Roundup

• June 26: Last day of the 29th Annual Idaho Watercolor Society Juried Exhibition at the Student Union Gallery at Boise State University.
• June 27: Meridian Youth Theater opens Androcles and the Lion at the Meridian High School auditorium. The play, about a servant who pulls a thorn from a lion's paw and later meets the lion in the arena, runs June 27-29 at 1:00 and 3:30 each day.
• June 27-28: Boise State University Dancefest culminates in two evenings of Choreography Festival performances at 7:00 at the Morrison Center.
• June 28: Closing night of Daisy's Madhouse's production of Psycho Beach Party at 7:30 at the Neurolux. Chicklet is a typical California teen who wants desperately to fit in with the local surfer gang, but she has multiple personalities, including a dominatrix who's plotting world domination, that make it hard to make friends.
• June 28: The Boise Art Museum opens a new exhibit by illustrator, painter and sculptor Frederic Remington called Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions.
• June 28: Starlight Mountain Theatre opens Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues July 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 23, 26 and 29 and Aug. 1, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19 and 22. Times are 8:00.
• July 1: Company of Fools opens Violet, a coming of age story about a girl growing up in the Deep South during the early Civil Rights Movement who goes on a journey of self-discovery, at 7:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 2-4, 8-9, 13, 17, 24 and 29 at 7:00, July 20 at 2:00 and Aug. 2 at 8:00.
• July 5: Company of Fools opens Collected Stories, a tale about a short story writer and teacher and her hero-worshipping graduate student, at 8:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 6, 10, 15, 20, 23 and 31 at 7:00, July 11 and 18 at 8:00 and July 27 at 2:00.
• July 11: Stage Coach Theatre opens Greater Tuna at 8:15 at the theater at Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. This satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores stars two men in about 20 roles. The play continues July 12, 17-20 and 24-26. Times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 Sundays.
• July 11: Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim musical about what happens after "happily ever after" in several classic fairy tales, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. The play continues July 12-13, 15-16 and 24-26 and Aug. 7-8, 12-13, 16-17, 21-22, 26-27 and 30-31. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• July 12: Boise Art Museum opens an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach. (You better believe I'll be going to this one.)
• July 12: Starlight Mountain Theater opens Crazy for You, a musical about a stagestruck New York City playboy in a Nevada mining town, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues July 16, 19, 21, 24 and 30 and Aug. 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 20 and 23. Times are 8:00.
• July 12: Company of Fools opens Noises Off, a farce about a theater production gone haywire, with 17 false entrances, 73 flubbed lines, 46 miscues and a missing plate of sardines, at 8:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 16, 22, 27 and 30 at 7:00, July 19, 25 and 26 and Aug. 1 at 8:00, and July 13 and Aug. 3 at 2:00.
• July 17: Boise Little Theater opens The Pirates of Penzance Junior at 7:00 at the theater on Fort Street in Boise. The Gilbert & Sullivan musical about sentimental pirates, dim-witted young lovers and an eccentric major-general continues July 18-19 and 24-25 at 7:00 and July 20 and 26 at 7:00.
• Now through July 17: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents the musical comedy Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are June 26 and July 1, 3, 7, 10 and 17. Times are 8:00.
• Now through July 18: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents All's Well that Ends Well at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. A romantic comedy about a woman determined to track down her husband in war-torn Europe. Show dates are June 26-27 and July 1-2, 5, and 17-18. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Now through July 23: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival performs The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials, at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. Dates are June 28-29 and July 3-4, 19-20 and 22-23. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• July 31: Climbing Tree Productions opens Boys' Life at 8:00 at the Visual Arts Collective on 3638 Osage Street, Garden City, near the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden. The show runs Aug. 1-2 at 9 p.m.
• Now through Aug. 21: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are June 27 and 30, July 4, 9, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28 and 31, and Aug. 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21. Times are 8:00.
• 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.

Psycho Beach Party

They had me at the name.

I mean really, how can you go to something called "Psycho Beach Party" and not have fun? The name just sounds like good, campy fun -- and good, campy fun it was. It was like watching an MST3K of some goofy Teenage Werewolves Hit the Beach-type movie, with its absurd plot (really? Switching from one identity to another in Multiple Personality Disorder can be triggered by a common word?); its pointless, yet sort of enjoyable dance interludes; and its uninformed stereotypes of teenage kids and teenage slang as written by adults who want to create a hip, with-it movie, but have apparently lost all memory of high school (at least here the author, Charles Busch, seems to be in on the joke and parodying the teenage werewolf beach blanket movies).

