Greater Tuna

I'm going to keep my comments about the Idaho Shakespeare Festival's production of Greater Tuna relatively brief, because I reviewed Stagecoach Theater's production of it earlier this summer and I don't really think it's fair to invite comparison. Idaho Shakespeare Festival has a much larger budget for costumes and sets, so the production values were certainly greater. Moreover, Joe Golden and Tom Willmorth both belong to the Actors' Equity Association, the union for stage actors, so they get paid for their performances. I'll simply say that it was very funny and worthwhile going to.

But I've seen Greater Tuna three times now, and I think it's worth noting a couple of new things that ISF brought to the play -- again, not to invite comparison, but to point out some innovative strokes. One of them was a cool special effect that ISF was able to pull off -- the weatherman character, Harold Dean Latimer, is repeatedly struck by lightning. Another is the amount of miming that Golden and Willmorth do. All productions of Greater Tuna I've seen involve some amount of miming, especially when Bertha Bumiller has to shoo the dogs out of the house. Golden and Willmorth take it to an extreme, miming everything from dunking donuts to playing accordians and jugs to straddling a large dog and swatting it out the door. They pull it off with panache, using clear motions that made it obvious what they were doing and generating lots of laughs in the process.

As much as I loved seeing this show, for review purposes I wish I could have seen a different ISF production this year. I would have been more comfortable talking about the performances for another show. Plus it would have been nice to see some actual Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Festival. As good as ISF's non-Shakespeare productions are, I can't escape the feeling that seeing a musical or a contemporary play there is a little like ordering a hamburger at a Chinese restaurant.

Final Solutions

Last week I went to the Visual Arts Collective to see East Indian Follies' production of Final Solutions, about the aftermath of the Partition of India and Pakistan and the strife between Hindus and Muslims in India afterwards. I really wanted to like the play; I saw a production by East Indian Follies once before at a Community Theater Association of Idaho event that I really enjoyed. Sadly, I don't think I can recommend Final Solutions for my average reader here. It may be appreciated more by the Indian community in Boise, but for me it was a bit hard to get through.

Final Solutions has an interesting premise. It's after curfew in a city in India, there are riots in the streets, and a mob of Hindu men has chased two Muslims, Javed and Bobby, to the home of Ramnik, who takes the men into his house to protect them. Ramnik's mother Hardika, wife Aruna, and daughter Smita are all, to varying degrees, upset by his actions. Hardika lived through the Partition in 1947 and says that these people -- Muslims in general, not Javed and Bobby -- killed Ramnik's father. Aruna, unlike the liberal, agnostic Ramnik and Smita, is a devout Hindu and believes that Javed and Bobby are desecrating things like the family's water when they are allowed to touch it. And Smita knows Javed and Bobby, and knows that Javed has joined a group of Muslims who started the riot. The play explores prejudices, deep-seated grievances, and tenuous attempts to make peace.

Some of the performances were excellent, particularly Aruna, played by Chandrika Anand, and Smita, played by Kavita Jayaraman. And the play has its share of powerful moments, such as when Bobby, played by Amit Gupta, grabs one of the gods from the family's Hindu shrine, and when Ramnik (Mouli Subramanian) and Smita confront Aruna and tell her that her religious prejudices make her no different than fanatics like Javed.

But unfortunately, the play gets bogged down. There are multiple flashbacks to when Hardika was a young woman, and there's also four men who appear periodically as a sort of Greek chorus, alternatively wearing the masks of Hindus and Muslims and chanting slogans repetitively. These continually interrupt the flow of the play and don't always add the dramatic tension they should, particularly since the woman playing young Hardika spoke in such a shrill, overwrought voice that it made it difficult sometimes to follow what she was saying. And the script goes from revelation to revelation, from big symbolic speech to big symbolic speech, trying to say too much and to say it with grandiose rhetoric. I think the real problem with the big speeches was that they led to an issue with timing. The characters delivered their speeches chock-full of dramatic pauses. The play should have been tightened up considerably -- it just went on too long. By the end of the three-hour production, I was exhausted.

