If you beat Nebraska and Ohio State in football by the same margin, that usually makes sense. And good for you.

If you beat those two schools by the same five points in basketball, at home, 80 hours apart, it stirs debate. Basically: are you good, or was the big upset of the No. 5 Buckeyes an aberration?

We decided to delve into this conundrum in point/counterpoint fashion.

First up is Bill Liesse, a journalist who columnized from both of Illinois’ color-TV Final Fours after covering Ken Norman and the formation of the Flyin’ Illini for the D.I. He will argue that Illinois fans shouldn’t read too much into Tuesday’s 79-74 win over Ohio State.

Illini fans are longing to recapture the swagger they felt from 2001-06, when the team was ranked in the Top 10 more often than not, virtually never lost at home and won four Big Ten titles. The game on Tuesday held the feeling of those days.

That does not mean the team is returning to that time.

The easiest way to dismiss this upset is to look at Brandon Paul and his 43 points. On the Ohio State side, they’re probably saying “We got beat by a kid going out of his head. What can you do?”

That’s only partially on point.  Tuesday was a team win, with Joseph Bertrand, Meyers Leonard and D.J. Richardson all contributing significantly before Paul completely took over late.

It is true, however, that Paul’s uncharacteristic shooting — 11-of-13 overall and 8-of-9 on 3s after missing his first two shots — renders impossible a repeat of this particular winning recipe. It’s also true that Paul’s numbers led to a 60 percent shooting night by the team.

Funny numbers in the box score scream “outlier” and won’t mean a thing when the ball goes up Jan. 19 at Penn State.

Look deeper into that box and you see ongoing Illinois problems: Only 45 shot attempts, 21 fewer than the Buckeyes. This on the heels of 44 FGA vs. Nebraska. The team does not offensive rebound, it regularly turns it over more than 15 times and it  plays catch around the 3-point ring for most of the shot clock on many possessions.

You can’t score enough to beat good teams with so few possessions and the inherent pressure on each one. Not when you perennially reside toward the bottom of the NCAA in free throw tries. Shoot your usual 45% on those 45 shots, Illini, and you’re scratching and clawing to get to 60 points, per usual.

It’d be nice to think the Illini have figured out how to score in the 70s now, but you thought that after Gonzaga and Missouri, didn’t you? They reverted right back to teeth-pulling wins over the likes of Cornell and Minnesota. There’s a reason, too. With half the box scores this year reading “0″ for transition points, and 20 FTA nights about as common as 80th birthday parties at the Hall (forget it on the road), Illinois simply has to be an extraordinary shooting team to succeed, and it isn’t.

Other concerns include the annually shrinking bench, which contributed zero points vs. OSU, its third shutout in the last 10 games; two point guards with astonishingly low assist numbers who simply don’t get the ball to the scorers in the right spots; evidence from the huddles, if not the floor, that Leonard and Paul have tuned out Bruce Weber; the 214 national rank in rebounding; the even-worse rebounding ability on nights when Leonard is called for fouls; and the nagging scare that Bertrand, a 3 ppg scorer through a dozen games, is not the 14 ppg guy he has been for three weeks.

Illinois’ 15-3 record belies the fact it has played pedestrian or lousy in 13 of the games and large parts of two others (Maryland and Missouri). Weber’s teams have had sterling records through the holidays a few times during the now-six doldrums years since Dee Brown left campus. Virtually every season grinds to its conclusion.

You’re looking for a hot streak out of a program that couldn’t win two straight games over the last two months a year ago. Ain’t gonna happen.

For the countering argument, we turn to Bill Liesse, who would have attended the Eddie-over-Magic-Johnson game in 1979 if it weren’t a school night, wore wrist bands well up his arm to emulate Derek Harper and took in Tuesday’s win over OSU roughly one outstretched Nnanna Egwu from Lou and Mary Henson.

Bill, you ignorant slut. (Sorry, had to be done.)

Get out of your box scores and sense what is happening here. This is 2003-04 all over again.

You remember Bruce’s first year. Dee, Deron and Luther not getting the offense for a while, and thus turning in stinkers like Providence and a 20-point loss at Wisconsin.

Then, they got it. And ran off 12 straight conference wins for Illinois’ first outright Big Ten title in 50 years. Twelve straight! Who does that?

Any college team anywhere would be lucky to re-create MV3 (Dee, Deron, Luther). The sheer greatness of Williams makes it almost impossible. So while The Ingredients (a nickname assigned by lifelong Illini hoop afficianado Doug White to the three guards who committed within 24 hours some four years ago) might not be MV3, they are nonetheless a good fit for Weber’s motion. They will turn the same corner the 2003-04 team did, and after they do, look out.

The current three scorers complement each other nicely. You have a catch-and-shoot guy in Richardson, a slasher in Paul who can also shoot well if he does it off the pass and not the bounce, and a midrange expert in Bertrand. The intelligent, fifth-year senior who has been watching for three games, Sam Maniscalco, should see how he can facilitate The Ingredients upon his return. Get it to JoeBert on cuts. Kick out to D.J. when defenders cheat toward Leonard. Implore Paul to drive more, despite Tuesday’s rainbows, and choose his 3 tries more wisely.

Furthermore, as good as James Augustine and Roger Powell were, the current roster has assets that 2004 and 2005 lacked: Leonard, destined to be the best big man in program history, and Egwu, probably a future NBA  7-footer himself. While the chances of the latter helping significantly this season are in the long-shot category, at the very least Egwu has a zest for defending the rim that has been completely lacking in the program for years.

Jared Sullinger, while scoring a few above his average with 21, made  a single free throw at the Assembly Hall. That alone reflects a giant step forward for the Illini. It also reflects a defensive makeup that will allow this team to compete in upcoming games while the offensive metamorphosis continues to evolve.

Paul and Bertrand provide wing D that can adapt to opponents from 6-foot-2 through about 6-8 or so. Richardson and Tracy Abrams will dog ballhandlers. Leonard and Egwu have the rim. This defense is a large part of the reason the team is 15-3 and half-game out in the Big Ten despite flawed efforts in four of the five league games thus far.

