SIX BY SONDHEIM: Tonight, Tonight Won't Be Just Any Night

The lyrics for "Tonight" from West Side Story -- all the lyrics from West Side Story, from "The Jet Song" to "Somewhere" and "Gee, Officer Krupke" -- are wonderful. And who wrote them? Stephen Sondheim. So when I put "Tonight, tonight won't be just any night" in the header, yes, I was quoting his lyrics. But mostly I was referring to the fact that there's a special documentary on HBO tonight. It won't be just any night. Tonight there will be Six by Sondheim!

If you've read Sondheim's first book about his lyrics, Finishing the Hat, you know that he wasn't completely in love with what he wrote for West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein, the composer, wanted "poetic" lyrics that Sondheim felt were at odds with Arthur Laurents' dialogue as well as how he felt a boy like Tony and a girl like Maria would really speak. I'm guessing that will be part of the discussion in Six by Sondheim, which is structured around six songs in the Sondheim ouevre.

The first song discussed is "Something's Coming" from West Side Story, a show early in Sondheim's career for which he did the lyrics but not the music. That came from Bernstein, as noted above. For that reason, it provides an entry point into Sondheim's work for James Lapine, who directed this documentary. Lapine is a frequent collaborator with Sondheim; Lapine wrote the book for and directed Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Passion, directed Merrily We Roll Along, and conceived and directed Sondheim on Sondheim, a biographical Broadway show that used video and music to look at his life and work.

Six by Sondheim performs that same function, using six seminal pieces and Sondheim's thoughts about how and why he created them to chart the different phases in his career. Larry Kert, the first Tony in West Side Story, performs "Something's Coming" in a clip from the 50s, followed by "Opening Doors," the jaunty number about what it is to start out as an adult in the world from Merrily We Roll Along. For Six by Sondheim, "Opening Doors" gets a fresh performance from Glee's Darren Criss, Ugly Betty's America Ferrara, and Smash and Newsies star Jeremy Jordan, with Jackie Hoffman from The Addams Family, Laura Osnes, currently starring in Cinderella, and Stephen Sondheim himself in the mix.

Husband and wife Broadway stars Will Swenson and Audra McDonald, who is fresh off her triumph as the Abbess in The Sound of Music, will sing Sondheim's biggest hit as a single, "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music, after we get a chance to see video of some of the very different artists -- Glynis Johns, Frank Sinatra, Cher -- who performed it over the years.

And then it's "I'm Still Here," the wry Follies song about surviving "good times and bum times," "plush velvet sometimes, sometimes just pretzels and beer..." Instead of giving it to the aging showgirl-turned-Hollywood-star described in Follies, Lapine turns the "I'm Still Here" segment over to director Todd Haynes, who has Jarvis Cocker of the rock band Pulp perform it in front of the kind of women it's about. A provocative choice, to be sure.

It's back to the vault for footage of Dean Jones trying to get "Being Alive" right, taken from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the recording of the cast album from the first Company. The evening ends with "Sunday," the soaring piece about how art can immortalize, as performed by Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin in the Broadway production, captured for television broadcast on American Playhouse. Ending with "Sunday"? Perfection.

I loved Sondheim on Sondheim. I loved the two volumes he wrote -- Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat -- that go into detail about his lyrics. You can never get enough Sondheim, after all. Which is why Six by Sondheim is a must-see, tonight at 8 Central time on HBO.

Community Players Announces Cast for ANNE FRANK

Community Players and director Opal Virtue have announced the cast for their January production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Although the original version of the script was written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Players is using an updated text adapted by Wendy Kesselman in 1997 and used for the Broadway revival of the play starring Natalie Portman.

For Community Players, Veronica Bettis will play the central role of Anne, the young Jewish girl trying to survive while hidden in an attic in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. Paul Vellella and Penny Wilson will play her parents, Otto and Edith Frank, with Rebekah Easling as her older sister, Margot.

