Joyeux anniversaire, Georges Feydeau!

Not only did Georges Feydeau (born December 8, 1862) turn the boulevard farce into an art form, he was a historical hottie. See photo at left. (Although his wild ways mean you should probably not sleep with him if you should find yourself traveling to Belle Epoque France in a time machine or through a Woody Allen movie.)

You may know M. Feydeau from Hotel Paradiso, AKA A Little Hotel on the Side (L'Hôtel du libre échange) or A Flea in Her Ear (La Puce à l'oreille), both often produced at colleges and universities, or one of the other sixty some plays he wrote between 1882 and 1916. His plays have been translated into countless languages and made into more movies than you can throw a Coq at.

A portrait of Feydeau painted by his father-in-law.

On the books, Feydeau was the son of Ernest Feydeau, a Parisian writer and scholar, but rumor had it he was the love child of Napoleon III or some other aristocrat. Royal or not, he had money problems and romantic complications most of his adult life. He married Marianne Carolus-Duran, the daughter of a famous painter, when he was 27, which kept him afloat financially for awhile, but certainly didn't make him happy on the home front.

They separated and eventually divorced, but that didn't stop him from writing some very unpleasant female characters late in his career that some feel were patterned after his wife. His plays were hugely successful, quickly garnering him a reputation outside France as well as in, but his gambling habits and predilection for wiling away his time at Maxim's, the seductive and beyond fashionable late-night Paris restaurant, kept him continually on the brink of financial disaster.

And if farce has never been considered as important as other, weightier forms of drama, Feydeau's farces rose above. Given the way his middle-class characters are tossed around by the whims of fate, battered by a crazy world they can't control, Feydeau is considered a forerunner of Theatre of the Absurd and surrealism.

Georges Feydeau died at the age of 58, probably from complications from syphilis.

Audition Reminder: LEND ME A TENOR and TIME STANDS STILL

Almost time for auditions for two popular shows. If you;re looking for a winter acting gig, if your audition monologue is up to date or you do a heck of a cold reading from a script, and you are somewhere between 20 and 80, there may just be a role for you.

First up, Community Players and director Cris Embree will hold auditions on December 10 and 11 for their January production of Ken Ludwig's opera-inspired farce Lend Me a Tenor.

Embree will be looking for four men and four women to play the following roles:

MAX, 25-35. Assistant to Saunders who fancies himself a tenor.
MAGGIE, 25-30. Max's girlfriend and Saunders' daughter. She has a major thing for Merelli.
SAUNDERS, 50s-60s. Maggie's father, General Manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera     Company. 
TITO MERELLI, 40s-50s. A world-famous Italian tenor, known as Il Stupendo to his fans. 
MARIA, 40s-50s. Tito's wife. She's fiery and passionate, and none too pleased with her husband's womanizing ways. 
DIANA, 35-45. A sexy soprano who will do what it takes to get ahead. 
JULIA, 55-65. Chairman of the Opera Guild. A grande dame. 
BELLHOP, 20-35. He, too, is obsessed with Merelli, opera and getting into that hotel room.

Lend Me a Tenor is scheduled for performances from January 25 to February 3 at Community Players Theatre at 201 Robinhood Lane in Bloomington. For more about Community Players' production, you can visit the CP website here or for more about Lend Me a Tenor, check out my longer piece about the play here.

Time Stands Still, from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, is a very different kind of play, delving deep into issues of personal responsibility and happiness, what it means to be a journalist, and what it means to grow up. Veteran director Sandra Zielinski, who was at the helm of Mauritius and Three Sisters last winter, will be holding auditions December 16, 17 and 18 at Heartland Theatre for a February production of Time Stands Still.

Roles to be cast include:

SARAH, late 30s to early 40s. An international photojournalist. She thinks of herself as fierce and fiercely independent. She is home recuperating after a serious injury from a roadside bomb.
JAMES, late 30s to early 40s. A freelance journalist and Sarah's significant other. He, too, came home after an injury. Unlike Sarah, he would like to stay.
RICHARD, 55. Sarah's editor.
MANDY, 25. An event planner and Richard's much younger girlfriend.

The play is provocative and thought-provoking about the world of onlookers who see and record big events, but don't actually participate. And what about the people who stay at home, build relationships, have families and lead more peaceful lives? Whose work is important?

For more information about Time Stands Still, click here. For audition info, click here.

Hooked on SCANDAL and Its Juicy Political Intrigue

OMG! Scandal shot President Grant!

