NICHOLAS NICKLEBY on BroadwayHD

I think my first trip to New York City happened in the summer of 1983. That means I wasn't there in time to see the vividly theatrical, eight-and-a-half-hour, two-night adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby that playwright David Edgar, directors Trevor Nunn and John Caird and a cast of 42 actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company had created together, first for performance at the Aldwych Theater in London and then at the Plymouth on Broadway.

There was a long period during my formative years when Nicholas Nickleby was my favorite book. Of all books. I have no idea why it caught my imagination at a time when my peers were clinging to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye, but there you are. My fondness for Nicholas Nickleby in book form meant that I was well aware of the RSC project, even as it never occurred to me that I could actually see it on stage.

I might've wished there was a way to get to London in 1980 or New York in 1981, but I was in law school, I'd never been to either place, I'd never seen a Broadway show, and that kind of jaunt was simply out of my realm of possibility. But then something called the Mobile Showcase Theatre came to my rescue, showing a filmed performance of the RSC's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby as a four-night event on my local PBS station. 

That filmed Nicholas Nickleby starred Roger Rees as Nicholas, offering energy, integrity and depth as the young man trying to keep his own sense of goodness and kindness together even as he faces cruelty and meanness in the world. David Threlfall, Emily Richard, Edward Petherbridge, Alun Armstrong, Suzanne Bertish, Lila Kaye, Lucy Gutteridge, Bob Peck, Christopher Ravenscroft, John McEnery and John Woodvine are just some of the actors surrounding Rees in this amazing company. As an ensemble, they create an array of sharply realized characters and dramatic pieces that fit together beautifully. I will never forget characters like Newman Noggs and Peg Sliderskew or the way the company slams doors in Ralph Nickleby's face. Rees may have provided the emotional center and the overall arc, but it's the company together that turns Nicholas Nickleby into something special.

I had a VCR by 1982 but I screwed up when I tried to tape all of this Nicholas Nickleby, which was originally shown in four parts over four nights. When PBS began selling a set of nine one-hour VHS tapes of the whole thing, I snapped them up, even though they are not what I really wanted, which was the four-night Mobile Showcase I remember. But the subsequent four-DVD set for Nicholas Nickleby is notorious for being shoddily put together, with such poor decision-making that they split one scene over separate discs.

BroadwayHD has now announced that the full Nicholas Nickleby, split into nine parts like the A&E VHS set, is streaming on its site. Click here for information on signing up for an account so you can sit back and watch it.

Catching Up with the Merry, Murderous Month of May

It's May, which can only mean one thing. Tony Awards! Or at least the Tony nominations and a whole lot of discussion about who will win. If you haven't seen the nominations list yet, go take a look now. As expected, Hamilton cleaned up in the musical categories, picking up a historical number of nominations with 16. Yes, that's more than The Producers got back in 2001 (15), as well as more than the number of colonies (13) when Hamilton was helping to nation-build and more than the number of dollars (10) a Hamilton is worth and will continue to be worth after dodging a bullet from the Treasury and their money redesign people. History! It's fun! The awards will be presented June 12 on CBS with James Corden hosting.

If you're looking for a major piece of film history, you need to see Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, which will be on screen tonight at 7 pm at the Normal Theater as part of their Tuesday Night Classics series. Renoir's film was made in 1939, when France was on the brink of World War II, but it was not well received at that time, and with no love from audiences, Nazis invading and Americans bombing, this masterpiece about different classes of French men and women playing at games of sex and romance in a country house was almost lost completely. But a restored print resurfaced twenty years later, putting The Rules of the Game at the top of "best of" lists ever since. Roger Ebert called it "magical and elusive" as he concluded it was "so simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous, that you can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it."

Life looked very different 45 years later in the movie that has the late-night slot at the Art Theater and Co-op in Champaign Wednesday and Thursday. In memory of Prince, they'll be playing Purple Rain May 4 at 10 pm and May 5 at 11 pm. I lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul when Purple Rain was released in 1984, and let's just say people in those Twin Cities embraced their native son and then some. Purple Rain's picture of a talented musician with a fantastic sense of fashion, a beautiful love interest and a very messy home life defined the 80s for a lot of people. The Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III played the abusive father in the mix, with Apollonia as the stunning woman Prince's character, called "The Kid" was interested in. Prince's soundtrack for Purple Rain includes songs like "I Would Die 4 U," "When Doves Cry," "Darling Nikki" and "Let's Go Crazy" along with the title tune.

Marriage and betrayal are at the heart of Frederick Knott's thriller Dial M for Murder, on stage at Community Players from May 5 to 15. It's not so much a whodunit, since we know from the get-go that Tony Wendice, a man with murder on his mind, is the bad guy. Tony, played by Maurice Evans in the 1952 Broadway production of the play and by Ray Milland in the 1954 Hitchcock movie, has decided to do away with his wealthy wife, both because she's been having an affair and because he wants her money. But he doesn't want to get caught, so he blackmails a ne'er-do-well acquaintance into doing it for him at a time when he has a perfect alibi. And that's when things fall apart. Grace Kelly famously played the wife for Hitchcock, with Robert Cummings as her lover and Anthony Dawson and John Williams reprising their roles from the Broadway production as the criminal colleague forced into murder and the police inspector trying to make sense of it all. For Community Players, Andrew German is Tony, with Hannah Artman as his wife, Branden Smith as her boyfriend, Brian Artman as the would-be murderer, John D. Poling as Inspector Hubbard, and Jason Maloy as Thompson, another policeman.