Alan Wilson and Tricia Stiller have been cast as Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan, other occupants of the attic, Tim Zaitselff will take on their son, Peter, who becomes Anne's friend, and Nathan Bottorff will play Mr. Dussel, the final person who joins the others in hiding.

Rounding out the cast, Amanda Fisher and Tom Smith will play Miep and Mr. Kraler, Dutch friends of the Frank family who provide a link to the outside world, with Jake Rathman and Tyler Stark as German soldiers.

The Diary of Anne Frank represents Community Players' first show of 2014, with a preview on January 16 and regular performances scheduled from January 17 to 26. Call 309-663-2121 or click here for tickets.

CHESS: Opening Moves Tonight at the Station Theatre

There was a day when chess champions from the United States and Russia vied not just for bragging rights across the board, but in international headlines, as well. As Cold War tensions remained high, the battle between American Bobby Fischer and Russian Boris Spassky for the World Championship in chess took on greater significance. A prize of $250,000 raised the stakes. When the two superstars, so different in approach and temperament, one shaped by the traditional, dominant Soviet system, the other an American loner known as much for his tics as his brilliance, met for 21 games played over two months in Iceland, the world watched to see who would ultimately checkmate whom.

The musical Chess, which opens tonight at the Station Theatre in Urbana, does not specifically deal with Fischer and Spassky, although there are certain similarities. There's an American and a Russian, and their match is played for higher stakes than just a few pawns, with political and diplomatic implications at every turn. But there's also romance, which was, as far as we know, not part of the famous 1972 World Championship, subplots involving defection, blackmail and selling out, action set in Thailand (to fit the show's most famous single "One Night in Bangkok"), and the inclusion of music written by the male half of ABBA, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, with lyrics by frequent Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator Tim Rice. Singing chess playes is quite a departure from the real deal! And that means that Chess may have been inspired by Fischer and the infamous match in Reykjavik, but the musical is its own, distinctive creation on stage. In the end, it isn't so much about the game of chess as it is about loyalty, responsibility, family and honor. Note that there have been several different versions of Richard Nelson's book over the show's lifetime to reflect changes in the political landscape of Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union fell.

Chess opens tonight at 8 pm at the Station, directed by Mikel L. Matthews, Jr. This production features Warren Garver as American bad boy chess champ Freddie Trumper and David Barkley as Soviet challenger Anatoly Sergievsky. Malia Andrus plays Florence, caught between the two men professionally and personally, while Kevin Paul Wickart takes on Molokov, the Russian handler and manipulater behind Anatoly; Dawn McDaniel plays Svetlana, Anatoly's wife; Jessica Miller is the Arbiter, the president of the International Chess Federation overseeing the matches; and Wen Bu, Lola McQueen, Michael Murphy, Kenna Reiss, Craig Smith and Rachel Warren comprise the ensemble.

The Station's version of Chess continues in performance through December 21. All the details are here on the show's Facebook page. The Station Theatre is located at 223 North Broadway in Urbana, and you may call 217-384-4000 for reservations.

Carrie Underwood Goes Live in SOUND OF MUSIC on NBC December 5

Carrie Underwood and her live version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music will come twirling to your television at 7 pm (8 Eastern) on Thursday, December 5. There's been lots of talk about this particular production, with speculation on whether Underwood will be able to pull off the songs as written, whether she can act, whether it is sacrilege for NBC to try to redo the Julie Andrews movie from 1963, and whether the fact that this is live makes it special and fantastic and worthy all by itself.

My guesses? She won't, she can't, no and no again.