Weber used very little bench vs. Ohio State, leading some to say he’s following an annual pattern of cranking it down to a seven-man rotation in league play. Not so fast on that assessment.

For one, he had a nine-day layoff coming up, so that game allowed an extra-heavy reliance on starters. For another, Maniscalco was out of the equation.

From my seat, Weber has been masterful at minutes allocation this season. He began it with Griffey at a traditional PF, and sprinkled in plenty of Mike Shaw as a backup there. He deftly got Abrams ample time behind his senior PG. He went so far as using 12 players before halftime in the foul-heavy Gonzaga game and has kept Egwu nicely involved despite extremely rare foul trouble by Leonard.

The Bertrand emergence changed everything midstream, and Bruce has adapted. Griffey might have been tossed aside too abruptly for some, but three points on that. 1) Tyler is going to have to find and front some cutters in his life to not be a huge defensive liability to this team. 2) Traditional 4 men are hard to find on many a college team right now. 3) It’s not over yet. You could see bounce-back minutes out of Griffey as this team finds and redefines its identity.

Weber also has shown increasing confidence in Myke Henry. Like Egwu, Henry might not contribute significantly before this year is out. But drawing on the 2004 parallel again, the main subject at play here is building for what should be a nationally prominent run in the 2013 NCAA tournament. Henry, the most likely pro on campus behind the 7-footers, needs to grow along that timeline. He owns an inside-outside offensive game that is reflective of his Chicago westside predecessors of yesteryear, the aforementioned Eddie Johnson and his superstar Westinghouse teammate, Mark Aguirre.

For all the times you have heard, or said, “I thought Weber was going to do better with all the good recruits here now,” realize that it requires some patience. It is a process.

And it’s happening.

Flattened in a state semifinal two years ago and flat in another semi last November, the Knights were determined to put their best foot  forward Saturday when Lemont, heretofore unbeaten and unthreatened, came to Endres Field.

Those who saw Richwoods early in the season probably would not have guessed that foot would belong to placekicker Justin Cole. But it was the little sophomore who sent the RHS back yard into a frenzy when his 19-yard field goal ended a second tiebreaker session and gave the Knights a 34-31 win over Lemont.

“Not bad for a kid who missed the first two weeks with a bad eye for playing X-box,” Richwoods coach Roland Brown said after his  10th playoff win in his third year as head coach.

Forget for a moment the specifics of that peculiar “injury.” Just consider that placekicking was part of a long list of shortcomings that Brown had to work out before, during and after an 0-3 start to the season.

That’s right. One of the few Richwoods teams ever to start 0-3 is the Richwoods team that put an end to more than two decades of longing for a return to a place the Knights were once accustomed: state-championship games.

“When I got this job three years ago,” Brown said of an elevation from the assistants staff that was a quarter-century in the making and two years overdue, “I promised the boosters that I’d return the program to where we were playing for and winning state championships.”

He went on to pay homage to the highly revered list of former bosses “who taught me more football than I can even remember” — Tom Peeler, Rod Butler, Doug Simper. Brown may as well have named program lifers such as himself, Dave Webb and Marty Lomelino, as the primary reason this program has such stability, such swagger, such “cred.”

“I’m sad for us but happy for them,” said Lemont coach Eric Michaelsen, perfectly gracious in defeat. “They’re a class program.”

And a clutch one.

Two years ago, Richwoods unleashed a freshman named Kendrick Foster on the previous year’s 6A champion, Springfield Griffin, and seemed to make all the big plays down the stretch of that 5A quarterfinal upset. Alas, a week later, Richwoods was not at all ready for Joliet Catholic and lost a 54-7 rout.

Program pride was evident a year later when Richwoods turned the tables on JCA, winning a breathtaking quarterfinal with an NFL-quality touchdown pass play in the final seconds.  The sheer high of that stunner seemed to linger, however, in a dud of a semifinal loss at Chatham Glenwood, 42-13.

Now Brown’s program has erased that memory as well. Undaunted by a 12-0 Lemont resume that included six shutouts and no game closer than 21 points, Richwoods followed its 2011 playoff formula: It  struck first. Jeremye Johnson did so loudly, scampering 90 yards around right end on the Knights’ first possession, a 98-yard, 3-play drive.

Lemont scored the next two touchdowns, but Richwoods scored just before halftime for a 14-14 tie. Not close enough to intermission, it turned out, as Lemont posted the second of Mike Anzalone’s three TDs with 45 seconds on the clock.

When the Knights fumbled on their first second-half play, Lemont drove to another Anzalone score and had the game’s only sizeable lead, 28-14.

“We knew they were going to battle,” Michaelsen said. “They’re too good a team.”

Overcoming a game full of mistakes — three Wes McCormack interceptions, two fumbles, a muff and a botched punt snap — Richwoods pulled even before the third quarter ended. McCormack, playing better as the game moved along, pitched to Ryan Moredock for a 20-yard option run, then connected with Clayton Glasper on a fade.

Foster, shunned on the coaches’ all-state team earlier in the week despite 2,200 yards, thus got none of Richwoods’ TDs, a rarity. But he set up both of the third-quarter scores, with runs of 41 and 57 yards. Lemont’s vaunted defense game-planned against him all day, so Foster’s “quiet” afternoon was a mere 162 yards on 21 carries.

“They’ve got some real nice playmakers over there,” Michaelsen said. “We had nice schemes and they adjusted.”

The biggest playmaker of all was junior Mikail Davis. His interception in the second extra session meant Richwoods, playing offense last, knew 3 would win it. After McCormack almost got in on a third-down keep, Brown called on his 5-foot-6 X-box player who had answered the pressure of the second-half PATs to ensure the 28-all tie, no sure thing in a high school game.

“I had all the confidence in the world in him,” Brown said.

Back to Davis. His interception followed two recoveries of Lemont fumbles in regulation. He is in  line to be next year’s quarterback, portending more clutch performances out of a program whose flair for the dramatic has provided the best sports theater in this town over the last 105 weeks.

Save next year for next year, however. Richwoods has one more favorite to knock off, Crystal Lake Prairie Ridge (12-1), following perceived upsets of 10-0 Crete-Monee, preseason 6A favorite Danville and now Lemont, a top-four team in the all-class rankings of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times.

