Casting Update: Heartland's EARNEST Begins Its Bunbury Business September 7

Heartland Theatre Company and director Don LaCasse have announced who'll be pretending to be Earnest (spoiler alert: there is no Earnest or Ernest) when Oscar Wilde's delightful period comedy The Importance of Being Earnest opens September 7th.

The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, which is also when it's set. Earnest takes place in fashionable English settings like a London flat and the garden of a country house, and its cast of elegant characters are generally floating around in gowns with giant leg-o-mutton sleeves and feathered bonnets (the ladies) or silk cravats and high hats (the gents). Wilde is sending up society and puncturing its pomposity, which means you must see what that society looked like in 1895.

The most memorable character in the play and the clearest example of snobbery among the finer classes is Lady Bracknell, the formidable dragon who sniffs at her daughter marrying a man whose pedigree cannot be ascertained. After all, Jack Worthing was abandoned as a baby, left in a handbag at the railway station. A handbag! She also has all the best lines in Wilde's deliciously witty play, like this one: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

Because it's such a wonderful role, men have strapped themselves into Lady Bracknell's corset quite a lot, with acclaimed performances from the likes of Brian Bedford, Geoffrey Rush and David Suchet. Still, my favorite Lady Bracknell is Dame Edith Evans in the 1952 movie version of the play. Apparently director LaCasse is also a fan of the female Lady Bracknell, since he's cast local favorite Kathleen Kirk to play Lady B for Heartland.

The four lovers in the play -- Algernon, Jack, Cecily and Gwendolyn -- will be played by Kyle Redmon, Timothy Olsen, Emilia Dvorak and Jessie Swiech. Joining them will be Julie Riffle as Miss Prism, Cecily's governess, and Dean Brown as Dr. Chasuble, a local rector, with Chuck Pettigrew and Larry Eggan as Merriman and Lane, the perfectly composed manservant and butler who bring in the tea (and possibly cucumber sandwiches) at inopportune moments.

Wilde called The Importance of Being Earnest "a trivial comedy for serious people," but it's actually not at all serious as long as it skates along with the proper fin de siècle feel.

You'll find The Importance of Being Earnest on stage at Heartland Theatre beginning with a Pay What You Can preview on September 7, followed by Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances through the 23rd. For the complete list of performance dates and times, click here. For reservation information, see this page.

Lynn Nottage's INTIMATE APPAREL Opens Tomorrow at Heartland

If you saw By the Way, Meet Vera Stark last year at Illinois State University, you know that playwright Lynn Nottage + director Don LaCasse + actor Faith Servant adds up to some fine theatre. The team is back, this time at Heartland Theatre, with Intimate Apparel, a different kind of Nottage play.

Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize, for Ruined, her emotional and dramatic look at women abused and "ruined" by war in the Congo, plus a Guggenheim fellowship and a MacArthur "genius" grant, along with a host of other awards and fellowships. Her voice as a playwright is distinctive but also versatile, ranging from the Alice Down the Rabbit Hole modern-day stylings of Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, produced locally by New Route Theatre; Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a family drama set in the 1950s that has been compared to The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun; the afore-mentioned Vera Stark, a fun and irreverent look at what it meant to be black and talented in Old Hollywood; and Intimate Apparel, probably her most-produced play, which focuses on an African-American woman in a different historical period.

Intimate Apparel's Off-Broadway production at the Roundabout Theatre starred Viola Davis and took home Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Davis, with another Outer Critics Circle win for the play itself, an Obie for Derek McLane's set, Lucille Lortel Awards for set and costumes, and a half dozen nominations in other categories.

Its action is set in 1905, a time when a talented seamstress like Esther -- more of an artist than a tradeswoman when it comes to the beautiful lingerie she creates -- can scratch out a small place for herself in New York City, even as she cruises past the far side of 30 unmarried and on her own. Yes, the lace and silk confections she sews are popular with both sides of the street, with white society ladies and juke-joint African-American women alike. But Esther wants more than dressing up other people in sexy underthings. She wants love, romance, intimacy... Maybe even the respectable marriage her landlady keeps pushing.

In Nottage's script, Esther comes into contact with people outside her own small circle, from a sympathetic fabric merchant who happens to be an Orthodox Jew, an African-American prostitute, a wealthy white woman trapped in a stultifying marriage, and a pen pal halfway across the world. The pen pal, a working man in Barbados who's worked on the Panama Canal, is the source of much of Intimate Apparel's drama. Is he the man Esther sees in his letters? Can he be what she needs?