Okay, that was last week. And if you watch Scandal, you know that I'm not talking about Ulysses S. here. This is President Fitzgerald Grant, played by Tony Goldwyn, someone I've always thought was handsome, but... Kind of opaque. If you're just catching up with Tony Goldwyn, I will tell you that my view of him was formed by his performances as Neil Armstrong in From the Earth to the Moon, the bad guy in Ghost and Goren's brother in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a lot of episodic TV (Without a Trace, The L Word, Frasier, L.A. Law, Murphy Brown, etc.), and most recently, playing slimy boss Sheldrake in the Broadway company of Promises, Promises. My feeling? Always hot, but kind of cold.

In Scandal, Tony Goldwyn is not cold. Not. Not. Not. Let's just get that out of the way. Goldwyn has been steaming up the small screen with Kerry Washington, who plays Olivia Pope, his former press secretary and a professional "fixer" who makes problems go away. The two fell in love and major lust when she was part of the crew running his presidential campaign, and they've had a really hard time keeping their hands off each other, in some very sexy scenes played out over the fifteen episodes of Scandal aired so far. The temperature rose even higher in last night's "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" episode that flashed back to some pivotal events in the Fitz-Liv relationship. Let's just say their method of writing a State of the Union speech is a little unorthodox.

Olivia may be a fixer, but for President Grant, she causes a whole lot of problems. He's already a mess, since, you know, he's President, he's married, his wife, the manipulative Mellie (Bellamy Young) is pregnant with "America's child," he has a scheming, ambitious, double-dealing VP (Kate Burton), and he only got elected because of a voting fraud conspiracy involving his chief of staff, Cyrus (Chicago's Jeff Perry, doing a terrific number as a Machiavellian politico), along with Olivia, Mellie, a Supreme Court Justice and a powerful business tycoon not above taking out whole office buildings to cover up his evil deeds.

As nosy folks get closer to uncovering the voting fraud, more people get mowed down. The stakes got even higher last week when shots rang out outside a presidential birthday bash, felling Fitz and his post-Olivia press secretary, played by Keiko Agena, AKA Gilmore Girls' Lane Kim. Fitz is clinging to life in the hospital, but Britta/Lane the press secretary didn't make it. Did Hollis, the billionaire pulling everybody's strings, call in a hit? Was it Mellie, tired of playing second fiddle to Olivia when it comes to Fitz's affections? Could the assassin really have been Huck, the scary, messed-up former spy on Olivia's payroll? What about the crazy Vice President, Bible-thumper Sally Langston, who pulled an Alexander Haig and told everybody she was in charge before the keys were out of the ambulance ignition? And what about poor Britta/Lane? Was she the real target in this assassination attempt because she knew something she shouldn't have about the rigged voting machines in Defiance, Ohio?

There's at least one more episode this year -- next week's "Blown Away" is billed in some places as the fall finale, but IMDB has another one, "One for the Dog," also listed for 2012 -- but you can pretty much bet we're not going to get answers to any of these questions anytime soon. Scandal creator/executive producer/writer Shonda Rhimes has shown with Grey's Anatomy that she knows her way around a cliffhanger, that she's not afraid to pile up a body count, and anybody and everybody is expendable. I'm figuring Olivia has to be around for there to be a show since she's at the center of it, but even President Grant could get taken out if Rhimes think there's more drama to be had with him out of the picture (or maybe with his brain preserved in a jar floating on a boat in the Potomac, like all the old conspiracy theories about Lincoln and Kennedy). That's part of what makes the show so addictive -- there's real suspense there as you wonder who might be in the next body bag.

I don't think I've ever been hugely interested in political thrillers, but the soapy aspects of Scandal make it very attractive to me. Well, that and Tony Goldwyn. It doesn't hurt that Olivia's other boyfriend is played by Norm Lewis, the Broadway star who lit up Sondheim on Sondheim with his amazing performance of "Being Alive."

You can catch full episodes at ABC if you want to catch up, plus there are some fun (free) podcasts available at iTunes for extra tidbits of info. After watching the episodes and listening to the podcasts, you'll definitely need to be there next week for "Blown Away," scheduled to air December 13, 2012, at 9 pm Central time. 

WGA Has Their Say with Noms for TV

The Writers Guilds (East and West) have announced their nominations for outstanding achievement in writing for television during the 2012 season. They also honor news, radio, promotional writing and graphic animation. Two simultaneous ceremonies (one in LA and one in New York) to honor winners will be held on Sunday, February 17, 2013.

So who are the big nominees in TV?

In the Drama Series category, the nominees are Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones on HBO, Breaking Bad and Mad Men on AMC, and Homeland on Showtime. The fact that Breaking Bad has four of the six total nominations for writing an episode of a TV drama says that they may split the vote in the episodic category, but they'll probably blow away the competition in Drama Series. Who knows, though? Homeland and Boardwalk Empire have mighty weapons of their own.

