Heartland Has its MIDDLETOWN Cast in Place

Will Eno's Middletown is a bittersweet slice-of-life, showcasing the citizens of a small town on ordinary days in their lives. There's birth, death, curiosity, pride of place, casual cruelty, longing for connection and... A good deal of humanity.

Because of the ensemble nature of the show, the size of the cast has varied from production to production. After auditions last week, director John Kirk has announced his cast for the Heartland Theatre production coming in April. For Heartland, the Middletown ensemble will contain twelve players, ranging from IWU student Geena Barry to Heartland past-president Ann B. White, who is also the program director and founder of Young at Heartland, the theater's senior acting troupe.

Barry will play three roles -- Woman, Female Tourist and Music Host -- while White will be take on the roles of Tour Guide, Aunt and Attendant.

The other denizens of Middletown will be played by Lynna Briggs (playing Sweetheart and Ground Control), Dean Brown (Public Speaker, Landscaper and Janitor), Aric Diamani (Male Tourist, Freelancer and Male Doctor), George Freeman (Cop), Karen Hazen (Mrs. Swanson), Richard Jensen (Mechanic), Kathleen Kirk (Librarian), Devon Lovell (Female Doctor and Cop Radio), Rhys Lovell (John Dodge and Science Host) and John Poling (Greg and Man).

It looks like a powerhouse cast for a complex, thoughtful and poetic play by a major new voice in American theater. Will Eno received the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010 for Middletown, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award, and numerous other awards and citations. His play Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Performances of Middletown begin April 18 at Heartland Theatre. Follow these links to see showtimes and reservation information.

It's Noir Before the Dawn in AS YOU LIKE IT at IWU

Shakespeare's As You Like It starts in France, at the court ruled by the usurping Duke Frederick. He's a bad guy, keeping his daughter Celia on a short leash and acting all menacing to her cousin, Rosalind, the daughter of the rightful duke.

To portray the decadent duchy, director Tom Quinn makes Illinois Wesleyan University's current production all shadowy and noir, a vision of urban American in the early 40s, the land of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), where thugs wearing Fedoras do their dirty work in dark alleys and snazzy nightclubs.

That's certainly atmospheric, turning Duke Frederick into a kind of hard-boiled Dick Powell character, with Celia and Rosalind dames in high heels not unlike the Jane Greers and Joan Powells of yesteryear, and Touchstone the clown turned into a Joe E. Lewis style nightclub comic.

But once Roz and Celia go on the lam to the Forest of Arden, we lose the noir feel, instead inhabiting a free-wheeling rural landscape where the temperature is cold but the company is warm. With music and food and furs wrapped around our exiled heroes, the dark mood lifts, the season moves from winter to spring, everybody starts getting frisky, and love is in the air. Rosalind meets up with her Orlando, Touchstone romances a local lass named Audrey, and Celia even gets a late-in-the-day suitor.

Geena Barry makes a lovely Rosalind for IWU, looking just as fetching in her boys' cap and trousers as she does in the opening cocktail dress. She matches up well with Ben Mulgrew, a more boyish Orlando than most, and their faux-wooing comes off very sweet and charming.

Elaina Henderson gives Celia a lot of personality, as well, and T. Isaac Sherman shows both sides of the Dick Powell persona, giving Duke Frederick the hard guy Powell from Murder My Sweet and Duke Senior the warm, nice guy Powell from Susan Slept Here or Christmas in July.

Jacques, the gloomy philosopher with the Seven Ages of Man speech, gets a lighter touch from Ian Scarlato, who seems to be playing for laughs in his interaction with Touchstone, here played by Will Henke as a light-footed jokester in a porkpie hat.

In the ensemble, Kate Rozycki, Maggie Sheridan, Mandi Corrao and Will Greenlee do good work adding a certain wild musical streak to the proceedings. That echoes Quinn's director's notes about the wilderness within as represented by the Forest of Arden.

Overall, this is a warm, fun As You Like It, one that looks good and moves well, with lovers and lunatics at every turn.

AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare

Illinois Wesleyan University School of Theatre Arts
McPherson Theatre

Director: Thomas Quinn
Scenic Designer: Curtis C. Trout
Costume Designers: Mariah Williamson
Lighting Designer: Stephen Sakowski
Sound Designer: Aaron Woodstein

Cast: Geena Barry, Elaina Henderson, T. Isaac Sherman, Ben Mulgrew, Zachary Wagner, Adam Wallaser, Debra Madans, Marek Zurowski, Zach Mahler, Will Henke, Kate Rozycki, Ian Scarlato, Elliott Plowman, Briana Sarikcioglu, Angela Jos, Joey Chu, Nick Castellanos, Mandi Corrao, Maggie Sheridan, Will Greenlee.

Remaining performances: February 28 and March 1-2 at 8 pm

Running time: 2:40, including one 15-minute intermission

For ticket information, click here.

