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Jennifer Keishin Armstrong – American Writers Museum – June 19, 2018

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I saw, maybe, two episodes, of Sex and the City, but I wasn’t oblivious to its popularity. Jennifer Armstrong has written books about The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld (she says she writes cultural histories and has been called a tv anthropologist), so I figured she’s probably got a sense of humor, which is why I went to see her discuss her new book, Sex and the City and Us.

For better or worse, I learned a few things (that everyone else in the audience seemed to know already based on the constant head nodding). I generally knew about the impact of the show on the consumption of cosmopolitans and a heightened awareness of shoes (Armstrong suggested that the Carrie Bradshaw character proved that you could be dark and twisty and still like shoes), but now I know about the show’s effect on the world of cupcakes (the museum provided some bite-size cupcakes for us).

Armstrong also delved deeply into the adult education provided by the show, rattling off a series of sex terms that the show introduced to its viewers (sorry, I didn’t write them down).

According to Armstrong, all the sex in the show was based upon true stories that happened either to a writer of the show or someone a writer knew first hand. Carrie Bradshaw wondered about a lot of things (see “Everything Carrie Ever Wondered About on Sex and the City”). I wonder which came first, having a lot of sex stories, which qualified you to be one of the writers, or getting hired as a writer and then having to go out and have weird sexual encounters.

And, I wonder, is it really true that Mr. Big was so named because of his “status as a ‘major tycoon, major dreamboat, and majorly out of [Carrie’s] league,'” rather than, well, you know? And, was he the same Mr. Big who was Boris Badenov’s superior on Rocky and Bullwinkle?

 

Science Friday – Harris Theater – June 16, 2018

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I went to a taping of the NPR show Science Friday at the Harris Theater, which would make a good bomb shelter if things don’t work out with Kim Jong-un.

Unlike some of my friends, I’ve never been an NPR junkie. Over the years my listening has been limited to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; Car Talk (gone); and Whad’ya Know (gone), for which I was part of a test audience before they went on the air in 1985. I was selected to compete in the quiz and, when interviewed by Michael Feldman, made some wise crack response to him that he didn’t appreciate because he was supposed to get the laughs. No big deal as I figured the show was a rip-off of You Bet Your Life that had no chance of succeeding. Sure enough, it only lasted 31 years, so there!

The Science Friday taping included a segment on urban coyotes and a description of how, in the 19th century, they used to make Indian yellow paint from the urine of cows that were fed mango leaves. They didn’t discuss the effect on humans of eating mango. The show also included a disappointing Second City skit about the bidding war over a meteorite that fell to earth in Park Forest, Illinois in 2003. I would have rather seen scenes from The Blob.

The best part of the evening was Eugenia Cheng, the Scientist-in-Residence at the School of the Art Institute (cool job), who gave a reasonably understandable explanation of the intersection of music and mathematics as it relates to piano tuning (the twelfth root of two comes into play), played a couple piano selections, and engaged in a discussion with another mathematician about math as an art (even though the show isn’t called Art Friday). I would go see her speak again anytime (watch a video of her on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert).

The American Writers Museum has a Science Friday program coming up in August that I plan to attend, so I guess I’m heading toward becoming a groupie.

Five Venues – Seven Programs – Eleven Days – June 5-15, 2018

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In anticipation of the upcoming Make Music Chicago day on June 21, here’s a recap of the musical performances I’ve seen recently (not counting the Porchlight Revisits 1975 I already wrote about).

On June 5th I got a taste of the Rose Colella Quartet, along with the Cajun shrimp risotto, at Andy’s Jazz Club.

On June 8th I attended the noonday concert at Fourth Presbyterian Church, featuring pianist Mio Nakamura. I hadn’t been there in a while, in part because some recent programs were organ music. Other than people who play the organ, the phantom of the opera, and Johann Sebastian Bach (and he’s dead), who likes organ music?

The next evening I stopped by Millennium Park to check out the Chicago Blues Festival. The sound of a harmonica lured me, like a sailor to the Sirens, to the Wrigley Square stage to watch Chicago Wind, featuring Deitra Farr and Matthew Skoller. I wasn’t injured, but I thought there was a faint smell in the air that suggested that others around me may have [been] wrecked.

The next afternoon I went to see a Crossing Borders Music program Honoring Refugee Composers at St. James Cathedral, featuring music of composers from Syria, Armenia, Iran, Croatia, Germany, and Uruguay, the number of whom, unfortunately, about equaled the attendees.

