Tonight's the Night for AN EVENING with Eli Van Sickel (and Friends)

Illinois State University alum Eli Van Sickel is directing An Evening full of theatre. And it's in Chicago. Tonight. More specifically, An Evening is tonight at 7 pm at Lifeline Theatre.

Van Sickel has put together a program of short scenes, with selections from newer work like John Logan's Red, Neil Labute's Reasons to Be Pretty, Julia Jordan's Nightswim and Songs for a New World, Jason Robert Brown's heartfelt song cycle, along with classic pieces like Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty.

This is how Eli describes his Evening:

Eli Van Sickel has spent his entire life in the theatre. He holds a BS in Directing from Indiana State University and an MS in Theatre Studies from Illinois State University. He has worked professionally as a freelance sound designer for the last eight years. He has not directed a play since he was in school, five years ago. He has been too afraid to pursue a career as a theatre director...until now. In order to dust off the cobwebs and see if he’s worth a damn, Eli has put together an evening of scenes entitled AN EVENING. The performance will take place on Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at Lifeline Theatre.

David F. Meldman and James Martineau will perform the Red scene, with Devon Nimerfroh and Kristen Hughes in Reasons to Be Pretty, Mitch Conti, Gerrit Wilford, and Andrea Williams taking on Cyrano, Alyssa Ratkovich, Kent Nusbaum and Joe Faifer in Waiting for Lefty, Courtney Dane Mize performing part of Songs for a New World, and Gaby Fernandez and Emily Willis in Nightswim. Michael Evans is the Evening's musical director and pianist and Slick Jorgensen is the lighting designer.

Conti, Faifer, Fernandez, Martineau, Nimerfroh, Nusbaum, Ratkovich and Williams all have ISU connections, and you may remember them from work on Bloomington-Normal stages. Meldman has a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in acting from Florida Atlantic University, Willis is a Northwestern grad, Mize has a degree from Ole Miss, Wilford studied at the other Northwestern in Iowa, and Hughes earned her BA from Indiana University in the other Bloomington.

All of which adds up to a lot of talent in one place at one time. If you're wondering why this show now, Eli offers this inspirational program note:

All of us are relatively new to Chicago. We are looking for opportunities. We are looking for artistic homes. We are looking for people to take chances on us. We have devoted our lives to our craft and we are ready to do great things within it.

You have to root for that, right? Let's hope this Evening is the first in a long line of great things for all of them!

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.