Walls Bring Us Together: CTC goes musical with “The Fantasticks”

Posted inCulture

Walls Bring Us Together: CTC goes musical with “The Fantasticks”

Mike Bookey

The Fantasticks: Waving jazz hands for 40-plus years.Luisa is 16, "pretty for the first time," and quite insane. Matt is 20,
nerdy, and wondering what's beyond that road. Oh, and they're in love
and as close together as the wall their parents have literally built
between them allows. This isn't another Romeo and Juliet or Pyramus and
Thisbe, but The Fantasticks - the longest-running off-Broadway musical
(some 17,162 performances spanning 42 years), loosely based on Edmond
Rostand's Les Romanesques, and now available to hum along with at the
Cascades Theatrical Company.

Marking the middle of the CTC's 29th
season, The Fantasticks is a stage standard; dripping with nostalgia,
audiences lap up the escapism and the cast ever-cognizant that they are
part of history. Yet the CTC has again offered a twist: Director
Kymberli Colbourne has dared to alter the time-tested formula of The
Fantasticks by replacing the two meddling fathers (who built the wall
to manipulate their children) with two equally errant mothers. Bellomy
(Kimberlee Lear) and Hucklebee (Mandy Rockwell) bring new life to the
sometimes quaint script, while Jimena Romero as Luisa and Scott Carroll
as Matt never take themselves too seriously - which is most welcome
when watching a play nearly a half-century old.

Posted inMusic

Jamming Away the Cool: The unapologetic covers and improvisations of The Zen Tricksters

The Source Staff

Whatcha looking at? Did Jerry just drop out of the clouds?In the hip circle of music critics to which I pretend to belong,
admitting that you like jam bands is akin to wearing Velcro shoes in
public or showing off the collection of G.I. Joes you keep beneath your
bed - it isn't going to give you too many cool points. I like indie
rock, indie folk, indie power pop, indie hip-hop (indie, while once an
abbreviation of "independent," now seems to mean "cool") and a good
deal of other genres and styles, but I've held fast to my fascination
with the noodles and genre mashing only found in the poorly labeled
"jam band" arena.
Jeff Mattson plays guitar and sings in The Zen
Tricksters, a New York-based quartet with heavy Grateful Dead
influences and affiliations, and he too likes jam bands - probably
because he plays in one (two, actually). While Zen Tricksters has been
Mattson's band for the past couple of decades, he, along with the rest
of his band, also meet up and tour with former Dead vocalist Donna Jean
Godchaux McKay to form Donna Jean and the Tricksters.

Posted inCulture

Our Picks for the week of 1/31 – 2/6

Mike Bookey

Stand up Comedy Night – Wednesday 2/6

Randy Liedtke hosts the fourth and final installment of this local laugh factory before he moves his funny ass down to Los Angeles - we knew he was too good to last. So show up and send Liedtke off in style as the redheaded funny man plays his weird little keyboard thing and tells jokes about dogs pretending to be cats. 8:30pm. $10. Summit Saloon and Stage, 125 NW Oregon Ave., 749-2440.

Posted inNews

Vinyl…it just sounds better: Digging through the bins of the vinyl world

The Source Staff

In a corner of Brian Jones' bedroom there's a wooden trunk overflowing with LPs, many of which were recorded decades before the 22-year-old was even born. Iconic album covers, each 12 inches by 12 inches, cover one wall of the room. Jones is thumbing through his collection of more than 300 records (ranging from a comprehensive Beatles section to a wealth of semi-rare blues albums) in his Seattle apartment and is trying to tell me why these pieces of vinyl are so important to him.

"The presentation of the album is what got me excited. The visual
aspect of it - opening up the insert, holding it in your hand," Jones
says. "I think the process of actually shuffling through and pulling it
out and looking at the record, not just scrolling on a computer, is
what attracts me to vinyl."

Posted inNews

Unger vs. Daly: Redmond Mayor hops into the county commissioner race

The Source Staff

Last week, Redmond Mayor Alan Unger announced that he will be running
for a spot on the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners. Unger, a
Democrat who has served as Redmond's mayor since 2001, will be seeking
the seat currently held by Republican Mike Daly.

Unger, a lifelong
resident of Oregon, was actually born in the city of which he is now
mayor. Before taking the city's top office, he served on the Redmond
Area Planning Commission and was then elected to the Redmond City
Council.

Posted inOpinion

Environmental Bigfoot Found in LA

Joseph Oguiza

Beckham after learning he just poked a hole in the Ozone.Which human being has the biggest carbon footprint in the world? According to British environmentalists, it's soccer star David Beckham.

As reported in the UK's Daily Star newspaper, Beckham - who now plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy - won the dubious distinction largely because of the tremendous amount of jet-setting he does around the world.
"The amount of flying David does means he holds the dubious crown of having the largest carbon footprint in human history," said a spokesman for the Carbon Trust. "In the last year he has traveled more than 250,000 air miles, a length which could have taken him to the far side of the moon and beyond."

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