She definitely isn't singing the songs as written -- they're set down for her since her voice is lower than Julie Andrews, who famously played Maria in the film, or Mary Martin, Rebecca Luker or Laura Benanti, who have played Maria on Broadway -- and from the trailers and the video out so far of her vocal performance, she doesn't know what to do to act her way through a song, either. You can listen to her versions of "The Sound of Music,"  "My Favorite Things," "Do Re Mi," and "The Lonely Goatherd" on Youtube, and that should tell the story right there. Listen to the difference between Underwood and multi-Tony Award winner Audra McDonald on "Favorite Things." The energy, the spark, the charisma... It's all there in McDonald's portion of the song, while Underwood sounds careful, tentative and dull. Underwood does bring a really yodelly yodel sound to "Lonely Goatherd," which is kind of fun. And maybe she will relax and reflect more personality when she performs these pieces live. These are from the soundtrack (or "studio recording"), which is already available on Amazon and iTunes.

Whether she can act or sing as Maria won't matter to her millions of fans, of course, and stunt casting on Broadway has already happened so many times that nobody really cares anymore if some star from another universe tries to take on a role, classic or otherwise, even if he or she isn't right for it. Brooke Shields and a thousand other people in Grease come to mind, as do Melanie Griffith and Jerry Springer in Chicago, Julia Roberts in Three Days of Rain and Haley Joel Osment in American Buffalo. It's about butts in seats in those cases, and about viewers and ratings in this one.

I don't think it's a travesty or disrespectful to Julie Andrews or the movie version, either. At the time the film was made, I feel certain at least a few people were complaining that it was a travesty and disrespectful to Mary Martin, the stage star who always got overlooked when it came time to make movies of her Broadway triumphs. But then, Julie Andrews got replaced by Vanessa Redgrave, a wonderful actress who was certainly not known for her singing, for the film version of Camelot, and by Audrey Hepburn, who was lovely but really not a singer, either, in My Fair Lady, so Andrews had some grievances of her own. I can't say I like the Swiss Miss get-up Underwood is wearing in the posters -- Maria has usually been more of a plain girl, as you can see by what Andrews has on in the DVD cover image shown here -- or the vapid and vacant look on her face, which brings to mind Steve Carrell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Heidi outfit and the blank face were part of an effort to make Carrie look her prettiest for fans who expect their country singers to be glitzy and sparkly, and maybe even to give her 30-year-old self a more youthful glow. Maria is supposed to be 18, after all.

But, no, this isn't a gift to the entertainment world by bringing back live TV.  We have Saturday Night Live and a host of sporting events, which often include halftime entertainment, as well as a lot of singing competitions. Aside from the musicals and operas we get to see on PBS's Great Performances, Britain's National Theater and Globe offer live shows on screens around the world, and there are filmed versions of all sorts of live shows these days, from Neil Patrick Harris in Company to the West End Merrily We Roll Along and David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing. Plus I've seen a few of the old live musicals, and the quality wasn't great enough to make me nostalgic for more like them. This Sound of Music won't look like those classic cases of filming a live musical for TV, anyway, since they will be using multiple soundstages to give a more upscale look to the sets and scenery.

On the plus side, they have stuffed the cast with real Broadway stars who can elevate their supporting roles, like McDonald as the Abbess (inexplicably singing "My Favorite Things"), Laura Benanti as the Countess and Christian Borle as Max. The Broadway fans who might otherwise eschew a Carrie Underwood vehicle may tune in to see and hear McDonald, Benanti and Borle. And a song called "How Can Love Survive," sung on stage in 1959 and 1998 but not in the movie, will be back in this new version to give Benanti and Borle more to do. That's excellent news.

I suppose there is also an argument that this enterprise will acquaint a new generation of pop and/or contry music fans with Broadway, in the same way that sticking any number of American Idol alumni into shows like Grease, Hair, Rent and Rock of Ages was supposed to bridge that gap. Will it work? Will Carrie's fans flock to the TKTS booth to plunk down cash for new musicals like The Bridges of Madison County or A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder or another Rodgers and Hammerstein choice like the current Cinderella revival? Or perhaps create a resurgence in musical events on television, with a Kinky Boots performance broadcast live this week and A Night with Janis Joplin the next? I'm thinking that depends on the ratings, the enthusiasm of advertisers, and the overall cost, as well as the vehicle itself and whether more stars like Carrie Underwood are game.