The only real difference is that in Psycho Beach Party, the actors get both the cornball dialogue and the witty lines, instead of saving the witty lines for puppets. A sampling of the gems you're in for: "You have the sex drive of a marshmallow." "You have the most amazing eyelashes I've ever seen on any mammal." "I should get the Purple Heart just for being seen with you two."

There were a few drawbacks to holding the play in the Neurolux, the main one being that the venue's ventilation system makes it tough to hear performers that aren't using amps. Most of the time the actors did just fine projecting their voices, but there were a few moments that it was hard to hear -- most notably when the main character, Chicklet, played by Jacqueline Morales, has several personality shifts, one after another in immediate succession. They all have different voices, and Morales was having a hard time shifting her voice that quickly and keeping her volume up (not always an easy trick.)

This was a great ensemble cast. They worked well together, keeping the pace of the show moving quickly and creating some wonderful moments of physical comedy, notably the big kiss between Skip de Fabry and Derek Patterson; Morales, Sarah Handren and Angela DeRisio's "animal magnetism"; and John Gibbons, who played Mrs. Forrest in drag, waving around a jock strap.

Many of the characters are supposed to be typical teenagers and surfer dudes, so it's hard to call out many actors for their performances except Chicklet (whose jumps from eager Chicklet to seductive Anne Bowman were quite enjoyable), her bitchy friend Marvel Ann (DeRisio, who pulls off the queen-bee-gets-her-comeuppance storyline with aplomb), her Sartre and Nietzsche-quoting friend (Handren, who was eagerly and deliciously nerdy), and Gibbons (a guy in drag's always going to get laughs, but he got a lot. I suspect that he had a lot of friends in the audience. Still, he deserved the laughs even from strangers). These were the only characters in the script that got much character development -- and even they are stereotypes (tomboy, queen bee, nerdy friend ... uh ... overbearing, strangely mannish yet effeminate mother?). But they're campy, fun stereotypes. So go for the good, campy fun.

The Lisk Gallery

Last First Thursday I went to the Lisk Gallery since I hadn't been in for a while. Mostly, it was a good chance to refresh my memory.

Mark Lisk has some wonderful, warm color photos of sunsets over mountains and swirling waters, as well as some stunning black-and-whites of curving grasses and frothing waterfalls. One of my favorite pieces was The Subway, a photo of a subterranean channel cut by water, with greenish pools and dramatic swoops of reddish purple rock. The photos are crisp where they need to be, soft where they need to be.

I like the shapes of Jerri Lisk's brushed steel "canvases" almost as much as the pictures on them -- long, narrow rectangles and tiny squares. She uses simple shapes to evoke trees -- curving branches, knotty trunks and rounded evergreen cones -- and fiery reds, deep blues and cool greens. I like the pieces' stark shadows and echoing shapes.

Sadly, it's a static gallery. I feel like I've seen most of these pieces before -- and I know I've seen some of them before. It'll probably be a while until I go back again.

Andrea Merrell at BAM: A rant

I like the fact that the Boise Art Museum has exhibits from two Idaho artists in right now, Andrea Merrell (whose exhibit, Measure of Man, closes Sunday) and Gerri Sayler (whose instillation Ad Infinitum opened recently and will remain open until October).

But I was a little disappointed in the amount of space they gave to Andrea Merrell. Gerri Sayler got the entire back room, the one that leads out to the sculpture garden, with good reason: Her sculpture is simply enormous, and it needs the high ceilings of that room. Merrell got three smaller rooms, but frankly, I think she only needed the one small center room that leads from the lobby to Sayler's exhibit. Merrell's best work is on a small scale. There's nothing wrong with that. I found her tiny wall-mounted wooden squares with painted line carvings of absurdly contorted human forms to be quite charming. And her paper creations that sit in glass cases were also quite nice. They brought to mind the origami ladies my college roommate from Japan made for me from brightly patterned paper and toothpicks. That's a happy memory.