Roundup

September

• Sept. 24-27: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents Greater Tuna, a satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores starring two men in 20 roles, at 7:30 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise.
• Sept. 25-27: Music Theatre of Idaho presents I Remember Mama, a musical about a Norwegian family's survival in the New World, at 7:30 at the Nampa Civic Center.
• Sept. 25, 27 and 28: East Indian Follies presents Final Solutions, a play about an Indian family that struggles with intergenerational ideas about religion, politics, history, and in particular the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, at the Visual Arts Collective just off Chinden behind the Woman of Steel Gallery in Garden City. The play runs Sept. 25 and 27 at 8:00 and Sept. 28 at 7:00.
• Sept. 26: Opera Idaho holds Puccini Martini Blast at the Arid Club at 7:00.
• Sept. 26: Daisy's Madhouse opens Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a look at the Peanuts gang and what happens when they go to high school and deal with drugs, violence and eating disorders, at 7:00 at Neurolux. The show continues Sept. 27 and Oct. 3-4 at 7:00 at Neurolux.
• Sept. 26: Prairie Dog Productions opens Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at 7:15 at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show continues at 2:00 Oct. 12 and 19 and at 7:15 on Sept. 27; Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 31; and Nov. 1.
• Sept. 28: Del Parkinson, a pianist for the Boise Philharmonic, will perform at 3:00 in the Morrison Center Recital Hall at BSU.
• Now through Oct. 7: Bhutanese Thanka paintings by artist Phurba Namgay are on display in the Visual Arts Center of the liberal arts building in Gallery 2 at BSU.
• Now through Oct. 12: "Waiting for the World to Change," Candace Nicol's exhibit of etchings, collapraphs and screenprints about growing up in a multicultural family and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 is on display at the Hatch Ballroom at BSU's Student Union Building.
• Now through October: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Gerri Sayler's exhibit Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• Now through Oct. 17: Robert Kantor's "The Hope Series," an exhibit of large-scale steel and mixed-media sculptures, is on display in the Visual Arts Center of the liberal arts building in Gallery 1 at BSU.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.
• Now through Nov. 9: The Boise Art Museum presents Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.

