Try Conquer and Cows, Then April Blooms
Mr. Hobbs, then Happy Days Ending?
Coming and going: If you want a taste of what 50-plus travelers saw on the Omaha Community Playhouse London theatre tour, catch the National Theatre’s production of She Stoops to Conquer, the Oliver Goldsmith comedy.
It runs 7 p.m. Thursday on several big screens from Oak View and Village Pointe to the Mary Riepma Ross Center in Lincoln. Or you could do a right-wing demonstration denouncing it all as another evil of European socialism.
Unless something opens unbeknownst to this poor cowboy, the only new show next weekend is Click, Clack, Moo…Cows That Type, an appealing title at the Rose. In April, we get a rare appearance of the disturbing musical Assassins at the University of Nebraska at Omaha with Ben Beck in Scott Glasser’s cast. And Moira Mangiameli directs Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at Iowa Western Community College east of Council Bluffs while the Playhouse brings back the Ken Ludwig comedy Lend Me a Tenor.
Next up in the Broadway series: Dick Holland’s favorite musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the last week in April at the Orpheum.
Then plan ahead to make history in May by attending the Happy Days musical at Chanticleer Community Theatre in CB. No patron saint has yet appeared to save the Franklin Avenue outfit from shutting down when the season ends.
A good-sized audience Friday night enjoyed Mr. Hobbs’ Vacation, with Tim Daugherty endearing in the Jimmy Stewart role, and well-supported by the rest of Gary Planck’s cast, including Denise Putnam as Mrs. Hobbs.
But it closed last weekend, so you may have only the Fonz and Richie Cunningham left to experience a 60-year-old theater that has brought happier days to the entire metro community. Norm Filbert did West Side Story before the Broadway tour even came to Omaha, and they did the only metroA production of the controversial Assassins now coming to UNO.
The Iowa West Foundation turned them down, but somebody with some Hawkeye clout should keep trying to shake that casino money loose to save the city’s only non-collegiate theater. I’ve seen Chanticleer productions that weren’t worth the trip, but the two attended this season were good enough to keep me coming back—if, as they used to say on “Laugh-In,” there is a next time.
Cold Cream looks at theater in the metro area. Email information to coldcream@thereader.com.
posted at 08:55 am
on Sunday, March 25th, 2012