Stay tuned. We'll all know more after Thursday!

It's a Month of Fred Astaire, Music, Dance and WONDERFUL LIFE at Every Turn

There is always a lot happening in Bloomington-Normal and environs in December, and yes, most of it is related to the holiday season. Most, but not all. You can expect to hear the words "wonderful life" fairly often, however. Here are some of the highlights of what's happening this month...

I already told you that December is Fred Astaire month at Turner Classic Movies, which means I will undoubtedly be glued to the telly every Wednesday. You'll find Flying Down to Rio, The Gay Divorcee, Roberta, Follow the Fleet and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, all Fred-and-Ginger pics, along with Second Chorus, where he was paired with Paulette Goddard, and The Sky's the Limit, where Fred plays a pilot opposite Joan Leslie, spilling from Wednesday the 4th into Thursday the 5th; You'll Never Get Rich and You Were Never Lovelier, the two Rita Hayworth choices, The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, the two with Cyd Charisse, plus Three Little Words, The Belle of New York, Yolanda and the Thief and The Ziegfeld Follies on the 11th and 12th; the last Astaire/Rogers pairing in The Barkleys of Broadway, a reprise of The Band Wagon, and The Broadway Melody of 1940, Easter Parade, Royal Wedding, A Damsel in Distress and Finian's Rainbow, an example of Astaire in his elder years, on the 18th and the cusp of the 19th; with the cream of the Astaire/Rogers crop -- Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall We Dance -- saved for Christmas night. Filling out that night will be Carefree and those Barkleys of Broadway again to round out the Fred-and-Ginger oeuvre. That's the end of Wednesdays in December, although New Year's Eve, a Tuesday, will see all three That's Entertainment packages of MGM song-and-dance clips, which of course include Mr. Astaire.

The rarely seen musical Chess is the December offering at Urbana's Station Theatre. The male half of the musical group ABBA -- Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus -- wrote the music while Tim Rice provided the lyrics for this exploration of international chess intrigue, including the hit single "One Night in Bangkok." Mikel J. Matthews directs a cast that includes David Barkley, Warren Garver and Kevin Paul Wickart in performance from December 5 to 21. Click here to get the Station scoop.

Bing, Danny and White Christmas come to the Normal Theater's big screen from December 5 to 8. That's followed by Will Ferrell as a very large Elf on December 12 and 13, a small boy's singular devotion to a Red Ryder BB gun in A Christmas Story on December 14 and 15, and It's a Wonderful Life all the way from December 19 to Christmas Eve. The others seem to pop up every year at the Normal Theater, but it's good to see Elf, a particular favorite of mine, join the class.

Illinois State University's Fall Dance Concert under the direction of Darby Wilde will be in performance December 5, 6 and 7 at the Center for the Performing Arts on the ISU campus. The program will include "classical and contemporary dance pieces including guest artist Jennifer Harge's Before I Started Flying, an abstract work exploring spiritual pathways and undesired states of being; Lachrymae, a trio choreographed by Gregory Merriman to the music of Benjamin Britten, about being alone and together; and #connected?, a collaborative work by Darby Wilde with an original score by Aaron Paolucci, which journeys into the world of social media." Tickets are available through Ticketmaster or the CPA box office at 309-438-2535.

Bloomington-Normal high school actors are invited to audition for the 2014 Intercity High School Shakespeare productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. Auditions will take place in ISU's Centennial West 214 on Thursday, December 5, from 7 to 9 pm and Saturday, December 7, from 9 am to noon. Performances are scheduled for January 31 and February 1, 2014. For more information about auditions, contact Cristen Monson.

If music is more your style for the holidays, the Madrigala offered by ISU's Madrigal Singers on December 13 and 14 may be just the ticket to ring in the season "with drinks, desserts and delights!" They will sing traditional madrigals as well as other holiday music, with pieces like "Moro Lasso," "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" on the program.