No, my problem is with the room to the north that I walked through to get to that part of Merrell's exhibit. That room was filled entirely with circles and squares. They weren't even particularly interestingly arranged circles and squares, in my opinion.

The circles and squares were also part of Merrell's exhibit, but I wondered how many of the special brownies Boise Art Museum staff had to consume before they deemed them to be great art.

Why, Boise Art Museum? Why did you fill an entire room full of circles and squares? Were there no other emerging artists in Idaho or outside the state who could have filled that room? I find that hard to believe. It made me angry because gallery space is precious, and I know a lot of talented emerging artists would give their eye teeth for that kind of exposure.

I cooled down enough after leaving the circle-and-square room to get a little enjoyment out of Merrell's contortionist carvings and paper cutouts. Then I poked my head into the third, southern room of her exhibit. More geometric shapes.

Bloody hell.

What I See

This is my rendering of Marsden Hartley's One Portrait of One Woman. I'm pretty sure about this one: It's definitely a symbolic portrait Hartley did of Gertrude Stein representing one of his cherished memories of her: the time she burned down a McDonald's for offering her a Coke when she asked for a hot cup of tea.

According to the museum's writeup next to the painting, this is actually a symbolic portrait of Gertrude Stein, but according to the museum writeup, the painting symbolizes Stein because the colors represent the countries she lived in, the teacup represents Stein's favorite beverage, the word "moi" indicates her sense of self-importance, and the arches and flames invoke some sort of unidentified ritual they shared.

I like my version better.

Last chance for Marsden Hartley

Sunday is your last chance to see Marsden Hartley at the Boise Art Museum, and if you like modern art, it's a trip worth taking. In most of his pieces you can tell what it's a still life of or what part of the country this is a landscape of (some in New Mexico, some in Maine), but in others it's interesting to see his art get less representational from one painting to the next. The display statement next to the piece I've done a rendering of above, Waterfall, 1910, noted that Hartley removed the horizon line from the painting, making it more abstract and harder to read as a landscape.

I'm not sure what it is about modern art, but people feel compelled to talk to you about their theories about it. I was just getting started going through the first room when a group of people came in, including one very loud woman. "Self-portrait?" she announced, standing in front of a breezy charcoal sketch by Hartley. "Hmm. He woke up and didn't comb his hair." Thanks, lady. I hadn't planned on a guided tour. Another guy came up to me after I had moved on from a colorful painting of a forest that I had studied for a couple minutes. "Excuse me," he said. "How many faces did you see in that painting?" I replied that I hadn't been looking for faces, and said I saw trees instead. I joked that I might have missed the forest, and asked him how many faces he saw. "I see two," he said, and went out of his way to point out the one he thought was most obvious -- one he claimed was lying on its side on the bottom of the painting. I think I saw what he must have established as the face's eye, but for the record, I still don't see any faces. I'm not sure if it was the same man or another one, but in the final room of the Marsden Hartley exhibit, a guy walked up to me and said, "Seems like he was real interested in death. Dead birds over there, a dead friend," he said, gesturing. "Dead fish."

Hartley has a great use of shape and color, and even his pencil and charcoal sketches were interestingly rendered, but the imp in me quickly decided that Eight Bells Folly: Memorial to Hart Crane was my favorite piece. It looks like a giant sea serpent eating a ship, while a 12-eyed beast lurking underwater looks on. But don't rely on my wacko theory. Go to the museum Sunday and make up your own.