“It is one awesome feeling,” Brown said. “And I have one more week to work.”

HUH? you say. He stubbornly plays bad seniors and I wanna see more Leonard … or Head … or Paul … or Griffey …

You are 100% correct. Now let’s explore this paradox.

Weber is reluctant to play his inexperienced players, and this is almost invariably Subject 1 when fans talk about their dissatisfaction with him, or any coach. Your author accidentally fell into this trap himself. On a message board, I posted a lament about Ohio State freshmen getting to play after some December game in which three of them combined for 50-some points, and I was skewered for it.

“You picked a terrible example with Ohio State,” I was told. “Matta uses his bench less than anybody.”

“Leonard and Head aren’t ready,” many others chimed. “Meyers fouls all the time and Crandall turns it over in practice.”

Ignore for now that the aforementioned trio of OSU freshmen came to Assembly Hall and were 90 percent of the reason Ohio State was able to play exceedingly average basketball and get a road win. Over a team, mind you, that returned its top six players and was picked to make the Final Four by Sports Illustrated and the final two by ESPN’s Doug Gottleib. Matta got nothing from veterans William Buford, David Lighty or Dallas Lauderdale that day and limited help from Jon Diebler. No matter. Erstwhile Tennessee coach visitor Aaron Craft, an alleged 3-star recruit, utterly dominated Illinois senior Demitri McCamey, an alleged All-America candidate. DeShaun Thomas made the shots that put OSU ahead, and Jared Sullinger notched 150 percent of his already lofty season averages because, in part, Illinois has not been interested in recruiting a defensively capable big man since Marcus Griffin.

But we digress. I have not argued for increased minutes for any bench player in the six weeks since, and would not. Player rotations shrink in league play and if Illinois’ staff could not get itself to let Crandall Head play through a mistake at home against Northern Colorado,  there’s no way he’s going to appear at Wisconsin or Indiana.

If Tyler Griffey, a fundamentally solid face-up forward with a gorgeous jumpshot, is not allowed to work out his shooting woes vs. Yale and UIC, then you’re going to see the modifier “season-long” appear about his shooting slump, and you’re seeing him approach the midpoint of his career as an unusable part.

Meyers Leonard might be a top 40 national recruit with a skill set greater than myriad McDonald’s All-American big stiffs before him — midrange jumpers, great interior passing, sensational vertical jump, Kevin Love-like outlet passes. But, hey, he’s from a small town and has had a tough home life, so we’ll have to wait a few years before this career gets under way.

Leonard has had his ample mistakes emphasized so regularly that he is, indeed, a circus on the floor. Griffey, indeed, does not help. Head, we don’t even know. Joseph Bertrand, either. Stan Simpson, for that matter. The staff connected so miserably with that one-man 2008 recruiting class that he’s gone, turning himself into a Kentucky recruit at a juco down the road.

But here’s the rub. Here’s why you are clamoring to see these younger players. The veterans in front of them are dyed-in-the-wool losing players. The seniors are 30-32 in Big Ten play and flying by the 50-loss mark for their careers for a program that lost about half that many in the four years before their arrival.

To see Mike Tisdale play is to clamor for someone else. But Leonard marks a dropoff. To see Mike Davis play to is to beg that he doesn’t. But we’ve already discussed Griffey. To see Bill Cole play is to beg for anyone at all, as Billy’s spot on the final stat sheet is most often near the empty set. So you get Brandon Paul, a player whose psyche Weber destroyed within weeks of Paul scoring 42 points in his first three halves of college basketball.

Throw in the invisible D.J. Richardson and the miserable-all-of-a-sudden McCamey and you have a clean sweep. Every player on the roster is below expectations. The only possible exception to this is Jereme Richmond, a scintillating freshman who embodies 99.5% of the team’s basketball instincts. But really, meandering about at 8-some points and 5 rebounds a game? And never getting his number called to win you a game at the end, when he’s so obviously Option 1? Is that really at or above what you expected his impact to be when he committed four years ago? Because I remember hearing “one and done” until I was blue in the face.

Yes, each and every Illini is doing less than he is capable. That should strike you as a coaching matter. Put all that together and you get these end-game performances:

• a choking of all but 3 points of a huge lead against a pitiful Maryland team;
• a fumble out of bounds and a sideline inbounds pass to the wrong team vs. Missouri;
• two incomplete passes, one out of bounds, on two chances to survive against UIC, which has still yet to win since beating Illinois;
• a complete lack of recognition that Talor Battle was 90 percent of what you had to worry about on Penn State’s last possession, as McCamey stayed glued to a bricklayer named Frazier (another unheralded guard who held DMac to nothing), Mike Davis also stayed out of the play, and a simple one-man rotation by Tisdale created an uncontested putback winner;
• throwing a bounce pass at the feet of your 7-footer well inside the 3-point arc when a 3 was needed vs. Ohio State, and seeing Tisdale turn it over;
• going back to the Fumbletron at Indiana, amid his 2-for-10 night, and seeing Tiz hook a pass out of bounds as the shot clock buzzed;
• then not choosing deadeye shooter Tisdale … nor wannabe draftee McCamey … nor Richardson, who can still shoot 3 but just doesn’t … nor best player Richmond for the final 3, but rather Paul, who makes  San Francisco Richter scales look steady.

IU, by the way, also won the game on a putback. Everyone beats the Illini on putbacks. The team is woefully outscored on offensive rebounds and from the line virtually every time it plays. This is part of the program identity. (Illinois had more points from the floor than Indiana, if that’s possible while scoring 49, and reached the bonus with 11 minutes to play, amassing EIGHT total foul shots on the night. Everyone else goes inside with impunity against the Hoosiers, whose opponents shoot 49%.)

By the same token, IU won by the margin it enjoyed 10 seconds in. Illinois won the tip but Jordan Hulls of IU said no, outhustled Illinois to the ball and stuck a 3 in the Illini’s eye. The effort tone was set, as it is dictated so very often to this group that talks about a will to win, but virtually never displays one.

