2020: The Year in Live Entertainment
Haha! I'm actually attempting to write an article titled "2020: The Year in Live Entertainment!"
I'm serious.
Here's the breakdown of all live entertainment, including straight plays, musicals, and concerts.
The Boxcar Children, Playcrafter's Barn Theatre. This was put on as a mainstage production. I was able to see the adaptation of Alden's depression-era children's books. We see at the beginning, after their parents have drowned trying to rescue them, and the children overhearing the social workers planning to break the children up between foster homes. The children decide to risk their lives and safety to keep the family together to go on the road together, running from shed to barn, finally settling in a boxcar. Getting help from a doctor. One of them taking a job for the physician, mowing the lawn. One of the girls gets sick with fever, and the kinds have to make a choice- try to take care of her on their own and risk losing her, or risk losing the boxcar existence that they have and get her to the doctor that one of the kids mows the lawn for. I happened to see the same cast of kids in the two separate weekends I had seen the show. But that was fine, because the children were really great actors. You get a sense that the social worker was a good woman, who really was looking out for the well-being of the children, and wanted to keep them together above all else, it was just tough, because there was four of them. I remember the one daughter, the oldest, seeming mature beyond her years, keeping her cool when she wound up with a group of hobos who wound up asking for some of her groceries in exchange for food. Though they initially seemed threatening, they turned out to be helpful down the road. This was a very relaxing night of theatre, and it makes me miss it like a home that I can't go to anymore because of infection.
The Wedding Singer- I saw this one at the Spotlight Theater. Chase Austin played Robbie Hart. Amelia Fischer played the part of Julia. It hit all of the familiar story beats of the 1998 movie, which was one of my ten favorite movies from that year. In as much as I knew that the stage adaptation would only be retaining "Somebody Kill Me" and "I Want to Grow Old With You" from the films soundtrack, as those were Sandler's originals, I was thrilled with the dynamic '80's sound that the songs and score managed to retain. Austin had this wild-eyed look to him as Hart, such that he at once came across as sweet, and also manic. And in some ways, Austin here makes what had been an institution Sandler character actually very much his own. In ways I wasn't expecting, he made Robbie Hart belong not only to Adam Sandler. After he gets left at the altar by Linda (Sara Nicole Wegener), he has his meltdown at the reception hall while playing another wedding with his band. And then he has a free-fall, living in his sister's basement, and cutting his wedding gigs. Though there is a second chance at love. While helping Julia plan her wedding with Glenn (Tim Dominicus), Robbie starts to have strong feelings for Julia. It was an adorable show, I loved it enough to see it twice, and it makes me miss having musical theater as a constant in my life.
Tommy- I saw Tommy The Musical two weeks before the Shelter in Place kicked into effect. This was my first time seeing Tommy. My friend, Scott Rasso, was the director of this fine production at the Prairie Players' Civic Theater in Galesburg, Illinois. We had met for drinks around the holidays back in 2018 to discuss his application to direct the show. He had a whole portfolio with his vision for the show. It was fantastic. A man and woman wed. They have a son named Tommy. Husband goes off to the military, presumed dead, wife consoled, she gets engaged again, husband turns up alive, husband and new boyfriend get in a physical fight, a gun gets pulled, the boyfriend dies, Tommy sees everything, he stops speaking, he loses his sight, he loses his hearing. And he learns to play the pinball, beautifully. I knew the songs "See Me Feel Me Touch Me Heal Me" and I knew "Pinball Wizard." But this was my first time experiencing the show in its entirety. And the cast was terrific. It was moving to see the boy with his scarred childhood, not only with the witnessing the homicide, but also when his own uncle molests him, following his shift to not seeing not hearing not talking, then rise like a phoenix and become a pinball wizard. And even emerge from his condition. I was happy for this, because the boy who played the young man version of Tommy was in fact a great singer. He was well matched by the pre-teen and the young child actors who also played the character. This was a really great production.
Verdi Requiem- I was getting Coronavirus Dread by the time I made it to the March 8th performance of Verdi Requiem. It was everywhere. It was not a hoax. The President was shooting himself in the foot at this point by trying to propagate the obvious lie that this was not real, that it was propped up by the media. But I was happy to get to see the concert, performed with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and the Handel Oratorio Society, at the Centennial Hall on the campus of Augustana College, on a mild Sunday afternoon in early March. There was abundant coughing. But they got it done. They narrowly got this performance in front of close to 1,500 people, with crammed singers, soloists, and instrumentalists up onto the stage just days before WHO declared COVID not merely an epidemic but a pandemic. Already, Dr. Hurty wasn't shaking hands, but they tossed him his bouquet of flowers and waved.
Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story at Lewistown Community High School. I remember watching Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story with the same sense of watching the gloaming, the nocturne, the twilight of an institution that I love as I was watching Austria fall to Germany in The Sound of Music. When Captain Von Trapp did his solo rendition of "Edelweiss" in front of Maria and the children, it was the final shout of a defiant Austrian who would flee the country with his wife and seven children before staying to accept an assignment aboard a naval ship for NAZI Germany. COVID is like NAZIs, populating too fast, taking over the planet. So watching Kennedy Sidwell perform sweetly as Cinderella, Madelynn Wilcox and Brenna Clark as the stepsisters, Andrew Rice as the Prince, Caleb Keithley as the King, Bridgette Evans as the Queen, Josey Moore as the Fairy Godmother, Kaeli Spotloe as the storyteller, Lydia Cripe, Isabella Cooper, and Aleah Grove as the maids, Leilah Wilcox as the Head Maid, and Brennan Grove as the Prince's sidekick was like watching a way of life get one last gasp before it would disappear for weeks, perhaps months. We didn't know how bad it was going to get. But we did know at that point that it was bad, and nothing was turning it around. Governor Pritzker had ordered no crowds of larger than 250 people to gather in the state of Illinois as of Thursday, March 12th. This was the night I went to Music Guild to do a write-up of The Secret Garden for the website. I didn't even know until the next day, March 13th, if we would have a performance at Lewistown. I got the text from the school board that we were allowed to attend one performance, they'd be counting 250 people, and we were to seat in only every other row. The very early days of 2020 were spent shuttling between the High School for practice with the adults (er teenagers) and the grade school with the children, who were great. They practiced so hard. They reached such an accomplished level of skill. It would have been a travesty not to get to do the show. But those would have been the orders handed down from on high. Was relieved we got to put this one on.
Other live entertainment from 2020:
Does a Trivia Bowl qualify as live entertainment? Since the music is all on the computer? I went to the Lewistown High School Trivia Bowl in support of the band's planned trip to Florida. It was at the VFW Hall in Lewistown in late January. I got to hear some new music, and some old music that I haven't heard in a while. "Steal Away" by Robbie Dupree was the big Easter Egg that came out of that.
I also attended the Musical Theatre Trivia Bowl at the Spotlight Theatre in Moline in September. Brent Tubbs performed a few bars of music live, between questions. That constitutes live performance.
During COVID, I saw Jim Waddell's One Man Show of Mark Twain at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. That was the only live performance I saw in person over the summer.
On the Zoom, I got to participate in a Genesius Guild live reading of Iphogenia. That was a lot of fun.
On the Zoom, I also got to participate in a stage reading of George Orwell's 1984, the dramatization, in August. I was the person who read the stage notes.
On the Zoom, I was able to read the part of Peter in Don Faust's live reading of For the Love of Peter in November.
I saw a Socially Distanced production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Speakeasy in Rock Island in October. I was familiar with the show. The music was good. The banter was appropriately bawdy and off-the-cuff. The cast pulled it off by wearing masks when they weren't singing, and it actually worked pretty well, since some of the characters in Frank - N - Furter's castle are supposed to in fact be creepy and mysterious.
I watched Augustana College Theater's production of The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe on Zoom in early November as well. It happened to be the same night as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered their victory speeches, so truth be told, I was a bit distracted by the history taking place on the television. It led to some cognitive dissonance for me. Seeing a play that spoke to the four-year-previous moment, about a man (played here by a woman) who sells his soul to the devil in an effort to ascend in power. And how the devil comes to collect on the debt.
But then there was so much hope and promise on the television while I was internalizing the suspense, strife and agony on the computer monitor.
Tommy was the big new musical discovery of 2020 for me, along with The Wedding Singer. At some point, I will do a whole entry dedicated to the new musical discovery I have made for each year of my being a theatre fan. I am determined to still find a new musical to enjoy or even fall in love with in 2021. Even if I'm watching it on my laptop. Even if I'm downloading the soundtrack on Amazon Music or iTunes. Even if I am learning about it through a Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet performance.
