"Frost/Nixon" opens Friday at Corn Stock Theatre

Given the complex and challenging task "Frost/Nixon" director Ryan Campen has undertaken, he's nothing if not adventurous.

The young Bradley University graduate previously directed the romantic comedy "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," for Peoria Players. It was his first stint as director.

Corn Stock Theatre's upcoming production of "Frost/Nixon" will be his second.

"Well, the first one was a rom-com," he said, laughing. "This is a little more of a challenge."

No kidding.

"Frost/Nixon" is Corn Stock Theatre's final offering of its successful 2012-2013 Winter Playhouse season. The play begins its two-weekend run on Friday.

Peter Morgan's Tony Award-winning play tells the story leading up to and including the famous interviews British journalist David Frost did with Richard Nixon in 1977, three years after the controversial president resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Actor Frank Langella won best actor Tony Award for his Broadway performance as Nixon and was nominated for a best actor Oscar for the movie by the same name. British actor Michael Sheen portrayed Frost.

Those are big shoes to fill. And Campen, 33, believes he's found the perfect actors to fill them.

"It's a psychological drama that really rises and falls on its cast," he said. "And we got lucky. Paul Gordon (who plays Richard Nixon) really nails it. In fact, this will be the role he will be known for the rest of his life. He's that good. Paul really captures the spirit and determination of Nixon, while bringing a bit of himself to the role as well."

Campen said Gordon had to shave his longtime facial hair for the role. "We did our first dress rehearsal and I was stunned. In full costume and make-up, Paul literally becomes Richard Nixon. It's really quite amazing."

Andrew Harrison plays Frost, the British journalist who scored the fascinating interviews that helped cement Nixon's reputation and character for a generation.

"The interplay between Paul and Andrew is wonderful," Campen said. "They play off of each other very well. The entire cast is incredibly strong. We had a number of quality auditions, so it made my job pretty easy."

The production will use live video as well as live acting, he said. "We'll be showing video throughout the play. For instance, it starts with the video of Nixon resigning. I think it works very well."

Campen said it was a real challenge to stage the play in such an intimate surrounding. "One minute, you're on a plane over the Atlantic. And the next, you're sitting in an office. It was interesting, but I think we pulled it off."

The production at Corn Stock Theatre's Winter Playhouse in upper Bradley Park will be Friday, March 8 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, March 9 at 7:30; Sunday, March 10 at 2:30 p.m.; Friday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday March 16 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students. They can be ordered by calling 676-2196.

Cast list: Richard Nixon (Paul Gordon), David Frost (Andrew T. Harrison), James Reston (Sean Howell), Jack Brennan (Tim Wyman), John Birt (Blake Stubbs), Bob Zelnick (Ryan Simpson), Caroline Cushing (Kerri Rae Hinman), Swifty Lazar (Michael Wohl), Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Coombs) and Evonne Goolagong (Krystal Uhl).

CAPTION: (Photo by Blake Stubbs) Paul Gordon portrays Richard Nixon, the only president who ever resigned from office, in the Corn Stock Theatre production of "Frost/Nixon," which opens Friday.

Priceless Prine brings storytelling genius to Peoria

One of the best singer-songwriters is the best because of his talent at storytelling: John Prine.

For decades, the one-time Chicago letter carrier has effectively blended observational genius of the past and present with a distinctive internal peace, if not a separate peace.

Prine, 66, who’s scheduled to appear at the Peoria Civic Center Theater at 8 p.m. March 15, has penned a lot of music and lyrics, and most of it is memorable and creditable – he won a Grammy in 2008 – but sometimes his contribution was underappreciated or even overlooked.

Remember his number “Paradise”?

“And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County/down by the Green River where paradise lay?”/”Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking/Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”

That’s a heartbreaking truth about Kentucky that few investigative journalists could deliver.

His 2010 record “In Person and On Stage” had that number, with vocal help from Kane Welch Kaplin, plus gems ranging from “Saddle in the Rain”  and “Long Monday”  to “Angel from Montgomery” (with Emmylou Harris) and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore” (which has become somehow relevant again with the rise of these Tea Party times).

But a personal favorite was his uncredited collaboration with the late Steve Goodman on “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” made famous by David Allen Coe.

The tale’s told that Goodman and Prine wanted to write the epitome of country & western tunes, and its first draft was wonderful – but not perfect. Remember?