Sally Parry directs the radio play version of It's a Wonderful Life, complete with a sound effects guy (or foley artist) on stage, scripts in hand, and all sorts of Golden Age of Radio escapades, at Community Players from December 12 to 15. Nine actors will portray the radio actors and crew, with Thom Rakestraw as George Bailey, the sweet everyman who doubts the value of his own existence, Hannah Kerns as his lovely wife Mary, Bob McLaughlin as evil Mr. Potter and other characters not so evil, Dave Lemmon as loopy Uncle Billy and other characters not so loopy, John Poling as angel Clarence and other characters not so angelic, Nancy Nickerson as Mrs. Bailey and other maternal types, Annie Weaver as Zuzu and other children, John Lieder as the announcer and Herb Reichelt as the foley artist providing key bells and whistles. Click here for all the details.

The annual event known as the Pantagraph's Holiday Spectacular offers three performances at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts from December 13 to 15. It's huge, it's spirited, it's... Spectacular! There are singers, dancers, actors, Wooden Soldiers, Alphabet Blocks, Jingle Bells and even local politicians making cameos. You can see the whole cast list here -- it's bound to include someone you know. Lori Adams is back as director, with a script once again by Nancy Steele Brokaw.

If you are looking for a totally different take on It's a Wonderful Life... I don't know exactly how this is going to work, but the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign is putting on something called It's a Heckleful Life! on Wednesday, December 18 at 10 pm. Billed as "in the tradition of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax," the Art will screen the real It's a Wonderful Life film accompanied by sarcasm, ribbing and heckling from four C-U area comedians. It sounds a bit like people throwing toast at Rocky Horror, but apparently these comedians will simply throw insults at Jimmy Stewart and company. The "Destroyers of Christmas Joy" are Jessica Coburn, Matt Fear, Charlie Hester and someone known as "Quizmaster Chris."

I admit I had a crush on Peter Noone of the musical group Herman's Hermits when I was about nine or ten. My older sisters and I had a stack of 45s like "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter," "I'm Henry VIII, I Am," "This Door Swings Both Ways" and 'The End of the World" that we listened to over and over and over. Presumably Noone and whatever incarnation of Herman's Hermits we're up to will be performing some of those as well as other Herman's Hemits hits when they come to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on December 19 with "An Olde English Christmas with Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone." The letters are tiny and difficult to read on the poster image, but I think it says: "On a frosty night 'neath a winter moon, come and sing a Christmas tune. With good cheer and joy, we all will croon with Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone!"

And that's what's tempting me this holiday season. You'll definitely hear more about all of these as December progresses, with additions and updates along the way.

It's Preston Sturges Screwball Comedy Night on Turner Classic Movies

Turner Classic Movies has announced that my favorite, Fred Astaire, is their star of the month for December, meaning there will be Astaire movies every Wednesday in December. I will be telling you more about that as the first Fred Film arrives, but before we even get to December, TCM is offering one last Screwball Comedy Friday in November. And it's a goodie, with three classics from director/screenwriter Preston Sturges taking the spotlight tonight.

These three are at the top of my Best Ever Lists, whether you're talking screwball, "dialogue comedies," romantic comedies, films of the 40s, or any other classification that includes funny, irreverent, witty movies like The Lady Eve, Christmas in July and The Palm Beach Story.

