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The Recommendation – Windy City Playhouse – August 18, 2019

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As with past productions, the Windy City Playhouse’s current show provides a different kind of experience, this time moving the necessarily small audience between a dorm room, jail cell, poolside patio, restaurant, bar, and health club sauna, which, as far as I could tell, served no purpose other than to show off the actors’ pecs and the stage crew’s ability to quickly transform the space.

There’s a lot of yelling, which, in my opinion, often replaces more interesting subtlety, and which I find annoying enough in a normal theater space, but when you’re three feet from the actors, it makes me want to close my eyes and go to a happy place.

The actors do a fine job of ignoring audience members while moving among them, except on those occasions when interaction is intended, as when one of them took me by surprise by calling out my name and delivering to me a cold, awful tasting shot of coffee in the middle of a scene, the occasion of which I nonetheless intend to add to my stage resume as an uncredited role.

It’s a serious show, but I found the delivery of the message to be somewhat convoluted, with unnecessary details inserted for no apparent reason other than to fill time. In particular, I couldn’t help but cringe when a lawyer asked his client to sign something that bore no relation to the thread of the story and would be a clear violation of legal ethics rules. I later felt compelled to go to the playwright’s webpage and send him a message citing the rule he had his character breaking. I’m sure that will go over well.

I love the creativity of the Windy City Playhouse, but The Recommendation does not get mine.

Chicago Sings 25 Years of Porchlight – Museum of Contemporary Art – August 5, 2019

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The first Porchlight production I ever saw was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in the 2014-15 season. Portentous perhaps, as a funny thing happened to me on the way to their 25-year celebration – my “good” knee collapsed 5 days in advance.

But, on the hope that the pre-show hor d’oeuvres would be comforting, I decided not to let a little thing like another grade whatever sprained ligament deter me from attending, though I decided to forego the cocktails given how wobbly I already was on two bad knees and a single vintage 1968 wooden crutch that made me look like I was there to audition for the role of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.

There were luminaries in the audience and the performances were great, but the highlight of the evening for me was very slowly and carefully making it down and up the stairs to my seat and back twice without further injury, which leads me to my one complaint about the evening – NO DESSERT at intermission, even though it had been promised.

Among the performers, I’ll mention two Five Guys Named Moe alumni, Lorenzo Rush, Jr., and James Earl Jones II, who is back in town with the touring company of Come From Away; the wacky Bill Larkin, whose one-man show I recently wrote about; and triple threat Laura Savage, whom I’ve had the good fortune to see recently in Sweet Charity, Holiday Inn, A Chorus Line, and The Music Man.

The evening also included the presentation of the Guy Adkins Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Music Theater in Chicago to Gary Griffin. Having seen nine productions directed by Griffin, I can attest to his results, but listening to his choppy, rambling, somewhat incoherent acceptance speech (he assured us he was only drinking water), I wondered how he communicates with his actors. Perhaps, as in The Music Man, it’s the think system.

Teatro ZinZanni: Love, Chaos, and Dinner – Cambria Hotel – July 28, 2019

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Described as The Kit Kat Club on acid or The Moulin Rouge meets Cirque de Soleil, Teatro ZinZanni is too long, but what a hoot. Even the lobby is fun.

If you see it, be aware that it makes a difference where you sit. You don’t need to worry about blue paint or flying watermelon parts, but some of the action in the middle of the spiegeltent flows over onto a table or two, and if you’re centrally located you’re more likely to become part of the show, interacting with The Caesar or Lady Rizo, who is part Janis Joplin, part Bette Midler.

If you’re follicly challenged, you may get your scalp rubbed by various cast members, and if you’re a woman of a certain age, you might find yourself being theatrically-wooed by The Caesar, whose wild patter is reminiscent of Robin Williams. If you’re a healthy-looking young male, The Caesar may pick you out to participate in a faux competition to be his successor.

Sitting in a back booth provides relief for the stage shy. And you might, as I did, wind up in a conversation with a sixth-generation circus-family contortionist watching her ninth-generation circus-family, body-juggling, crowd-wowing boyfriend from an area behind your table in preparation for joining the show herself in a couple months when the acts change, as they regularly do to encourage return customers.

Between aerial artists, rhythmic gymnasts, and dancing waitstaff, Joe De Paul sang a little like Frank Sinatra (backed by a band that never took a break), portrayed King Kong, and partnered with the multi-talented Mr. P.P. (if you consider juggling with your mouth a talent) to leave the audience in tears of laughter from their hijinks.

My only regret was that singer Kelly Britt, hitting a ridiculously high note, failed to break the wine glass in her hand. Had she succeeded, she might have brought me over to the dark side, or as it is more commonly known, opera.

Sunday Near Millennium Park Without Anyone Named George – July 21, 2019

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Interestingly, both Doctors Without Borders and Borders book stores, which no one was able to save (thereby making the doctors’ organizational name prescient), were founded in 1971. On the other hand, Crossing Borders Music, which put on the concert by my piano teacher, Marianne Parker, that I attended at the Chicago Cultural Center, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park, originated in 2011.