“You don’t have to call me Waylon Jennings,/and you don’t have to call me Charlie Pride,/ and you don’t have to call me Merle Haddard anymore/even though you’re on my fightin’ side./And, I’ll hang around as long as you will let me,/ and I never minded standing in the rain,/ but you don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’./ You never even called me by my name.” But after realizing that the song seemed incomplete without references to Mama, trains, trucks, prison, or getting drunk, they added a verse and NAILED it:

“Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison,/ and I went to pick her up in the rain,/ but before I could get to the station in my pickup truck, she got run over by a damned old train.”

Prine’s recorded other live albums, such as 1988’s “John Prine Live” and 1997’s “Live on Tour,” but in concert is better.

Maybe the Peoria show will feature another Prine treasure, “The Other Side of Town,” about an everyday guy dealing with a complaining failed romance:

“My body’s in this room with you just catching hell/ while my soul is drinking beer down the road a spell./ You might think I’m listening to your grocery list,/ but I’m leaning on the jukebox and I’m about half ... way there.

“A clown puts his makeup on upside down/ so he wears a smile even when he wears a frown./ You might think I’m here when you put me down,/ but actually I’m on the other side of town. 

“I’m sittin’ on a chair just behind my ear/ playing dominoes and drinking some ice-cold beer./ When you get done talking I’ll come back downstairs/ and assume the body of the person you presume who cares.”

Internal peace.

Prine is priceless.

Here's some rare home video footage of John Prine and Johnny Cash (et al) performing "Ballad of a Teenage Queen":

A Short Story; A Long History: An Airmail Pilot's Wild Night Over Peoria

The young airmail pilot was falling head first when he pulled tightly on the rip cord and hoped for the best. Suddenly the risers whipped around with a jerk and the free falling weight at the bottom of the harness snapped back into an upright position. The chute was open. But a more precarious threat lay just below. The pilot placed the rip cord in his pocket and took out a flashlight. He pointed it downward. “The first indication that I was near ground was a gradual darkening of the space below,” he recalled. Time was running out.

Just minutes before, in desperation, the pilot was flying in circles over Peoria looking for a place to land. It was around 8 p.m. on November 3, 1926. A fueling mistake in St. Louis had drained the main tank of the refurbished Army DeHavilland sooner than expected and the reserve tank was just about tapped. An early November snow was falling and visibility of ground lights was less than a half-mile. The Peoria airstrip was only faintly visible. “Twice I could see lights on the ground and descended to less than 200 feet before they disappeared from view.”

With only minutes left in the reserve, the pilot steered the craft east hoping to find a clearing in the weather, but it was too late. At least he had made it to a less populated area. “I decided to leave the ship rather than land blindly.” So he jumped.  

The snow had turned to a light rain and the water-logged chute began to spin. It was too foggy to see but he could sense it. The ground was closing in. Then the chute stopped spinning just long enough to slow the descent. “I landed directly on a barbed wire fence without seeing it,” the pilot remembers.

Expecting the worst, he opened his eyes surprised to be unharmed. The fence helped break the fall and the thick khaki aviation suit kept the barbs from penetrating the skin. There wasn’t a scratch. The young aviator took his bundled parachute in hand and headed towards the nearest light. He found a road and followed it to a small town. From there he would try to determine where his plane ended up.

B.K. (Pete) Thompson, a farmer, had just entered the town’s general store and was sitting down to a friendly game of cards when a “tall, slim man” walked in.

“Anyone hear a plane crash?” the stranger asked. Thompson offered to help.

Together the two men, similar in age (early 20’s), climbed into the farmer’s Model T to search the country roads. “I’m an airmail pilot,” the stranger told Thompson and introduced himself as Charles Lindbergh. Thompson told Lindbergh he was in Covell, Illinois, about seven miles west of Bloomington. “I ran out a fuel over Peoria,” Lindbergh explained.

The search for wreckage was fruitless; it was too dark. “Can you give me a ride to the train station?” Lindbergh asked. The plan was to take a train to Chicago and a fly a new plane over the area in the morning. The ten-mile drive on the dark bumpy roads was treacherous and Lindbergh buckled down for the ride. “For a man who had just ditched an airplane,” Thompson recalled. “He sure held on for dear life.”

If you find the wreckage, Lindbergh explained, there is a 38-caliber revolver in the cockpit. “Guard the mail,” he told Thompson.

Thompson found the wreckage the next day less than 500 feet south of his house. The plane’s main landing gear had torn off at impact. The wings were completely gone but the metal frame of the fuselage and tail were still intact. One wheel had broken loose and covered a full hundred yards before crashing through a fence and resting - fully inflated - against the wall of a hog house.