Roundup

• June 20: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Chicago at 7:30 at the Nampa Civic Center. Chorus girl/murderesses Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly vie for the spotlight and the headlines. The show continues June 21 and 26-28 at 7:30, with a 1:30 matinee June 21.
• June 20-21: The Gene Harris Jazz Festival starts out Friday and Saturday with concerts from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Gene Harris Bandshell in Julia Davis Park featuring local artists and jazz camp students. On Friday evening it continues with a concert by Roy Haynes and Birds of a Feather at 8:00 at the Morrison Center.
• June 21: Idaho Dance Theatre holds its Summer Solstice event at 7:00 at the Breshear's home on 387 Knob Hill Court, Eagle. Live music by the Tracy Underwood Connection, with stilters and fire dancers performing at 10:00.
• June 21 and 28: Daisy's Madhouse presents Psycho Beach Party at 7:30 at the Neurolux. Chicklet is a typical California teen who wants desperately to fit in with the local surfer gang, but she has multiple personalities, including a dominatrix who's plotting world domination, that make it hard to make friends.
• Now through June 22: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Marsden Hartley's modern artwork, much of which are semi-abstract pieces based on the American Southwest, and Andrea Merrell's installation Measure of Man, which includes her interpretations of 14th century Italian fresco murals.
• Now through June 26: The 29th Annual Idaho Watercolor Society Juried Exhibition is held at the Student Union Gallery at Boise State University.
• June 27: Meridian Youth Theater opens Androcles and the Lion at the Meridian High School auditorium. The play, about a servant who pulls a thorn from a lion's paw and later meets the lion in the arena, runs June 27-29 at 1:00 and 3:30 each day.
• June 27-28: Boise State University Dancefest culminates in two evenings of Choreography Festival performances at 7:00 at the Morrison Center.
• June 28: The Boise Art Museum opens a new exhibit by illustrator, painter and sculptor Frederic Remington called Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions.
• June 28: Starlight Mountain Theatre opens Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues July 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 23, 26 and 29 and Aug. 1, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19 and 22. Times are 8:00.
• July 1: Company of Fools opens Violet, a coming of age story about a girl growing up in the Deep South during the early Civil Rights Movement who goes on a journey of self-discovery, at 7:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 2-4, 8-9, 13, 17, 24 and 29 at 7:00, July 20 at 2:00 and Aug. 2 at 8:00.
• July 5: Company of Fools opens Collected Stories, a tale about a short story writer and teacher and her hero-worshipping graduate student, at 8:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 6, 10, 15, 20, 23 and 31 at 7:00, July 11 and 18 at 8:00 and July 27 at 2:00.
• July 11: Stage Coach Theatre opens Greater Tuna at 8:15 at the theater at Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. This satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores stars two men in about 20 roles. The play continues July 12, 17-20 and 24-26. Times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 Sundays.
• July 11: Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim musical about what happens after "happily ever after" in several classic fairy tales, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. The play continues July 12-13, 15-16 and 24-26 and Aug. 7-8, 12-13, 16-17, 21-22, 26-27 and 30-31. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• July 12: Boise Art Museum opens an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach. (You better believe I'll be going to this one.)
• July 12: Starlight Mountain Theater opens Crazy for You, a musical about a stagestruck New York City playboy in a Nevada mining town, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues July 16, 19, 21, 24 and 30 and Aug. 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 20 and 23. Times are 8:00.
• July 12: Company of Fools opens Noises Off, a farce about a theater production gone haywire, with 17 false entrances, 73 flubbed lines, 46 miscues and a missing plate of sardines, at 8:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The play continues July 16, 22, 27 and 30 at 7:00, July 19, 25 and 26 and Aug. 1 at 8:00, and July 13 and Aug. 3 at 2:00.
• July 17: Boise Little Theater opens The Pirates of Penzance Junior at 7:00 at the theater on Fort Street in Boise. The Gilbert & Sullivan musical about sentimental pirates, dim-witted young lovers and an eccentric major-general continues July 18-19 and 24-25 at 7:00 and July 20 and 26 at 7:00.
• Now through July 17: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents the musical comedy Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are June 20, 23 and 26 and July 1, 3, 7, 10 and 17. Times are 8:00.
• Now through July 18: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents All's Well that Ends Well at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. A romantic comedy about a woman determined to track down her husband in war-torn Europe. Show dates are June 21-22, and 26-27, and July 1-2, 5, and 17-18. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Now through July 23: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival performs The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials, at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. Dates are June 19-20, 24-25 and 28-29 and July 3-4, 19-20 and 22-23. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Now through Aug. 21: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are June 19, 21, 27 and 30, July 4, 9, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28 and 31, and Aug. 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21. Times are 8:00.
• 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.

What I See

This is a sketch I did in colored pencil of a sculpture I spotted at the R. Grey Gallery on First Thursday. (I think I'll have to go back to sketching in pastels, as they seem to have scanned better; the only things I was really trying to capture here were the colors and the general shape of the markings, and most of the color was lost in the scan.) I thought the sculpture, cryptically named "Markings No. 3-X," could have been a few different things:

A new variation on crop circles.
An artistic treatise on tagger graffiti.
Deconstructing the Russkies: A Biography of a CIA Codebreaker in Mixed Media.