For director Don LaCasse, Faith Servant, a third-year MFA candidate in acting at ISU, will take on Esther. Servant played the glamorous maid-turned-actress Vera Stark last year; Esther Mills is more real, less sparkly, but definitely a showcase for an actress. The rest of the cast is equally strong, with some of Bloomington-Normal's best actors, including Fania Bourn, seen last year in New Route Theatre's powerful production of The Mountaintop; Rhys Lovell, Heartland's Artistic Director who can always be counted on for first-rate performances; Elante Richardson, seen on stage at ISU in Happy Endings and Day of Absence; Jennifer Rusk, who made a vivid impression in Community Players' Hairspray and as Eliza Esque with Illinois Voices Theatre; and Megan Tennis, who went from ISU's Pride and Prejudice last spring to Brighton Beach Memoirs a few months ago.

Rusk will portray Mrs. Dickson, Esther's respectable landlady and confidante, with Bourn as Mayme, a prostitute who buys garments from Esther, Tennis as Mrs. Van Buren, Mayme's society counterpart, Lovell as Mr. Marks, the Jewish merchant, and Richardson as George, the mystery man from Barbados.

Intimate Apparel is a beautiful play -- a real standout even on Lynn Nottage's outstanding resume -- and its issues of aspiration, longing and loneliness should resonate with almost everyone. If you'd like to read more about Nottage, try this piece in The Guardian or this Interval interview. 

Intimate Apparel opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre with a special 7:30 pm "Pay What You Can Preview," followed by evening performances on November 6 and 7; 12, 13 and 14; and 19, 20 and 21; and matinees at 2 pm on November 15 and 22. For reservation information, click here. For a list of performance dates and times, click here.

GLASS MENAGERIE Shines at Heartland

Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie may be over 70, but it still seems young and fresh on the stage. There's a reason for that. It lies in Williams' central conflict, with a mother so lost in what she wants for her children that she doesn't see who they are or what they want. The parent/child impasse, the desperation, the inability to understand... It's achingly real.

Because of that, Amanda Wingfield, the mother in question, has been a dream role for generations, as has her son Tom, this memory play's unhappy narrator and a representation of Williams himself. They seem like real people who could be plucked off any family tree.

In the context of the play, the Wingfield family, such as it is, has fallen on hard times. Dad decamped years ago, and the three remaining Wingfields -- Amanda, Tom and daughter Laura, a fragile, shy young woman -- live in a poor apartment in St. Louis. Tom supports the family with his income from a drab job in a shoe factory, even as he dreams of becoming a writer. His mother pushes him to make more of himself, but she also constantly interrupts when he tries to write. As she repeats stories of her own girlhood as a Southern belle, Amanda is desperate to find "gentleman callers" for her daughter, who becomes ill at the very idea.

Don LaCasse, the head of the MFA directing program at Illinois State University, makes this Glass Menagerie moody and a little misty, as befits a memory play. He is aided in that effort by John Stark's beautiful set, framed in brick and lace to keep the action constricted and confined, with a tricky little corner fire escape that affords Tom a breath of fresh air. Cassie Mings' lighting design is just as impressive, moving the actors from shadow to candlelight and darkness and providing a really lovely final tableau.

Connie de Veer leads the cast as Amanda, offering a fully-drawn portrayal of a woman who expected so much more from her life than where she is now. It's not easy to make this domineering, narcissistic woman sympathetic, but de Veer finds a way. We can see her desperation and her lost dreams on her face and in her eyes, no matter what the facade, and the touches of humor in the performance only serve to underline that.

Joe Faifer is strong and equally compelling as Tom, who loves his sister -- and his mother -- even as he chokes on the stranglehold they have on him. His Tom is a little rough around the edges, someone we can see bolting to become a merchant marine, with a command of language that tells us everything we need to know about Tennessee the writer. The layers and the contradictions are all there in Faifer's performance.

As Laura, Elsa Torner is lovely and delicate, visibly shattering at even a hint of having to make her way in the world, breaking our hearts every time she tries to make herself heard, while Patrick Riley's ebullient Gentleman Caller is a welcome counterpoint with his boyish enthusiasm and can-do spirit.

