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Circus Quixote – Lookingglass Theatre – February 26, 2025

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My hope that the reopening of Lookingglass Theatre, featuring the world premiere of Circus Quixote, would lead me on a quest to see more of their productions, turned out to be an impossible dream.

Upon entering the building, the first thing that struck me was the spare feeling of the “vibrant new lobby,” as described by the architects.

If not for the juggling instruction going on in one corner, I might have thought that I had wandered into the wrong place.

The play itself wasn’t quite as monstrous a show as the theater’s production of Frankenstein in 2019, but I was ready to leave within the first 30 seconds, thereafter gritting my teeth and performing mental gymnastics to help me endure until intermission.

There were some laughs (not as many for me as for a few others in the sparse crowd – relatives of the cast?), though I feel like much of the humor must have been lost to me in translation. I did understand the sophomoric use of belching, but wasn’t particularly amused. If you’re going that route, go bigger.

Some of the choreographed scenes were lame, though not so the horse fantasized from a rocking chair.

The interactions with the audience struck me as inappropriate and somewhat desperate, as, all in all, I felt like I was watching a long-form improv show that was playing off of a suggestion to incorporate windmills into a scene.

Betrayal – Goodman Theatre – February 22, 2025

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A review I read before going to see Betrayal said that Pinter’s “plays famously include long pauses and silences that can feel interminable to audiences if not handled with care.”

Had I not read that review, I wouldn’t even have noticed any such delays. As it is, maybe one or two. Certainly never enough of an interlude to grab a snack in the lobby. Credit to the director and cast? Or difference of opinion as to what qualifies? I don’t know.

Before seeing the production, I was thinking that maybe I made a mistake in not pursuing an acting career, specializing in Pinter. Given a long enough gap between lines, I might have had time to recall my dialogue, or sneak a peek at crib notes on my sleeve, before my turn arose.

Moreover, the anguish in my expression as I tried to remember what to say might have been interpreted as, or confused for acting.

As an audience member, I could use long pauses when watching Shakespeare, as they would give me time to figure out, or look up on my phone, what I had just heard. Of course that would lead to interminably long shows, which was not a problem in this 75-minute production.

Helen Hunt and Robert Sean Leonard were the draws, and they were fine, but, frankly, not special enough to induce a recommendation from me. Fortunately, however, though the play is considered a drama, there were some good laughs, because I just didn’t care about the characters.

An interesting side note about this play with a backward timeline is that the audience wasn’t sure that it was over until a minor character walked onto the stage alone to take the first bow.

Season Prelude Reception and Dinner with the Maestro – Millennium Park – February 20, 2025

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The maestro, in case you have been avoiding all news, is the new Grant Park Music Festival (GPMF) artistic director and principal conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, replacing Carlos Kalmar.

Addressing a packed stage, Guerrero had a lot to say about his background and plans, not only for this year, but also the future, in particular next year’s 250th anniversary of something or other.

He did so in a rapid-fire style that would make Aaron Sorkin proud. I was assured by GPMF staff that not everything he conducts moves at that same lightening-fast pace.

In his remarks, GPMF President and CEO Paul Winberg mentioned the organization’s successful DEI efforts, and didn’t get hit by lightning.

It never gets old sitting on the Jay Pritzker Pavilion Stage, with the glass doors closed to spare us from the frigid temperatures, and looking out onto Millennium Park from the vantage point, in this case, of a member of the violin section of the Grant Park Orchestra.

Several times I noticed the headlights from a golf cart driving east to west across the division between the seats and the lawn, which I assume was either some sort of security check or a search for the most wayward shot in history.

We were treated to two beautiful cello selections played by this year’s artist-in-residence, Inbal Segev. I wish I could tell you what they were, but I must have been too focused on the hunt for the golf ball. Segev will be playing at two consecutive Wednesday concerts in July, which I look forward to and when there will be written programs for me to crib from.

There also was a mezzo-soprano, who probably was very good, delivering a couple short songs, but, as we know, I don’t care.

Dinner in the Choral Hall was excellent (special kudos to the rolls).

Finally, I would be remiss in not mentioning my excitement when parking in the Millennium Park Garage for the first time and having the gates open automatically for me upon recognizing my license plates as entered on my prepay online form. I’m easily amused.