In fact, it was one of Thomas Mann's sculptures for his installation "Storm Cycle," which depicts the chaos of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina using photos and pieces of debris left by the storm. This particular piece illustrates the home inspection process in the weeks following the hurricane. Teams of contractors went from home to home, checking for damage and for bodies. When they completed the inspection, they spray-painted a large X on the side of the house. In one quadrant of the X they sprayed their initials; in another quadrant they sprayed the date; and in the other quadrants they noted whether bodies or pets were in the house.

The odd markings intrigued Mann, especially since they were often made in bright colors that set off the equally brightly painted homes of New Orleans.

Mann constructed his piece using five wooden boards painted a vivid green to replicate wooden siding. He used yellow spray paint to draw an X across the siding and partial markings in each quadrant. Then he mounted a compilation of eight photos he took of actual homes with these markings, and of the contractors making them, on the lower half of the sculpture and a miniature metal sculpture of one of the markings on the upper half of the sculpture.

Each piece in the installation had a miniature sculpture mounted in the top half, which serves as a small symbol of the larger piece. These miniature sculptures in particular are professionally done; there are excellent carvings of animals in pieces about the pets that were left behind in Katrina, and a lovely miniature replica of an angel Mann discovered in a destroyed church building. The larger pieces were hit and miss sometimes, but mostly hit -- I loved the colors in Markings, and I loved the blinking lights and frayed wires in "Power Down," a piece about the extended power outages in New Orleans. (I found a piece about the blue tarps used on buildings with damaged roofs less visually interesting, even though the story behind it was kind of interesting).

The use of actual debris added another layer to the experience. I recall one sculpture that was mounted on a piece of dirt-covered laminate cut from a countertop, to illustrate the grit that Katrina left everywhere. Using MREs and instant Taster's Choice packets added another layer to the visceral blue-tinted photos of crying men and women crowded in the Convention Center after the Superdome filled up in "Stranded."

But what really makes these pieces is not the art itself -- as good as the art often is -- but the combination of art and good storytelling. The sculptures each come with a long explanation of the meaning of the piece and the larger context in terms of the damage done by the hurricane and by delayed or inadequate relief efforts. It's part journalism, part diary entry. Each piece is a little slice of post-Katrina life.

Some of the best pieces contain both journalistic style records and personal tales. The written entry for "Power Down" talked about how folks had to use their own generators to rebuild so they could operate power tools, charge cell phones and cook dinner. Mann wrote about lending a generator to a friend who was still using it five months later -- power still had not been restored, and one major power provider, Entergy Corp., declared bankruptcy because so many of its poles, lines and transformer substations had been destroyed. Even a month without power was devastating, Mann wrote: "A month after the power goes down, your refrigerator has passed the science experiment phase and has entered the demonic wormhole arena."

Some pieces expose corruption and incompetence. The blue tarp piece talked about the inferior quality of the tarps used by FEMA contractors, which were destroyed when Hurricane Rita came through right after Katrina.

Some pieces shed light on daily acts of heroism and of individuals making the best of this new world. Through Mann's storytelling, we meet a dog called Wall Street and the woman who saw to it that he was fed every day; an artist named Chris Cressione who had covered his car with other people's refrigerator magnets; and a hero, Paul Guerra, who drove stranded neighbors to the Superdome in his 7-ton truck and later drove them from the Superdome to the airport.

There's less than two dozen pieces in "Storm Cycle," but give yourself plenty of time if you go to see it. You'll want to read every word.