I'm serious.
Here's the breakdown of all live entertainment, including straight plays, musicals, and concerts.
The Boxcar Children, Playcrafter's Barn Theatre. This was put on as a mainstage production. I was able to see the adaptation of Alden's depression-era children's books. We see at the beginning, after their parents have drowned trying to rescue them, and the children overhearing the social workers planning to break the children up between foster homes. The children decide to risk their lives and safety to keep the family together to go on the road together, running from shed to barn, finally settling in a boxcar. Getting help from a doctor. One of them taking a job for the physician, mowing the lawn. One of the girls gets sick with fever, and the kinds have to make a choice- try to take care of her on their own and risk losing her, or risk losing the boxcar existence that they have and get her to the doctor that one of the kids mows the lawn for. I happened to see the same cast of kids in the two separate weekends I had seen the show. But that was fine, because the children were really great actors. You get a sense that the social worker was a good woman, who really was looking out for the well-being of the children, and wanted to keep them together above all else, it was just tough, because there was four of them. I remember the one daughter, the oldest, seeming mature beyond her years, keeping her cool when she wound up with a group of hobos who wound up asking for some of her groceries in exchange for food. Though they initially seemed threatening, they turned out to be helpful down the road. This was a very relaxing night of theatre, and it makes me miss it like a home that I can't go to anymore because of infection.
The Wedding Singer- I saw this one at the Spotlight Theater. Chase Austin played Robbie Hart. Amelia Fischer played the part of Julia. It hit all of the familiar story beats of the 1998 movie, which was one of my ten favorite movies from that year. In as much as I knew that the stage adaptation would only be retaining "Somebody Kill Me" and "I Want to Grow Old With You" from the films soundtrack, as those were Sandler's originals, I was thrilled with the dynamic '80's sound that the songs and score managed to retain. Austin had this wild-eyed look to him as Hart, such that he at once came across as sweet, and also manic. And in some ways, Austin here makes what had been an institution Sandler character actually very much his own. In ways I wasn't expecting, he made Robbie Hart belong not only to Adam Sandler. After he gets left at the altar by Linda (Sara Nicole Wegener), he has his meltdown at the reception hall while playing another wedding with his band. And then he has a free-fall, living in his sister's basement, and cutting his wedding gigs. Though there is a second chance at love. While helping Julia plan her wedding with Glenn (Tim Dominicus), Robbie starts to have strong feelings for Julia. It was an adorable show, I loved it enough to see it twice, and it makes me miss having musical theater as a constant in my life.
Tommy- I saw Tommy The Musical two weeks before the Shelter in Place kicked into effect. This was my first time seeing Tommy. My friend, Scott Rasso, was the director of this fine production at the Prairie Players' Civic Theater in Galesburg, Illinois. We had met for drinks around the holidays back in 2018 to discuss his application to direct the show. He had a whole portfolio with his vision for the show. It was fantastic. A man and woman wed. They have a son named Tommy. Husband goes off to the military, presumed dead, wife consoled, she gets engaged again, husband turns up alive, husband and new boyfriend get in a physical fight, a gun gets pulled, the boyfriend dies, Tommy sees everything, he stops speaking, he loses his sight, he loses his hearing. And he learns to play the pinball, beautifully. I knew the songs "See Me Feel Me Touch Me Heal Me" and I knew "Pinball Wizard." But this was my first time experiencing the show in its entirety. And the cast was terrific. It was moving to see the boy with his scarred childhood, not only with the witnessing the homicide, but also when his own uncle molests him, following his shift to not seeing not hearing not talking, then rise like a phoenix and become a pinball wizard. And even emerge from his condition. I was happy for this, because the boy who played the young man version of Tommy was in fact a great singer. He was well matched by the pre-teen and the young child actors who also played the character. This was a really great production.
Verdi Requiem- I was getting Coronavirus Dread by the time I made it to the March 8th performance of Verdi Requiem. It was everywhere. It was not a hoax. The President was shooting himself in the foot at this point by trying to propagate the obvious lie that this was not real, that it was propped up by the media. But I was happy to get to see the concert, performed with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and the Handel Oratorio Society, at the Centennial Hall on the campus of Augustana College, on a mild Sunday afternoon in early March. There was abundant coughing. But they got it done. They narrowly got this performance in front of close to 1,500 people, with crammed singers, soloists, and instrumentalists up onto the stage just days before WHO declared COVID not merely an epidemic but a pandemic. Already, Dr. Hurty wasn't shaking hands, but they tossed him his bouquet of flowers and waved.
Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story at Lewistown Community High School. I remember watching Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story with the same sense of watching the gloaming, the nocturne, the twilight of an institution that I love as I was watching Austria fall to Germany in The Sound of Music. When Captain Von Trapp did his solo rendition of "Edelweiss" in front of Maria and the children, it was the final shout of a defiant Austrian who would flee the country with his wife and seven children before staying to accept an assignment aboard a naval ship for NAZI Germany. COVID is like NAZIs, populating too fast, taking over the planet. So watching Kennedy Sidwell perform sweetly as Cinderella, Madelynn Wilcox and Brenna Clark as the stepsisters, Andrew Rice as the Prince, Caleb Keithley as the King, Bridgette Evans as the Queen, Josey Moore as the Fairy Godmother, Kaeli Spotloe as the storyteller, Lydia Cripe, Isabella Cooper, and Aleah Grove as the maids, Leilah Wilcox as the Head Maid, and Brennan Grove as the Prince's sidekick was like watching a way of life get one last gasp before it would disappear for weeks, perhaps months. We didn't know how bad it was going to get. But we did know at that point that it was bad, and nothing was turning it around. Governor Pritzker had ordered no crowds of larger than 250 people to gather in the state of Illinois as of Thursday, March 12th. This was the night I went to Music Guild to do a write-up of The Secret Garden for the website. I didn't even know until the next day, March 13th, if we would have a performance at Lewistown. I got the text from the school board that we were allowed to attend one performance, they'd be counting 250 people, and we were to seat in only every other row. The very early days of 2020 were spent shuttling between the High School for practice with the adults (er teenagers) and the grade school with the children, who were great. They practiced so hard. They reached such an accomplished level of skill. It would have been a travesty not to get to do the show. But those would have been the orders handed down from on high. Was relieved we got to put this one on.
Other live entertainment from 2020:
Does a Trivia Bowl qualify as live entertainment? Since the music is all on the computer? I went to the Lewistown High School Trivia Bowl in support of the band's planned trip to Florida. It was at the VFW Hall in Lewistown in late January. I got to hear some new music, and some old music that I haven't heard in a while. "Steal Away" by Robbie Dupree was the big Easter Egg that came out of that.
I also attended the Musical Theatre Trivia Bowl at the Spotlight Theatre in Moline in September. Brent Tubbs performed a few bars of music live, between questions. That constitutes live performance.
During COVID, I saw Jim Waddell's One Man Show of Mark Twain at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. That was the only live performance I saw in person over the summer.
On the Zoom, I got to participate in a Genesius Guild live reading of Iphogenia. That was a lot of fun.
On the Zoom, I also got to participate in a stage reading of George Orwell's 1984, the dramatization, in August. I was the person who read the stage notes.
On the Zoom, I was able to read the part of Peter in Don Faust's live reading of For the Love of Peter in November.
I saw a Socially Distanced production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Speakeasy in Rock Island in October. I was familiar with the show. The music was good. The banter was appropriately bawdy and off-the-cuff. The cast pulled it off by wearing masks when they weren't singing, and it actually worked pretty well, since some of the characters in Frank - N - Furter's castle are supposed to in fact be creepy and mysterious.
I watched Augustana College Theater's production of The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe on Zoom in early November as well. It happened to be the same night as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered their victory speeches, so truth be told, I was a bit distracted by the history taking place on the television. It led to some cognitive dissonance for me. Seeing a play that spoke to the four-year-previous moment, about a man (played here by a woman) who sells his soul to the devil in an effort to ascend in power. And how the devil comes to collect on the debt.
But then there was so much hope and promise on the television while I was internalizing the suspense, strife and agony on the computer monitor.
Tommy was the big new musical discovery of 2020 for me, along with The Wedding Singer. At some point, I will do a whole entry dedicated to the new musical discovery I have made for each year of my being a theatre fan. I am determined to still find a new musical to enjoy or even fall in love with in 2021. Even if I'm watching it on my laptop. Even if I'm downloading the soundtrack on Amazon Music or iTunes. Even if I am learning about it through a Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet performance.