As I said, Breaking Bad dominates the episodic drama category, with episodes "Buyout," "Dead Weight," "Fifty-One" and "Say My Name" all nominated, along with the "New Car Smell" episode of Homeland and "The Other Woman" from Mad Men. "The Other Woman" was killer. Mad Men. S'all I'm gonna say.

Comedy Series with a Writers Guild nod include 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation on NBC, Modern Family on ABC, Girls on HBO, and Louie on FX. Modern Family will win, but Parks and Rec or Louie would be fine by me.

Modern Family almost corners the market in episodic comedy nominations, with Writers Guild love for "Little Bo Bleep," "Mistery Date" and "Virgin Territory," as well as "The Debate" episode of Parks and Recreation, "Leap Day" from 30 Rock, and "Episode 9" of Episodes. I like Modern Family as much as the next person, but I'm a little tired of automatically sending all the awards their way. "The Debate" was funny and smart and featured Paul Rudd as a sweet but stupid candidate for office in Pawnee. Ya gotta vote Paul Rudd!

Joining Fox's The Mindy Project and ABC's Nashville as nominees for Best New Series were Girls, The Newsroom and Veep from HBO. I'd personally go for Nashville if I had a vote, but really, you can give it to anything but Girls. Or The Mindy Project. Not trying to rain on the Girl Power Parade -- I just don't like Girls or That Mindy Thing.

And even though the daytime soaps are a dying breed, the Guild is still recognizing them. Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless, which still exist, will compete against the late and very much lamented One Life to Live in that category.

For the complete list of nominees, including Hatfields and McCoys, Conan and Kimmel and Colbert, anthrax and the Amish and The Ghost of Joe McCarthy, click here.

Magical CHRISTMAS CAROL Takes on More Luster with Joe Foust

Given just how many regional theaters perform Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol each and every year, it's kind of odd that we don't have a local production. But never fear -- Chicago's Goodman Theatre continues their annual Christmas Carol tradition through December 29.

And this year, you can catch Joe Foust, a U of I and Station Theatre alum as well as one of the founders of Chicago's gone-but-not-forgotten Defiant Theatre, in the role of Marley, the ghostly one with the chains who starts mean ol' Scrooge on his journey. I wrote about Foust as part of a "Where are they now?" piece a while ago, and you can read all the details here.

Larry Yando (L, Scrooge) and Joe Foust (R, Marley) at the Goodman Theatre

At the Goodman, Steve Scott directs a script by Tom Creamer, with one of Chicago's finest actors, Larry Yando, playing Scrooge for the fifth time.

Kerry Reid reviewed this 35th anniversary edition of the Dickens' classic for the Chicago Tribune, calling the show "beautifully realized this year at the Goodman" and noting that "Yando's Scrooge plays all the emotional notes to perfection, with finely honed comic bits...spicing up the proceedings."

Cast Set for J.B. at ISU Next February

Auditions are done, and all the actors have been cast for Illinois State University's winter/spring season. If you're looking forward to the next batch of ISU shows and you're wondering who will be playing whom, you can start with the Oklahoma! cast here. That rip-roarin' musical begins February 22, 2013, at the Center for the Performing Arts. But the night before Oklahoma! takes its first bow, you can start the season with Archibald MacLeish's J.B. on February 21. Here's the low-down on the cast for that one.

J.B. is a verse play, written in 1958, taking up the Biblical story of Job set under the big top of a traveling circus, as a balloon vendor and a popcorn seller tell the tale of a wealthy banker who loses everything but his faith in God. The original Broadway production starred Raymond Massey and Christopher Plummer as Zuss and Nickles, the two vendors, and Pat Hingle as J.B. Basil Rathbone -- Sherlock Holmes himself -- came in as a Mr. Zuss replacement in that production. The show played for 364 performances and won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as Tony Awards for Best Play and for director Elia Kazan.

For Illinois State University, Matthew Scott Campbell will direct, with a cast that includes Andrew Rogalny, Jr., as Mr. Zuss and Matt Hallahan as Nickles. Rogalny recently appeared as the hypocrite of a Chaplain in Mother Courage and Her Children, while Hallahan was sweet, dopey Freddy the nose-bleeder in Noises Off. Tommy Malouf, who played Eilif, Mother Courage's bloodthirsty son, will play J.B., the banker whose faith is so severely tested by God. That is quite a departure!

