items tagged with Nicole Savitt

The sequel to Church Basement Ladies, the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's best-selling show (ever!), opened last weekend. And if this second installment, Church Basement Ladies 2: A Second Helping, isn't enough "Uff da!" for audience members, don't worry: Circa '21 is already considering upcoming performances of Away in a Basement and A Mighty Fortress is Our Basement, the next scripts in the series.

I'm not sure where Barbara Park got the inspiration for her literary heroine Junie B. Jones, the adorable kindergarten heroine/hellion of the author's series of wildly popular children's books. But after seeing the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's presentation of Junie B. Jones & a Little Monkey Business, I have a pretty firm theory: Park swiped the characterization from kindergarten-era home movies taken of actress Sunshine Ramsey.

Upon entering the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse for Friday's evening presentation of Church Basement Ladies, I handed my ticket to longtime lobby host Ed Jones, who greeted me with a knock-knock joke (one of his better ones, I must say) and some happy news: The audience for that day's matinée performance included seven busloads of guests making their first-ever treks to the Rock Island venue, with one tour group traveling all the way from Champaign, Illinois, to see the show.

When the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse produced Charlotte's Web in 2003, I was lucky enough to perform in the show opposite Janos Horvath's Wilbur, and I vividly remember being amazed that someone could give such a touching, wholly credible performance while wearing a rubber pig nose.

The theatre has now revived the production, and luckily for audiences, Horvath and his adorable pink honker are back, too. Yet with all due respect to Horvath - who's as marvelous in the role now as he was then - this version of Charlotte's Web is currently being stolen by someone else entirely. And she's only in fifth grade.

Being raised Lutheran, I easily recognized the Lutheranisms on display in director Curt Wollan's Church Basement Ladies, currently playing at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse. (Growing Up Lutheran, in fact, is the title of the Janet Letnes Martin & Suzann Johnson Nelson book the show is based on.) And as written by Jim Stowell and Jessica Zuehlke, with music and lyrics by Drew Jansen, this comedy smartly dissects the customs of its Minnesotan characters, is filled with gently sly references, and is spot-on in revealing our sect's unique brand of hostility, in which insults are casually tossed off as conversation. (Handing the phone to her pastor, one of the title characters gets in a veiled, pointed jab with "It's your new wife.")