. Louis, will be in town for a series of events grouped under the heading IWU WEEKEND WITH DEANNA JENT. Jent's visit has been made possible by Illinois Wesleyan University and Provost Jonathan Green.

As the mother of an autistic child, Jent balances her time with a thriving theatre career. She is artistic director of the Mustard Seed Theatre, a professor at Fontbonne University and also a working director and playwright. Jent acted as the commencement speaker at last spring's IWU graduation ceremony, when her son graduated, and she wrote a piece for the IWU Magazine in 2013 about some of her Falling experiences. 

On campus, Jent will speak to theater and psychology students about Falling and her life and career, and at Heartland, she will be in the audience for the Saturday night and Sunday afternoon performances of her play on November 15 and 16. She will also be present after the show on both Saturday and Sunday to speak to audiences and take questions. And she will be there on Sunday evening for a reading of her new play, Blood Lines, which takes place in a group home for adult autistic women. That reading will feature actresses from Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University and from Heartland's pool of actors. Actors Olivia Candocia (ISU), Alexa Eldridge (IWU), Debra Madans (IWU), Melissa James Shrader (Heartland) and Jaimie Taylor (ISU) will take part under the director of Dr. John Ficca, Emeritus Professor from the IWU School of Theatre Arts.

The talkback sessions with Deanna Jent will follow the performances, with the Saturday night discussion beginning at approximately 8:50 pm and the Sunday session starting at about 3:20 pm. The Sunday night reading of Blood Lines will begin at 7:30 pm. Both post-show discussions and the reading of Blood Lines will take place at Heartland Theatre, and all three are free and open to the public.

For Heartland Theatre reservation information, click here. To read more about Deanna Jent and Falling, you will definitely want to check out this essay, written by Jent in 2013.

Heartland's FALLING, Opening Nov 6, Spotlights a Family Dealing with Autism

When Heartland Theatre opens Falling, Deanna Jent's play about the challenges of living inside a family with a profoundly autistic son, it will represent Step 3 in the journey director Lori Adams has taken with this play. Adams directed the show's world premiere at the Mustard Seed Theatre in St. Louis as well as its Off-Broadway production at the Minetta Lane Theatre. And her husband, scenic designer John C. Stark, designed both productions, along with a return stand at the Mustard Seed.

What made Falling rise above all the other new plays that pop up regionally, enough to send it straight to New York? The fact that it is in part based on Jent's real life as the mother of an autistic son certainly makes it stand out. And the rising profile of autism, along with larger and larger numbers of children diagnosed somewhere on the spectrum, makes it timely and compelling.

Adams and Stark are once again on board for Heartland's take on the family drama, bringing everything they learned about Jent's script back home for the benefit of local audiences who may not have been able to get to New York or St. Louis to see it there.

For this production, Karen Hazen and Rhys Lovell, who appeared together at Heartland in Middletown in 2013, will appear as Tami and Bill Martin, the couple whose marriage is tested by the demands of their older child. Daniel Esquivel, an ISU student in the School of Theatre and Dance, will play Josh, the child in question, while fellow Redbird Ashley Pruitt will play his younger sister Lisa. The family's fragile balance begins to falter when Grammy Sue, played by Ann B. White, arrives for a visit.

Playwright Deanna Jent will add to the Falling experience with a visit to Bloomington-Normal for what Illinois Wesleyan University is calling an "IWU Weekend with Deanna Jent" over November 15, 16 and 17, including events at Wesleyan as well as Heartland Theatre. Jent will stick around after Heartland's performances on the 15th and 16th to answer questions and give the inside scoop on Falling. These after-show discussions will be free and open to the public. To cap off her weekend in B-N, Jent will be present for a reading of her brand-new play Bloodlines at Heartland at 7:30 pm on Sunday the 16th.

In addition to Jent's appearances for post-show discussions, Heartland has arranged "post-scripts" involving various issues raised in the play, from daily life and employment opportunities for people with autism to bridging the gap between theater and disability. Lori Adams, John Stark and the cast of Falling will also be available after certain performances to give their perspective on the process. For the complete list of discussions scheduled, check Heartland's Show Times page here.

Falling opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre with a special Pay What You Can preview performance, followed by ten performances from November 7 to the 23rd. To see the complete schedule of performances, click here. For reservation information, click here.