I’ve Got a Sinking Feeling

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It was ten months from the time Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the ice before it finally sank. Fortunately the entire crew amazingly survived not only that, but also another nine months before their rescue. The last five of those months were spent on Elephant Island.

The weather forecast here this week is for temperatures and wind chills some 30 or more degrees lower than that of Elephant Island, but I don’t have to go outside if I don’t want to (and I won’t be eating any dogs).

Instead I have been inspired to start constructing a LEGO version of the Endurance that I’m taking my time with, as the groundhog said something about six more weeks (months?, years?) of winter, but hope will not take me more than ten months to complete (though I’ve already had to start over once, so who knows), will not sink (pretty good chance of that as it’s not near any water) and will not go unseen for over 100 years (some possibility of that as I don’t get a lot of company).

This project might be the first item in a new LEGO wing (complementing the spacecraft gallery) that would be a combination musical theater (Ernest Shackleton Loves Me) – sea (a groaner, not a typo) you later nook that could also include the Titanic, which took somewhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours 40 minutes to sink, depending on whom you believe (but in either case, would require me to work faster) and is featured in the upcoming Porchlight Music Theatre/Broadway in Chicago production of Titanique.

Booked for the Evening – Newberry Library – Feb. 7, 2025

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If only I had brought my checkbook with me, I might have been able to purchase John Bringhurst and Rosina Matern’s Quaker marriage certificate from June 2, 1682 for a mere $5000. But I didn’t, so I limited myself to browsing, and chatting with some of the staff who had been released from their research nooks to be available to wax poetically about the esoteric materials on display.

One table exhibited a collection of early to mid-20th-century house plans, down to things like plumbing fixtures, in case I wanted to build the retro abode of my dreams, like Brendon Frasier did for his parents in Blast from the Past.

Another, which actually held some interest for me, presented the sheet music for twelve Tunisian dances, composed by Ali Ben Salomone, from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, made more interesting by the fact that at least some of those dances were notoriously performed by Fatima Djemille, the belly dancer famously known as Little Egypt.

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning the Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger Coffee Book display, which might go well with Cosmo Kramer’s coffee table book of coffee tables that turns into a coffee table.

The married couple used a different piece of paper as a coaster for their cups every day from January 25 through August 30, 2020, and apparently forgot to throw them out, so that today I could appreciate the coffee stains and rings they had left.

I would have expected to see something like that at the Museum of Contemporary Art, especially since, it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that there is something known as coffee art, though that at least requires some creative value-added over and above putting out a new piece of paper every day.

On Second Thought

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In 1965 the Doomsday Clock (not to be confused with the Doomsday Machine from Dr. Strangelove) was set at 12 minutes to midnight by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which seemed precarious when you considered that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few million years – something to do with the Lambda CDM (not a music storage device) and the Hubble constant, a measure of cosmic expansion.

That same year Hedgehoppers Anonymous released a song entitled It’s Good News Week, which, of course, it wasn’t, though everything’s relative, a theory that eventually led to the Hubble constant.

Today, the Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds (less time than it takes for me to whip up some instant oatmeal) to midnight — the closest to that hour it has ever been. We should be so proud.

According to a Bulletin spokesman: “We set the clock closer to midnight [only by one second from where it was] because we do not see sufficient, positive progress on the global challenges we face, including nuclear risk, climate change, biological threats and advances in disruptive technologies.” This is much the same as they said last year, when they did not move the clock. I wonder what changed.

Since there are 31,556,952,000,000,000 (that’s 31.55 quadrillion for those of you wondering) seconds in a billion years, that one second seems rather infinitesimal, particularly when you compare it to the five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes that helped Rent win the Tony for best original score in 1996.

Take a second and think about it.

Michelle Cann – The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance – Logan Center – January 24, 2025

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This was the second time I’ve seen pianist Michelle Cann perform. She was fabulous in the summer of 2023 when I saw her play Rhapsody in Blue at the Grant Park Music Festival (actually at an afternoon rehearsal I fortunately attended as I correctly anticipated weather issues for the evening performance). Even at a bit of a distance, her energy and enthusiasm, atop her skills, were evident.

From a closer vantage point for this concert, it was even better. And, since it was just her, we also got to hear her passion through background introductions about the composers before each piece. She has a magnetic, contagious personalty, further confirmed by her interaction with attendees after the performance. And she sure can play the piano.