The beauty of this production is that each of the four shows dashed dreams and failed expectations, giving strong support to each corner of Williams' play. After we've met them, we want more for each of them. It's the eternal human dilemma, right there in front of our eyes.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE
By Tennessee Williams

Heartland Theatre Company

Director: Don LaCasse
Assistant Director: Megan Hoepker
Scenic Designer: John Stark
Assistant Scenic Designer/Charge Artist/Properties Master: Jen Kazmierczak
Costume Designer: Lauren Lowell
Lighting Designer: Cassie Mings
Sound Designer: Shannon O'Neill
Assistant Sound Designer: Mat Piotrowski
Stage Manager: Matthew Harter

Cast: Connie de Veer, Joseph Faifer, Patrick Riley and Elsa Torner.

Running time: 2:10, including one 10-minute intermission.

Remaining performances: April 23, 24, 25 and 26, 2015

For performances times and ticket information, click here.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE Opens Tomorrow at Heartland Theatre

It's not like Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie has ever gone out of style, but still... Recently -- or maybe since the Broadway revival that starred Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield and Zachary Quinto as her son Tom -- Glass Menagerie has been hotter than hot.

Heartland Theatre's production, which opens tomorrow night with a "pay what you can preview," is directed by Don LaCasse, the Illinois State University professor at the helm of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lynn Nottage's musing on what it meant to be an African-American movie star in the first half of the 20th century, last fall for ISU, and Douglas Post's psychological mystery Earth and Sky for Heartland last season. The Glass Menagerie is considerably different from either of those shows, although it does have strong female characters in common with the other two.

LaCasse directs ISU professor Connie de Veer as Amanda Wingfield, the lapsed Southern belle who despairs of understanding her children or the place her life has led her. The Glass Menagerie offers de Veer a chance to take on one of the biggest roles in the American theatrical canon, one originated by the legendary Laurette Taylor and revived on stage by the likes of Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, Jessica Lange, and, as mentioned above, the amazing Cherry Jones. Joanne Woodward played Amanda in a very well-received 1987 film directed by her husband Paul Newman, while Shirley Booth and Katharine Hepburn were very different Amandas in very different versions of the play produced for television.

The actors who have played Tom, the stand-in role for Tennessee Williams himself, are also a Who's Who of the American stage, from Eddie Dowling, who produced and directed the 1945 Chicago production that put the play on the map and then moved to Broadway; to Montgomery Clift, George Grizzard, Hal Holbrook, Željko Ivanek, John Malkovich, Rip Torn and Sam Waterston. And, of course, Zachary Quinto, the new Spock, who was opposite Cherry Jones.

For LaCasse's production, Tom will be played by Joe Faifer, a fine actor who graced ISU stages in roles as disparate as inebriated old actor Selsdon Mowbray in Noises Off, an innocent man sent to Death Row in The Exonerated and a father slipping into dementia in Tales of the Lost Formicans.

That's the beauty of The Glass Menagerie and why it's such a great choice for all these revivals and reimaginings -- the characters are so strong and yet so flexible that every production is a little different, each providing a new lens to see the play. Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich make for a unique mother and son, just as Laurette Taylor and Eddie Dowling did before them. And de Veer and Faifer will at Heartland.

They will be joined at Heartland by Elsa Torner, who played Christina, the youngest Mundy sister in ISU's recent Dancing at Lughnasa, as Laura, Tom's fragile sister, while Patrick Riley, seen to good advantage in The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Playboy of the Western World in Westhoff Theatre, as Jim, the would-be suitor Tom brings home after pressure from his mother to provide a "Gentleman Caller" for his sister.

After tomorrow's "pay what you can" preview, The Glass Menagerie will continue at Heartland Theatre on June 10 and 11; 16, 17, 18 and 19; and 23, 24, 25 and 26, with evening performances at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2 pm. The cast will be present for a talkback after the matinee on the 19th to answer questions about how they approached their roles and why this play continues to exert such a strong influence in American theatre.

Follow these links for more information on showtimes and reservations.

A Playwright and a Movie Star in Normal: BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK at ISU

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, opening tomorrow night at Illinois State University's Center for the Performing Arts, is part of a pleasantly female-playwright-centric season launched this fall by ISU's Department of Theatre and Dance. With Sarah Ruhl and Quiara Alegria Hudes already represented this season with In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) and Water by the Spoonful, putting Lynn Nottage and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark on the bill seems like a perfect progression.

