What's Up at Peoria Players in 2013-14

Peoria Players, the venerable theatrical institution over on the other side of the Illinois River, continues its tradition of four musicals plus two plays -- one comedy and one drama -- for their 95th season, with old favorites at every turn. Season tickets are available at the Peoria Players box office at Lakeview Park or by calling 309-688-4473.

September will see Les Misérables, directed by Connie Sinn,with performances from the 6th to the 15th, including a Wednesday show on September 11. The cast includes Charlie Brown as Jean Valjean, John Huerta as Inspector Javert, Chloe Morton as Cosette, Lindsey Pugh as Eponine, Ashley Rufus as Fantine, and Brian Witkowski as Marius. Individual tickets for Les Mis will go on sale August 26.

Next up is Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, that classic comedy of mismatched newlyweds -- he's a straight-arrow lawyer and she's one of the original Manic Pixie Dreamgirls -- trying to make it work in a 6th-floor walkup in Greenwich Village. Director Liz Landes Reed held auditions last weekend, so cast details should be forthcoming. Performances of Barefoot in the Park are scheduled for October 4 to 13.

Meet Me in St. Louis will be Peoria Players' third show of the season and their last show in 2013. This musical, based on the film of the same name, takes place in and around the 1904 World's Fair, as various members of the Smith family deal with a possible move, love with the boy next door, and having themselves a Merry Little Christmas, if the fates allow. Look for Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Mary Ellen Ulrich, at Peoria Players from November 8 to 17.

Oliver! will open 2014, with Bryan Blanks directing performances scheduled for February 7 to 16. The musical, with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, is based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a novel about an orphan adrift in the underbelly of London in the 1830s. The musical take on young Oliver's tale, featuring songs like "Where is Love?" and "As Long as He Needs Me," opened in London's West End in 1960 before a successful Broadway run from January 1963 to November 1964 and then an Oscar-winning movie adaptation in 1968. Oliver! has never really fallen out of fashion, with an acclaimed London production in 2009 and rumors that Cameron Mackintosh will be reviving it on Broadway sometime soon.

William Gibson's The Miracle Worker, another winner of multiple Tony Awards, is the season's drama entry. For Peoria Players, director Charles Killen takes the reins of this gripping story about young Helen Keller and her relationship with her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Gibson first wrote a teleplay based on Keller's writings about her life, and then adapted that script into a full-length play for the 1959 Broadway production directed by Arthur Penn. That production earned Anne Bancroft a Best Actress Tony and young Patty Duke, who played Helen, a Theatre World Award, while the 1962 movie version scored Oscars for both actresses. Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan and The Miracle Worker will take the stage at Peoria Players from March 14 to 23, 2014.

The only new show in the bunch, Disney's Shrek the Musical, will finish up the season, with performances from May 2 to 11. The original Shrek movie was another Oscar winner (Best Animated Feature) and the subsequent Broadway musical was nominated for a pile of Tony Awards, although it won only one, for Tim Hatley's costume design. I'm betting everybody knows it's a fractured fairytale about a green ogre and his talking donkey pal, who venture away from their friendly neighborhood swamp, whereupon Shrek falls in love with a princess and complicates his life incredibly. Travis Olson and Mary Keltner will direct Shrek the Musical in Peoria.

So that's the tuneful, award-heavy line-up coming from Peoria Players. For season information, including how to order season tickets and when tickets to individual shows will be on sale, click here.

Community Players Out of the Gate Fast Announcing 2013-14 Season

Now that it's 2013, Community Players isn't wasting any time. Yesterday, they made their big 2013-14 announcement, cluing everyone in on what they'll be performing on Robinhood Lane through July 27, 2014.

What do they have planned? A challenging season, mixing stage classics with some spiffy new musicals.

When I saw the first two choices, I thought maybe they going to do a whole season of Plays Beginning with A. That might be fun, but for right now, they'll start with the musical Aida in July, 2013, and head on to Arsenic and Old Lace in September.

This Aida (as opposed to the Verdi opera) is a power ballad bonanza, with music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls, and David Henry Hwang. It's a love story about the transcendent connection between an Egyptian military man, one Radames, and a Nubian captive named Aida. On Broadway, Aida won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical Score and Best Performance by a Leading Actress for Heather Headley, who played Aida.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a totally different kettle of fish. This comedy classic, performed by countless theaters, schools and community organizations, has great roles -- Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha -- for ladies of a certain age. Mortimer Brewster's two aunts are lovely and sweet, providing both the lace and the arsenic, as it happens, knocking off old older gentlemen who stop by their parlor with poisoned elderberry wine. They're only doing it to be kind to these lonely souls, and also to provide "yellow fever" victims for their brother Teddy, who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt, to bury in the basement, where he thinks he is digging the Panama Canal. It's dark humor and decidedly funny, as poor Mortimer gets put through the wringer by all the nonsense going on in the Brewster household.

In November, Players will unveil Monty Python's Spamalot, the musical version of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail that won the Tony for Best Musical on Broadway in 2005. Monty Python member Eric Idle wrote the book and the lyrics and contributed to the score with John Du Prez and Neil Innes. Spamalot is a decidedly irreverent retelling of  Arthurian legends, with a little Fish Slapping, some Laker Girls and Las Vegas style entertainment, as well as jokes at the expense of Broadway itself.

That will be followed by a radio play version of It's a Wonderful Life, in December, of course, and the drama The Diary of Anne Frank to start 2014. The original stage version of Anne Frank, adapted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett from the diaries the young schoolgirl wrote while hiding out from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War II, played on Broadway in 1955. A new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman also came to Broadway, this time in 1997, with Natalie Portman in the title role. The newly adapted Diary of Anne Frank is scheduled for performances from January 17 to 26, 2014, at Community Players.

The March musical choice is Dolly Parton's 9 to 5: The Musical, the show IWU performed last semester. Dolly wrote the score, while Patricia Resnick contributed the book of this female empowerment musical that takes a leap back to the late 70s to show the comical side of revenge against a male chauvinist pig. Remember when we said "male chauvinist pig"? I do!

9 to 5 will be followed by Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, with performances from May 16 to 25. The Odd Couple is a perennial favorite, with the original stageplay, film and TV versions, scripts written for men and for women playing the mismatched roommates, and a 2002 updated Odd Couple (called Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple) that includes more current references. Which one is Community Players performing? We'll have to wait till we're a little closer to find out. (The image at right is from the film version, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. A little bit of trivia: Matthau was also in the Broadway original, where he played Oscar opposite Art Carney's Felix.)

The last show of this ambitious season will be Shrek the Musical, a Broadway show about a sweet green ogre and the enchanted princess he falls in love with. Lots of fairytale humor in this one, with a prince who is not at all charming, exiled fairies and elves and Pinocchio, and a talking donkey who becomes Shrek's best pal. Jeanine Tesori wrote the music for Shrek the Musical, while playwright David Lindsay-Abaire contributed both the lyrics and the book. The wonderful Brian d'Arcy James and Sutton Foster played Shrek and his beloved Princess Fiona on Broadway. And Christopher Sieber, one of the original cast members of Spamalot, took on the diminutive Prince Farquaard, the bad guy in the mix.

For schedule details and audition dates for all these shows, check out the Facebook announcement from Community Players here.