I left out a bullet:

• McCamey trying a 3/4-court chest pass in another muffed last-second attempt to get a shot, at Penn State. Each of the 600 fans there that night had a chance to run out and intercept the ball. Instead, the Nittany Lions did easily. So that’s at least three desperation-time inbounds (they weren’t desperation under Lou Henson, who always got his team shots, even against Austin Peay) in which the correct guy did not make the pass.

The right passer would be Meyers Leonard.

But he can’t be out there because he can’t be trusted. The players in front of him are “better.”

Which sums up the state of the program.

And tells you why the ultimate substitution is needed.

Both schools visited the Assembly Hall in 2010, and the one Trent Meacham transferred out of to find a higher level (Dayton) offered infinitely more energy, purpose and pressure than did the the second-winningest collegiate program of all time (UNC).

OK, OK, we’re talking about different seasons. But Carolina on Tuesday continued its post-Tyler Hansbrough era of rudderless, head-scratching, quintessentially average basketball as Illinois won the Big Ten/ACC Challenge game 79-67 without playing overly well.

We should call it the post-Ty Lawson era in Chapel Hill, because point guard is the black hole for Roy Williams’ program, as it was last season when UNC made an exceedingly rare appearance in the Nobody’s Interested Tournament (as did the Illini, who fell victim to champion Dayton two games before UNC).

Carolina’s ills aside, Illinois picked up a valuable win thanks to basketball’s age-oldest winning combination: point guard and head coach. Demetri McCamey and Bruce Weber were magnificent in helping erase past Illini nightmares (home Challenge losses to Maryland and Clemson, not to mention falling to these Heels in the 2005 NCAA final).

Weber artfully went with a rotation long on Jereme Richmond and light on Bill Cole, helping cover the hole in the man-to-man matchups on paper. That would be Harrison Barnes, whose selection to the preseason AP All-America squad might be sillier than UNC’s October place in the Top 10. Still, the forward who badly outplayed Richmond in a high school game on ESPN last season, would need to be checked by Richmond or he’d have a 5-inch advantage over Brandon Paul or an even wider quickness edge on Cole.

Richmond played most of the first half and Barnes never got on track. He made a three-point play 13 minutes in, a 3-pointer a short while later, and otherwise had two foul shots with 1:58 left to show for his visit.

Weber pulled McCamey for a quick chat fairly early and the senior All-America candidate’s game took off after that. His first two 3-pointers gave the Illini the lead, the second time for good, as he finished with 17 points and eight assists, right near his averages.

“Demetri was something else,” Williams said. “He never looked like he felt pressure or anything.”

The eight dimes almost all seemed to get the right teammate going at the right time. When “Cames” dropped a perfectly timed, transition bounce pass to Mike Davis for a dunk, Davis took it from there. Cold early — once a death knell for Davis’ night — the senior started making his quick flip shots and straight-up jumpers, not stopping until he was game-high scorer at 20 (with 10 rebounds and five assists).

McCamey calmly found D.J. Richardson for a half-closing 3 that put the Illini up 7, the kind of lead they “should have” had after the final 9 minutes of the opening session saw UNC scoring leader Tyler Zeller bench-ridden with three fouls. Zeller was in that foul trouble because of McCamey’s crafty hip-to-hip drive that drew a blocking call about half a minute after Zeller told Williams he could stay out there with two.

This is the same “D-Mac” who didn’t shoot, or get a teammate a shot, as the clock expired on the Clemson debacle, the last Challenge game in this building. How far Demetri has come.

Weber’s other deft touches included recognizing Brandon Paul’s off night — a rarity in 2010-11 — and limiting the sophomore’s time after intermission. The coach endured the oft-infuriating inexperience of Meyers Leonard in giving the freshman 7-footer plenty of tick vs. a Heels frontline that looked poised to dominate early in the game.

Whether you prefer to credit the coach or the players, Illinois’ defense is now such that they help and sag and steal the ball in the lane area, while almost never getting torched at the arc. The offense glided in to the 80-point mark after having only six through the first 7-plus minutes; they put up 52 in the “middle half” of the game. Five players scored in double figures.

Little by little, these seniors who have been more on college basketball’s periphery than virtually any Illini class of the last 30 years, are gaining experience in the real NCAA world. They’ve been to Madison Square; they’ve played the Rolls Royce of the sport; they’ve been to a funny little MAC gym in between.

Next is a quasi-road game vs. Gonzaga, Saturday in Seattle. God love South Padre Island and the Orleans in Vegas, but the Illini are starting to be in places they ought to be. But for a few points here or there vs. Texas, so far they’re succeeding.

Bob Parkhurst in the title role.

Here’s the short review of “Sweeney Todd” at Corn Stock Theatre’s Winter Playhouse:

When they get this thing down, they’re really going to be dangerous.

Bringing Stephen Sondheim’s sordid tale to the relatively tiny space of “the lab” in Upper Bradley Park is the brainchild of Nate Downs, the director whose vision included half of this show’s pair of leads.

If there can be a community theater diva, Cheri Beever is it, and the veteran always seemed a natural to play the role Angela Landsbury made famous: Mrs. Lovett. On the other hand, Bob Parkhurst as Sweeney Todd was as unlikely a choice as having this fairly big show in the lab in the first place.

Counter-intuitiveness becomes Downs, because both these choices work well: Venue, and especially Parkhurst. This show is good for a number of reasons, but ultimately, it’s very good because of Parkhurst.

The famously nice Corn Stock lifer was a surprise choice as the lead because no one who knows him can think of him as the demon anything of anywhere. “That’s what acting is,” Parkhurst says, almost shrugging. “Taking on a persona that you’re not.”

Parkhurst truly becomes Sweeney and carries the persona for just short of three hours. In the story, Benjamin Barker is back in London to exact revenge on a sinister judge and his lackey … if not everyone in his swath. Fifteen years of exile have him using a new name, the title moniker, and have his rage boiling over. Rage is but one of many emotions Parkhurst has down pat. Others include creepy enjoyment of Lovett’s idea to bake the victims into her infamously bad meat pies and various levels of impatience with Lovett when she talks too much.