In case you're keeping track, Ruhl was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Clean House in 2005 and again for In the Next Room in 2010, and Hudes was a Pulitzer finalist for Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue in 2007 and for the the book she co-wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda for the musical In the Heights in 2009, picking up the win for Water by the Spoonful in 2012. Nottage edged out Hudes in 2009, taking home the coveted Pulitzer for Ruined. Ruhl and Nottage have also been awarded MacArthur Fellowships (sometimes called Genius Grants), Ruhl owns a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and Nottage took home a Guggenheim Fellowship. What's interesting about the pile of hardware is not that it was accumulated by female playwrights, but that the body of work it represents is so eclectic, combining comedy and drama with issues of war, family, gender, sexuality, love, career and ambition.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is satirical, amusing piece, looking into the mysterious history of a black actress in Old Hollywood. While she dreams of breaking into the movies in the early 30s, Vera is employed as a ladies' maid by a neurotic diva named Gloria Mitchell who has the reputation of being "America's Little Sweetie Pie." When a role (as a slave) is available in a melodrama where Gloria is playing a quintessential Southern belle, Vera jumps at the chance to get on screen. Yes, it's a slave. But it's a slave with lines. And even in a small role, Vera stands out. In fact, she is incandescent and unforgettable on screen, whether or not she is limited to the maids and mammy roles available to someone like her.

Vera achieves a certain level of stardom, but her story isn't happily-ever-after. By the 70s, she has disappeared from the screen, leaving a panel of scholars in Meet Vera Stark's second act to debate what happened to her and what kind of footnote to movie history she represents.

Don LaCasse directs Vera Stark for ISU, with MFA actress Faith Servant as Vera, Mary DeWitt as Gloria Mitchell, Brianna Haskell and Gabrielle Lott-Rogers as Vera's wannabe actress friends, Dan Machalinski and Wesley Tilford as major players in the film industry, and La'Mar Hawkins as a romantic interest. When the action jumps forward, Haskell, Hawkins, Lott-Rogers, Machalinski and Tilford play the academics and TV talking heads putting together the pieces that make up the real and the imagined Vera Stark.

Playwright Lynn Nottage is coming to Illinois State University as part of this Vera Stark experience. Nottage will speak 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.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark opens November 6 with a 7:30 pm curtain, with evening performances on November 7, 8, 12, 13, 14 and 15, and a 2 pm matinee on November 9. For more information, click here. For ticket info, try this page.

One Acts Take Center Stage in NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND

Heartland Theatre began its life as a home for new works. Although that mission has changed over the years, Heartland still makes a place for brand-new plays, with a festival for 10-minute plays in June and a program of one-act plays in July. Both projects solicit scripts from playwrights and then select the cream of the crop for staging. The 10-Minute Play Festival, which just finished up its 13th year, accepts submissions from all over the world, with eight winning plays fully staged and performed on Heartland's stage. The New Plays from the Heartland, on the other hand, celebrate new work written by Midwestern authors. And Midwestern authors only!

When the New Plays from the Heartland have been sorted through, discussed and considered, only three winners emerge. This year, with the theme Escape, two winners hail from Illinois and one from Wisconsin, but their work covers a range of issues. There's a look at what represents escape and what represents a trap for a woman in the 1950, a philosophical musing on the nature of theatre, and a filmic piece about how a boy's life can be changed in the space of a summer when he leaves home to stay with his aunt. The plays are:

AN ESCAPE PLAN FOR WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE 
by Lori Matthews, Stoughton WI
It's 1950, and Harriet is smart, accomplished and committed to her future. The question is what that future should hold. Marriage, wealth, privilege? Or perhaps her life should be a bowl of cherries.

MERELY PLAYERS 
by Michael Leathers, Chatham IL
When two very different men come to the theater, they think they'll just take their seats and settle in for a show. But this is no ordinary theater...

ALCHEMY
by Pamela Lovell, Bloomington IL
For Josh, "escape" might be spending the summer with his aunt. For Aunt Julie, it might be living alone in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. For both of them, it might be finding a way to talk, to grow, to ride out the storm.