October

• Oct. 2, 4 & 5: Boise Open Studios Collective Organization holds its Open Studios Weekend from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Oct. 4-5. Attend the opening reception at the Idaho History Museum Oct. 2 during First Thursday to decide which studios to go to, or simply pick up a map and guide in that week's Boise Weekly.
• Oct. 2: Boise State Department of Theatre Arts presents Tragedy: A Tragedy, an absurdist comedy about a TV news team prepared to cover a tragedy that isn't happening. Performances are Oct. 2-4 and 8-11 at 7:30 and Oct. 5 and 12 at 2:00 in the Morrison Center Stage II, newly rechristened the Danny Peterson Theatre.
• Oct. 3: Opera Idaho holds Puccini Martini Blast at the Arid Club at 7:00.
• Oct. 3-5: Ballet Idaho presents Fall Collage of Classics, a selection of three diverse ballets: Mozart's A Little Night Music, Debussy's Clair de Lune and Footage, a salute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Performances are Oct. 3-4 at 8:00 and Oct. 4-5 at 2:00 in the BSU Special Events Center.
• Oct. 3: Knock 'Em Dead Dinner Theatre presents Ragtime, a musical combining Jewish folk music sounds, vaudeville and jazz to tell the story of a Latvian Jewish immigrant, an upscale white family, a Harlem musician, and historical figures such as Houdini, Booker T. Washington and Henry Ford. Show dates are Oct. 3-4, 9-11, 16-18, 23-25 and 30-31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8. Show times are 7:00 Thursdays and 8:00 Fridays and Saturdays; dinner is served at 7:00 Fridays and Saturdays. The theater is on Ninth Street between Front and Myrtle in Boise.
• Oct. 3: CAN-ACT presents Something's Afoot, a musical murder-mystery spoof about 10 people stranded at an isolated English country estate and who are killed off one by one in mysterious and amusing ways, at its new location at 214 Seventh Ave., Caldwell. Show times are 8:00 Oct. 3-4 and 10-11 and 2:00 Oct. 4; tickets for the show include a wine, cheese and chocolate tasting.
• Oct. 8: Boise Contemporary Theater presents God's Ear at the theater at 854 Fulton St. in Boise. A couple struggles to find themselves and each other in the wake of a family tragedy in this show that includes appearances from the Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant. Show dates are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 8:00 and 18 and 25 at 2:00.
• Oct. 8: Company of Fools presents Jack and the Beanstalk, the musical, at the Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. Performances are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 7 p.m., Oct. 12, 19 and 26 at 3:00 p.m. and Oct. 18 and 25 at 11 a.m.
• Oct. 10: Stage Coach Theatre opens Dark Rituals, a thriller about an anthropologist learning about the Native American legend of the windigo, a cannibalistic creature. She and her son and daughter-in-law find themselves forced to face supernatural elements, murder and ritual death. Show dates are Oct. 10-11, 16-19 and 23-25; show times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:00 Sunday. The theater is in the Hillcrest Shopping Center at Orchard and Overland in Boise.
• Oct. 10: Alley Repertory Theater opens Burial at Thebes, a contemporary version of Antigone written by Seamus Haney as a metaphor for security issues under the Bush administration. Performances are Oct. 10-11, 14, and 16-18 at 8:00 at the Visual Arts Collective on Osage St. behind the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden.
• Oct. 14: Big Band Swing Design of the Netherlands performs at 7:30 p.m. at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 17-18: The Boise Philharmonic will perform three pieces by Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony, at NNU's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa on Oct. 17 at 8:00 and at BSU's Morrison Center in Boise on Oct. 18 at 8:15.
• Oct. 17: Boise Little Theater opens The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style musical mystery by Rupert Holmes based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. During intermission, the audience gets to vote on who the murderer is. Show dates are Oct. 17-18, 23-26 and 29-31 and Nov. 1; show times are 8:00 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2:00 on Sunday and 7:30 on Wednesday. The theater is on Fort Street just off Broadway in Boise.
• Oct. 29: Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah performs Time Capsule: A Century of Dance at 7:30 at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 31: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a musical thriller by Stephen Sondheim about a murderous, vengeful barber and some suspicious meat pies. Shows are Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8 at 7:30 and Nov. 1 at 1:30 at the Nampa Civic Center.

Plaza Suite

Tonight and Saturday are the last two nights you'll get to see Plaza Suite at Boise Little Theater, so please, do yourself a favor and go.

The script consists of three vignettes, all of which take place in the same suite at the Plaza Hotel. Each scene is its own carefully crafted story, and the cast members tell them superbly.

Instead of saving the fireworks for the grand finale, Plaza Suite starts out with them. You can practically smell the sulfurous gunpowder and hear the crackles when Debra Southworth and Jeff Chapman, who play Karen and Sam Nash, clash about the affair Sam is having with his secretary on the day of (or maybe it's the day before) their anniversary, in the very room (or maybe it's the floor below) where they spent their honeymoon. But this is not a predictable argument. Karen is a little too permissive for Sam's taste, and Sam sometimes finds himself trying to goad his wife into excoriating him. At one point during the argument, after half-heartedly (but creatively -- it is Neil Simon) insulting Sam -- at his request -- Karen says, "I take back everything I said. You're a pussycat." Karen seems to recognize that if she makes a big scene, she'll make it easy for Sam to go off to his secretary, and she won't give him the satisfaction. Her refusal to play the game intrigues Sam, who starts to see something in his wife he's never seen before. Southworth and Chapman offer rapid-fire banter and a fascinating dynamic as a long-married couple on the rocks. This is the third time I've seen Southworth onstage, and each time is better than the last. I've never seen Chapman before, but he provided the perfect counterpoint to Southworth; I was not entirely surprised to see his impressive bio.

