So he stepped into the title role. By then, he’d already had plenty of preparation. “The whole time I was Raoul, I was the Phantom’s understudy as well,” Gleason said, calling from New York City. “On a two-show day, I could be Raoul at the matinee and then be the Phantom at night.

In Muskegon, a frazzled family battles over whose turn it is to use the only bathroom in the house. In Madison, Wis., an elderly widow laments what she sees as the deterioration of her neighborhood. In Detroit, a babysitter is taken aback by the unusual lunch request of the boy she’s taking care of.

“Currently, BoarsHead is defunct, they are bankrupt. We’re not rescuing anyone,” he said. “The BoarsHead people are working hard to reconstitute themselves to once again be a viable theater company in Lansing. Without us, they’d have to go back to the drawing board.

The curtains closed on BoarsHead Theater Monday night as the Lansing Community College Board of Trustees voted not to pursue a proposed partnership with the now-bankrupt company.“We’re dead,” said BoarsHead interim director George Orban after the vote.By a vote of 4-2 the LCC trustees rejected a union with BoarsHead, which closed its doors last December in the face of declining ticket sales and high-profile personnel shake-ups.

Emerald-green tights, sneering sheriffs and damsels-in-distress have no place in director Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood,” which is the latest in an ever-growing series of epics that “re-imagine” a familiar tale. Brian Helgeland’s screenplay takes Robin — or Robin Longstride, as he is known here — back to his final days in The Crusades and into his first visit to Nottingham, where he will meet many of the characters who will become his band of Merry Men.It’s an idea ripe with possibilities. Unfortunately, it’s also the same idea the creators of the excellent BBC “Robin Hood” series had several years ago, and they had more fun with it. Although Scott’s saga is extremely well-crafted and often exciting, it somehow never quite catches fire to become the pulse-pounding, vigorous romantic adventure it aspires to be.

Lansing Live, a new concert series featuring local artists, kicks off May 20 on Washington Square, while Citadel Broadcasting prepares to launch a revamped version of the Blues on the Square series..

Summit Entertainment, which distributes the “Twilight” films, is hoping many of those eagerly awaiting “Eclipse” will use this weekend to check out “Letters to Juliet,” a romantic comedy-drama the studio is positioning as a kind of curtain-raiser for the “Twilight” juggernaut.

Make it bigger, louder and longer: That’s the typical blueprint for action-movie sequels. Yet “Iron Man 2” is not a completely formulaic follow-up. Director Jon Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux have created something that’s closer to a comedy-drama than it is to a traditional summer-movie spectacular. The often loopy, non sequitur-riddled dialogue is reminiscent of Favreau’s earlier movies, such as “Swingers” and “Made,” and, thankfully, the storyline does not slide into the old evil-genius-threatens-to-take-over-the-universe groove.

It’s not uncommon to hear a movie described as “cute.” Often, that’s not a compliment. But if there’s any film that truly deserves to be described with that particular adjective, it must be “Babies,” director Thomas Balmes’ documentary examining the first months in the lives of four infants.

The building that once housed BoarsHead Theater is scheduled to be turned into a parking lot. Former BoarsHead artistic director Kristine Thatcher has already launched a new professional theater company called Stormfield. The rest of BoarsHead’s staff has moved on to other ventures.