The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 3B The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, October14, 2010 - 3B Le Dog is le best at le soup O ne of Ann Arbor's best kept secrets, Le Dog, would be easy to miss if it weren't painted bright red. Bro- ken lightbulbs hang from their sockets underneath its curved awning. Its corners ate " damaged from years of quiet LILA vigilance. KALICK Great white globe lights adorn the red spires of its sup- ports; ironic, considering it's never been and never will be open at night. It's not apparent where the entrance is. Like Willy Wonka's factory, it seems that civilized line against the curb. Le Dog's humble but delish hotdogs and mouthwatering sophisticat- ed soups are the reason you nobly choose to overlook its shortcom- ings (as in No Cell Phones, No Seating, No Soda and No Credit Cards). In terms of its food, Le Dog might as well be called Le Soup. The hotdogs are good but not worth writing home about. Ray's Red Hots are better, but it takes 20 minutes to get one and that place has lost all its swagger since it switched owners and stopped being the beloved Red Hot Lovers of yore. But despite Le Dog's median score on the hotdog scale, the polish sausage is excellent - a winner if you're not into just a run-of-the-mill The Witch of Stephen Sondheim's 'Into the Woods' departs from Broadway norms by busting out a rap. Enering Sondheim's 'Woods' nobody ever co Le D erty (on tions - South A Arbor i though doned.: sure it sible th Arbor Dog a it open that. L tery by. short h a.m. to T de lob Don warniq use or "NO C soda. E Van Dy tion for mudge you ma that yo only tw five day get a lit East Dog's a ever goes in, and nobody dog. imes out. Where the bark is worth its og's stand on East Lib- bite at Le Dog, though, is the ne of its two elusive loca- soup selection. The available -the other being on 306 soups rotate daily. Try the cheesy Main Street) is an Ann chicken tortilla, indubitably the nstitution. Perhaps you bomb. Other favorites include it it was closed or aban- broccoli cheese, peanut udon or Maybe you were pretty the Moroccan stew, depending was a drug front. It's pos- on the day. Every morning Mon- at in all your time in Ann day through Friday, the staff-- a you could've passed by Le two-man show made up of Van million times and not seen Dyck-Dobos and one other dude . Well, there's a reason for - post the day's soups. Hand- e Dog maintains its mys- made signs highlight crowd- keeping some seriously pleasers and let newcomers know ours (weekdays from 11:30 what's up. 2 p.m.). Maybe its most popular soup - so much so that it is the only mainstay on Le Dog's menu - is the lobster bisque. he dogs are It's only available on Thursday c the and Friday, so make sure you cent, bUt t e check your planner. Made with cream and sherry, there are ster bisque is actually real substantial pieces to die for. of lobster in the lobster bisque, which is sadly a novel concept these days. Six bucks will get you 16oz. 't be dismayed by signs Beginning at 11:30 a.m. Mon- ig against rude cell phone day through Friday, Le Dog's insistence that there is window miraculously opens. A oke, NO Pepsi, NO pop or line forms. People are walking ver!!" The owner, Jules away with small styrofoam boxes Eck-Dobos, has a reputa- and brown paper bags with the r being somewhat of a cur- tops rolled over. At 2 p.m., the on. But who cares? When window closes. Rain or shine, ike a product so popular winter or summer. It's cash only u can get by selling it for - so bring some dollars in your ro-and-a-half hours a day, pocket. ys a week, its hard not to Now you know. There's no ttle diva. excuse not to go at least once in Liberty provides Le all your years at Michigan, or imbiance. There seems to those thereafter. be an unwritten rule among its patrons: Up-at-bat and on-deck persons ordering stand under the awning; all the rest form a * COMMUNITY From Page 2B to network television. In his spare time, he also raps under the name Childish Gambino and does sketch videos with DERRICK Comedy. But while Glover himself has gathered an impressive fol- lowing, the same can't yet be said for "Community." "It'd be nice to have more peo- ple watch the show, just because I feel like they'd enjoy it," Glover said. Still, Glover is more than pleased with the enthusiasm of the fan base, comparing "Commu- nity" to a large, enjoyable dessert. "If you make a great cake ... a special cake with crust and sprin- DANCE TEAM From Page 2B videos and movies like "Step Up" - because dance is still recog- nized, first and foremost, as an art. I'm guessing it will be a long time before dance loses its ambiguity and