Next up, Muriel Tate (played by Helene Myers) stops by the hotel to visit her high school sweetheart Jesse Kiplinger (Jeremy Gugino), who grew up to be a famous Hollywood producer while she married another high school beau, raised three children and joined the PTA. I think this is the first time I've actually seen Myers onstage, and I'm glad I had the chance. She was perfect as Muriel, a jumble of raw nerves, descending quickly into the influence of starstruck awe, impetuousness, and far too many vodka stingers. Kiplinger for his part claims he wanted to see Muriel after the disappointments of his failed Hollywood marriages. He says he saw her picture in a newspaper photo of a PTA meeting and realized she was the uncorruptible woman he's been searching for. His claims are somewhat undercut by the amount of time his hand spends on her knee; it's clear he'd like to do some corrupting of his own. Gugino does an excellent job of drawing Muriel in. He and Myers have great chemistry throughout the scene.

In the final scene, Patti O'Hara and Andy Neill, who play Norma and Roy Hubley, try to convince their daughter, who's getting married that day, to come out of the hotel bathroom she's locked herself into. O'Hara, who was excellent when I saw her in Steel Magnolias last year, turns in another great performance, moving easily from strained, barely-held-in-check panic to manic shouts of "Don't you wave your broken arm at me!" to the almost crushing realization that her daughter is afraid of turning into her. I think Neill could have been a little angrier at times. He's a little too soft-spoken when he should be shouting, and it seems hard to believe he could be so angry as to intimidate his wife and back her up against the wall. But he portrays Roy's frustration well, and he has some great facial expressions that really add to some of the scene's moments of physical comedy. The scene has kind of a cheesy ending, but overall it's a nice way to cap off the rest of the evening.

The rest of the cast -- Zach Townsend, Larry Tingler and Allison Berglund -- round out the show nicely.

A few minor criticisms: Southworth and O'Hara both rushed through their phone conversations without providing quite enough time for the person on the other end of the line to respond. I recognize that watching someone listen to the other end of a phone conversation does not make for dynamic theater, but without the pauses the play loses some realism. I also found myself easily distracted by Southworth's semi-translucent gray rubber booties (those are galoshes? I picture the big knee-high black things) and the fact that Gugino's shoes, a topic of conversation at one point, didn't appear to be made of particularly nice leather (the two flaws in an otherwise well costumed show -- I coveted some of those dresses). But sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm a little borderline OCD about things like that (for instance, Chapman's sportcoat collar got partially turned up during the middle of the scene and I could not stop staring at it).