On her worst, worst day, Beever will give you maybe a B- performance; she simply is too good to go lower. Lets rate her first-weekend Lovett more like a B+, and I’ll dare say the shortcomings are by her own admission. I’m aware of at least two cases where Beever reacted to a compliment with, “Wait ’til I know the songs,” seeing as I was one of the two.

It’s worth a $15 bet (the price of admission) that she will have it all down for the second week of the run (Thursday through Saturday nights at 7:30). Then she’ll rise to Parkhurst’s level. Then this show has a chance to overwhelm.

While Downs worked in some casting risks — Jake Hazzard as Anthony, Caleb Finley as Tobias, George Maxedon as the aforementioned judge — it has been known for some time that there would be ample talent in the room. Too many talented performers with marvelous voices auditioned for it to turn out any other way.

Talent young (Evan Frazier, Maddy Hoskins, et al.) and not so young (Tim Drew, John Johnson, et al.) and in between (Sean Howell, Amber Katz, et al.) dots the ever-growing ensemble — 21 at last check. They are on every note of Sondheim’s five-part harmonies thanks to the dogged perfectionism of music director Amanda Humphreys (even if they weren’t on every lyric, thanks to some curve balls from their leads).

Humphreys’ work was easy when it came to a trio always fun to hear sing: Laura Johnson as the Beggar Woman, Jarod Hazzard as Pirelli, and Johanna by the incredible Melissa Blain, whom everyone in Bradley Park is convinced is just gracing us with her presence now before going on to do this kind of thing professionally.

I’m a little sheepish to point out how excellent the costuming effort is, what with the director being listed as Leaann Liesse. But if you don’t believe me, believe Corn Stock matriarch Gloria Costa, who gushed over the clothing at intermission on opening night.

Besides, I didn’t let my friendship with Leaann’s co-director, Heather Osmulski, get in my way … nor my fondness for Downs. These relationships would make a reviewer recuse himself if working for, say, a newspaper. But in the less rigid blog-o-world, we elected to write the piece and divulge the links and let you decide how big of a grain of salt you need to wash this down.

The real caveat here should be about my limited familiarity with Sweeney Todd in particular and the famed Sondheim in general.

But the real point is how well Parkhurst bucked the odds and pulled off evil. Sweeney Todd makes “Sweeney Todd.”

The esteemed Mrs. Costa, whose surname graces the doorways into the theater, believes this to be the best show ever performed in Corn Stock’s inside space.

The multi-talented Joyce still is walking around with a feather in his cap from last November, when his remounted “Rent” at Eastlight capped off a whirlwind visit by National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman.

What impressed me more about that night was not so much that famed Broadway producer Landesman said nice things; his visit was all about eating crow from the start. (His visit/tour was admirably secured and arranged by Eastlight’s Kathy Chitwood and the Peoria Arts Partners’ Suzette Boulais after Landesman effectively questioned whether the Peoria area had vibrant theater at all.) More noteworthy was the national arts press accompanying Landesman reacting with, more or less: I didn’t expect much, but that was a really good “Rent.”

Whatever your standards, feel free to expect an evening of fun from the “Spelling Bee.” This isn’t one of those musicals that tells you what a “romp” it is only to produce a few smirks with mostly corny humor. This is a true comedy that emerged out of improvisational beginnings and maintains those roots by, among other things, inviting four audience members onstage to spell a few words.

Joyce wraps this ad-lib vibe amidst a meticulously directed couple of hours that never slow down and seamlessly employ some personal touches by the graduate of Illinois State’s theater school. Eastlight puts a twist on the end of the show by using a pet device — film — and it works beautifully. We’ll save Joyce’s other minor deviations from Rebecca Feldman’s creation, lest they serve as spoilers.

As simple as Putnam County’s set is — the play truly is a spelling bee, beginning to end — Eastlight’s technical crew gives a sterling effort nonetheless. From the five or six times the back curtain opens to reveal the movie screen, to a strobe-light sequence, to a chunk of the cast coming up the aisle to perform, all the sound and lights are spot-on. A tiny bit of microphone static, courtesy of one “speller” making a balloon animal, is the lone miniature hiccup the audience is asked to endure.

Now, the show itself.

Joyce taps his co-star from last season’s terrific “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” at Peoria Players, Mike Reams, to lend his ample comedic gifts to the role of  Douglas Panch. The vice principal is the one in charge of giving the words, and I’d challenge you to not laugh out loud at any of the lines Reams delivers when the spellers ask for a word to be used in a sentence.

Sitting alongside at the judges’ table is another familiar name, Katie McLuckie, as Rona Lisa Peretti, a former spelling champ who tells us she lives for this kind of thing. McLuckie regales us with one of the area’s truly great singing voices between a stream of anecdotes about the spellers, including the recruited audience members. Those lines consistently amuse as McLuckie exudes she’s having her most fun onstage in quite some time.

The casting of the half-dozen student spellers is magnificent, and the manner in which all of them develop and maintain their characters is top shelf.

Bethany Freitag embodies the sheer likability the writers intended for Olive Ostrovsky. Ingrid Weiman pulls off the lisp and spunk of Logan SchwartzandGrubenierre, not to mention the longing for approval of her two dads. Jarod Hazzard (as Chip Tolentino) just can’t believe the bee, his day and in fact his whole life aren’t going to his perfectly scripted plan.

Clarissa Childs plays the role you’ve seen countless times before, the wannabe perfect girl, which you’ve probably seen overdone countless times before. Instead, Childs underplays Marcy Park, offering an endearing subtlety to a girl at odds with her own “all business” persona.

The cut-up roles are Leaf Coneybear and William Barfee, and this show would really suffer if either was played in cheesy fashion. Not a problem. Joyce gets a flighty, eccentric performance out of Kyle Motsinger as Coneybear, reprising the role he just played in Galesburg and staying in a difficult character all the while. Again, the tech crew is in perfect sync on changing lights when Coneybear changes faces, zeroes in and spells the words.

Will Loftus is brilliant as Barfee. You beg that his many idiosyncracies don’t go over the top, as in far too many Hollywood comedies, and they don’t. Loftus has it all down: the mumbling to himself, the disdain for Mr. Panch, the physical comedy of his “magic foot” routine, the insecurities of an ostracized high school nerd — and then, he outs with a magnificent set of pipes when it’s his turn for a solo. A-plus.