November Openings, November Shows

There are certain days of the year when everybody wants to schedule everything, all on the same day. November 6 is one of those days. Four different shows bow on the 6th, all (I'm guessing) to fit their complete runs in before Thanksgiving. The good news it that you have a lot to choose from if you are so inclined. The bad news is that you will probably miss something good every time you choose something else.

Alphabetically, the first show of the cluster opening on the 6th is Illinois State University's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, a thought-provoking comedy about a black actress in Old Hollywood, when performers like Vera and her friends were stuck playing maids and mammies, no matter how often they stole scenes or dominated the screen.Vera Stark comes from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, who is coming to Illinois State University this weekend to talk to students and audience members after the November 8 evening performance and before the Sunday matinee on the 9th. Click here to see the details of Nottage's visit. The play itself jumps from Vera as an aspiring actress and real-life maid in the 1930s, her path to screen fame, and then her disappearance. In Act II, we see a TV panel put together to solve the mystery of whatever happened to... Vera Stark is directed for ISU's Center for the Performing Arts by Don LaCasse and stars MFA actress Faith Servant in the title role. You'll have eight chances to catch Vera between November 6 and 15.

The second contender on November 6 is Heartland Theatre's riveting family drama Falling, Deanna Jent's semi-autobiographical look inside a family struggling to keep up with the demands of a severely autistic son. Jent is an IWU alum and she, too, will be visiting Bloomington-Normal. We don't often get playwrights here, so two in two weeks is pretty remarkable. Jent is the Artistic Director of St. Louis's Mustard Seed Theatre, where Falling premiered. From there, the show, with director Lori Adams and scenic designer John Stark on board, moved off-Broadway, to New York's Minetta Lane Theater, where it played to sold-out audiences and garnered a host of Drama Desk nominations. Adams is back at the helm for Heartland Theatre, with a cast that includes Karen Hazen and Rhys Lovell as Tami and Bill Martin, parents of big-and-getting-bigger Josh, played by Daniel Esquivel. Ashley Pruitt plays little sis Lisa, while Ann B. White, as grandmother Sue Martin, upsets the family applecart when she arrives for a visit. While Jent is in town November 15 to 17, she will visit the IWU campus, answer questions and share the inside scoop on Falling at Heartland after the Saturday, November 15 evening performance and the Sunday, November 16 matinee, and watch a reading of her new play, Bloodlines, also at Heartland, on Sunday night at 7:30 pm.

During the run of the show, Heartland has scheduled short "postscripts" after almost every performance, with Julie Calmes of AutonomyWorks and Kim Williamson of Circles Behavior Consultation Services first up on the 6th. For the full schedule of talkbacks and discussions, check here.

We're halfway through the 6th! Let's celebrate with Rent, that musical callback to the late 90s, about Bohemian youth in the Village who want to make art in the midst of conflict with landlords, addiction and HIV/AIDS. Brett Cottone directs a cast of about 20, with Sean Stevens and Samantha Bettis at the top of the card as star-crossed lovers Roger and Mimi. Rent's preview on the 6th is followed by performance November 7 to 9, 13 to 16 and 20 to 23.

New Route Theatre officially christens its new space at 814 Jersey Avenue in Normal with the world premiere of Walking With My Ancestors by Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum, directed by Kim Pereira and featuring Leola Bellamy, John Bowen, Jajwannica Johnson, Cynthia Senefianso-Amedoda and Claron Sharrieff along with Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum herself. Email new.route.theatre@gmail.com or call 309-827-7330 to reserve a ticket to this exploration of the African-American journey in America told through song, dance and the spoken word.

The new film Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as a formerly famous action/super hero, comes to Champaign's Art Theater Co-op on November 7th. The Art goes to 11 with one of my favorite movies, This Is Spinal Tap, showing on November 14, and another fabulous piece of filmmaking, Stanley Kubrick's war film, Paths of Glory, on the 17th. They'll finish up the month with another new film, The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, showing on November 28.

The Ides of March, a "powerhouse rock and roll band" known primarily for their hit song Vehicle, will take you anywhere you want to go, as long as it's the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on November 15. I have two connections to this band. Some iteration of it (or perhaps a tribute band to it) played at my prom in 1974. And I once worked with the brother of Ides band member Larry Millas. Does that make me one degree of separation from the Ides of March? Or none?