is officially considered sport in addition to art. School of MT&D takes on challenging fairytale musical By SHARON JACOBS Assistant Arts Editor When the Department of Musi- cal Theatre begins its run of "Into the Woods" tonight, it will mark the first time in five years that the School of Music, Theatre & Dance has taken on the work of famed composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim - a peculiar fact given Sondheim's enormous influence on the scene. Numbering into the teens, Sondheim's Broadway shows run the gamut from the creepy and cannibalistic "Sweeney Todd" to the pun-filled Roman farce "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." He's one of the darkest and most unconven- tional personalities along the Great White Way, and "Into the Woods" is certainly out there. For "Into the Woods" Director Mark Madama, an associate pro- fessor of music, this production marks only his third staging of a Sondheim show in more than 10 years directing musical theater at the University. "Sondheim musicals, except for 'Into The Woods,' are just not that accessible," he explained in an interview with the Daily. But "Into the Woods," which ties together some quite mature themes a fairytale motif, manages to bridge age gaps for a wider appeal. The show premiered on Broadway in 1987 and soon became a favorite of community theater companies and youth drama programs. "If you doit in a grammar school or a high school, it just means that the kids are just watching these fairytales," he said. "If you do it with a college-aged group in their twenties, you're watching people making decisions that are going to affect their lives. And then if you do it on a more adult level, you're watching people who are living the ramifications of the choices they made when they were in college or when they were in their early twen- ties." The plot of "Into the Woods" fol- lows Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk" as they all tryto make their wishes come true while stumbling through a physical and metaphorical forest. The charac- ters' familiar storylines all cross paths, but ultimately they're tied minutes. (It may not sound long, but trust me, it is.) Of course, this intense athleticism is showcased in costumes decorated with rhine- stones, lace and velvet, specially designed to show off muscular legs and toned abs. Being a girly- girl, that is one of the things I love most about being a dancer: There's no other time I'd get to sweat and work out in full makeup and a beautiful costume. together by Sondheim's original tale of a baker and his wife who, in order to have a child, must reverse a curse of infertility. "I think that my favorite char- acter is probably the baker's wife, because she holds everything together, and she's probably the most human and has the most human wants and flaws," Madama said. "They all do, but Baker's Wife is the most easily recognizable, because she's not a character from a story, from a fairytale - although she seems like she would be." "She deals with the problems she's having with her marriage, looking for more adventure, and then the ramifications of finding that adventure," he continued. It's these problems that twist the show from fantasy into a story of true-to-life people stuck in a fan- tasy world. "When you get really familiar with the script, you realize that it's not just about the fairytales ... it is about how sometimes wishes don't come true, and life doesn't turn out like you hope it does," said Music, Theatre & Dance junior Sam Lips. "I think it's a really profound mes- sage that a lot of people can relate and connect with." Lips plays Rapunzel's Prince, the younger of two royal brothers whose spoiled-rotten lifestyle is challenged when he's faced with a girl he can't simply own. "He can't get (Rapunzel) down to be his wife, so it becomes that one thing you can't have that you want more than anything," Lips said. "And I think because you can't have it, you want it that much more." "Into the Woods" also delves into Rapunzel's storyline from another, less explored perspective: that of the witch who has impris- oned her in the tower. The Witch of "Into the Woods" is a complex woman in many ways bound up by her overprotective feelings and love for Rapunzel. "(To cast) the Witch, you try to find somebody who is going to allow themselves to be free and allow themselves to find something they love more than anything in the world, which would be Rapunzel," Madama said, "even if that means their dog, even if it means their par- ents, even if it means anything, just trying to find something they can relate to." At the end of July, all musical theater students who