SPAMALOT Looks on the Bright Side at Community Players

When the Monty Python musical Spamalot began its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago back in late 2004, everyone was curious whether it would look more like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the irreverent movie it was "lovingly ripped off from," or whether it would be more like a Broadway musical. Would it have the surreal insouciance of the former or the mainstream appeal of the latter? Would it be geared to the absurdist, snarky, anti-establishment Monty Python fans or the more traditional Broadway musical types who would plunk down $100 for Phantom or Les Miz?

Eric Idle, the part of Monty Python who created Spamalot, went for both at the same time. Idle attempted to bridge the gap between the two groups, pulling out some of the best bits of Holy Grail, like substituting coconut shells for horses, the Black Knight who fights on as he loses limbs, Brave Sir Robin who isn't brave at all, the French Taunter whose insults include "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" and even Dennis, the anarcho-syndicalist ditch-digger, and setting them right next to pieces of Broadway parody that wouldn't have been out of place in The Producers. In fact, I think a similar Fiddler on the Roof send-up appears in The Producers. There's also a big inspirational number called "Find Your Grail" reminiscent of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," and a meta-piece in 'The Diva's Lament," wherein the leading lady wonders why she isn't getting more to do. Just for an added portion of Python, we get "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," a song from the Life of Brian movie.

For me, the Python material beats the Broadway parody with one giant foot tied behind its back. Still, it's nice for everybody to get something to laugh at, even if "nice" isn't something I generally associate with Monty Python.

For Community Players, Spamalot gets plenty of laughs. Director Marcia Weiss has a game cast, full of actors and singers who are clearly enjoying the heck out of themselves, with John Bowen (Sir Lancelot), Joe Culpepper (Not Dead Fred), Aimee Kerber (Patsy), Dave Krostal (The French Taunter and several other roles), Austin Travis (Sir Robin), Alan Wilson (Galahad's mother) and especially Sharon Russell, who sparkles all over the place as the Lady of the Lake, as standouts. Russell is sensational on "The Song That Goes Like This" and "The Diva's Lament," and she raises the level of every scene she's in. If you know any of those people, you are likely to be rolling in the aisles when you see what they're getting up to in Spamalot.

Costume designers Opal Virtue and Sherry Bradshaw make the various knights and nuts look nifty, while Carol Plotkin and Dorothy Gordish add a whole range of cool props. Whether they borrowed, bought or built the costumes, the killer rabbit and the Grail, it all looks great on stage.

Spamalot continues at Community Players through November 24. For ticket information, click here.

Look Out! November Crashes into Theaters with Every Possible Option

Time to binge on the last of the Halloween candy and toss the pumpkins away. November is here!

Although it's easy to get fussy about November as the days get shorter and the weather takes on a certain chill, there's also a lot to keep you occupied and away from sad songs like "November Rain," "November Blue," and the one where November has tied Tom Waits to an old dead tree. Take a deep breath, put away the November songs, and jump into...Thanksgiving! Pie! Lots and lots of pie!

As well as dancing Irish sisters, David Sedaris, a crazy acting class at Heartland, Monty Python at Community Players, Angels descending from on high, and Noel Coward at IWU...

And founding father Alexander Hamilton, he of the ten-dollar bill, on stage at Illinois Wesleyan's E. Melba Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre. In Tim Slover's Treasure, directed by Michael Cotey, Hamilton is caught in a web of ambition, greed, carelessness, righteousness, honor and betrayal. What happens when a brilliant man with the country's best interests at heart finds himself the victim of his own baser instincts? Politics as usual, that's what. You'll find Treasure's themes of individualism vs. federalism and entrenched wealth vs. opportunity very, very current. Treasure has only two more performances, tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm.

Meanwhile, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of yesteryear appear at the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign. What's not to love about turtles who act like human teenagers, trained by a sewer rat to fight crime? They were all the rage in comic books and cartoons of the 80s, and they got a bunch of different movies, including the one from 1990 being screened at the Art. Not only is the Art offering this mutant classic movie on November 1, 2, 3 and 7, but they're also selling pizza at the Friday and Saturday shows. Cowabunga!

Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel's evocative memory play about an Irish family in the 1930s, opens tonight at Illinois State University's Center for the Performing Arts. ISU professor Lori Adams directs this sweet, sad play about the Mundy sisters, played by and Natalie Blackman, Faith Servant, Fiona Stephens, Jaimie Taylor and Elsa Torner, with Arif Yampolsky as their brother Jack, and Robert Johnson as our narrator, who steps back into his childhood to tell this story.

