Local audiences have seen married actors Jonathan and Rochelle Schrader appearing opposite one another numerous times over the years: in Oper a@ Augustana's The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado; in the former Green Room Theatre's Into the Woods; and in Quad City Music Guild's Babes in Toyland.
But with Countryside Community Theatre's presentation of The King & I, running June 22 through 30 at Eldridge's North Scott High School, patrons will see the Schraders interact in a way that, on-stage at least, they never have before.
"This is the first time we've actually gotten to play semi-romantically together," says Jonathan, who enacts the titular, short-tempered King of Siam - a role made legendary by Yul Brynner - opposite his wife's stalwart schoolteacher Anna. "I've played her father several times, and I tried to kill her in Babes in Toyland, but ... ."
While I like David Turley's work as a director - with this year's Chicago at the District Theatre and Gypsy with Countryside Community Theatre among his most notable efforts - I'd like to see more of him on-stage. I was wowed by his John Hinckley Jr. in 2008's Assassins at the Green Room Theatre, tickled pink by his William Barfee in 2010's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre, and amusingly intrigued by his Vladimir in that venue's 2010 Waiting for Godot.
As enjoyable as Countryside Community Theatre's The Wizard of Oz is, the most thrilling part is this: The witches fly. While L. Frank Baum's familiar story of the Kansas girl who's blown to the land of Oz by a tornado has its fill of magic, Countryside adds some magic of its own by making its witches (and a flying monkey) airborne. It's a special touch to a show that, during Friday's opening-night performance, proved to be a gratifying evening's diversion - if a long one, running three hours from beginning to end.
As if she hadn't already proven so in the previous three hours of Friday's Countryside Community Theatre performance, Christina Myatt left no doubt that she's worthy of the larger-than-life role of Mama Rose with Gypsy's final song, "Rose's Turn."
Countryside Community Theatre's current, charming presentation of Annie Get Your Gun is directed by married couple Christina and William Myatt, and stars married couple Sheri and Wayne Hess as Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. (You'll also find the wedded Cheryl and John Wagner among the show's 38 cast members, plus several parent/child and sibling/sibling combinations.) Yet the production's most endearing, unexpectedly inspired couple turns out to be two performers who don't share 40 years between them, and whose characters you're probably unfamiliar with if your only exposure to this Irving Berlin classic comes via Ethel Merman's glorious blare.
South Pacific comes to us with an intimidating load of pedigreed baggage: Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Rodgers & Hammerstein. And if you add its dramatic World War II setting, its themes of interracial romance and prejudice, its enormous scenic drops and set pieces, and its cast of two dozen plus, it'd be enough for Countryside Community Theatre's current production of the piece to be impressive, and it most certainly is that.
In the 11-week period between June 1 and August 12, I saw 28 area productions. And how did you spend your summer vacation?
