Upcoming in August

August is a bit calmer month for local entertainment, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty to keep you busy.

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival continues through August 9, with their all-male Much Ado About Nothing at 7:30 pm in the theater on the grounds of the Ewing Cultural Center on Tuesday the 5th and Thursday the 7th and in the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts at 1:30 pm on Saturday the 9th; Antony and Cleopatra at Ewing at 7:30 pm on Wednesday the 6th and 8 pm on Saturday the 9th and inside the CPA at 1:30 pm on the 8th; and the not-written-by-Shakespeare-but-featuring-him-as-a-character play Elizabeth Rex, written by Canadian playwright Timothy Findley, at Ewing at 8 pm on the 8th and in the CPA at 1:30 pm on the 6th. If that sounds like a lot of performances, remember that this is the last week. And check here on the calendar if you want to keep it all straight or see ticket information.

Also continuing through the 9th is the Station Theatre production of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, a much-acclaimed new play about a grandmother and grandson trying to find common ground after he bikes across America and lands in her West Village apartment. Sara Boland-Taylor directs Janice Rothbaum and Casey Thiel as grandma Ida and grandson Leo in performances at 8 pm Wednesday through Saturday at the Station Theatre on Broadway in Urbana.

Terry Gilliam's weirdly wonderful Brazil comes to Champaign's Art Theater Co-op on August 6 and 7 in the 10 pm slot. Gilliam, the only American member of the Monty Python troupe, paints a picture of a sort of anarchic alt-world, not exactly the future or the past or the now, just a world that ours might have been or might become, where paranoia, an all-powerful bureaucracy and eccentric technology, as well as a lot of duct work, tubes and pipes, rule the day. That world is crushing the spirit of an everyman named Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce. It's funny, strange and sad, but never depressing. And visually, it is indeed a "nonstop dazzler," as the Art's website calls it.

If you were a fan of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of time travel romance novels, you'll either be thrilled or horrified to find out there's finally a screen adaptation of her work. It's on Starz and it starts August 9 at 8 pm Central. And if you just can't wait, Starz is making the first episode available online now. Irish actress Catriona Balfe plays English nurse Claire Randall, the one who tumbles backwards in time, away from war-torn Britain, landing in Scotland in 1743. Her Scottish love interest, rough and tumble Jamie Fraser, is played by Scotsman Sam Heughan.

New Route Theatre is officially moved in to its new space at 814 Jersey Avenue in Normal now, and they have been celebrating that fact with a summer schedule of workshops and staged readings. The next one up is set for August 15th. It's called Flashbacks, and it is written by Gregory Hicks and Erica Thurman, based on Thurman's prior writings.  Hicks also directs. New Route describes Flashbacks as "a multi-media work that examines the intersection of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, poverty, sexism and racism through poetry, rap and dialogue." The performance will begin at 7:30 pm on August 15, with a talkback afterwards. Tickets are available at the door for a donation. If you'd like more information, you can visit New Route's Facebook page or email new.route.theatre@gmail.com

The University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts recently sent out its big annual packet on the 2014-15 season, featuring "Renée Fleming, Ragamala Dance, KODO, Cassandra Wilson, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Rosanne Cash, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Circus Oz, and dozens of other artists and intriguing events," as they put it. Tickets go on sale August 16 at 10 am for everything from the season's opening night festivities September 12 with Tiempo Libre, Mariachi Sol de México de José Hernández and Samba Soul to the Mark Morris Dance Group's Acis and Galatea in May, 2015. All the details are available here.

Doctor Who with new doctor Peter Capaldi comes to BBC America on August 23 with the "takeover" episode at 7 pm Central that night. But there's a slew of Doctor Who programming before and after the premiere, including a live pre-show and after-show, a marathon of episodes voted through by fans, and movie theater screenings. To see the trailer for Who with Capaldi, click here. For the complicated list of what exactly is happening to usher in Doctor No. 12, thumb through BBC America's roundup.

Ready or Not, Here Comes August

Back to school, the last of the summer blockbuster movies, sneak previews of the fall TV season, theatres going strong and gearing up... That's August for you!

If you haven't already made the trip over to Champaign to see Joss Whedon's effervescent and charming Much Ado About Nothing at the Art Theater Co-op, tonight is your last chance. The Art is offering 5 pm and 7:30 pm screenings of Much Ado, followed by a 35mm print of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo at 10 pm. Vertigo was chosen as the No. 1 film of all time by movie scholars who responded to Sight & Sound's 2012 poll, eclipsing Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

Tonight Macbeth, tomorrow Failure: A Love Story, and then another Macbeth and a Comedy of Errors as the weekend wends on. It's the end of the summer repertory season for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, but there are still nine mainstage performances, a little Billy Shakespeare, and a host of preshows and tours left on the schedule. Get out to Ewing Manor while there's still time!

Les Miserables is on stage beginning tonight at Parkland College Theatre under the auspices of the Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company. Stephen Fiol directs for the CUTC, with a very large cast that includes Kyle Pollio as Jean Valjean, Timothy Renner as Javert, the man on his trail, Bethany Stiles as poor Fantine, James C. Dobbs and LaDonna Wilson as Mr. and Mrs. Thenardier, Caitlin Caruso-Dobbs as Cosette, Marah Sotelo as Eponine, and Corbin Knight-Dixon as Marius. Look for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances through August 11.

Prairie Fire offers A Little Night Music, the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler swirl through Midsummer in the Land of the Midnight Sun, August 2 through 4 and 9 through 11 at the Illinois University Memorial Center. It's all about Desiree Armfeldt, a beautiful actress with a current lover who is decidedly inconvenient, an old lover who resurfaces at the wrong time, and various romantic complications that occur when the sun refuses to set and love makes fools of both young and old. A Little Night Music, which features the Song "Send in the Clowns," one of Sondheim's most ruefully romantic, is adapted from the 1955 Ingmar Bergman (non-musical) movie Smiles of a Summer Night, a delightful confection of its own. Prairie Fire's curtain is at 7:30 pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 3 pm on Sundays.

The Miller Park Summer Theatre production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs also begins tomorrow, August 2, with a second performance on the 3rd. Admission is free.

Gary Ambler (L) and Jesse Angelo in Freud's Last Session
Photo credit: Jesse Folks

Urbana's Station Theatre finishes up its run of the play Freud's Last Session by Mark St. Germain on August 3rd. University of Illinois theatre professor Tom Mitchell directs Gary Ambler and Jesse Angelo in this two-hander  that sets Freud against a young C.S. Lewis, author of "The Narnia Chronicles." As the Station website describes the play, "On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex and the meaning of life -- only two weeks before Freud chooses to take his own."

The Improvised Shakespeare Company brings its spur-of-the-moment Shakespearean antics to the Theatre at Ewing one last time on August 5. Tickets are $16 and available through the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and the ISU Center for the Performing Arts box office. You may also call 866-IL-SHAKE for tickets.

Tickets go on sale August 10 for the entire 2013-14 season line-up set for Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana. University of Illinois's Department of Theatre, opera, dance, symphonies, musicians and lots more will fill the different performance spaces inside the Krannert Center as 2013 turns into 2014, with options for just about every taste.

And the Normal Theater offers something out of the ordinary in time for Labor Day weekend -- a Jerry Lewis film fest. It will take you safely from August into September with The Bellboy at 7 pm on August 29 and 30, and The Nutty Professor on August 31 and September 1. If you, like the folks at the Normal Theater, are in need of a Jerry Lewis fix, this is your ticket.