wished to par- ticipate in "Into the Woods" were sent a casting breakdown and list of requirements for auditions, which included singing a song in the style of a character from the show. "If you're doing Sondheim, Broadway style is the best - except for the Witch, who can come in with a rap song," Madama explained. One of the Witch's early musical numbers is a spoken-word piece about - what else? - beans. Rachel Bahler, the Music, The- atre & Dance senior who won the part, had the advantage of already being familiar with her rap. "I saw this show in community theater when I was eight, and I was obsessed with the Witch bean rap, so ... I hearkened it back to my memory," Bahler said. "And once you've learned it, it really just rolls off your tongue." Though she was ready for the rapping, Bahler found other aspects of the score difficult - a charge often levied at Sondheim. "(Singing Sondheim) takes a lot of work, and a lot of concentration, because everything needs to be very precise in order to get those words out, and the tempos change - it can be very tricky," Madama said. "Into the Woods" has its fair share of timing-dependent duets and sudden musical changes. Bahler pointed specifically to the quick emotional turns in her songs as being tough to master. "In 'Stay With Me,' I start out furious with Rapunzel and I have to demonstrate that feeling," she said. "Then I have this huge swell of motherly tendency toward Rapun- zel even though I was mad at her. So you have to be really attuned to those emotional changes. But (Sondheim) is brilliant; once you get it, then you're set." Before the musical theater department's production, Bahler and Lips had never performed in "Into the Woods," though both were already fans. Madama is more familiar with the show, having directed several regional theater productions in the'90s. "I'm looking at it from that other perspective of being an adult, as opposed to when I was just starting to direct shows, and I was more in the mindset of somebody who's set- ting out on a new life," he said. Madama doesn't try to impose his own views on his cast - a 16-person ensemble composed entirely of musical theater majors. Instead, he stresses the importance of each actor relatingto the charac- ters and the show from his or her own standpoint. "Really, what they need 'to all do is become children, and play as their age," he said. And in portraying their charac- ters from a college student's per- spective, the cast members open up means through which all audience members can connect to this dark and twisted fairytale. Kalick is doing Ann Arbor Le Dog style. If you want to join, e-mail her at Ikalick@umich.edu. kles and it's delicious, and only two people eat it and they love it - that's enough for me," he said. The theme of "Community" is one that anyone can relate to - like a long airplane trip or an hour in the doctor's office wait- ing room, the show puts a bunch of people in one room who might never talk otherwise. "The great thing about commu- nity college and especially, spe- cifically this group, is that none of them were supposed to be there," Glover said. The same could be said about outer space in tonight's episode - certainly, none of the charac- ters are supposed to be there, but the clever jokes, petty fights and life lessons they'll take from each other will make it worth their while. Fueling the movement, national college dance team competitions televised on ESPN show the grow- ing interest in dance as a college sport. Watch some of the videos on YouTube from last year's Uni- versal Dance Association college nationals and then tell me dance isn't athletic. I attended for the first time last year and saw groups of girls furiously turn, jump, crawl, leap and thrash for a solid two This is the first time in five years the School of MT&D has done Sondheim. THE B-SIDE WANTS TO KNOW: DO YOU HAVE ONE OF THE UNIVERSITY'S BEST-DRESSED PROFESSORS? E-mail jamblock@michigandaily.com to nominate your professor. school f information Connect with SI AN INFORMATION SESSION FOR PROSPECTIVE MASTER'S AND PH.D. STUDENTS Noon-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23 Great Lakes Room, Palmer Commons RSVP by Monday, Oct. 18 at si.umich.edulrsvp A graduate degree from the School of Information pr epares you f exciting array of Information Age cIrOeers. Our hD. program prepares you forteaching id Sesacinacademiaandcorporatesearhlach bs, Indo how our exible, multidisciplinary program will benefit'you A Michigan MSI can lead to a career as: Archivist Librarian, Research ; Analyst eb Marketing Manager Multimedia Consultant, Data Analyst. 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