The wonderful solo concert featured music from Marianne’s new album of Haitian music, entitled Pages intimes. As I told her afterward, she obviously has been holding out on me, not teaching me everything she knows, because, shockingly, I can’t play like she can. What other reason could there be?

I then rushed over to the Art Institute, across Monroe Street from Millennium Park, to attend its annual Block Party. On my way to the Impressionism room containing Van Gogh’s The Drinkers, for a program put on by the Brewseum, I passed by Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, thereby completing my park-adjacent trilogy.

Pub historian, and Brewseum founder and executive director, Liz Garibay presented a delightful lecture to the crowd on both the Van Gogh painting and the history and culture of drinking and drinking establishments in Chicago, including the 1855 Lager Beer Riot. After this educational tasting, I now thirst for more information, which I attend to drink in at the Brewseum’s exhibition currently on tap at the Field Museum.

I ended my near-the-park Sunday by watching Mucca Pazza (which translates as mad cow) end the party with one of their unique musical performances. P.T. Barnum would have been proud of the way they closed by marching through the Monroe Street exit, helping to clear the building by leading out hundreds of visitors, who then realized that the show was over.  This way to the egress.

Southport Arts Festival – July 13, 2019

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The Southport Arts Festival is a modest gathering, where free street parking is not that far away, at least in the daytime, and one location offers free beer.

But my main reason for going was to see Bill Larkin and his Comic Songs at the Piano (and one with a ukulele) at the Venus Cabaret. Larkin acts, including some shouting, as much as sings his original songs. I see a sort of combination of Lewis Black and Tom Lehrer in him, as his dark humor highlights people’s foolishness and foibles (including his own). The size of the crowd was disappointing, but Larkin wasn’t.

Later in the day, Neal Tobin, Necromancer, took the same stage. Necromancy is a practice of magic involving communication with the dead. After only 15 minutes of his act, Tobin made me wish I were dead, so I got up and left, thinking that his act was not worth the free price of admission, and not worrying whether he could read my mind in that regard.

As with most street fairs, there were a variety of artists and artisans displaying their work. Three attracted my attention. Time After Time, it turned out, was not selling Cyndi Lauper CDs or DVDs of H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper, but rather Historic American Rephotography, where Mark Hersch merges 100-year-old photographs with photographs he takes from the same vantage point to create a single image.

Robots in Rowboats also misled me, as most of the robots were not, in fact, in rowboats, but I guess you just can’t pass on a good alliteration.

Finally, By The Yard sells outdoor furniture recycled from plastic milk jugs. Really. Afterward, it occurred to me that I should have asked whether there was a quality difference between pieces constructed from skim, 2%, and whole milk containers.

The Music Man – The Goodman Theatre – July 7, 2019

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I would rather see a Neil Simon play than one by Shakespeare, so it should come as no surprise that I smiled for two and a half hours while watching The Music Man (despite what I considered a rather drab performance by the leading man), just knowing, that at some point, the Wells Fargo Wagon would be coming down the street, to the roars of the audience, creating even more excitement than an Amazon delivery.

I didn’t find the play dated. To me, River City is like Brigadoon, a pastoral place, frozen in time, that seems uninviting if you’re a cynical New Yorker or an anvil salesman, like the ten-time Jeff-nominated, scene-stealing Matt Crowle, but, eventually, idyllic, if you’re Tommy Albright in Brigadoon, or Harold Hill, who realizes that there was nothing till there was Marian, and the beautiful singing voice of Monica West.

When Hill jumps off the train, it reminds me of the passenger, who definitely didn’t know the territory, in the Twilight Zone episode A Stop at Willoughby, a place around the bend, when he jumped into “sunlight and serenity.”

The Music Man features a wonderful group of townspeople that fittingly includes three of the actors I last saw auditioning for roles in Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of A Chorus Line in May. No solos for them this time, but Laura Savage and Adrienne Velasco-Storrs, along with Ayana Strutz (great name for a dancer), help light up the stage.

I don’t know if Meredith Wilson, through Professor Hill, introduced the “think method” of learning to play an instrument as a wink and a nod to the then incipient Suzuki method of instruction, but Rock Island and Ya Got Trouble are still my favorite rap songs.

Seventy-Six Trombones is the signature song of the show, but the best line is Hill’s concession that he always thinks there’s a band. With a nod to another show, that should be everyone’s new philosophy.

The Ballad of Lefty and Crabbe – The Understudy – July 6, 2019

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I’d never before been to the Understudy (50 seats behind a storefront door that’s easy to miss) or seen an Underscore Theatre Company production, which, unbeknownst to me, has been putting on musicals since established in 2010.

As is my wont, I offered the ticket checker/concession person a bit of unsolicited advice about the company’s website, which she said she would pass on, as she wasn’t anybody, just there for the day. At intermission, after seeing her introduce the play to the audience, I returned to the counter and congenially accused her of lying to me, whereupon she (Laura Stratford, I later determined) shyly admitted that she was one of the founders of the company, but had recently stepped down from her position as Artistic Director to focus more on her writing.