University of Illinois professor Henson Keys appears the aging magician Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, which continues through November 3 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana. Robert G. Anderson directs this very different take on the The Tempest, which focuses on Prospero's exploitation of the island on which he has found himself marooned, bringing in "the ecological implications of theatre making while working to implement sustainable practices." This production has been presented in association with the Department of Landscape Architecture and the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois.

David Sedaris brings his brand of dry wit and wry humor to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on November 6, including readings from "Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls," his newest collection of essays, and a book signing. The next night, the BCPA hosts Dr. John, that master of voodoo-meets-R&B-meets-funktastic-piano who wrote "Right Place Wrong Time," won six Grammies, and made the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. That's a very interesting one-two punch for November 6 and 7.

Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, a luminous and lovely play about four very different people who take an Adult Drama class at a small community center in Vermont, opens with a special pay-what-you-can preview on Thursday, November 7. Illinois State University professor Cyndee Brown directs Circle Mirror for Heartland with a cast that includes Cathy Sutliff as Marty, the teacher of the class, and Julia Besch, Dean Brown, Cristen Monson and Aaron Thomas as her students. You will see hula hooping, counting, the personification of trees, confessions and, yes, transformation on stage before you, with performances November 7-9, 14-17 and 21-24. Check out showtimes here or reservation information here.

Community Players opens Monty Python's Spamalot, the stage musical lovingly ripped off from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, on their stage with a preview on November 7 and regular performances November 8-10, 14-17 and 21-24. Chris Terven leads the cast as King Arthur, with John Bowen as Sir Lancelot, Spencer Powell as Sir Galahad, Charles Boudreaux as Sir Bedevere and Sharon Russell as The Lady of the Lake. Marcia Weiss directs this epic farce, which manages to pack in all the familiar Python bits like the French taunter and the Knight of Ni (both played by Dave Krostal) as well as a lot of spoofing at the expense of the Great White Way. Click here for all the details about Community Players' production.

And the theatrical offerings on that very popular weekend are not over yet! MFA director David Ian Lee brings part II, the Perestroika half of Tony Kushner's masterpiece Angels in America, to Centennial West 207 that very same weekend. This "gay fantasia on national themes" looks at America in the 80s, when the AIDS crisis was just beginning, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, evil lawyer Roy Cohn was straddling the former and the latter, and a new century was about to crack wide open. Both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika were produced in ISU's Westhoff Theatre (the old Westhoff Theatre), with Patrick O'Gara directing the shows as part of the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 seasons. I have to think Lee will have a different take than O'Gara did, and it will be intriguing to see Perestroika by itself. I've seen Millennium as a stand-alone before (at the University of Illinois) and I had to wait a year between Millennium and Perestroika on Broadway, but otherwise... I've always seen them performed together. This will not be my first black box Angels, however. The Station Theater in Urbana did a bang-up job with both pieces, under the direction of Steven M. Keen, way back in 1996.

If you thought that was all the theater that could possibly open on November 7, you would be wrong. Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris's take on Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun, opens in the Studio Theatre at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois that very same weekend. Clybourne Park has emerged as one of the hottest plays of the past few years, earning Norris a Pulitzer and a Broadway run whose cast included U of I theatre alums Crystal Dickinson and Brandon Dirden. The U of I production is directed by Lisa Gaye Dixon and features Akua Sarhen in the role Dickinson played, and Preston “Wigasi” Brant in the role Dirden understudied.

Urbana's Station Theatre opens Come Back Little Sheba on November 7, as well, with performances until the 23rd, while across town Parkland College in Champaign goes with November 14 to start its production of Jon Jory's stage adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Phew! A show not starting on the 7th!

November is a little late for Hay Fever, but Noel Coward's droll comedy about a theatre family in the 1920s taking its act to the country is a welcome sight well past the allergy season. Illinois Wesleyan professor Nancy Loitz will direct Hay Fever for McPherson Theatre from the 19th through the 24th, with 8 pm performances on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and a Saturday matinee at 2 on November 24.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the Fred Astaire appearance at the Normal Theater, with Holiday Inn, a lesser effort that stars Bing Crosby as a man who opens a hotel/nightclub in Vermont that's only open on holidays. It's a precursor of sorts to White Christmas, what with the Irving Berlin score that includes the song "White Christmas," although this one is black and white and has some creepy blackface stuff for Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Fred plays Bing's ex-partner, a dancer named Ted Hanover who keeps getting into romantic triangles with singer Bing. Holiday Inn plays the big screen at the Normal Theater from November 21 to 24, followed by another holiday classic, Miracle on 34th Street, from November 28 to 30.