Roundup

September

• Sept. 12-13: The Boise Philharmonic will perform music by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Corigliano with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine at 8:00 Sept. 12 at Northwest Nazarene University's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa and 8:15 Sept. 13 at Boise State University's Morrison Center.
• Now through Sept. 13: Stage Coach Theatre presents Kitchen Witches, a comedy about two cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for 30 years who are forced by circumstance to share a cooking show produced by the long-suffering son of one of the women. It's all he can do to rein them in when the insults and the food start flying. Shows are Sept. 12-13 at the theater on Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. Times are 7:30 Thursdays and 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays.
• Now through Sept. 13: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Let's Murder Marsha, a comedy about a housewife who becomes convinced her husband is plotting to murder her and hatches a plan to thwart him, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Sept. 12-13. Times are 7:30 Fridays and Saturdays.
• Now through Sept. 14: The Boise Art Museum hosts Ties of Protection and Safe Keeping, an interactive braid sculpture by Oregon artist MK Guth. Woven into the sculpture are ribbons on which hundreds of people have written their answer to the question, "What is worth protecting?"
• Sept. 19: Refugee Tibetan monks will perform The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music and Dance at 7:30 at the College of Idaho.
• Sept. 19-20: The Langroise Trio (Geoffrey Trabichoff, David Johnson and Samuel Smith)will perform works by Schubert, Mozart, Bach and Idaho composer Jim Cockey's two string trios Sept. 19 at the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy in Boise and Sept. 20 at Langroise Recital Hall at the College of Idaho in Caldwell. Times are 7:30.
• Sept. 19: East Indian Follies opens Final Solutions, a play about an Indian family that struggles with intergenerational ideas about religion, politics, history, and in particular the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, at the Visual Arts Collective just off Chinden behind the Woman of Steel Gallery in Garden City. The play continues Sept. 20, 25 and 27 at 8:00 and Sept. 28 at 7:00.
• Sept. 19: Music Theatre of Idaho opens I Remember Mama, a musical about a Norwegian family's survival in the New World, at 7:30 at the Nampa Civic Center. The show continues Sept. 20 and 25-27 at 7:30 and Sept. 20 at 1:30.
• Sept. 20: The Trey McIntyre Project dance company performs at the Morrison Center at BSU at 8:00.
• Now through Sept. 20: Boise Little Theater presents Neil Simon's Plaza Suite at the theater on Broadway and Fort Street. Show dates are Sept. 12-13 and 18-20 at 8:00, Sept. 14 at 2:00 and Sept. 17 at 7:30.
• Sept. 23: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver reads her work at 7:30 at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street and Capitol Boulevard in Boise.
• Sept. 26: Daisy's Madhouse opens Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a look at the Peanuts gang and what happens when they go to high school and deal with drugs, violence and eating disorders, at 7:00 at Neurolux. The show continues Sept. 27 and Oct. 3-4 at 7:00 at Neurolux.
• Sept. 26: Prairie Dog Productions opens Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at 7:15 at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show continues at 2:00 Oct. 12 and 19 and at 7:15 on Sept. 27; Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 31; and Nov. 1.
• Sept. 26: Opera Idaho holds Puccini Martini Blast at the Arid Club at 7:00.
• Now through Sept. 27: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents Greater Tuna, a satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores starring two men in 20 roles, at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. The show continues Sept. 12-14, 17-21 and 24-27; times are 7:30 Wednesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sundays.
• Sept. 28: Del Parkinson, a pianist for the Boise Philharmonic, will perform at 3:00 in the Morrison Center Recital Hall at BSU.
• Now through Oct. 7: Bhutanese Thanka paintings by artist Phurba Namgay are on display in the Visual Arts Center of the liberal arts building in Gallery 2 at BSU.
• Now through Oct. 12: "Waiting for the World to Change," Candace Nicol's exhibit of etchings, collapraphs and screenprints about growing up in a multicultural family and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 is on display at the Hatch Ballroom at BSU's Student Union Building.
• Now through October: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Gerri Sayler's exhibit Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• Now through Oct. 17: Robert Kantor's "The Hope Series," an exhibit of large-scale steel and mixed-media sculptures, is on display in the Visual Arts Center of the liberal arts building in Gallery 1 at BSU.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.
• Now through Nov. 9: The Boise Art Museum presents Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.
  

