MR. BURNS Electrifies at ISU

Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play has been around since 2012, but it seems even more timely now than it did then. Are we edging closer to the kind of apocalypse Washburn envisioned? Probably. As other playwrights and authors continue to grapple with the end of the world, Washburn is the only one that uses The Simpsons, blending pop culture, humor and wit into her dystopic nightmare.

Washburn opens with a small group of survivors after some kind of nuclear meltdown. They are sitting around a fire, trying to occupy themselves by retelling a classic Simpsons episode, the one where Sideshow Bob plots to kill Bart by trapping the whole family on a houseboat. That's the "Cape Feare" episode, riffing on Cape Fear, the 1991 movie remake of the previous Cape Fear from 1962. As the survivors in Mr. Burns focus on the fragments of "Cape Feare" they can remember, they also drop desperate pieces of information about their current reality, the one where whole cities lie empty, supplies are limited, almost everyone is dead or missing, and the few who are left are wary of everyone else, guns at the ready.

From this minimalist beginning, we move seven years into the future for Act II, where the campfire group from Act I plus a few new friends are part of a traveling troupe of players whose stock in trade is now performing "Cape Feare," complete with commercials for things like chablis and Diet Coke, goodies they remember from their pre-meltdown life. We learn there are other rival companies trying to monopolize The Simpsons turf, lines from the show have become a sort of currency, and surviving is still a cut-throat business.

And in Act III, 75 years farther along, we see just how far this storytelling odyssey has taken humanity, as they now use Simpsons characters like Homer and Bart in a grand mythic pageant. The Simpsons -- or at least a version transformed, overwritten and mixed up by 75 years of retelling -- has become the ritual and scripture of the new world, layered with new meaning to try to make sense of what happened way back when.

By the end, Illinois State University's production of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play plays like Greek tragedy, liturgy and Simpsons cosplay put in a blender, and that's exactly as it should be. Director Kristin L. Schoenback keeps the pace humming, with the necessary snap and crackle to hold an audience over three acts, and a strong overall vision of how and why we build stories.

The entire company is strong, doing equally well with the spontaneity of the early going and the stylization of the end. Thomas Russell and Johanna Kerber carry the narration nicely in Act I, while Megan Compton and Owen McGee step up as wannabe actors in Act II, and Sarah Ford and Everson Pierce face off sharply in Act III.

Scenic designers Allison McCarthy and John C. Stark, costume designer Amanda Bedker, lighting designer Laura Gisondi and properties manager Nick Chamernik make valuable contributions to the edgy and striking visual landscape that shifts from a dark campfire to a quick-and-dirty world of found objects and then a golden temple. I'm not sure who was responsible for the masks, but they're pretty nifty, too.

Choreographer Mattilyn Nation and fight choreographer Paul Dennhardt deserve credit for keeping things moving when they need to, and sound designer Morgan Hunter, music director Pete Guither and "chart hit" composer Jordan Coughtry up the ante on the aural side.

All in all, this Mr. Burns is provocative and snarky, with all the jagged pieces in place. It's also a helpful reminder to start memorizing Simpsons episodes now. You may need them in the coming nuclear apocalypse.

MR. BURNS: A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY
By Anne Washburn
Music by Michael Friedman. Lyrics by Anne Washburn

The School of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University
Westhoff Theatre
February 16 to 24, 2018

Director: Kristin L. Schoenback
Music Director: Pete Guither
Choreographer: Mattilyn Nation
Fight Choregrapher: Paul Dennhardt
Scenic Designers: Allison McCarthy and John C. Stark
Costume Designer: Amanda Bedker
Lighting Designer: Laura Gisondi
Sound Designer: Morgan Hunter
Dramaturg: Nicole R. Kippen
Properties Master: Nick Chamernik
Chart Hit Composer: Jordan Coughtry
Assistant Director: Asa Wallace
Stage Manager: Kiara Irizarry

Cast: Paige Brantley, Erika Clark, Megan Compton, Sarah Ford, Emily Franke, Josh Harris, Lauren Hickle, Johanna Kerber, Emma Lizzio, Owen McGee, Daija Nealy, Everson Pierce, Pat Regan, Cody Rogers, Thomas Russell, Deanna Stewart and Caitlin Wolfe.