She brought to life the music and stories of Nora Holt, Betty Jackson King, Florence Price, Irene Britton Smith and Margaret Bonds.  I was previously unfamiliar with the music, but Instantly attracted to it.

Michelle is coming back to town later this year, with a whole different playlist, but I think I’ll keep the details to myself until I get a ticket, so I won’t miss out.

Writers on Writing – The Newberry – January 23, 2025

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Hernan Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author, despite the fact that he says  he has met with universal and enthusiastic rejection about his writing for most of his life.

Diaz was in conversation with Ananda Lima, herself an award-winning author of poetry, who also has had real writing published.

Lima was excellent at eliciting interesting conversation, including her perspectives, but Diaz was the star of the program with his unique, entertaining articulations.

He’s all about words, saying that a book is only as good as its worst sentence. He calls his books syntactical events, He likes to write longhand, describing his typing as reminiscent of a praying mantis, and preferring not to be constrained by layout designs dictated by Bill Gates.

Trust, his second book, is four novels in one, each written from a different perspective, based on four style guides he fashioned in advance, creating what he called a stratified, polyphonic structure.

His mention of that led him to tell us that his procrastination time is spent looking at the Chicago Manual of Style, where he loves taking their quizzes. I bet he’s fun at parties.

What he doesn’t do, is research. He says that term should be limited to the sciences, where emotion isn’t allowed. He prefers to say he reads.

He describes genre as writing’s built-in device to help form a meeting of the minds between the author and the reader and a reason why he doesn’t worry about whether readers will “get it”, as he also assumes the readers are smarter than he is, which is a cause of his constant state of writing terror, the state of mind, not the genre.

Fun Home – Porchlight Music Theatre – January 16 – March 2, 2025

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My best personal dress rehearsal story (for anther time) is a perfect example of that which was best described in Shakespeare in Love as follows:

“Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
So what do we do?
Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
How?
I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

Porchlight’s Fun Home dress/tech rehearsal actually went quite well. A drawer of pencils spilled on the stage (perhaps appropriately since the play is set in Pennsylvania), promptly cleaned up by one of the actors ,who of course knew better than to let them sit there for everyone to stare at and/or trip over.

I was also engaged by watching a photographer work his way around in front of the stage (as best viewed from the balcony where we sat) snapping away for promotional purposes, while the actors, professionals that they are, totally ignored him, which reminded me of the way the actors in the immersive plays I’ve been to have worked around the audience members in their midst as if they were mere apparitions.

Back a mere four days later, for the final preview, it was obvious that the cast hadn’t just been lazing around the house eating popcorn and watching football, like someone I know. The production was even sharper and my enjoyment even higher.

Fun Home is complicated. It doesn’t sugar-coat life, but it also doesn’t forget about the good things – the ending is, surprisingly, not downbeat. Despite the play’s serious themes, it uncovers plenty of humor, with the aid of some wonderful songs. Listen to the children singing Come to the Fun Home and you’ll want to.

Making an Impression: Immigrant Printing in Chicago – The Newberry – Dec. 12, 2024 – March 29, 2015

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Printing is so yesterday. Now it’s all about videos, DMs and deep fake photos, although the U.S. Supreme Court has installed a speed bump in the social media highway for about 170 million people.

Hickory Dickory Dock,
China is on the clock
The Court voted nine to none
That their U.S. time was done
For providing us their Tik and their Tok.

So let’s discuss printing. Chicago in the late 19th, early 20th century, produced newspapers for over 20 different foreign language communities.

The current Newberry exhibit made an impression on me, but not totally in a good way. I understand why documents are protectively placed behind glass, but could the library at least put them close enough to the viewer so that they can be read. That said, I press on.

The highlight, for me, was the section dealing with the company of Curt Teich, a- German immigrant who arrived here in 1895 at the age of 18. The company secretly printed 3 million maps for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in World War II that were used for invasions and as decoy maps. A couple were on display, but, again, were hard to view in person, so I went online afterward, but couldn’t find them. Apparently still a secret.

The company was also known for its postcards, printing up to 250 million a year depicting places around the country. Among those on display were a few featuring a Chicago Chinese restaurant, which left me wanting more.