October

• Oct. 2, 4 & 5: Boise Open Studios Collective Organization holds its Open Studios Weekend from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Oct. 4-5. Attend the opening reception at the Idaho History Museum Oct. 2 during First Thursday to decide which studios to go to, or simply pick up a map and guide in that week's Boise Weekly.
• Oct. 2: Boise State Department of Theatre Arts presents Tragedy: A Tragedy, an absurdist comedy about a TV news team prepared to cover a tragedy that isn't happening. Performances are Oct. 2-4 and 8-11 at 7:30 and Oct. 5 and 12 at 2:00 in the Morrison Center Stage II, newly rechristened the Danny Peterson Theatre.
• Oct. 3: Opera Idaho holds Puccini Martini Blast at the Arid Club at 7:00.
• Oct. 3-5: Ballet Idaho presents Fall Collage of Classics, a selection of three diverse ballets: Mozart's A Little Night Music, Debussy's Clair de Lune and Footage, a salute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Performances are Oct. 3-4 at 8:00 and Oct. 4-5 at 2:00 in the BSU Special Events Center.
• Oct. 3: Knock 'Em Dead Dinner Theatre presents Ragtime, a musical combining Jewish folk music sounds, vaudeville and jazz to tell the story of a Latvian Jewish immigrant, an upscale white family, a Harlem musician, and historical figures such as Houdini, Booker T. Washington and Henry Ford. Show dates are Oct. 3-4, 9-11, 16-18, 23-25 and 30-31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8. Show times are 7:00 Thursdays and 8:00 Fridays and Saturdays; dinner is served at 7:00 Fridays and Saturdays. The theater is on Ninth Street between Front and Myrtle in Boise.
• Oct. 3: CAN-ACT presents Something's Afoot, a musical murder-mystery spoof, at its new location at 214 Seventh Ave. in Caldwell. Show times are 8:00 Oct. 3-4 and 10-11 and 2:00 Oct. 4; tickets for the show include a wine, cheese and chocolate tasting.
• Oct. 8: Boise Contemporary Theater presents God's Ear at the theater at 854 Fulton St. in Boise. A couple struggles to find themselves and each other in the wake of a family tragedy in this show that includes appearances from the Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant. Show dates are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 8:00 and 18 and 25 at 2:00.
• Oct. 8: Company of Fools presents Jack and the Beanstalk, the musical, at the Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. Performances are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 7 p.m., Oct. 12, 19 and 26 at 3:00 p.m. and Oct. 18 and 25 at 11 a.m.
• Oct. 10: Stage Coach Theatre opens Dark Rituals, a thriller about an anthropologist learning about the Native American legend of the windigo, a cannibalistic creature. She and her son and daughter-in-law find themselves forced to face supernatural elements, murder and ritual death. Show dates are Oct. 10-11, 16-19 and 23-25; show times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:00 Sunday. The theater is in the Hillcrest Shopping Center at Orchard and Overland in Boise.
• Oct. 10: Alley Repertory Theater opens Burial at Thebes, a contemporary version of Antigone written by Seamus Haney as a metaphor for security issues under the Bush administration. Performances are Oct. 10-11, 14, and 16-18 at 8:00 at the Visual Arts Collective on Osage St. behind the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden.
• Oct. 14: Big Band Swing Design of the Netherlands performs at 7:30 p.m. at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 17-18: The Boise Philharmonic will perform three pieces by Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony, at NNU's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa on Oct. 17 at 8:00 and at BSU's Morrison Center in Boise on Oct. 18 at 8:15.
• Oct. 17: Boise Little Theater opens The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style musical mystery by Rupert Holmes based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. During intermission, the audience gets to vote on who the murderer is. Show dates are Oct. 17-18, 23-26 and 29-31 and Nov. 1; show times are 8:00 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2:00 on Sunday and 7:30 on Wednesday. The theater is on Fort Street just off Broadway in Boise.
• Oct. 29: Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah performs Time Capsule: A Century of Dance at 7:30 at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 31: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a musical thriller by Stephen Sondheim about a murderous, vengeful barber and some suspicious meat pies. Shows are Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8 at 7:30and Nov. 1 at 1:30 at the Nampa Civic Center.

Woman of Steel

The Woman of Steel Gallery is a little like the Lisk Gallery in that it's dedicated mainly to displaying the art of the gallery's owner, Irene Deely, so while the pieces themselves are dynamic, they don't always vary a lot from visit to visit. In fact, the sculpture I've sketched above -- of a steel mermaid with what look like old-fashioned car grilles for the chest and arms or wings, and hair cascading into a tangle of wires and light bulbs -- is one I'm pretty sure I've seen on both my visits there. This is not to say that Deely isn't prolific enough, but I understand much of her work is custom work for clients that never makes it into her gallery.

But Woman of Steel has a few more things to commend it and, in my humble opinion, make it worth visiting more frequently. One, of course, is the wine and cigar bar (a nice perk if you indulge in either, or, like me, both). And another is the impressive way the art is integrated into the building. If you go, be sure to pay attention to wall outlets, light fixtures and vent grates. Deely has put her touch on all of them, sneaking her twisting welded metal creations in throughout the exhibit space.

Woman of Steel is probably best known for Deely's sculpture of a roundhouse-kicking Statue of Liberty. The original is inside the gallery, and a larger-than-life version outside has just gone on a tour of military bases, an assistant welder told me. It's a fun piece, but I really like a lot of the other pieces inside -- particularly the mermaid I sketched above; a sculpture behind the bar like some arched stained-glass window full of intertwining circles; and a triptych of photos of the Boise area, including one I recognized of the leaf cutouts on the Capitol Terrace Parking Garage at 9th and Idaho in Boise, framed in a massive hinged metal frame about two inches thick.