The Strange Little World of "Dog Sees God"

When I was young, I remember a controversial bumper sticker that showed Lucy, the pushy girl from Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip, hugely pregnant. I don't remember what the caption was, but it was something like, "Damn you, Charlie Brown!" It seems tame now, but at the time, a lot of people were upset that somebody would subvert the sweet little "Peanuts" characters that way. I seem to recall lawsuits and general dismay. I thought it was funny. But, hey, I was a kid.

Bert V. Royal, the writer behind the movie "Easy A," goes a lot farther than that in his play "Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead." He doesn't use the actual names of the Peanuts characters, but there's a guy named CB at the center of it, with "Van" instead of Linus van Pelt, "Beethoven" for Schroeder, the piano-playing kid, "Tricia" instead of Peppermint Patty, "Marcy" with a y instead of Marcie with ie, and "Matt" as a cleaned-up Pigpen. Sally and Lucy are reduced to merely "C.B.'s sister" and "Van's sister," respectively. Royal has aged them all to their high school years, and given each of them enough angst and misery to fuel six teen soap operas. Or maybe one day in Lindsay Lohan's life.

So our main character CB is mourning the loss of his dog, clearly Snoopy, who had to be put down after contracting rabies and chomping on a small yellow bird we recognize as Woodstock, while his sister, currently going through a Goth Wiccan phase, has a crush on the Beethoven version of Schroeder, who is constantly bullied because his father molested him. At some point in the recent past, CB conspired with Lucy, now completely bonkers and in an institution after she set the Little Red-Headed Girl's hair on fire, to burn Van's beloved blanket, as well. Van is a stoner, Tricia and Marcy are vapid party girls chugging gin and vodka with their chocolate milk and having sex with whoever they can nab, and Matt has cleaned up his former Pigpen ways by becoming a thug and a bully.

It's hard not to imagine that this play is the product of some self-absorbed teen with an ax to grind, deliberately making each plot element and each character backstory as nasty and over the top as possible, wallowing in the excess. It's hard not to imagine that Bert V. Royal came up with these plot elements and character problems just to show how sarcastic and outrageous he can be. It's telling to me that Sally and Lucy don't get names but are instead defined as some guy's sister, and poor Lucy only gets one scene. Not very interested in the girls, are we, Bert V?

Royal says he was interested in deeper issues, about what happens when your creator leaves you behind, as Charles Schulz left behind his "Peanuts" characters when he died. “What would you do in the absence of God or your creator?” Royal asks in this interview.

That's actually an interesting question and one I wish I'd seen more of in "Dog Sees God." Instead, what we get in the Phoenix Theatre production of the play at IWU is dark, smirky teen drama, with the script not nearly good enough to support the talents of the actors who are trying to bring it to life. And that's a shame.

When the play nears its conclusion and turns from send-up to something more heartfelt, actors Josh Conrad, Geena Barry and Jordan Lipes tap into real emotion, giving this "Dog Sees God" a moving conclusion and making me wish that its cast had a better vehicle to showcase what they can do.

As it is, Conrad carries the show from beginning to end. He's a very watchable actor and he manages the difficult trick of making his CB a root-for character, someone with a brain and a heart in the midst of emptiness. Geena Barry gives Sally (er, "CB's Sister") good energy and vulnerability, as well, and she really nails Sally's epilogue speech, while Jordan Lipes is consistently sincere and wounded enough to make us care about Beethoven.

DOG SEES GOD: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
By Bert V. Royal

The Phoenix Theater at Illinois Wesleyan University

Director: Mack Rivkin
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Ambria Bernardi
Scenic and Lighting Designer: Gopher Kuzmin
Sound Designr: Antonio Gracias
Board Operator: Laura Gisondi
Costumes and Makeup by Bri Sarikcioglu
Publicity by Riley Blindt

Cast: Josh Conrad, Geena Barry, Nick Carlson, Joe Ruskey, Jordan Lipes, Mandi Corrao, Mary Nicholas and Bri Sarikcioglu.

Running time: 2 hours, performed without intermission

Remaining performances: April 18, 2012, at 5 pm.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama Goes to Quiara Alegría Hudes for "Water by the Spoonful"

Winners of the Pulitzer Prizes for 2012 were announced yesterday, with Quiara Alegría Hudes taking the Drama prize for her play "Water by the Spoonful," which the Pulitzer committee described as, "an imaginative play about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq war veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia."

Quiara Alegría Hudes

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama may be awarded annually to "a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life," and it comes with a $10,000 added prize.

Hudes' play premiered last year at the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. A previous play, "Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue," which was a Pulitzer finalist in 2007, is the first in a planned trilogy, with "Water by the Spoonful" as the second play. And the third part of the trilogy, "The Happiest Song Plays Last," is scheduled for next April and May at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.

"Water by the Spoonful" spotlights characters around the world who interact by way of an internet chat room, with the main focus on the troubled veteran in Philadelphia and his mother, who has demons of her own.

Other finalist plays this year were "Other Desert Cities," by Jon Robin Baitz, also on the Goodman's schedule for next year, and "Sons of the Prophet," by Stephen Karam.