Summer at the Station: LEAVING IOWA and BAT BOY

Today may be the first official day of summer, but the Station Theatre in Urbana has already started their summer celebration. The Station Theatre production of Leaving Iowa opened last week, with performances continuing through July 2, while Bat Boy is on deck, scheduled to run July 14 to August 6.

Both shows are the kind of lighter fare the Station tends to look for during the summer months, with Leaving Iowa, a memory play that finds comedy in family road trips, absolutely on target for this travel-intensive time of year. Yes, my family took endless vacations in the car, and we almost seemed to be in Iowa, just like the people in the play by Tim Clue and Spike Manton.

For the Station Theatre, David Barkley directs a cast that includes Jeremiah Lowery as Don Browning, the man whose trip down Memory Lane drives the story, with David Heckman, Nancy Keener, Krystal Moya, Michael Murphy, Krysten Ostrom, Chris Taber, John Tilford, Laura Anne Welle and Kyrsten Ostrom as the family and folks Don sees in his rear-view mirror.

As for Bat Boy... This kicky little musical -- with book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe -- is torn right from the pages of the most outrageous tabloid you can imagine. Or at least the Weekly World News. The musical tells the tale of a misunderstood kid (or half-kid, half-bat) who grew up in a cave and is quite feral. When he is discovered in his cave (and he bites one of the rescuers) he is dragged out and taken to the home of the local veterinarian, whose kindly wife takes him under her wing. But the rest of the town isn't happy at all to have a strange creature like Bat Boy in their midst, and hysteria ensues. There are serious messages about tolerance of those who are different underlying all the camp and capers, but the catchy score is hard to shake. I saw Bat Boy at least ten years ago, but I can still hum "Hold Me, Bat Boy."

Mikel J. Matthews, Jr. directs Bat Boy with musical direction by Griffin Jenkins and choreography by Whitney Havice. Opening night is Thursday, July 14, with performances at 8 pm through Saturday, August 6.

For information about either show or to make reservations, visit the Station Theatre website or call 217-384-4000.

CHESS: Opening Moves Tonight at the Station Theatre

There was a day when chess champions from the United States and Russia vied not just for bragging rights across the board, but in international headlines, as well. As Cold War tensions remained high, the battle between American Bobby Fischer and Russian Boris Spassky for the World Championship in chess took on greater significance. A prize of $250,000 raised the stakes. When the two superstars, so different in approach and temperament, one shaped by the traditional, dominant Soviet system, the other an American loner known as much for his tics as his brilliance, met for 21 games played over two months in Iceland, the world watched to see who would ultimately checkmate whom.

The musical Chess, which opens tonight at the Station Theatre in Urbana, does not specifically deal with Fischer and Spassky, although there are certain similarities. There's an American and a Russian, and their match is played for higher stakes than just a few pawns, with political and diplomatic implications at every turn. But there's also romance, which was, as far as we know, not part of the famous 1972 World Championship, subplots involving defection, blackmail and selling out, action set in Thailand (to fit the show's most famous single "One Night in Bangkok"), and the inclusion of music written by the male half of ABBA, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, with lyrics by frequent Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator Tim Rice. Singing chess playes is quite a departure from the real deal! And that means that Chess may have been inspired by Fischer and the infamous match in Reykjavik, but the musical is its own, distinctive creation on stage. In the end, it isn't so much about the game of chess as it is about loyalty, responsibility, family and honor. Note that there have been several different versions of Richard Nelson's book over the show's lifetime to reflect changes in the political landscape of Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union fell.

Chess opens tonight at 8 pm at the Station, directed by Mikel L. Matthews, Jr. This production features Warren Garver as American bad boy chess champ Freddie Trumper and David Barkley as Soviet challenger Anatoly Sergievsky. Malia Andrus plays Florence, caught between the two men professionally and personally, while Kevin Paul Wickart takes on Molokov, the Russian handler and manipulater behind Anatoly; Dawn McDaniel plays Svetlana, Anatoly's wife; Jessica Miller is the Arbiter, the president of the International Chess Federation overseeing the matches; and Wen Bu, Lola McQueen, Michael Murphy, Kenna Reiss, Craig Smith and Rachel Warren comprise the ensemble.

The Station's version of Chess continues in performance through December 21. All the details are here on the show's Facebook page. The Station Theatre is located at 223 North Broadway in Urbana, and you may call 217-384-4000 for reservations.

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON Opens Tomorrow at the Station Theatre

Urbana's Station Theatre is known for doing provocative theater, throwing caution to the four winds, and finding a way to put even big musicals inside their tiny space. Angels in America? They've done it. Assassins? Done it. West Side Story, complete with full choreography and all the requisite Jets and Sharks? Done it. Long Day's Journey Into Night? Done it twice, 25 years apart, with the same actors playing James and Mary Tyrone.

The member of the Celebration Company are at it again this week, with Michael Friedman's and Alex Timbers' Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a controversial rock musical about... President Andrew Jackson! Not Andrew Johnson, the impeached one who followed Lincoln. We're talking Andrew Jackson, the possibly illiterate, hot-headed, duel-happy "man of the people" who came from the Tennessee frontier, became a war hero during the war of 1812, picked up the nickname "Old Hickory" because he looked like a tree (no, really, it was because he was such a hard guy, or "tough as hickory"), built a new political party and machine, and managed to tick off a whole lot of people left wounded and bleeding along his political path to the presidency. And that's how he got to be the 7th president of the United States.

Aside from all the controversy and destruction, he was involved in two Big Things during his presidency. He got rid of the monopolistic Second Bank of the United States and he came up with the idea to get rid of all the Native Americans, something called "Indian removal," which meant the U.S. government "bought" their tribal lands and forced them to move west, basically off the map. You can call it "ethnic cleansing," "genocide," or "Indian removal," but it resulted in death, disappearance, violence and 45,000 Native Americans pushed off their lands.

The musical, with music and lyrics by Friedman and the book by Timbers, who also directed the initial production, creates a raucous, outrageous Wild West Show with cowboys and hookers rallying around a rock star version of Andrew Jackson. Jackson has songs like "I'm So That Guy" when he decides to step up and push back Spanish, British and Native American incursions into what the U.S. considered its turf, and "Ten Little Indians" to talk about his plans to eradicate Native peoples. Like Jackson himself, the musical has spurred controversy over its treatment of Native issues.

For the Station, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is directed by Mikel L. Matthews, Jr., and David Barkley provides musical direction. Barkley has a beautiful voice himself, as well as experience with presidential musicals. I still remember his stunning version of "Molasses to Rum" in a production of 1776 from the 90s.

The cast includes Corbin Dixon as Andrew Jackson, the Mick Jagger of presidents, and Ninos Baba, David Butler, Amanda Clement, Mark E. Fox, Sidney Germaine, James Haas, Sally Hamer, Brittany Helfrich, Chris Johnson, Jay Kim, Zach Moyer, Katarina Spungen, Stefanie Senior, Kara Sotakoun, Marah Sotelo, and Laura Anne Welle in the ensemble.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson opens with an 8 pm performance on January 17 and runs through February 2.  The Station also has an online reservation request form, which you can access here.