Back at the Normal Theater, Ingrid Bergman fans have reasons to celebrate. The Normal Theater will show three of her movies -- Gaslight, Murder on the Orient Express and Notorious -- between May 17 and 28, with a documentary called Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words shown on other evenings as counterpoint to Bergman's films. Gaslight will be on screen on May 17 as a Tuesday Night Classic, with Murder on the Orient Express on May 20 and 22 and Notorious on May 26 and 28. The documentary plays on May 18, 21, 27 and 29.

Released in 1944, Gaslight stars Bergman as the victim of a scheme -- flickering lights, mysterious noises -- to convince her that she is mad. This is the movie that coined the verb "gaslight" to mean exactly that sort of scheme. Bergman plays opposite Charles Boyer, as her husband, and a very young Angela Lansbury as their maid. Bergman won her first Oscar for Gaslight and then earned her third 30 years later in Murder on the Orient Express. In this all-star adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery novel, Bergman was cast against type as a frumpy, devout Swedish missionary who happens to be a passenger on the train where a horrible man was murdered in the middle of the night. Albert Finney plays detective Hercule Poirot, with a supporting cast that includes Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York. Out of all of those actors, Bergman was the only one to walk away with the Academy Award.

And then there's Notorious, a sexy, suspenseful Hitchcock piece from 1946, with Bergman caught up in spy games with Cary Grant. Her father was a bad, bad man, a German who lived in the United States but was caught and tried for treason after World War II. Now Bergman's character, Alicia, has a bad reputation of her own, but Cary convinces her to team up with him to try to take down a creepy band of Nazis in Brazil. Her job entails romancing -- and even marrying -- Claude Rains, leader of the band, and trying not to get on the bad side of his evil mother. It's all very tricky, Cary plays down and dirty, and you'll need to keep an eye on the beverages in the plot, since both tea and champagne turn out to be important. I love this movie. I have its poster on my wall. Go see it on the big screen when you have a chance!

The last theater piece I have for May is Annie Baker's Body Awareness, scheduled for Illinois Wesleyan University's E. Melba Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre for three 8 pm performances between May 22 and 24. Baker's play is set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont, also the setting for her Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. This time, Baker looks at a college professor who has set up campus seminars on the topic of Body Awareness, her partner, her son, and the photographer who specializes in female nudes who comes to stay in their house. The play involves gender, art and what happens to when people are not only aware of bodies, but what's inside. Click here for what information is currently available on the IWU SOTA production.

If you are willing to drive to Springfield or perhaps Joliet, you can catch the Royal Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare Live! in a movie theater on May 23. The RSC celebrated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death with Shakespeare Live!, which included "performances of some of the greatest dramatic scenes ever written, played by some of our greatest actors, as well as songs, comedy, dances and music celebrating Shakespeare's legacy. The show was conceived and directed by Gregory Doran and hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate." Other actors who appeared included Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joseph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear and Sir Ian McKellen. It was broadcast in Britain on BBC Two on April 23, but May 23 will be our first chance to see it in the states, now under the title The Shakespeare Show. If you're in England, you can watch the show on the RSC site, and the RSC Shop is also promising a DVD at some point. Let's hope they make a  DVD we can see watch here, too!

England for Spring Break? Tomorrow's the Deadline to Go with Eureka College Theatre

There's still time to sign up for Eureka College's spring break theatre trip to England, but you'd better act quickly! You'll need to reserve a spot by tomorrow, October 31, and make a $250 deposit to take advantage of this travel opportunity. And if three more people get in before the deadline, the price for everybody drops significantly!

Yep -- they only need THREE more people to get a really nice group price.

Eureka students will visit London and Stratford-upon-Avon from March 8 to 14, 2014, and they're including lots of goodies in the tour package, including tickets to four shows, including London’s West End, Stratford, and fringe theatres; private workshops at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Globe Theatre; behind-the-scenes tours at the National Theatre, Globe, Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford and the Victoria and Albert Museum; private tours of London’s historical theaters and sights in Stratford; roundtrip airfare from Peoria, six nights of hotel (including six mornings of breakfast), two group dinners, hop on/off tour tickets and London tube and bus passes.

You can find all the details here, including the price with and without the extra three people. You need a passport, a check for $250 to the Eureka College business office sometime tomorrow, and a desire to see some really wonderful sights. You can reach the business office by phone at 309-467-6305 if you want to talk about how to get that deposit in on time. And check out the Eureka College Theatre page on Facebook to see if they get to the magic number!