Illinois Wesleyan University School of Theatre Arts enters November sweeps with the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, beginning November 18 at McPherson Theatre. The madcap musical, with book by Jeffrey Lane and music and lyrics by David Yazbeck, is based on the Pedro Almodovar movie about women in Madrid being driven crazy by the men in their lives. On Broadway, Women on the Verge starred Sherie Rene Scott, Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti and Brian Stokes Mitchell, with the score, LuPone and Benanti nominated for Tony Awards. The show was nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, with Benanti taking home the hardware. That's the Broadway Playbill you see at left. Watch for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at IWU from November 18 to 23.

Lori Adams Announces Cast for FALLING

Director Lori Adams has announced her cast for the play Falling by Deanna Jent, to be performed at Heartland Theatre from November 6 to 23, 2014.

For Heartland, Adams' cast will feature Karen Hazen, who played the lead roles in Middletown and Earth and Sky, as Tami Martin, and Rhys Lovell, who starred opposite Hazen in Middletown and most recently directed and acted in My Fair Lady for Prairie Fire Theatre, as her husband Bill. Illinois State University students Daniel Esquivel and Ashley Pruitt will play their children, with Esquivel as Josh, the Martins' severely autistic son, and Pruitt as Lisa, the daughter who wishes her family life were not quite so challenging. Ann Bastian White, who created the senior acting troupe Young at Heartland and recently appeared in New Plays from the Heartland, will portray Grammy Sue, the relative whose visit precipitates change and disruption in the Martin's carefully balanced household.

Jent has often noted that the play's central question is how you love someone who is extremely difficult to love. Falling is semi-autobiographical, in that Jent herself has an autistic son and has confronted first-hand the tangle of educational, legal and medical issues for a family dealing with autism. And every autistic child is different. As she says, when you have met one person with autism, you have met one person with autism. There are no easy answers and no simple remedies that suit every family, no sure-fire way to catch a mother or father who fears falling down on this parenting job.

Adams directed the world premiere of Falling at the Mustard Seed Theatre in St. Louis in 2012, as well as the play's off-Broadway production at Minetta Lane later that year. Falling was named Outstanding New Play at St. Louis's Kevin Kline Awards in 2012. At Minetta Lane, the play was nominated for three Drama Desk awards, including Outstanding Play for Jent, Outstanding Actress in a Play for Julia Murney, who played Tami, and Outstanding Actor in a Play for Daniel Everidge, who played Josh.

For more information on Falling at Heartland Theatre, click here. For reservation information, click here or email boxoffice@heartlandtheatre.org

2013 Drama Desk Awards (Including Our Very Own Nominees)

How exciting was it when Illinois Wesleyan alum Deanna Jent and Illinois State University's Lori Adams and John Stark took Jent's play Falling to New York after a smash engagement in St. Louis? Adams, who is head of acting in ISU's School of Theatre and Dance, directed Jent's play, with scenic design by Stark, who is head of design and production at ISU. The little play that could and its Minetta Lane production scored Drama Desk nominations for Jent for Outstanding Play as well as actors Daniel Everidge and Julia Murney. And that's about as major as it gets.

Broadway World photo of Jent and Adams on opening night
Photo credit: Walter McBride

Fellow nominees included the likes of Annie Baker, David Byrne, Christopher Durang, Tom Hanks, Nathan Lane, Tracy Letts, Bette Midler, Vanessa Redgrave, Tony Shalhoub and Cicely Tyson.

The Drama Desk Awards are the only major New York awards to nominate and honor Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway shows in the same categories of competition. And that allows all the New York theatrical folk who cross those boundaries to be together for one night of big fun and excitement.

Sunday night, the Drama Desk Awards were handed out at Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan, with Christopher Durang's mixed-up Chekhovian comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike taking honors in the Outstanding Play category and Matilda, a musical version of the Roald Dahl novel with book by Dennis Kelly and music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, named Outstanding Musical. The Broadway transfer of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf took the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, while Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson's Pippin won in the Outstanding Revival of a Musical or Revue category.

Acting honors were spread around, with winners including Virginia Woolf's Tracy Letts, Cicely Tyson for her performance in The Trip to Bountiful, Billy Porter in Kinky Boots and Laura Osnes in Cinderella. In the "featured" categories, Richard Kind (The Big Knife), Judith Light (The Assembled Parties), Bertie Carvel (Matilda) and Andrea Martin (Pippin) took home the trophies.