Lefty and Crabbe are a vaudeville team that seems to be inspired by, among others, Laurel and Hardy. After they go to Hollywood, Lefty makes a career as a “fat guy falling down,” a specialty if ever there was one. Fortunately, for his health, the actor playing Lefty isn’t called upon to demonstrate that skill for the play. His character doesn’t even fall in love.

The last time I saw a play featuring a vaudeville theme was Thaddeus and Slocum at the Lookingglass Theater in 2016 when the show had to be delayed for twenty minutes in the middle of the performance while one of the actors was whisked away in an ambulance and someone was picked at random from the audience to replace him – I’m kidding about that last part.

Having now seen yet another group of previously unknown to me talented performers, I want to single out Mike Ott as the fast-talking agent, only because his patter seemed well-suited for the role of Harold Hill in The Music Man, which will be my next post.

Six – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – June 29, 2019

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“I’m Henry the eighth I am, Henry the eighth I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, She’s been married seven times before, And everyone was a Henry.” Turns out that’s not the real story about England’s King Henry VIII.

I’ve never seen the musical Nine, which won the 1982 Tony for best musical, but I bet it isn’t 50% better than Six, the part herstory lesson, part rock concert, part dance party, part comedic musical retelling of the stories of the six wives of Henry VIII, which I’m guessing will make its way to Broadway, with awards in its future.

All but one of the very talented performers were new to me, the exception being Abby Mueller, who was Carole King in Beautiful last time I saw her. Now she’s Jane Seymour, not the English actress (who has been married four times in her own right), but rather Henry’s third wife in the chain of “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, but just for you tonight, we’re divorced, beheaded, live.”

Don’t worry about the list’s suggestion of violent deaths. No one actually loses their head on stage, though a majority of the audience lost their minds, whooping and hollering in reaction to the creative, illuminating, high-energy songs, which, as I learned from reading the playbill, were “queenspired” by a dozen pop stars, ranging from Adele to Beyonce to Rihanna (but, thankfully, not Herman’s Hermits).

My only regret upon leaving the theater was that Henry didn’t have more wives to entertain and educate the audience. I don’t know what the authors have in mind for their next project, but Elizabeth Taylor had seven husbands (eight marriages counting Richard Burton twice).

Improvised Shakespeare Chicago – The iO Theater – June 28, 2019

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There appeared to be many repeat attendees at the performance. When the cast asked the audience for suggestions for a title for that night’s play, they were ready with a host of responses clearly thought out ahead of time. Otherwise how would you explain an immediate shout out of the chosen title – The Gift of the Gobbler? One doesn’t come up with that out of thin air in a split second.

So, given that the premise of the performance is not taking a named Shakespearean work and riffing off of it, which I would have known had I read that part of the promotion that said a “fully improvised play in Elizabethan style using the language and themes of William Shakespeare”, what makes this show Improvised Shakespeare? Nothing. That’s just to draw you in, which I’m glad it did.

So what made the product Shakespearean? Well, they used the word proffer a lot even though there weren’t any lawyers or courtroom scenes in the show.

There was a woman playing a man and men playing women and none of them were named Yentl or Tootsie.

There was British royalty, scheming, and a lot of rhyming, but no one named Hamilton.

Enough people died that it suggested either Shakespeare, George R.R. Martin, or Quentin Tarantino, but there wasn’t any nudity, so not Martin, and there weren’t any profanities or racial slurs, so not Tarantino.

Though many of the characters died on stage, none of the actors did, relying on their perseverance, skills and tricks of the trade (both short and long form improvisation “need a mechanism in place to relieve the audience of the excruciating pain of a scene that is not working”) to entertain and move the story forward.

As is often said, dying is easy, comedy is hard.

Tank and the Beez – Washington Square Park – June 21, 2019

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Husband and wife, Brian “Tank” (bass/harmonica) and Beth “Beez” (guitar) Blankenship, added Jeff Teppema (fiddle) and someone named Charlie (guitar) for the performance.

Tank and the Beez describe themselves as an old-time roots string band, which made me wonder whether their instruments are made out of onions, potatoes, carrots, or radishes.

They specialize in traditional blues, folk, and jazz tunes and, by their own account, read their lyrics off an old-timey iPad.

The group’s other concession to modern technology was Jeff tuning his fiddle off an app on his cell phone. His fiddle looked suspiciously like a violin, which led me to a nice article in Strings Magazine, which has nothing to do with theoretical physics.

Jeff pulled a shaker out for one song, but unfortunately, one of the band’s other frequent members, Amy Malouf, was not there to play her washboard.

Beez and Tank nicely took the lead on most of the songs, but Charlie had his moment in the shade on one tune. Even before that it struck me that he appeared to speak like a would-be ventriloquist, with slight movements of the lips, while his teeth remained glued together.

Charlie noted that the song he sang was written in B Flat, and suggested that it was a common key when it was written about a hundred years ago, as it made it compatible with the hum of the electric lights in use in the United States.

Though Charlie’s singing was not on par with Tank’s, or especially Beez’s, he acquitted himself quite well on the guitar, which he suggested was Middle English for out of tune, a possible homage, given the group’s brand of music, to Pete Seeger’s line that “when you play the 12-string guitar, you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.”