Matthew Webb, Lexie Plath, Analisha Santini, Blake W. Price, and Cody Jolly in Young FrankensteinThe Timber Lake Playhouse's Young Frankenstein is a polished, professional production featuring stellar performances by the lead actors and impressive energy from the ensemble. Playwright/composer Mel Brooks' material - with its book by Thomas Meehan - is well-served by this group of talented performers, dynamic lighting effects by designer James Kolditz, inventive choreography by Cameron Turner, and adeptly paced humor by director Brad Lyons. After seeing my first production at this much-lauded theatre in Mt. Carroll, I left impressed.

Michael J. Yarnell, Jenny Guse, and Danny Henning in The Producers Mel Brooks' musical The Producers - currently being produced at the Timber Lake Playhouse - received 12 Tony Awards in 2001, more than any Broadway musical before or since. And so I say this with all the deference and reverence that Brooks' historic achievement deserves: When Timber Lake's Justin Banta was throwing himself around the stage as a mincing Adolph Hitler in the show-within-a-show Springtime for Hitler, I was laughing so hard I almost freakin' wet myself.

Brandon Ford in All Shook Up No one in his or her right mind could possibly think that the Elvis Presley pastiche All Shook Up, the new presentation at the Timber Lake Playhouse, is a stronger piece of theatre than West Side Story or You Can't Take It with You, the first two presentations in the venue's 2008 season.

But whatever you do, do not, for the love of Pete, tell this to the performers in Timber Lake's latest, who are attacking this goofy lark with such impassioned zeal that you'd think they were enacting Shakespeare. (And, it turns out, they oftentimes are.)

You Can't Take It with You ensemble membersThere are wonderfully fresh, unexpected grace notes all throughout the Timber Lake Playhouse's presentation of You Can't Take It with You, but you have to be quick to catch them. Then again, for much of the show's length, you have to be quick to catch just about anything.

Spiro Bruskas, Craig Michaels, and Scott Naumann in Flaming Idiots On Friday night, I attended a comedic farce that featured slamming doors, mistaken identities, gunshots, an unhelpful cop, a heavily accented mobster, an attractive woman getting sloppy drunk, and a finale that found characters staring with amazement at a briefcase filled with cash.

And on Saturday, I attended another one.

Samantha Joy Dubina, Jay Reynolds Jr., Hillary Elk, and Ben Mason in Bat Boy the Musical The Timber Lake Playhouse's production of Bat Boy the Musical features a cast of 15 playing some two dozen characters, more than a fifth of whom will be dead by the curtain call. Necks are bitten, throats are slashed, overdoses are administered, and through it all, Bat Boy's performers look as though they couldn't possibly be having more fun. En masse, Timber Lake's ensemble just might compose the happiest musical cast I've seen all year, and considering the material they're working with, and the director they're working for, how could they be anything less?

Cassandra Marie Nuss, Daniel Trump, and Zach Powell in Dracula The scariest thing about the Timber Lake Playhouse's world-premiere production of Dracula is the set, and I mean that as a compliment. Designed by Joseph C. Heitman, the industrial playing space includes a series of metallic walkways with perilous inclines, some 20 feet above the floor, and the walkways themselves are slightly askew. The best way I can describe Dracula's architecture is by saying that, if the set were an amusement-park attraction, you'd be both ecstatic and petrified about riding it.

members of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ensemble Watching the cast perform in the Timber Lake Playhouse's production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is like witnessing a mass exodus on the last day of the school year; the actors appear so excited about their newfound freedom that they can barely contain themselves.

tomdickharry_thumb Most theatregoers have at least one genre that they simply can't get on board with. Some can't abide tragic plays - "I get enough drama in life" is their common refrain - and some don't like musicals, and there's an untitled genre that many people, sadly, seem to be petrified of: Shows I've Never Heard of Before.

The latest presentation at the Timber Lake Playhouse is entitled Tom, Dick, & Harry, which is a play that I'd never heard of before, but which also falls under the category of my least favorite genre: the slapstick farce. More often than not, shows of this ilk all seem the same to me: 20 minutes of protracted exposition and character introduction, an hour-plus of forced wackiness resulting from a series of misunderstandings, a few moments of maudlin sentimentality - to make us care about these people? - and a tidy wrap-up, with "naughty" double entendres and obvious, ba-dum-ching! punchlines sprinkled throughout. Many audiences love this stuff; I generally find the relentless bonhomie of it all depressing.

So it's no small praise to say that I really enjoyed Timber Lake's Tom, Dick, & Harry, even though my reasons for enjoying it don't have much to do with Tom, Dick, & Harry.

"Urinetown" ensemble In the second act of the magnificent musical parody Urinetown, the character of Bobby Strong - a novice revolutionary, and the show's ostensible leading man - sings "Run, Freedom, Run," a rousing call-to-arms to his fellow oppressed. The number, a sort of "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" from Guys & Dolls as seen through a Les Miserables filter, is one of those guaranteed show-stoppers designed to leave audiences cheering. At the Timber Lake Playhouse's Saturday-night performance of the show, however, this production number led to something even more thrilling.

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