Others in the cast include Audra Ferguson as Sarah, J.B.'s wife; Chris Bryant as the White Clown, a role created for this production; and Julia Besch, Colleen Besler, Hannah Brown, Eddie Curley, Martin Hannah, James Keating, Mary Leake, Joshua Pennington, Sara Shifflet, Chana Wilczynski, Taylor Wisham and David Zallis in the ensemble.

Performances of J.B. are scheduled for Westhoff Theatre from February 21 to March 2, 2013.

No Turning Back Now -- It's December!

So today is 12-02-12. I believe there is a theory of some sort that says the world will end this month. Mayan prediction, 12-21-12, etc... Never mind the fact that the Mayans are long gone and have no reason to have predicted the end of anything a thousand years after they were gone, and if they were going to predict, wouldn't they have chosen to predict (in order to guard against) the end of their own civilization? Okay, never mind. I don't know anything about any of this and I don't watch disaster movies, so I didn't see 2012, either. But in honor of this eschatological theory (gotta love the word eschatological), I am commemorating your What to Do in December post with the poster from the Roland "King of Crackpot Theories" Emmerich movie that pushed the End of Days '12 idea. As far as I know, no one is showing that movie on 12-21 or any other night, so you'll have to find it yourself for your 12-21-12 Eschatology viewing party.

No 2012 on the schedule, but Champaign's Art Theater is showing a 2011 version of  Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold and shot on location in Yorkshire, England. That's playing now through December 6, and will be followed by the new version of Anna Karenina with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Keira Knightley stars as Anna, with Jude Law as her stuffy husband and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as dashing Count Vronsky, the one she can't stay away from, even though it will ruin her life. Watch out for that train, Анна Каренина!

Also in Champaign-Urbana... The Station Theatre continues its production of Lee Blessing's Independence through December 9 -- you can read more about the play here -- while Parkland College welcomes a Bah Humbug production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever from December 14 to 23.

Community Players' White Christmas, the stage musical version of the classic Bing Crosby film, opened last week and continues through December 16th. Deb Smith directs for Community Players, with a cast that includes Ray Rybarczyk and Jason Strunk as the song-and-dance men who fall for a pair of pretty sisters, played here by Lindsey Kaupp and Larisa McCoy. Click here for ticket info for White Christmas and other upcoming Players shows.

The other White Christmas, the Bing and Danny Kaye film one, starts December 7 at the Normal Theater, with showings on the big screen till December 9. After that, the Normal Theater offers holiday favorites National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life to finish up 2012.

Illinois State University's Fall Dance Concert is scheduled for December 6 through 8, with three evening performances and one matinee.This concert promises to be a "celebration of movement, costumes, light, and music, featuring new choreographic works by faculty in the School of Theatre and Dance and invited guest artists." And don't forget to bring canned goods or other non-perishable food items to donate to the Redbird Giving Tree.

Ian Mairs' Our David, a play about sparring neighbors who find common ground over a tacky statue of Michelangelo's David, comes to New Route Theatre at the Bloomington YWCA beginning December 7. This David is directed by Bridgette Richards and stars Nathan Bothorff and Carol Scott as Clyde and Velma, who couldn't be more different and yet turn out to be strangely alike.

You also have a choice of the Holiday Spectacular at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts from December 7 to 9 or a variety of Nutcrackers in different cities at different times.

It's Barbara Stanwyck Month (on Wednesdays, anyway) over on Turner Classic Movies, with two of my favorites, The Lady Eve, from director/screenwriter Preston Sturges, and Ball of Fire, a Howard Hawks' gem, on December 12. Both movies came out in 1941, which may just be the best year ever for Hollywood movies. In The Lady Eve, Stanwyck is a con woman who woos a befuddled Henry Fonda, loses him, and then pretends to be another woman who looks just like the first one to pull the same scam on the same guy, while in Ball of Fire, she's a jazzy mob moll version of Snow White hiding out with seven pointy-headed encyclopedia writers (including Gary Cooper) who function as her Seven Dwarfs. It's adorable. It's screwball. It's fabulous.

Heartland Theatre is still accepting entries in its annual 10-minute play contest. This year's theme is The Parcel, the Package or the Present, and each play must include a package of some sort that fuels the play. All of which means that the holidays are a perfect time to come up with a play, what with all those parcels and packages arriving at your door. What's inside that box? Will it be a dream or will it be a dud? Will it go BOOM? You have a maximum of four characters and ten minutes to tell your Parcel/Package/Present tale.

Failure: A Love Story, a new play by Philip Dawkins, will be part of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival next summer. If you want a sneak peek or to set up a compare/contrast situation when it plays here next year, you can see the play now in its premiere production at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater. Failure finishes up at Victory Gardens on December 30.