You've heard of history, illustrated? Well, this might be referred to as history, titilated.

Matt Coats, Shawn Measles, and Joe Moye open tonight at the Forbes House in downtown Marysville in a dinner entertainment to run each subsequent Thursday night through November.

From the authors of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) comes the hilarious, fast-paced satire called The Complete History of America (abridged). (Why tinker wih a succesful formula?)

In a series of sketches that move at breakneck speed, Matt, Shawn, and Joe scamper through American history cheerfully running riot over 500 years of our country's past.

Past reviewers have liked the work of zany authors Adam Long, Reed Martin, & Austin Tichenor.

"This History of America should be a required course.," opined Terry Byrne, of the Boston Herald.

History has never been this much fun. Or as delightfully mutilated.

The show is produced by The Acting Company Dinner Theater, with the permission of Broadway Play Publishing Inc.

Tickets for dinner and a show, $37.50; show and dessert only, $20. Call (530)742-3180 for reservations.

So far, Apollo Theater, Faith Christian School Players, Galena Street East, Creative Light Theater and The Acting Company are on board to perform in Way, Way, Way Off Broadway, Linda Plummer reports.

WWWOB set to open in mid-November promises to be a potpourri of showstopper acts, scenes and bits torn from the script pages of Broadway history

Area high schools have not returned from the summer break so we won't know about their involvement until Paul DeMerrit or Staci Johnson -- WWWOB co-directors -- have a chance to meet with them, said Plummer, who is a creative force at AdAgency.

Also, there is some discussion of turning a dress rehearsal before the opening into a special student show so young people can enjoy a behind-the-scenes view of musical theater without paying a hefty cost.

"We're thinking $5 per student," Plummer said.
The San Francisco Opera does something like this, but selling reduced tickets to the last dress rehearsal so less pecunious -- but just as hardcore -- opera fans can see the show without taking out second mortgage.

Plummer encouraged Stage Door Canteen to create a calendar of events lining out coming Yuba-Sutter theater productions --a spiffy idea.

The good news is that an event calendar like that is easy to describe. The bad news is ithe idea is unexpectedly hard to do.

Local theater companies, performing arts schools, dance studios and drama clubs are astonishingly vague about what they're planning and stingy with information about such important things such as expected show, audition, rehearal and performance times and dates, as well as the price and availability of tickets.

A cynic -- none around here, of course -- might suspect some members of Yuba-Sutter's relatively small thespian community were trying to keep everyone in the dark for as long as possible lest some crucial detail escape into the atmosphere and allow mysterious enemy forces to gain a march on them. All of which represents corporate, not community thinking.

But we'll do what we can on assembling a fall season calendar. Those who wish to help with this can click on the "Smile Now, Cry Later" faces and send in what information they may have on any planned theater, dance or entertainment events.

Gregory Hines, who recently died of cancer, was a spokesman for Apple computers, which did its own obituary on him, and it was better than many others I've read.

I posted the earlier NY Times death notice, but Apple's obit tells us more about the talented dancer and showman. So here he is again. Alas not in the flesh.