15
Jun
2009
Over my many years of theatre-going, there isn't a stage trilogy I've enjoyed quite the way I've enjoyed the Pazinski-family comedies of author Tom Dudzick, a trio of lightly philosophical, understatedly touching, devastatingly funny plays that began with 1994's Over the Tavern and continued with 1998's King o' the Moon.
And I don't think I've ever loved a stage production quite the way I love the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's current The Last Mass at St. Casimir's, the climactic chapter (written in 2002) not only in Dudzick's trilogy, but in Richmond Hill's, as Geneseo's Barn Theatre produced Over the Tavern in the summer of 2005, and King o' the Moon in the summer of 2007.
Quad City Music Guild's current presentation of The King & I is colorful and handsomely mounted, and in one scene, at least, it's even surprising, particularly if you don't peruse the program's cast list before the production starts. (Please skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want the surprise ruined here.)
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3
THE HANGOVER
I love TV's The Office for many reasons, but the most basic is that nowhere else on television will you find a weekly ensemble of 16 performers, each of whom is consistently in character, and each of whom is consistently funny. No matter where your eye lands in a group scene, you find yourself grinning - if not laughing out loud - at some priceless reading or reaction, and that's what routinely occurs throughout the Timber Lake Playhouse's current, knockout presentation of Grease, a production that, coincidentally, also boasts an ensemble of 16 stellar comedians. (Seventeen, if you count the hysterical, wordless, run-on cameo by Jake Bollman.) And Timber Lake's troupe even tops the sitcom's office drones in one regard, because damn, but this staff can sing.
Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is perhaps the best-known, most widely adored American musical that, in all likelihood, you've never heard of. Unless, that is, you're well-versed in modern musical theatre, in which case Brown's two-character, mostly dialogue-free offering probably isn't familiar so much as borderline-legendary.
Directed and co-written by Pete Docter, Pixar's Up -- the studio's 10th full-length animated feature -- is so funny, touching, and inventive that I felt like a bit of an ingrate, if not a complete jerk, for wishing it were just a little bit better.
Sure, it's the Greek tragedy to end all Greek tragedies. But is any stage tragedy, Greek or otherwise, as unashamedly, wickedly enjoyable as that of the fall of Oedipus?
The Prenzie Players' presentation of Euripides' The Trojan Women, adapted by Richard Lattimore, runs just over an hour, and I can't imagine who would want it to last longer than that. There's so much anguish and grief on display, and the material appears so deeply felt by director Jill Sullivan-Bennin's cast, that the production leaves you not just haunted, but shaken; it's questionable whether either the actors or the audience could endure two hours of such extreme emotional states.
For the past 15 years, Muscatine's New Era Lutheran Church has staged an annual musical fundraiser, and I was moved to catch this year's offering for two (or rather, three) reasons: the casting of Jason Platt and Tracy Pelzer-Timm - two of our area's most entertaining character actors - in leading roles, and New Era's decision to produce Guys & Dolls, my all-time favorite musical, and certainly the least intimidating Great Musical ever written. Even at its worst, I reasoned, it would likely be a night well spent.