Also  excellent is Anthony Hendricks in the tremendously conceived role of Mitch Mahoney. This is a parolee who at one point confesses to wanting to slap these weird kids around a little, but ultimately spends the bee handing out juice boxes as parting gifts to the eliminated. From his stool in the background, Hendricks offers funny reactions whenever you remember to look, and applies his velvety voice not only to Mahoney but a couple smaller roles as well.

Putnam County is hardly as memorable a work as “Rent.” You might even call it the anti-epic. But ask my wife and I the last time we had this much pure fun in a theater, and you’ll probably have to wait a long time for an answer.

Not of the AP

CHICAGO — Randy Wells and three relievers combined on a 26-hitter Monday night, but the Chicago Cubs were edged 18-1 by the late-surging Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs, who remained in the Top 10 of the National League wild-card race, have won one of their last seven games.

The Brewers, befuddled by Wells through three innings, scratched out five runs in each the fourth and fifth innings on a series of seeing-eye flairs, including ex-Cub Casey McGehee’s 15th homer, to dead center, and a bunch of other extra-base hits.

The right side of the infield played error-free ball for Chicago, which entered Monday’s game riding the high of actually rallying to tie a game in the ninth inning (Sunday in Colorado) for the first time in four managerial regimes. Several Cubs also cited the momentum of witnessing a Rockies guy hit for the cycle in the same game.

Wells was the hard-luck loser, with the win going to default Brewers ace Something Gallardo.

Justin or Jason Berg relieved the Cubs starter, who faces arbitration in the offseason as Chicago attempts to slap Wells with his own default-ace tag.

For Berg, acrimonious dealings with the Chicago National League Ballclub already are under way. He is negotiating an extension of his father’s Wrigley Field hot-dog contract, but broke those talks off last week prior to the Cubs flying to Houston to drop a 3-game set to a club so depressed that six of eight everyday starters played the entire series on therapists’ couches.

Three of Berg’s runs Monday were unearned as Aramis Ramirez kept his 2010 error count respectably close to his hit total for the season.

Starlin Castro was named “Aw, man, player of the game” by the suicidal Ron Santo for scoring the Cubs’ lone run just prior to committing his 15th error in half a season.

The Cubs will send Dennis Quaid to the hill Tuesday as they attempt to put a stranglehold on the “NL Central’s most disappointing noncontender” moniker by letting the Brewers win easily again. Milwaukee will counter with Gallardo, its only starter.

You’ve heard it many times: “A performance so grand, it left the crowd begging for more.” 

But what if a show is so overwhelming, it leaves the audience wanting less? 

Adam Windish as Jean Valjean

OK, check that. I didn’t want less of “Les Miserables: Student Edition” on its opening night at the Corn Stock Theatre tent. I had the sensation I’d be content with less. It came upon the conclusion of a tremendously arranged, masterfully blocked “One Day More” that brought down CST’s mythical curtain as well as any finale in memory in area community theater. 

And that’s just the end of Act 1. 

Director Pam Orear’s production of the UK’s favorite and longest-running musical (and winner of eight Tony Awards on Broadway) is a triumph of epic proportions. Squared. 

In the round. 

Since your author is in disclosure mode, let me admit here that when I heard my favorite musical was coming to CST, I was afraid. “The music is too grand to be done at the community level,” I might have said. “Especially by kids.” 

Well, wrong. Step 1 on the production path was Orear’s admonition: “This is not a kids’ show.” She drilled that outlook into the heads of the cast and it’s true. This is 90-odd percent of the sweeping epic of post-revolutionary France, based on Victor Hugo’s novel, and it just happens to be the case that none of the 94 cast members may legally toast their magnificent work. 

This cast is so cute, Gracie Salmon here is a street urchin.

Step 2 for Orear was the casting itself. You’d swear, seeing a cast picture, she chose these kids on looks. Striking faces abound, and Cosette looks like you expect Cosette to look. So does Marias. Gavroche. Eponine. Both Thenardiers. Fantine. And, all importantly, Jean Valjean. Let’s face it: Community theater can give you redheads playing Asians sometimes, 60-year-olds trying to pass for 35. But here, nary a character makes you stretch to accept them. 

This sensation is backed by an exhaustive, close-to-perfect costuming effort spearheaded by Amy Ribordy and aided by a number of Corn Stock’s friends. Bradley, Eastlight, Players, Dunlap High and even the Champaign-Urbana Theatre Co. are cited in the acknowledgments — and you can see where borrowing is in order for a show whose professional version claims 392 complete costumes and 31 wigs. 

These students, however, were not cast just to look good. That’s abundantly clear the minute they start singing. And, oh, do they sing. How about 23 numbers … in each act! 

In discussing the genesis of the show, composer Claude-Michel Schonberg says he and collaborator Alain Boublil “were looking for the next subject which would be even more suitable to blend the opera and musical forms into one and the same work. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables came as the answer.” 

It would likely require an opera to find a more challenging vocal undertaking, a show that so seamlessly combines triumphant, stick-in-your-head anthems with stirring solos that wrench the heart. Orear’s big-show touch shone through in the former, from the early ”At the End of the Day” to a marvelous final sequence. And with an assist from vocal directors Harry and Kristen Williams, the performers assured that the solos carried the play. 

Eponine (Melissa Blain) dies in the arms of Marias (Zach Shrout) in Cornstock Theatre's "Les Miserables: Student Edition."

If you plunked down 18 bucks just to see Joseph Crumrine nail Javert’s “Stars” and Melissa Blain exude Eponine’s angst in “On My Own,” you’d be stealing. Instead, you get some 40 other numbers. 

You get Molly Smith continuing her Summer de Force as Fantine. Fresh off a terrific performance in Peoria Players’ “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” Smith was properly tear-inducing with “I Dreamed a Dream,” and acted the part exceptionally. 

You get Zach Shrout as Marias. Called the “most-improved cast member over the last week” on Wednesday by someone in the know, Shrout has continued to improve since then. Marias’ prominence grows as the show moves along and Shrout is growing right with it — a thoroughly impressive opening weekend. 