Roundup

• June 12-14: Stage Coach Theatre's production of Moon Over the Brewery at the theater in Hillcrest Shopping Center at Orchard and Overland. The play is about a 13-year-old girl and her imaginary friend and their efforts to sabotage her mom's dates with new boyfriends. Show times are 7:30 Thursday and 8:15 Friday-Saturday.
• June 12-14: CAN-ACT presents The Odd Couple -- Female Version by Neil Simon at 603 Everett St., Caldwell. Show times are 7:00 Thursday and 8:00 Friday-Saturday.
• June 12-14: Knock 'em Dead Dinner Theater is producing Jake's Women, a Neil Simon comedy, at the theater on Ninth Street. Show times are 7:00 Thursdays, 7:00 for dinner Fridays and Saturdays and 8:00 without dinner Fridays and Saturdays.
• June 13: Opera Idaho hosts Opera Under the Stars at 7:00 at the Idaho Botanical Gardens. The resident singers will be performing hits from the Met and Broadway.
• June 14: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials. It continues June 15, 19-20, 24-25 and 28-29 and July 3-4, 19-20 and 22-23. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• June 14: The Boise Art Museum opens a new exhibit by Gerri Sayler called Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• June 14: Starlight Mountain Theatre opens Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues June 19, 21, 27 and 30, July 4, 9, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28 and 31, and Aug. 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21. Times are 8:00.
• June 20: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Chicago at 7:30. Chorus girl/murderesses Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly vie for the spotlight and the headlines. The show continues June 21 and 26-28 at 7:30, with a 1:30 matinee June 21.
• June 21: Idaho Dance Theatre holds its Summer Solstice event at 7:00 at the Breshear's home on 387 Knob Hill Court, Eagle. Live music by the Tracy Underwood Connection, with stilters and fire dancers performing at 10:00.
• Now through June 22: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Marsden Hartley's modern artwork, much of which are semi-abstract pieces based on the American Southwest, and Andrea Merrell's installation Measure of Man, which includes her interpretations of 14th century Italian fresco murals.
• Now through June 26: The 29th Annual Idaho Watercolor Society Juried Exhibition is held at the Student Union Gallery at Boise State University.
• June 27: Meridian Youth Theater opens Androcles and the Lion at the Meridian High School auditorium. The play runs June 27-29 at 1:00 and 3:30 each day.
• June 28: The Boise Art Museum opens a new exhibit by illustrator, painter and sculptor Frederic Remington called Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions.
• June 28: Starlight Mountain Theatre opens Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues July 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 23, 26 and 29 and Aug. 1, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19 and 22. Times are 8:00.
• Now through July 17: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents the musical comedy Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are June 12-13, 16, 20, 23 and 26 and July 1, 3, 7, 10 and 17. Times are 8:00.
• Now through July 18: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents All's Well that Ends Well at the amphitheater on Warm Springs. A romantic comedy about a woman determined to track down her husband in war-torn Europe. Show dates are June 17-18, 21-22, and 26-27, and July 1-2, 5, and 17-18. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.

Moon over the Brewery

[Photo: Moon over the Brewery director Kim Labrum sits on the Stage Coach stage, which is painted to look like Starry Night in honor of the moonscapes painted by one of the characters in the play.]

Most imaginary friends don't hang around until you're 13 years old. But they do for Amanda Wazlyk, the heroine of Moon over the Brewery, now playing at Stage Coach Theatre.

On the surface, it's odd that a girl like Amanda would need an imaginary friend for that long. She's the most down-to-earth member of her family -- the opposite of her mother, a dreamy, artistic single parent. She balances her mom's checkbook, keeps her on a strict budget, and even handles business negotiations for the sale of her art. Her mom calls her "the Young Republican." And it's not just a case of denied childhood, of Amanda being forced too early into a responsible role by her mother's flightiness and acting out her childish impulses through her imaginary friend. Amanda seems to relish her grown-up role.

No, Amanda's imaginary friend Randolph shows up for one and only one thing -- to help humiliate and drive away her mother's boyfriends. But she and Randolph both meet their match in Warren Zimmerman, a mailman who's been eating for years at the diner where Amanda's mother Miriam waitresses. Despite Amanda's reluctance, he begins to charm her with his tales of wrestling a drunk alligator and his stories about their semi-famous neighbors, and Amanda finds herself torn between wanting to get rid of Warren like her mother's other suitors, who she and Randolph always deem unworthy, and wanting to hold back and allow her mother's relationship blossom just this once.

The script is funny, with tons of witty dialogue, but it's pulled off by the excellent acting. Thirteen-year-old Marissa Jerome plays Amanda beautifully and naturally, going from playing malicious cat-and-mouse games with Warren, to sullenness when he seems to be beating her at her own game, to angry outbursts, to genuine sorrow and guilt, and even affection. Her final scene with Randolph had the audience sniffling.

Kevin Labrum brings panache to his role as Randolph, who is Amanda's perfect man -- a snazzy dresser, witty conversant and brilliant strategist -- and, we later find, a very needy imaginary friend. Even perfection wears out its welcome.

Nichole Stull does a marvelous job as Miriam, creating a fascinating mother-daughter dynamic with Amanda and a sweet but complicated chemistry with Warren, played charmingly by David Rodarte. Amanda may be at the center of the story, but it's delightful to see these two in their own scenes with their own conflicts. Rodarte and Stull really make their characters come alive with little touches. Stull has expressive movements, particularly in a nervous scene where she attempts to have a sex talk with Amanda. As for Rodarte, I imagine the italics in the script would just have said, "Warren giggles inappropriately" at several points throughout the play. That doesn't begin to tell you how funny it was when he actually did it.

Stull's character Miriam paints moonlit landscapes. Several of these are scattered throughout the set, and it bears mentioning that they're done with some real talent -- not to mention the floor of the stage itself, which is painted to look like Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Also worth mentioning is the blocking of the play. It comes as no surprise that there's some swashbuckling -- if there's a rapier on the coffee table, it's bound to get used -- but it's got extra challenges to it, since it's between Randolph and Warren, who can't see Randolph and has to at least look like he's taking his cues from Amanda's eye movements. It's to first-time director Kim Labrum's credit that it was so well-choreographed. There are other nicely choreographed moments throughout the play, though to call some of them out here would be to give away too much -- but in each scene the movements seemed natural and fluid. Kim Labrum did an excellent job directing both the performances and the stagecraft. She and Kevin Labrum both had their directorial debuts at Stage Coach this season -- he directed the excellent drama Spinning into Butter about dealing with racism on a university campus -- and I look forward to seeing more from these two in the future.

First Thursday

First Thursday is tomorrow. Pick up a copy of the Boise Weekly for a map of Boise galleries.

Here's the BW's list of galleries and other art showings:

• Art Source Gallery -- 1015 W. Main St. Seventh annual National Juried Exhibition.
• Basement Gallery -- 928 Main St. Fred Choate, Deanna Eveland, Nancy Brossman, Michael Margulies, Scott Brown and Matthew Jordan.
• Boise Art Glass Studios -- 530 W. Myrtle St. Live glass blowing demonstration.
• Boise Art Museum -- 670 S. Julia Davis Dr. Gerri Sayler will talk about her work in progress, Ad Infinitum, and you can create your own hanging sculpture.
• Brown's Gallery -- 1022 W. Main St. "June's in Bloom," an exhibit of florals, gardens and landscapes from several artists.
• The Deluxe -- 214 N. Ninth St. Photo prints of the Oregon coast by Brad Parker.
• The Fixx Coffee Shop -- 224 N. 10th St. "Deterioration," an exhibit by photographers David Day and Samantha Laurman.
• Flying M -- 500 W. Idaho St. Colleen Morgan has repurposed hardbound book covers into art.
• Gallery 601 -- 211 N. 10th St. "Art for the Animals" silent auction of framed art benefiting the Idaho Humane Society.
• Holland Gallery -- 409 S. Eighth St. Oil paintings of Western scenes and figure paintings by Gary Holland and Mark Davis.
• Krakoosh -- 1404 W. Idaho St. Oils on recycled materials by Trevor Huff.
• Lisk Gallery -- 850 Main St. Desert and wilderness landscapes by photographer Mark Lisk and tree shapes and colored hills by painter Jerri Lisk.
• The Melting Pot -- 200 N. Sixth St. Amelia Berg's storytelling photographs.
• Piazza di Vino -- 212 N. Ninth St. Works by Italian artist Giuseppe Saitta.
• R. Grey Gallery -- 415 S. Eighth St. "Storm Cycle," an exhibit by New Orleans artist Thomas Mann created from debris gathered in the streets after Hurricane Katrina.
• Urban Outfitters -- 328 S. Eighth St. The store will have a new installment in its Community Artist Series.
• Zeppole -- 217 N. Eighth St. Kim Ellsworth and Melanie Burke's photographs of Boise bridges and abandoned buildings.

The BW also lists a couple places with musicians playing for First Thursday:

• Artisan Carpets -- 101 S. 15th St. Classical guitarist.
• Basque Museum -- 611 Grove St. Basque musicians jam session.