Perhaps they can consider themselves at home.
After several years of performing in various venues throughout the area, Fox Country Players returns to Waubonsee Valley Community College with its season-opener, the musical “Oliver!”
“We did perform at Waubonsee many years ago, it’s been over a decade,” Producer Jennifer Whittington said. “And we are so excited to be back. It’s a great space. The people there have been so welcoming and so great. We’re happy for this opportunity and hope it will be a great partnership.”
The classic Charles Dickens’ story of “Oliver Twist” told as a musical, “Oliver!” runs Oct. 16-18 in the auditorium at Waubonsee Community College’s Sugar Grove campus. Performances are at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Featuring well-known songs such as “Consider Yourself,” “As Long As He Needs Me” and “Food, Glorious Food,” the musical tells the tale of young orphan, Oliver, who after summoning the courage to ask for more gruel at the orphanage, is thrown out.
“He gets grouped in with a group of pickpockets, and it goes from there,” said Whittington, who is also president of Fox Country Players.
The production, she said, stays true to the script in how the story is told.
“I guess people expect a certain thing when they come to see it, and I think we’re giving them pretty much what they expect,” Whittington said. “It’s the traditional story, told in the 1800s. We’re doing the traditional version, and hopefully we can live up to expectations.”
Based out of Yorkville, Fox Country Players has performed at a variety of places in recent years, with the group’s most recent shows at Yorkville Congregational Church. There, as well as at other locations, they would set up a platform stage to perform.
“This is better, because it’s a real stage,” Whittington said. “Usually we just set up a makeshift stage, so this is clearly better. … A curtain is a total bonus.”
Tickets for “Oliver!” can be purchased online through Waubonsee Valley Community College at www.waubonseetickets.universitytickets.com/. Tickets will also be available at the door.
In the spring Fox Country Players will stage the musical “Next to Normal” at the college. After that, the group will reassess and “hopefully move forward with the partnership” with the college, Whittington said.
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Fox Country Players selected “Oliver!” for its fall production because the group wanted to get more youth involved in theater.
“For our first show at Waubonsee, we wanted to involve kids,” Whittington said. “We wanted to have something that involved kids because having kids in the production really brings out your community members.
“We wanted to get as many people as possible involved,” she said. “And with this many people in the cast, I think we achieved that.”
The cast features 48 actors, with 28 of them children. The youngest, she said, is 6 years old.
“With rehearsals in the evening, more than once we’ve had them fall asleep before the end of rehearsal,” she said of the younger cast members. “They’re working real hard,” she said. “But they’re having a good time too.”
Cast members come from throughout the Fox Valley and surrounding area. It’s been a long time since the theater group staged a production with this large of a cast.
“We’ve had a little bit of a challenge at times, getting the schedules to coincide,” Whittington said. “They say it takes a village, and community theater’s proved that for sure. It takes all hands on deck to pull this off. We’ve had a lot of help, and a lot of people coming together to make this work.”
It’s also been helpful that the cast and crew are able to rehearse on the stage where they will perform, she said.
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer.
‘Oliver!’
When: Friday-Sunday
Where: Waubonsee Valley Community College auditorium, 4S783 Route 47, Sugar Grove
Tickets: $20 adults; $15 students (to age 18) and seniors
Information: www.foxcountryplayers.org