Roundup

• Sept. 5-7: Art in the Park will have 265 artist booths in Julia Davis Park from 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
• Sept. 5-7: Laughing Stock Theatre Co. is performing The Compleat Works of Wllm Shakspr (abridged) at 6:00 at the Sun Valley Festival field, beside Our Lady of the Snows Church on Sun Valley Road.
• Sept. 5: Boise Little Theater opens Neil Simon's Plaza Suite at the theater on Broadway and Fort Street. The show continues Sept. 6, 11-13 and 18-20 at 8:00, Sept. 14 at 2:00 and Sept. 17 at 7:30.
• Sept. 5: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens Greater Tuna, a satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores starring two men in 20 roles, at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. The show continues Sept. 6-7, 10-14, 17-21 and 24-27; times are 7:30 Wednesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sundays.
• Sept. 5: Candace Nicol's exhibit of etchings, collapraphs and screenprints about growing up in a multicultural family and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 opens at the Hatch Ballroom at BSU's Student Union Building. The exhibit runs through Oct. 12.
• Sept. 12-13: The Boise Philharmonic will perform music by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Corigliano with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine at 8:00 Sept. 12 at Northwest Nazarene University's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa and 8:15 Sept. 13 at Boise State University's Morrison Center.
• Now through Sept. 13: Stage Coach Theatre presents Kitchen Witches, a comedy about two cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for 30 years who are forced by circumstance to share a cooking show produced by the long-suffering son of one of the women. It's all he can do to rein them in when the insults and the food start flying. Shows are Sept. 4-7 and 11-13 at the theater on Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. Times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 Sundays.
• Now through Sept. 13: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Let's Murder Marsha, a comedy about a housewife who becomes convinced her husband is plotting to murder her and hatches a plan to thwart him, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Sept. 5-6 and 12-13. Times are 7:30 Fridays and Saturdays and 6:30 Monday.
• Now through Sept. 14: The Boise Art Museum hosts Ties of Protection and Safe Keeping, an interactive braid sculpture by Oregon artist MK Guth. Woven into the sculpture are ribbons on which hundreds of people have written their answer to the question, "What is worth protecting?"
• Sept. 19: Refugee Tibetan monks will perform The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music and Dance at 7:30 at the College of Idaho.
• Sept. 19-20: The Langroise Trio (Geoffrey Trabichoff, David Johnson and Samuel Smith)will perform works by Schubert, Mozart, Bach and Idaho composer Jim Cockey's two string trios Sept. 19 at the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy in Boise and Sept. 20 at Langroise Recital Hall at the College of Idaho in Caldwell. Times are 7:30.
• Sept. 19: East Indian Follies opens Final Solutions, a play about an Indian family that struggles with intergenerational ideas about religion, politics, history, and in particular the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, at the Visual Arts Collective just off Chinden behind the Woman of Steel Gallery in Garden City. The play continues Sept. 20, 25 and 27 at 8:00 and Sept. 28 at 7:00.
• Sept. 19: Music Theatre of Idaho opens I Remember Mama, a musical about a Norwegian family's survival in the New World, at 7:30 at the Nampa Civic Center. The show continues Sept. 20 and 25-27 at 7:30 and Sept. 20 at 1:30.
• Sept. 20: The Trey McIntyre Project dance company performs at the Morrison Center at BSU at 8:00.
• Sept. 23: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver reads her work at 7:30 at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street and Capitol Boulevard in Boise.
• Sept. 26: Daisy's Madhouse opens Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a look at the Peanuts gang and what happens when they go to high school and deal with drugs, violence and eating disorders, at 7:00 at Neurolux. The show continues Sept. 27 and Oct. 3-4 at 7:00 at Neurolux.
• Sept. 26: Prairie Dog Productions opens Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at 7:15 at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show continues at 2:00 Oct. 12 and 19 and at 7:15 on Sept. 27; Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 31; and Nov. 1.
• Sept. 28: Del Parkinson, a pianist for the Boise Philharmonic, will perform at 3:00 in the Morrison Center Recital Hall at BSU.
• Now through October: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Gerri Sayler's exhibit Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• Now through October: Robert Kantor's "The Hope Series," an exhibit of large-scale steel and mixed-media sculptures, is on display in the liberal arts building Gallery 1 at BSU.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.
• Now through Nov. 9: The Boise Art Museum presents Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.