The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is both outrageously hilarious and poignantly touching. I laughed harder than I've laughed in a long time during Thursday's opening-night performance, and I wasn't alone in offering up hearty guffaws, with the capacity crowd cackling with delight throughout the evening's entertainment.
With its whopping cast size and an equally daunting song list, Guys & Dolls doesn't seem like the best choice for a rookie director. But that didn't stop local actor Jason Platt from taking the helm of Quad City Music Guild's first summer offering, and making a darned good run of it. To be sure, the Thursday-night preview show either needed a few major cuts to shave off at least 20 minutes of the two-hours-and-50-minute (including intermission) run time, or a quicker musical pace set by music director Charles DCamp. However, the lead vocal performances were phenomenal, the female dance numbers were great fun to watch, and the set design and high-quality costumes effectively represented New York City, circa 1940.
Every good writer needs an editor. Composer/accompanist Derek Childs certainly needs one for his rock musical Tired American Dream, which debuted at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre last week. The opening-night performance, which lasted two hours with an intermission, had a few talented singers to boost Dream's simple plot, Childs' script has potential, and some of the songs have peppy melodies with sweet and memorable (if word-heavy) lyrics. But as a complete production, Dream felt too much like an early draft in need of revisions.
As I never tire of telling people, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night ranks first on my list of all-time favorite plays, which puts me in league with, I'd imagine, several thousand others over the years. Widely considered the greatest work ever written by the author widely considered the greatest playwright our country has yet produced, O'Neill's autobiographical epic is nothing less than America's answer to King Lear - an incisive, harrowing, and altogether exhilarating study of family conducted with a microscope and a scalpel.
Director Lora Adams' Village Theatre production of The Boys Next Door opens and closes on the solitary figure of actor Jason Platt, and his portrayal here begs the question: Is there anything the man can't do?
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?
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.
Granted, it's only February. But after seeing the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Thursday-night presentation of Almost, Maine, I thought a reasonable case could already be made for actors Jessica Nicol and Chris White emerging as area theatre's most endearing romantic pairing for 2009. Although, to be fair, the accolade could just as easily go to Nicol and Almost, Maine co-star Jason Platt. Or to Platt and co-star Stacy Herrick. Or to Herrick and co-star Alex Klimkewicz. Or to White and Platt. Whichever.