As a play development project, the plays are presented as staged readings, with actors performing with scripts in hand along with some props, costumes and set pieces. Director Don LaCasse has an acting troupe of eight that includes some of the area's best actors, with Colleen Longo, Katie McCarty, Danny Rice and Ann B. White appearing in Escape Plan, Nathan Bottorff and Rick Jensen in Merely Players, and Harrison Gordon and Cristen Monson in Alchemy.

Kathleen Kirk served as dramaturg for the project, shepherding the scripts from entry to performance, and she also worked with Scott Klavan, the New York playwright, director and actor who acted as the final judge this year. Klavan will meet with the three winning playwrights in a special workshop designed just for them, and he will also conduct a forum on playwriting at the theater on Thursday, July 17, at 7:30 pm. That forum is free and open to the public.

Performances of the New Plays from the Heartland will take place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Heartland Theatre, with a 7:30 pm curtain on Friday and Saturday and a 2 pm matinee on Sunday. Since this is a special project and not a part of Heartland's subscription season, Flex Passes are not accepted, but tickets are priced at only $5 to make the project accessible to everyone. Reservations are a very good idea as some performances fill up quickly. 

Heartland Theatre Announces Cast for Douglas Post's EARTH AND SKY

Director Don LaCasse has announced his cast for the next show on Heartland Theatre's schedule, Chicago playwright Douglas Post's neo-noir thriller Earth and Sky. LaCasse's cast includes Karen Hazen, Richard Jensen and Dean Brown, all of whom appeared in Middletown, Heartland's last show of last season, along with Colleen Longo and Harold Chapman, who were in Time Stands Still last winter, as well as Dave Lemmon, Todd Wineburner, Michelle Kaiden and Kevin Paul Wickart.

Post's play involves Sara McKeon, a poet and librarian, who is told that David, the man she loves, is not at all what she believed. Instead, detectives Kersnowski and Weber paint a picture of a career criminal, someone involved in rape and murder. Sara doesn't believe them. How can she? But how can she distrust information that comes straight from the police?

Her journey to uncover the truth takes her into her own past with David as well as the present without him, as she is thrown into an urban landscape populated with liars, thieves and unreliable witnesses. Ultimately, Sara must decide what and who she can trust in a world turned upside-down.

For Heartland, Karen Hazen will play Sara, while Richard Jensen will take the role of David, who once seemed to be the perfect man but now is transformed into something very different. Harold Chapman and Dave Lemmon have been cast as the two policemen who drop the bomb into Sara's life, with Colleen Longo as a librarian colleague of Sara's and Dean Brown, Todd Wineburner, Michelle Kaiden and Kevin Paul Wickart as the shadowy characters Sara questions and encounters in her search for the truth. 

Performances of Earth and Sky begin September 12 and continue through the 29th. For information on the play, click here or here. To see the schedule of performances, click here.

Upcoming Auditions: EARTH AND SKY at Heartland Theatre

Heartland Theatre has announced it is holding auditions from 7 to 9:30 pm on July 21 and 22 for its September production of Earth and Sky, Douglas Post's "poetic thriller" that asks disturbing questions about how well we know the people we think we love, who we trust, and when it is right and important to keep asking questions.

For Heartland, director Don LaCasse will work with local actress and poet Kathleen Kirk as dramaturg. Kirk appeared in a Chicago production of the play some years ago in the lead role of Sara, a librarian and part-time poet who finds herself disappearing down a rabbit hole of murder, lies and betrayal after the death of her fiance. Sara thought David was the perfect man, but the police are telling her a very different story. Who does she believe? How much can she trust her own instincts when everything she thought she knew has been ripped away?

Other versions of Earth and Sky featured powerhouse actresses like Annette Bening, Kate Burton and Martha Lavey as Sara, so it will be very interesting to see who nabs the role here.

LaCasse will be looking for three women and six men to play the following characters:

SARA McKEON, late 20s
DAVID AMES, early 30s
DETECTIVE AL KERSNOWSKI, mid 30s
DETECTIVE H.E. WEBER, 40
JOYCE LAZLO, early 20s
BILLY HART, early 30s
CARL EISENSTADT, 50
MARIE DEFARIA, early 30s
JULIUS GATZ, 40

Keep in mind that the ages listed are those specified in Post's script, but the director may choose to be flexible with his cast's actual ages, depending on how they read and interact with each other.

To get an idea of what the play is about, you can visit its page at Dramatists Play Service or see some pages from the script at Google Books.

Performances of the play are scheduled for September 12 to 29, with specific dates and times here.