Running time: 2:30, including two 10-minute intermissions.

Sliding Softly Into September ...

Yes, I know, it's already Labor Day Weekend and you're all headed outside for the last barbecue, the last camp-out, the last lounge by the pool during the Summer of 16. But September is officially the kick-off for a whole lot of theater seasons, which means there is a lot of good stuff starting right now. Good inside stuff. Without a need for bug spray. I'll try to hit all the TV premieres a little later, but for now... Cue intro music... It's theater time!

If you prefer to dip into Fall in a comedic frame of mind, you'll want to try Boeing Boeing, which opened last night at Community Players. It's a fast, fizzy farce about a womanizer in Paris in the 60s and the trouble he gets into when his three flight attendant fiancées all descend at once. This "non-stop comedy" is directed by G. William Zorn, with Dave Krostal as the free-wheeling bachelor whose love life includes hot-and-cold running stewardesses of different nationalities. Community Players' preview of their production is available here.

Heartland Theatre launches its fall season next week with Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words, about three women in a small town in Wales in 1980 who are left at home while their hometown hero, a bantamweight boxer, fights for a world championship in Los Angeles. Don Shandrow directs Jessie Swiech and Lizzy Selzer as sisters Peg and Nia, women with very different but equally powerful aspirations, and Nancy Nickerson as their landlady, a woman who thinks she has made her peace with her own life and limited choices. Fighting Words opens with a "Pay What You Can" preview on September 8, followed by regularly ticketed performances through the 24th. More info about the production is available here, with show dates and times here.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts fuses music and the movies on September 15 and 16 in what they're calling "A Cine-Concert with Live Music" around The Triplets of Belleville, the Academy Award-nominated film from director/writer Sylvain Chomet. Composer Benoît Charest, who was nominated along with Chomet* in the Best Song category for "Belleville Rendez-Vous," will be on hand to conduct Le Terrible Orchestra de Belleville in a live performance of the film's score as the film is screened. For all the details, including un petit aperçu of the film itself, visit this page at the Krannert Center site.

There aren't a whole lot of details yet about who is included in the group of "the area's finest actors, dancers and musicians" who'll be helping the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts celebrate its 10th anniversary on September 16 at 7:30 pm. Whoever is included, A Toast to 10 promises "a glass of bubbly and a heartfelt look at a decade of performing arts." Click here for more information.

The singular theatrical experience known as Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play opens September 22 in the Meyer Jacobs Theatre at Bradley University in Peoria. In her play, Washburn fashions a dystopic future world where the people who've survived have no electricity, but they do have memories of a classic episode of The Simpsons to keep them warm, with echoes of pop culture taking on mythic and even religious significance over time. If you're interested in where theater is going in the new millennium or keeping track of rising playwrights, Mr. Burns should be a destination play. Washburn definitely made a splash with this strange, smart play. (Note that the image that accompanies this listing is from the ACT production in San Francisco in their 2014-15 season.)

The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's 1971 Obie Award-winning play, takes the stage at Illinois Central College from September 23 to October 2. Guare's script is an absurd, crazy and off-kilter visit to Sunnyside, Queens, where a man named Artie has been trying to write a hit song forever. He has a wife named Bananas, a girlfriend named Bunny, and a whole lot of mishegas, as the Pope visits New York, nuns mistakenly visit Artie's apartment, and a bomb goes off in the midst of the mess. Yes, it's funny, but there's pain underneath all the weirdness.

