But the show must go on ...

In the program for the musical The Pirates of Penzance, put on April 11-19 by Larkin High School and its District U46 Performing Arts Academy, the cast notes for Dan Berk say only that he is "a senior in the drama focus. He is America!" But that doesn't tell half the story.

Playing the harrumphing, comical Major General, Berk stole the show with terrific comic body movement, reminiscent of how Dick Van Dyke once portrayed that character on Van Dyke's 1960s TV series. Berk also was the human inside the Larkin mascot costume this year. But maybe the most fascinating thing he did happened during a dress rehearsal for Penzance.

"In a scene where Dan is dressed in a bed shirt with the main spotlight on him, he lost his microphone transmitter down his pants," says a witness, Elgin lawyer Eric Johnson.

"Staying in character, complete with the British accent, he knelt down to try to retrieve the little box and wires, keeping a running dialogue going about his troubles. While doing so, always prepared for a gag, Dan revealed to the spotlight and thus everyone there that he was wearing oversized, very patriotic underwear.

"His efforts frustrated, Dan then announced to the pit orchestra below that in order to remedy the problem, he was going to have to remove his pants, which he stated with great drama.

"Only then did he look at all bewildered, as he had to turn and get through a line of female cast members standing in the way of his exit. However, once he got to the line of girls, he quickly snapped back into character and loudly ordered, 'LAAADIES! Make a screen!!' They instantly turned their backs and all opened their parasols. Dan quickly fixed the problem."

But why did the program editors say "He is America," besides the fact that he wears red, white and blue underpants? Berk said he is working this summer at Donley's Wild West Town in Union, playing a cowboy. And then this fall, while his classmates are going on to drama schools and colleges or trying out Broadway, he'll be going on active duty with the U.S. Army airborne troops.

"I owe something to my country," Berk explained simply after the play's final performance. "Freedom isn't free."

When he gets out of the Army, he added -- unless he stays in long enough to become a real major general -- he plans to move to Alaska for a year.

• His day to shine: DeKalb native Richard Jenkins, who's 61 but has looked like he was 40 since he was 20, is one of those "character actors." Their faces look familiar but their names are on the tip of nobody's tongue, even as they make a steady living in movies and TV.

The other night I ran across the 1989 mystery Sea of Love on TV, and there was Jenkins, playing Al Pacino's middle-aged partner on the NYPD. In North Country he was the middle-aged father of the sexually persecuted miner played by Charlize Theron. In Shall We Dance?, he was a middle-aged detective who never stopped eating.

Now the time finally has come for Jenkins to star in a movie. Called The Visitor, it's about a self-obsessed, emotionally dry professor who finds two illegal immigrants squatting in his little-used New York apartment. The twin themes are that our immigration system is fouled up and that everybody needs some higher cause to live for.