items tagged with Into the Woods

The Quad Cities' spring theatre season will be bookended by Shakespeare, with the March 6 opening of Much Ado About Nothing, and Sophocles, with the May 28 debut of Oedipus Rex. But just because these plays are, respectively, more than 400 and 2,400 years old, it probably isn't wise to enter them expecting the expected. This Sophocles, after all, is subtitled The Audacity of Oed, and this Shakespeare is being staged by the Prenzie Players, so in both works, you may as well expect anything to happen; considering our lineup also features titles by Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, Euripides, and Mel Brooks, I'm thinking you can say the same for the theatre season as a whole.

Playwright Tony Kushner's Angels in America begins its run at The Green Room Theatre on October 31, and to hear artistic director Tyson Danner describe it, he and executive director Derek Bertelsen couldn't have chosen a more appropriate production to open on Halloween.

"It's a monster," says Danner.

Into the Woods (August 10 - 12, 2007): The Green Room's debut production was Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's fairy-tale musical, and many of its cast members had previously worked with director Derek Bertelsen (also the venue's Executive Director) and music director Tyson Danner (the Artistic Director) in the pair's previous, fund-raising performances for the Children's Therapy Center of the Quad Cities: 2005's Ragtime and 2006's The Secret Garden. Both vividly remember opening night.

Derek: It smelled like fresh paint.

Tyson: It did. We painted that morning.

So enough of my opinions already. The following are reflections by Derek Bertelsen, Tyson Danner, Kristofer Eitrheim, Kimberly Furness, Jennifer Kingry, Mandy Landreth, J.C. Luxton, Jackie Madunic, Angela Rathman, Jalayne Reiwerts, Susan Simosky, and Doug Tschopp - local-theatre artisans who enjoyed a memorable 2007.

There's no playwright, living or deceased, whose words I would rather listen to than Tennessee Williams. And if you don't already share that opinion, the first few minutes of the Green Room's The Glass Menagerie - with actor Eddie Staver III introducing us to Williams' "truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion" - might be enough to change your mind.