The revolver was still there; right where the pilot had said it would be. And three large U.S. Air Mail bags were on board too – one was split open and slightly oiled, but still legible.  

Around mid-morning, the whir of an engine was heard overhead. It was Lindbergh. He landed the reserve plane in a field next to the wreckage and was treated to hearty fried chicken lunch “with all the trimmings” before loading up the airmail bags and heading back to Chicago to complete his route - some 24 hours late. But even the return trip was hampered by delays. “We spent about two hours trying to get the new plane started,” Thompson recalls. “Lindbergh and I keep pulling the propeller, but it must have been too cold.” Lindbergh had an idea. He went to the farmhouse and boiled 20 gallons of water to heat the radiator. “The engine kicked right over,” Thompson said.

Thompson never saw the slim man again face-to-face, but would read about his heroics in the paper the following year. That’s when he remembered what the young pilot had told him on the automobile trip to the train station that night. An idea Lindbergh had considered just months before on another mail run over Peoria. While flying placidly through the clouds, Lindbergh mused over the question of balancing weight, fuel and distance and found an answer. “It can be done and I’m thinking of trying it,” he said. Of course he was talking about crossing the Atlantic.

(Sources: Charles Lindbergh. “Spirit of St Louis” & “We;” A. Scott Berg. “Lindbergh;” Marion McClure. “Bloomington, Illinois Aviation- 1920, 1930, 1940.”)

Building a foundation

Where once stood a pile of rocks deep in the scrubby jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula now stands a foundation and four block walls – walls that will soon become a tiny Presbyterian church that will serve a handful of Mayans in Nuevo Durango for decades to come.

Eighteen of us, many members of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Peoria, returned home Saturday Feb. 23 from our annual weeklong mission trip sunburned, bruised and exhausted – but ultimately joyous and a little surprised at what we accomplished.

The structure in Nuevo Durango is our second church project in seven years. We finished a similar project last year in nearby Tres Reyes. Both villages are located on the Mexican peninsula about a hundred miles inland from Cancun. We also have done work on a school in Leona Vicario.

We were honored to be allowed to name the emerging church in Nuevo Durango. We settled on New Covenant Presbyterian Church, or Iglesia Presbiteriana Nuevo Pacto in Spanish.

In many ways, it was a typical mission trip. The team bonded early and worked hard together alongside our Mayan maestros, as they are called. These are men in the village who are experts at masonry and construction using time-honored Mayan methods (read: lots and lots of backbreaking work with few modern tools). The daytime weather was hot and sunny (mid-80s most days with stifling humidity) and the nights were comfortably cool.

In a nutshell, we had a blast. We spent our evenings after dinner entertaining the children of Leona Vicario, the Mexican town in which our base is located. I still have my temporary (I hope) tattoo that somehow landed on my upper arm last Wednesday night. The artwork has drawn a few stares at the gym, but no one has yet mentioned it. That's a bit of a bummer since I was prepared to tell an entertaining yarn about a wild and crazy night in a Mexican bar. (Not true, by the way. Honestly sweetheart. It's not.)

The only incident of note was when our Mexican host, Wilian of the Yucatan Peninsula Mission, was stung by a scorpion while digging around in some rocks. After a few scary minutes and a quick trip to the closest medical clinic, Wilian was fine. He reports it was his second such sting and shrugged it off with a smile.

Despite being in considerable pain, Wilian (also a Presbyterian minister) delivered a fiery sermon in Tres Reyes only four hours after being stung. The man totally rocks, trust me. But he really needs to start wearing gloves ...

Many of us spent evenings smoking cigars and laughing on the roof of our base villa. The skies are beautiful in that part of the world, and those nights remain some of the best of my life.

Next year, we are looking to form two 16-member groups that would go down separately. Anyone interested in joining a team should contact Northminster Church at 691-6322 for more information. Slots are limited. Church membership is not required, although a desire to help those less fortunate and a fairly decent work ethic are a must. Bring your own cigars.

Oh, and heavy leather work gloves. Scorpion stings are as rare as wasp stings in Illinois, but better safe than sorry.

CAPTIONS: Terry Towery and others from a Peoria mission group are shown building the foundation of a new church in a Mayan section of Mexico. The mission trip was Feb. 16 through 23.

Members of a Peoria mission group with their hosts in Nuevo Durango, Mexico, where the group built a small church on a recent trip.