The Outstanding Director awards both went to women directors, with Pippin's Diane Paulus and Virgina Woolf's Pam MacKinnon honored.

To see the complete list of nominees and winners, click here.

FALLING Flies High in Its Off-Broadway Home

Lori Adams

Falling, the play directed by Illinois State University professor Lori Adams, has officially opened Off-Broadway. Playwright Deanna Jent wrote Falling, about a family trying to find ways to stay a family while dealing with the challenges of an autistic child, and the play received great notices when it began its life in St. Louis, where Adams received Best Director honors from St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic Judith Newmark and the play itself took the 2012 Kevin Kline Award for Best New Play. Those notices were strong enough to earn it an Off-Broadway production at the Minetta Lane Theater, where it's been in previews, with opening night last night.

This New York production includes not only Adams as director, but also ISU's John Stark as scenic designer and former ISU faculty member Julie Mack as lighting designer.

Reviews are beginning to trickle in, and they're stellar. In today's New York Post, Frank Scheck notes that "this heartfelt and nuanced family drama is shot through with dark humor, as cathartic for the audience as it is for its conflicted characters," and he calls the action "superbly staged" by Lori Adams.

Rex Reed opens his review in the New York Observer by praising the play's "Graceful writing, great acting, exquisite direction, suspense, [and] profound subject matter..." before concluding that Falling "teaches you something and leaves you sated—and it rocks."

At Talkin' Broadway, Matthew Murray writes that Falling is a "meticulously crafted and intensely moving play, given a sterling production by director Lori Adams."

The New York Daily News also put Falling in the No. 2 spot on its list of "top 10 things on New York stages" for this week.

You can also see interviews with the cast, including lead actress Julia Murney, on this page at Broadway.com, and see pictures and ticket information at Playbill's online site. Testimonials for the play have been posted on Youtube, if you're interested in the reactions of real-live audience members.

Note that $5 from each full-price ticket purchased for performances in October will benefit Autism Speaks, the world’s leading autism science and advocacy organization.

If you, like me, are unable to get to New York in time to see Adams' Off-Broadway directorial debut, you can enjoy this picture of the marquee for the show, as posted at Playbill online. Beautiful!

Lori Adams and "Falling" Headed Off-Broadway to Minetta Lane

Lori Adams

Last year, St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic Judith Newmark awarded ISU's Lori Adams "Best Director" honors in her 2011 list of St. Loui's best theatrical endeavors for her work on the play "Falling," by Deanna Jent. As she talked about the play and why it stood out, Newmark wrote, "'Falling' comes endowed with a keen mind, a warm though troubled heart — and a future. There's hope to bring it to New York, probably Off-Broadway; productions at other theaters around the country are virtually certain."

Newmark knew whereof she spoke, as Broadway.com is reporting that "Falling," with Lori Adams once again at the helm, will receive its Off-Broadway premiere at the Minetta Lane Theater in the West Village. It's a wonderful theater, the launching pad for plays like Moises Kaufman's "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde" and Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays With Morrie."

"Falling" is scheduled to begin previews on Thursday, September 27, with its official opening night scheduled for Monday, October 15, 2012.

Jent's play involves parents trying to balance the needs of their teenage daughter and their austistic son. Or, as Playbill's listing and the banner above frame the issue: "Family is not the most important thing: it's everything. Who will be there to catch you?" Jent herself is the mother of an autistic son and Newmark noted in the article linked at the top of this piece that "Falling" is based on Jent's own family. Along with being a playwright, she is the Artistic Director of the Mustard Seed Theatre, where the play was produced in St. Louis.

For its New York production, "Falling" will feature the work of scenic designer John C. Stark, who is also Adams' husband and Head of Production/Design at Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance; costume designer Tristan Raines; lighting designer Julie Mack; sound designer Raymond Schilke and fight choreographer Rick Sordelet.

Adams is the head of the Acting Program at ISU, and she also directs and acts in local productions. Last season, she directed William Inge's "Picnic" as part of the ISU theater season and the annual Holiday Extravaganza at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts. She has acted in many local plays, including taking on the titular woman in Alan Ayckbourn's "Woman in Mind" at Heartland Theatre and playing Fanny Kemble in the touring one-woman show "Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble."