New Lincoln Community Playhouse booklist - Little Shop of Horrors!

The 1982 dark comedy musical Little Shop of Horrors is currently on stage (Sep 22-Oct 1, 2023) at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, neighbor to the Lincoln City Libraries' own Gere Branch Library. As we usually do, a new booklist was created to accompany a book display at the Gere Branch, featuring books that should appeal to fans of murderous singing plants from outer space.

The booklist includes books and DVDs/Streaming videos that are similar in nature to the style of this musical, as well as materials about rare plants. This booklist also includes a little history of this play, plus descriptive blurbs and catalog hotlinks for each of the included books and DVDs.

You can "check out" this comedic booklist at the following hotlinks:

Little Shop of Horrors

DVD/Movie Review: My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary starring Bob Hope

My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary
starring Bob Hope (DVD My)

While recently working on the comedic play “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940” at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, I was inspired to watch two classic Bob Hope comedy dramas, which served as inspiration for that wacky mystery/farce play.

 

My Favorite Brunette (1947) featured Hope as mild-mannered children’s photographer Ronnie Jackson, who envies the private eye who operates out of the office next door to his. When that P.I. is absent, Ronnie ends up taking one of his cases, after misrepresenting himself, and soon finds himself up to his armpits in thugs, femmes fatales, and gun-toting goons. Because the film opens with Ronnie being led to the executioner’s chamber on Death Row and relating his adventures in flashback, we now that things didn’t go his way. That’s what you get for pretending to be something you’re not!

 

The Cat and the Canary (1939) is a more direct thematic predecessor of “The Music Comedy Murders of 1940”, with Hope as Wally Campbell, one of several people named in the will of an eccentric man who died 10 years earlier. The will requires that all the people named in it must journey to the swampy estate in the Bayou, where the man used to live. The primary heiress, Joyce Norman (played by frequent Hope co-star Paulette Goddard) must live for a week in the estate, without being driven insane, in order to fully inherit.

 

This triggers a madcap series of wacky events, involving hidden doorways and passageways, creepy spooks, other jealous relatives, a woman who may or may not be a witch, and maybe even paranormal hijinks.

 

Both films are classic comedian Bob Hope at his wimpy, sarcastic, snarky, break-the-fourth-wall best. Anyone who’s ever seen and enjoyed Hope and his friend Bing Crosby in their series of “The Road to…” movies will definitely enjoy both of these films. The libraries own My Favorite Brunette on DVD. The Cat and the Canary is available to borrow on DVD through our InterLibrary Loan service, but it is also available to watch for free on YouTube (with commercial interruptions). Both movies are short — under 90 minutes each!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the stage play The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for My Favorite Brunette ) | ( Internet Movie Database entry for The Cat and the Canary )

 

See the booklist page for the Lincoln Community Playhouse: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 here on BookGuide, for additional similar items!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Lincoln Community Playhouse booklist on BookGuide for The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940

The 1987 mystery-comedy-farce The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is currently on stage (May 5-14, 2023) at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, neighbor to the Lincoln City Libraries' own Gere Branch Library. As we usually do, a new booklist was created to accompany a book display at the Gere Branch, featuring books that should appeal to fans of funny bit of mayhem.

The booklist includes book books and DVDs/Streaming videos that are similar in nature to the style of this play. But it also includes personal recommendations from the various cast and crew members who are involved in putting on this particular production. This booklist includes a little history of this play, plus descriptive blurbs and catalog hotlinks for each of the included books and DVDs.

You can "check out"this comedic booklist at the following hotlinks:

The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940

New Lincoln Community Playhouse Booklist on BookGuide for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

  

The classic 1979 Broadway hit Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is currently on stage (March 10-19) at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, neighbor to the Lincoln City Libraries' own Gere Branch Library. As we usually do, a new booklist was created to accompany a book display at the Gere Branch, featuring books that should appeal to fans of this macabre masterpiece from Stephen Sondheim.

The booklist is available in two formats -- a simple single-page PDF listing titles only, and a more elaborate web page featuring a description of the history of this musical, plus descriptive blurbs and catalog hotlinks for each of the included books, CDs and DVDs (and this version has a few more titles than the shorter form).

You can "check out" these two variations on the Sweeney Todd booklist at the following hotlinks:

Sweeney Todd (1 page - printer-friendly)

Sweeney Todd (more detailed, web-based)

New Lincoln Community Playhouse Booklist - Almost, Maine

 

In November, the Lincoln Community Playhouse featured a production of John Cariani's play "Almost, Maine". Unfortunately, the run was interrupted by increases in local cases of COVID-19, and they hope to return to complete the remaining performances sometime in early 2021. The following recommended reading/listening/viewing list was prepared by library staff to accompany this production.

Check out the list of books, CDs, and DVDs recommended at the following link: 

Almost, Maine -- Recommended Reading Booklist

New Lincoln Community Playhouse booklist - The Sunshine Boys

During March 2020, the Lincoln Community Playhouse featured a production of Neil Simon's classic comedy play "The Sunshine Boys". The following recommended reading/listening/viewing list was prepared by library staff to accompany this production.

Check out the list of books, CDs, and DVDs recommended at the following link: 

The Sunshine Boys -- Booklist

New Lincoln Community Playhouse booklist: An Oscar Wilde Festival

During late January and early February, 2020, the Lincoln Community Playhouse featured An Oscar Wilde Festival, which included Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" and the biographical play "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde" by Moises Kaufman. The following booklist was prepared by library staff to accompany this Wilde Festival.

Check out the list of titles recommended at the following link: 

An Oscar Wilde Festival -- Booklist

DVD Review: The Happy Prince

The Happy Prince
[DVD Happy]

I’ve been fascinated by Oscar Wilde ever since seeing a stage production of The Importance of Being Earnest directed by my father at Nebraska Wesleyan in my youth, and then stumbling across numerous witty and biting quotes attributed to Wilde over the years. He’s a giant figure in the world of English literature, despite having only a limited selection of written works, including the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Happy Prince is written and directed by actor Rupert Everett, who also stars in it as Wilde, in the final few years of his life. Despite his superstar status as a British playwright, Wilde ended up dying destitute and nearly friendless, in a cheap Parisian hotel. Wilde lived a non-traditional life, reveling in the arts and partaking in “beauty” in whatever forms he found it. In the case of his interpersonal relationships, this means he found both women and men to be beautiful and had relationships with both genders. It was his relationship with the younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas, that led to his downfall. He was accused of being a “posing sodomite” by Douglas’ father, The Marquess of Queensbury. When Wilde sued the Marquess for slander, it backfired on him, and his relationships with Lord Douglas and other young men were brought into the public eye, resulting in Wilde being convicted of “Gross Indecency” and sentenced to two years of hard labor. While in prison, he was injured — injuries that plagued him the rest of his relatively-short life. He was also abandoned by most of his friends and supporters, and his relationship with his wife and two sons was destroyed. In order to find someplace where he would not be hounded by the ghosts of his past, Wilde settled in Paris, but was never able to revitalize his writing career. This film covers those final years in Paris, with flashbacks to some of the times of his life in England, ultimately leading to the circumstances that culminated in his death at the age of 46.

This film is sumptuous to look at — the production design and costumes are superb. The performances are all quite excellent, particularly Everett as Wilde (though at 60 he appears too old as Wilde, in my opinion). I can only give this one a lukewarm recommendation, though — the pacing is irregular, and the plot is told by jumping back and forth in time in a way that provides for little sense of cohesion. The “Happy Prince” refers to an elaborate story Wilde shares, first with his two young sons, and later with two Parisian street urchins.

The Lincoln Community Playhouse will be producing an Oscar Wilde festival, with two concurrent plays in late January and early February — Wilde’s own play The Importance of Being Earnest will alternate performances with “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde”, a play written by Moises Kaufman about the real life of Oscar Wilde and the three court trials that led to his downfall, conviction and imprisonment. Auditions will be Sunday, November 24th and Monday, November 25th for both plays.

[Note: Wilde (and 50,000 others) was pardoned in 2017 with the passage of “The Policing and Crime Act” (a.k.a. “The Alan Turing Law”), which decriminalized same-sex relationships in England.]

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to track down the film Wilde (1997), starring Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde.] [Also sample Oscar Wilde’s body of work (novels, plays, essays) in traditional print and digital formats.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official The Happy Prince web site ] | [ Wikipedia page for Oscar Wilde ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Lincoln Community Playhouse Booklist: Ring of Fire

The Lincoln City Libraries created a new “recommended reading” list in association with the first 2019-2020 production at the Lincoln Community Playhouse – the musical Ring of Fire, based on the life and music of Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire opened this weekend (September 6 2019), and is being performed through September 22^nd 2019. Whether or not you see the show, you may find some books, CDs and DVDs on this list that will spur your interest!

Check out the list of recommended reading for fans of the Johnny Cash musical Ring of Fire, at the following link:

Ring of Fire

New Lincoln Community Playhouse Booklist

The Lincoln City Libraries created a new “recommended reading” list in association with the final 2018-2019 production at the Lincoln Community Playhouse – the Penguin Project version of the musical fantasy adventure “Wizard of Oz: (Young Performers Edition”, which was on their stage in June. Whether or not you saw the show, you may find some books and DVDs on this list that will spur your interest!

Click here for more information about The Penguin Project, in which theatrical productions are performed by children with special needs (Artist), partner with peer Mentors.

Check out the list of recommended reading for fans of The Wizard of Oz, at the following link:

Wizard of Oz: Young Performers edition