Brett Harlow prances with unbridled confidence as little Gavroche and executes a dying scene for the ages. Mitch Connolly has the excessively patriotic thing down to a “T” as Enjolras. Annalise Pittenger is a lovely soprano as Cosette and you believe she is falling in love. Seth Hannan is in his dream role as slimy innkeeper Thenardier and plays it with requisite enthusiasm. If anything, his wife, played by Maggie Hemmele, is even better. 

Blain and Crumrine are ridiculous. Rock stars. Can’t say enough about them. 

That brings us to Adam Windish as Jean Valjean. What guts it takes to even audition for a lead of this magnitude, and the humble Elmwood teen is up to it in every way. Reflective of how the whole cast gets this extremely challenging material (many New York and London critics did not, initially), Windish acts up a storm as the prisoner-turned-upstanding leader. He shows no signs of distraction at being laden with three-piece wool suits on a July night outdoors, and if you don’t find him thoroughly believable on Schonberg’s deliciously sad “Bring Him Home,” then, well, don’t go to any local theater because your standards are unreasonable. 

The set and props match the grandeur of all the aforementioned. Chris Franken, Bob Parkhurst and Doug Orear gave up a week of sleep to build it — I saw the director’s husband still wearing a tool belt, drill gun in hand, half-hour before opening-night curtain — and the esteemed Gene Bourke worked through his 60th birthday to add his always-correct touches. They produced a whole bunch, most notably the show’s famed barricade that melds texture, dimension and functionality to the extent that it received a hand from Friday’s full house when it was revealed. 

The construction was extensive enough to cut into the time the tech crew had to get everything down, a monumental achievement over a handful of days given the show’s hundreds of cues and the fact this is all in the round. Stage manager Erin Durbin calmly worked out the kinks, backed by technical director Dan Crichton, light designer Robert Christ and sound man Frank Blain. Particular kudos to the latter for figuring out when to cue a multitude of microphones on challenges such as “At the End of the Day,” when the vocals bounce from girl to girl, then they all sing. 

The public is responding, in spades. The show’s original nine-day run sold out entirely, prompting the addition of a Sunday, July 25 performance. It’s possible a Monday holdover show will be added as well. 

So scratch that “want less” thought altogether. Whenever this magnificent achievement draws to a close, I know what I’ll be thinking. 

One Day More. 

Photographs courtesy of Jenny Parkhurst

The madcap musical about Catholic-school education enjoyed a record run three decades ago in Chicago, and also in Philadelphia. The show’s 1982 stay on Broadway, however, lasted  all of four days and five performances.

Perhaps New York was populated with too many “publics,” author John Powers’ description of all schoolchildren other than those regaled by ruler-wielding nuns, a numbers-based system of sin contrition and other tenets/absurdities of Eisenhower-era Catholic education in this country — and more specifically, in Chicago.

Peoria should be a ripe setting for this coming-of-age tale, being home to its own vast array of St. John’s and Father Sweeneys, et al., both during the setting of Powers’ novel and in the late ’70s, when James Quinn and Alaric Jans set all this fun to music.

Alas, the Cornstock Theater’s ticket booth is nowhere near as abuzz for the season’s second show as it was for the stalwart “The King and I” earlier in the month. And the minimalist set and smaller cast give the feeling of a far-less-extravagant production.

This is not to say that director Clifford Clark’s product is any less enjoyable of an evening at the tent. If the first rule in good directing is good casting, then Clark passed as convincingly as main character Eddie Ryan fails his schoolwork throughout the show.

You can’t do a good “Patent Leather Shoes” without a convincing priest and mean old nun terrorizing the kids, and Clark found both. Bill Ciardini uses masterful facial expressions to give an air of “yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it all before” to Father O’Reilly and would have been near-perfect in the role if we could have heard him all night.

Clark’s best work of recent vintage was as a supreme Lumiere in CST’s triumphant “Beauty and the Beast” two seasons ago. He plucked another standout from that cast, Barbara Couri, to be his Sister Lee.

Couri utterly steals the show. Wielding a cane and bespectacled in black-rim glasses of retired Cary Grant vintage, Couri plays to the crowd with top-notch physical comedy and many of the show’s best one-liners.

Unfortunately, the majority of those are contained in the superior Act 1.  When the kids get to high school (Act 2), Quinn and Jans focus too hard on a love story between Ryan (Sean Howell) and Becky Backowski (Elizabeth Keach). Howell and Keach are both good — the casting is solid to the last drop — but the laughs thin out considerably. That’s not good for a show that’s clearly a comedy set to music as opposed to a musical with a few laughs.

The show’s best  numbers are its funniest: “Little Fat Girls,” “It’s the Nuns,” “Private Parts,” and Sister Lee and Becky doing “Cookie Cutters.” The last of these romps, “Doo-Waa, Doo-Wee,” opens Act 2, gets the whole cast  bopping as even Father O’Reilly and the nuns don shades at a freshman mixer. It was pulled off with aplomb, despite early sound problems, by its leads, Alex Larson (as brown-nosing-but-getting-nowhere Louie) and Mariah Thornton (superb as the little-miss-perfect Mary Kenny).

We’d heard going in that the 10-piece orchestra overwhelms, and that’s partially true. The band was excellent, but you’d be advised to sit in the East seats, opposite its hidden pit, in order to properly hear vocals over instruments.

The 13-member cast also included CST veteran Katie McLuckie as the pleasant Sister Helen, Trish Ballard believable as the quickly maturing Nancy and a real find in Joe Kouri. Heretofore known only to Notre Dame High School theater-goers, Kouri nailed his role as hormone-driven student Felix Lindor.

Matt Stubbs and Jessie Pilcher played other students. Jillian Rebmann and CST board member Cathy Diefenbach portrayed other nuns. Like the aforementioned, all were on their game. Kudos to Clark for that.

The show runs nightly through July 3. Call the ticket office at 676-2196 about discount opportunities.