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.

Community Players Announces Its 90th Season!

Community Players is a Bloomington-Normal institution, founded in 1923 by a group of local theatrical enthusiasts that (as I've heard the story) included movers and shakers like playwright Rachel Crothers and Carl Vrooman, Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of Agriculture.

For their 90th season, CP will undertake a mix of musicals and straight plays, classics and newer works, comedies and dramas. Something for everyone!

First on the schedule is the musical "Legally Blonde," based on the movie of the same name. It's about a smart but kind of daffy blonde named Elle, who decides to try Harvard Law School after being dumped by a boyfriend who's on his way there. But once she hits Harvard, Elle's priorities change, even if her love of pink fashion does not. Bright and charming, "Legally Blonde" featured Christian Borle, now starring in NBC's "Smash," when it was on Broadway, with Laura Bell Bundy as Elle and former Miss America Kate Shindle as her rival. "Legally Blonde" will be presented from July 12 to 29. Note that it is considered a summer show rather than a regular season offering for CP.

Opening August 30 is the Kaufman and Hart classic "You Can't Take It With You," one of the most-performed comedies in the history of the American stage and winner of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The movie version, which starred Jean Arthur and James Stewart as the young lovers and Lionel Barrymore as happy-go-lucky Grandpa Vanderhof, who doesn't believe in paying taxes, won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (Frank Capra). "You Can't Take It With You" has a large cast of eccentrics, with two guys making fireworks in the basement, a would-be ballerina trying out her moves in the living room, a drunken actress who falls asleep on the sofa, and a former member of Russian royalty who is now a waitress.

"Leaving Iowa," a comedy that centers on family vacations, will be performed as a Lab Theatre presentation from October 4 to 7. "Leaving Iowa" comes from playwrights Tim Clue and Spike Manton. Clue says, "The real spark behind this work comes from being children of parents from the now dubbed 'greatest generation.' Leaving Iowa is a toast to their idealism and character, and perhaps a little roast of their undying dedication to the classic family road trip. Leaving Iowa is a postcard to anyone who has ever found themselves driving alone on a road, revisiting fond memories of their youth."

CP will finish up 2012 with "Irving Berlin's White Christmas," a stage version of the perennial fave Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye movie. The stage musical keeps the plot about a pair of musical comedy performers who are also WWII veterans who put on a show to honor their old commander. The book is by David Ives and Paul Blake, with a score that includes Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" as well as other Berlin hits like "Happy Holiday," "Blue Skies," "Let Yourself Go" and "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." Of that last bunch, only "Blue Skies" appeared in the movie. "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" opens November 29 and plays till December 16, 2012.

The first show of 2013, scheduled for January 24 to February 3, 2013, will be Ken Ludwig's door-slamming opera farce "Lend Me a Tenor," wherein a man who always wanted to sing Otello gets drafted to do just that after the famous Italian tenor who was supposed to sing the role with the Cleveland Opera takes too many sleeping pills and can't be roused. "Lend Me a Tenor" was revived on Broadway in 2010 with a cast that included Tony Shalhoub and Anthony LaPaglia, with "Hangover" star Justin Bartha as Max, the lowly assistant (and tenor) who finds himself in the middle of the mess.

The lone drama on the schedule is "To Kill a Mockingbird," a stage version of another much-loved book and movie. Harper Lee's original novel about a lawyer taking on a racially-charged case in Alabama during the 1930s and the effect on his family won a Pulitzer Prize, while "To Kill a Mockingbird" the film won Oscars for Gregory Peck for Best Actor, Horton Foote for Best Adapted Screenplay and a trio of designers for their Art Direction. From March 14 to 24, 2013, Community Players will be performing the stage adaptation by Christopher Sergel which was presented at Steppenwolf Theatre in 2010.

And they'll finish the season with "Monty Python's Spamalot," another Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical based on a film ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail"). Monty Python's Eric Idle put together a combination send-up of Broadway shows in general with a spoofy storyline about King Arthur and his knights wandering around having adventures, with favorite bits from the movie (the Black Knight who keeps losing appendages and insisting it's just a flesh wound, the Knights Who Say Ni, a psychotic rabbit, a snotty French guy who tells them "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries") as well as new characters and outrageous situations and songs. "Monty Python's Spamalot" will play at Community Players from May 9 to 26, 2013.

For subscription information as well as updates about auditions, casting and directors, visit the Community Players website.