Illinois State University's first play of the new season will be Waiora, by New Zealand playwright Hone Kouka, about a Māori family that moves from their small village to a larger city, upending their sense of family and home. Kim Pereira directs a cast that includes William Brown, Mac Byrd, Emilia Dvorak, Anastasia Ferguson, Anthony Harden, Emma Harmon, Brandi Jones, Alex Levy, Hannah Spohnholtz, Cayla Jones and Chloe Szot. Waiora opens in the ISU Center for the Performing Arts on September 30, with performances continuing October 1 to 9. For tickets, call the CPA Box Office at 309-438-2535 or visit them in person between 11 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday. (And the image accompanying this listing comes from a production of Waiora running right now at the Court Theatre in New Zealand.)

* The Triplets of Belleville was nominated as Best Animated Feature at the 2004 Oscars, while Benoît Charest (music) and Sylvain Chomet (lyrics) were nominated for Best Song for "Belleville Rendez-Vous."

Bradley Announces Its 2016-17 Theatre Arts Season

Bradley University's Department of Theatre Arts has announced its 2016-17 season, with four shows that mix a surreal dystopic fantasy with comedy horror, heartbreaking history and a little Shakespeare just for fun.

On tap are Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, where future survivors of some sort of apocalypse comfort themselves with performances of an old episode of The Simpsons. That will be followed by Emergency Prom by Steve Moulds, with a high school dance thrown by the kids who didn't fit in at the regular old prom; Melanie Marnich's These Shining Lives, a look at the short, tragic lives of "Radium Girls," who endangered their lives while painting watches that glowed in the dark; and Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy with mismatched lovers, identical twins and the triumph of chaos over order.

This is how they're describing the upcoming 2016-17 season:
 
Mr. Burns:  A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn. Music by Michael Friedman and lyrics by Anne Washburn.
September 22 - October 2, 2016
Part thriller, part musical, Mr. Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are. In a near future where a cataclysmic series of nuclear disasters has left America without electricity, infrastructure, or mass communication, a small group of survivors huddles around a fire trying to remember the dialogue from a popular episode of The Simpsons. Seven years later they have become a theatre troupe, traveling the lawless, ravaged country to stage bits of The Simpsons in exchange for food and shelter. 75 years later still, the epic story of the nuclear disaster has become myth, enacting in musical theatre form the creation story of a new society and the dimly recalled saga of a revered hero named Bart.

Emergency Prom by Steve Moulds
November 10 - 13, 2016
A play featuring our fabulous freshman class It's 1996, a time before texting, Tinder, and Snapchat, and the misfits of Glen Burnie High hated last weekend's prom. What's an unlikely band of outsiders to do? Throw the prom they should have had, a do-over prom, an emergency prom, where Gus and Corey won't break up, where Stephanie and Billy will finally get together, where Patrick might get lucky, Manuel will have the "high school moment" he dreams of, and Melissa will get to dance with the secret love whose silence is breaking her heart. A hilarious, heartfelt look at a group of friends taking destiny into their own hands.

These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich
February 16 – 26, 2017
In the 1920s and 30s, hundreds of Depression-era women in Central Illinois enjoyed well-paying jobs for the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, about 70 miles from Peoria. There they painted faces onto watches and clocks with luminescent paint made from radium—an element whose toxicity was never explained to them—until their hands began to glow in the dark and their health problems grew too serious to ignore. Based on the historical record this haunting, inspirational play celebrates the bonds of friendship and solidarity that unite four young working women; the conflicts they share; and the vindication they seek that may or may not come in time. "Perfect, touching, and wistful..." —Talkin' Broadway

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
April 20 – 30, 2017
"If music be the food of love, play on..." The perennial favorite and arguably Shakespeare's most transcendent comedy. A tale of young love in all its excess diverse, abetted by mistaken identity, gender confusion, unforgettable songs and exquisite poetry—not to mention some of Shakespeare's most vivid clowns and one of the greatest practical jokes in theatrical history. Originally written to celebrate the end of the Christmas season in the court of Queen Elizabeth, our production will herald the end of the school year and the beginning of summer.