A second straight year of storm clouds over Peoria Stadium dampened the track but not the spirits of a huge throng of fine track and field folk (redundant) Tuesday for the 32nd annual Honor Roll Meet. We started a half-hour late and, I suppose, finished a half-hour late. Big deal.

With Logan Pflibsen pole vaulting, we would have finished a little late either way. When you’re going up to 17 feet, it takes a while. Indeed, the Streator senior was as good as advertised, and seeing him easily slip over the bar at 16-6 stands as the most indelible image of the day for me. Fresh off the best vault an Illinois prep ever has executed — 17-2 at the Champaign Centennial sectional — Pflibsen just, just missed his middle attempt at 17 feet Tuesday. He packed his poles for the farthest northeast drive in the Journal Star area, content with a 16-inch shattering of the HRM record  (IVC’s Tyler Pence, 15-2 in 2006).

“You’ve gotta be (an adjective we won’t say) fearless to do that at that height,” Metamora’s Pat Ryan said as Pflibsen tried 17 feet.

“A certain Morgan Ryan pole vaults,” Dad was reminded.

“Yeah, but not 17 feet,” Ryan retorted before we both decided Pflibsen could give it a decent go if we just laid a bar across the top of the football uprights, which appears to be 20 feet.

Watching Pflibsen meant I had to take in my favorite event, the 4×400, from beyond the second curve, a regret. Morton’s D.J. Zahn, always a thrill, had the covered grandstand jumpin’ with his anchor-leg chase of Pekin’s Matt Davis, but the excellent Dragons quartet won, 3:25.14 to 3:25.19. A 20th of a second separating two teams after four kids do a lap; that’s what we love.  

Let’s interrupt the good with a little of the, um, shabby.

• The first Eureka relay to come west and run on Honor Roll Meet day placed fourth in the girls 4×100. Correct in the paper, but uncredited initially to the point of missing the awards stand. It was caught, the Games Committee quickly handled, and proper medals are en route to Shelby Kuphferscmid, Elly Vance, Natalie Puent and Kalla Gold. We did snap a shot of the quartet on the stand after the fix.
• They and all the 4×100 relays ran what you might have thought were incredible times. That can happen when you start at the wrong staggers. We have clerks and starters from the state track coaches hall of fame and/or ample state-meet assignments. We have state-medalist athletes and obscene levels of cumulative knowledge picking and timing. And no one said anything beforehand. Human error, where it makes no sense. School officials should toss Tuesday’s times out before looking at any of their own record books.
• The paper listed a fourth-place tie in boys discus, unlikely in any four-attempt competition but really impossible if you consider no two kids threw the same distance. It was a penmanship issue. Correct medals were given and henceforth the results read right.
• Not credited for her fifth-place tie in the girls high jump, in the paper’s Scoreboard results, was Washington junior Lexi Barra. Everything was right at the site, from event official to awards. Lexi lost the flip to Richwoods’ Emily Downing and thus has to wait for the correct medal to arrive by mail, but she gets to keep whatever older one we draped on her for photo purposes.
• The other two ties you saw in agate are correct, in boys vault and high jump.
• Kn0xville’s Brett Curry epitomized what the meet can be for: A senior who missed state gets a gold in the 3200. That put the finish-line folk’s head in a vice for a minute because I had inadvertently scratched Curry from the 2 when he wanted to run that and not the 1600. It didn’t help when his sub was named Mike Kouri, and that made 13. Well, 13 may run and Curry won and Kouri kinda did, too — six ahead of him, six behind, after he’d been seeded last.

Of course, there are ample personal victories such as Kouri’s at a huge meet. That’s why marking season bests always was a feature of the aforementioned next-day agate. Alas, computers sometimes conspire to take away what we used to do easily — “My kingdom for a legal pad!” — and when you throw some journalism vandals named Gatehouse into the mix (“One edition is enough, isn’t it, Peoria? We have to print 10 other papers here now.”), well, we all press on.

Let’s not think about them when we can think about Tawnie McGann, Lexi Hobbs and Grace Shadid.

McGann, subject of last year’s sensational, rain-drenched image after winning the 300 hurdles in a downpour, defended that title by two seconds over the field. But here’s a more amazing thing: She won the 100 hurdles by a full second (OK, .97) over Richwoods stud freshman Brenna Detra. Nobody wins a 100 hurdles race by that many steps at this meet. Love that girl’s guts. It’s not game face. It’s race face.

Hobbs is just crazy good. She outran Detra to give Dunlap a gold in the loaded 4×100, with people like Amanda Duvendack and Kalla Gold up the straightaway. Detra got her back in the open 200, by 4/10ths, and no one was catching the Knights freshman on the final leg of the 4×2. But Hobbs got past Eureka’s state-champion unit to give Dunlap third there. And she won the long jump over another sophomore, LaSalle-Peru’s Ellen Renk, who was distinctly the best triple jumper on the property and would have doubled with one more inch in the long.

Shadid took the girls 100, of all glamour events, as she and Woodruff’s Andrea Porch battled it out in lanes 6 and 7. This came right after Shadid won the girls pole vault and just before she had to run off and anchor ND’s 4×2.

Porch brought a proud, if quiet, curtain down on Woodruff track and field, with her season-bests in the 100 and long jump, taking away silver and bronze, respectively.

Then there’s Duvendack. What can you say? My rudimentary eyeball test has her as the best next-level prospect around here since Zach Glavash. My even-more-rudimentary estimation has her largely culpable for the Stadium’s wooden awards stand being so chock-full of spike holes. If she didn’t climb it four times a year for four years, she came close. Most often front and center. She assured herself of being in at least next year’s program because her :56.65 in the 400 is the best the HRM has seen in 31 years of girls trying.

My thanks list is too long for here. The volunteers all know I love them, or should. Special shout-outs go to 30-HRM-plus guys such as the tireless Don Merrick and Chris Perry, and also to first-time helpers in the sand jumps, Donald Glover (Richwoods) and Terry Shortridge (Notre Dame). Jim Runkle was more amazing this year than the previous few when I gushed over his help (this time it included corresponding during his fishing vacation). And Farmington’s Clarks and Eikers out at the pole vault love the event so much, they deserved to see the best vaulter in state history come by and do his thing.

Good night, everybody.