The Lady Eve is up first, starting at 7 pm Central time, and it's a gem, with a fun, feisty Barbara Stanwyck matched up with a very different Henry Fonda than you're probably used to. Stanwyck is a charming con woman named Jean who travels across the Atlantic with her wily dad, played by the irascible Charles Coburn, with Jean romancing rich men and the two combining to fleece their marks at card games. Fonda is Charles Poncefort Pike, AKA Hopsie, the shy heir to an ale fortune who is more interested in snakes than the eligible misses who keep throwing themselves in his path. But Jean's tricks are more sophisticated than most, and she snares poor Hopsie easily. It's Girl Cons Boy, Girl Gets Boy, Girls Loses Boy When He Finds Out About the Con Thing, and then Girl Plots Revenge. Her revenge scheme involves concocting a second identity, Lady Eve, who just happens to look exactly like Jean. Poor Hopsie falls hook, line and sinker all over again. It's adorable. And that premise creates a whirlwind of crazy antics as Jean, her dad, his old friend (played by the wonderful Eric Blore), Hopsie, his dad (Eugene Pallette, a staple of screwball comedies), and Hopsie's handler Muggsy (William Demarest eons before My Three Sons) all plot and counterplot.

Christmas in July, whose title I borrowed for my second book, is up at 8:45 pm Central. It was Sturges' second directorial effort, after The Great McGinty, and the eighth film for which he wrote the screenplay. It does seem less sophisticated than The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story, but it's still fun and sprightly, with a hapless nice guy hero, played here by Dick Powell, who dreams of winning a contest and $25,000 by writing a slogan for a coffee company. His idea? "If you can't sleep at night, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk." A prank by his coworkers makes Powell's Jimmy think he won, and, after a series of misunderstandings involving actually getting a check from the coffee company, he makes himself the most popular guy in the neighborhood by buying presents for everyone on his street, as well as an engagement ring for his girlfriend. Christmas in July has that same sweetly satirical edge that makes Preston Sturges's work rise above, and the supporting cast, with Demarest again as well as Georgia Caine, Jimmy Conlin, Franklin Pangborn, Ernest Truex and Robert Warwick, is first-rate.

TCM's little Sturges Fest will finish up with the goofiest of the three, The Palm Beach Story, at 10 pm. In Palm Beach, Sturges plays with two sets of twins (both played by Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea), a millionaire known as "The Wienie King," a train car full of the drunken members of the Ale and Quail Club, Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor as a rich but ridiculous brother and sister, and William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin, Franklin Pangborn, Ernest Truex and Robert Warwick from the Sturges stock company. There really isn't any good way to describe this fast, fizzy, flaky comedy, except to say that it's very funny and completely crazy. And you absolutely must stick around till the very end to see the beginning pay off.

I love romantic comedies, and these three are some of the best ever on film. For my money, rom coms haven't been the same since the 40s, when directors Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Frank Capra, George Cukor and Mitchell Leisen were at the top of their game. To revisit the Golden Age of romantic comedy, all you need to do is tune in Turner Classic Movies beginning at 7 tonight.

A Movie for Thanksgiving? Try MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET

If you are eschewing Black Friday shopping on Thursday, if Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or NFL football isn't how you want to spend your Thanksgiving evening, you may find getting out to the Normal Theater a better option.

We all think of Miracle on 34th Street as a Christmas movie, given the whole "Is he the real Santa?" plot. But it begins with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, making it appropriate for Turkey Day, too.

I chose Miracle on 34th Street as one of my favorite holiday movies back in 2010. Here's what I said about it then:

"Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 version) is one of the most recognizable holiday movies around, so everybody should know its story about a cynical little girl named Susan (played by the unbelievably cute Natalie Wood) and her hard-working single mother (Maureen O'Hara), neither of whom believes in Santa Claus. But then what appears to be the real Kris Kringle (played by the even more adorable Edmund Gwenn) arrives at Mom's department store and a firestorm of controversy erupts. Is he crazy? Is he the real deal?

"A handsome lawyer (John Payne) lends a hand when Kris has a sanity hearing, Mom gets a romance, Susan starts to believe that wishes can come true, and everybody has a Merry Christmas. Well, maybe not the cranky pencil pusher who put Santa Claus on trial.

"It's a classic for a reason: All the elements work perfectly, the players are terrific and just what they need to be, and both Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood knock it out of the park."

The Normal Theater will be showing Miracle on 34th Street at 7 pm on Thursday and Friday, November 28 and 29. All tickets are $7.