Two days later I went to the Rush Hour Concert at St. James, where John Macfarlane (violin), Anthony Devroye (viola), Brant Taylor (cello), and Kenneth Olsen (cello) performed Anton Arensky’s String Quartet in A Minor. Wonderful music, but I longed for the folding chairs they used to add in the back, which I find more comfortable than the pews.

Afterward I went to Jazz on the Terrace at the Museum of Contemporary Art, getting there during the break between sets. Sadly, I liked the recorded music they played during the break better than the live band, so my stay was short.

Finally, on June 15th, I enjoyed the Grant Park Music Festival at Millennium Park, featuring music of Gluck, Mozart, von Weber, and Elgar. This year’s new security measures were painless, as I didn’t bring any laser pointers, drones, or firearms with me.

Printers Row Lit Fest – June 9, 2018

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Because of the morning rain, I didn’t get the early start I’d hoped for and ran out of time to enter the flash fiction mystery writing contest put on each year at the fest by the Mystery Writers of America, which I also missed out on two years ago when they ran out of time before I could read the story I wrote that day. It was probably just as well since my only experience regarding mystery writing is the mystery as to whether I’ll think of anything to write.

Some friends and I couldn’t get into one restaurant by the fest because it was too crowded and got kicked out of another, which was mostly empty, because they didn’t like our limited order. No mystery as to why they didn’t have more customers.

The only program I saw at the fest was Chris Nashawaty, the film critic at Entertainment Weekly, author of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story, in conversation with Michael Phillips, film critic for the Chicago Tribune.

It was interesting and fun, with the best moment being when an audience member told Nashawaty that he had been a Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship recipient and that Caddyshack was the anthem for golf caddies everywhere. Nashawaty then asked how many former caddies there were in the audience and at least a dozen people raised their hands. The audience roared its approval of itself.

We learned about a cocaine-laced production, which was almost entirely improvised, and had no coherent structure until they came up with the idea of tying together, more or less – mostly less, the seemingly unrelated comedic scenes by adding more shots of the gopher. Despite the mostly unkind initial reviews of the film, the rest is history. Except for the cocaine, this sounded a lot like my life, so I’m shopping for a gopher who can sing I’m Alright.

The Light Fantastic – Jackalope Theater – June 7, 2018

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Promoted as funny and scary, the show featured good special effects and one moment early on when everyone except me (low blood pressure) jumped out of their seats.

The song Time in a Bottle became an element near the end of the play, which reminded me of the parody about drug testing, Mine in a Bottle, we did in the Bar Show years ago, which then reminded me of the show Urinetown (I would have liked to have been in the room for the discussion about naming that show), which was mentioned at this week’s Porchlight Music Theater New Faces Sing Broadway 1975 event in conjunction with John Cullum, who appeared in Urinetown, and won a 1975 Tony for Shenandoah, which I never knew, as it was only recently that I learned he was a Broadway star for years before appearing on Northern Exposure, like so many other Broadway stars who move to television, which made me think of Jerry Orbach, who starred on and off Broadway (two Tonys and the original El Gallo in the Fantastiks) before becoming Lenny Briscoe on Law and Order, though he never sang or danced on that show, which reminded me that I keep waiting and hoping that Sutton Foster (whose brother Hunter was in Urinetown with Cullum) will break into a tap dance on Younger, which is also how I felt about Dule Hill on West Wing, though they did figure out a way to let him tap dance a couple times on Psych. But I digress.

The Light Fantastic featured a monitor displaying the dialogue (and considerable sound effects), from the written script, which reflected some inconsequential differences from what the actors spoke, although I did notice one time when the reversal of order of a sentence killed a would-be comedic moment.

Other than that, and the moment when an audience member had to be helped from the theater after nearly passing out in the front row, the show seemed to go as planned.

New Faces Sing Broadway 1975 – Porchlight Music Theater – June 6, 2018

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First things first – special thanks to the Arts Club of Chicago, where the event was held, for serving red wine. Are you listening American Writers Museum?

If you like trivia and Broadway musicals (and who doesn’t, except one friend of mine), this was the place to be. We heard I Don’t Want to Go Over to Vietnam, from The Lieutenant, which holds the record for shortest run, nine performances, for a show with a Tony nomination for Best Musical. The show is a rock opera about the court martial of Lieutenant Calle. I prefer I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.

The Magic Show was another play with which I was unfamiliar. But this vehicle for magician Doug Henning ran for four years on Broadway, and the music and lyrics were written by Stephen Schwartz, who, among other things, did okay with Wicked. A bit of trivia I discovered that they didn’t tell us – the show was produced by Edgar Lansbury, Angela’s brother.

My favorite among the songs I hadn’t heard before was Emily Senkowsky’s energetic rendition of Look What Happened to Mabel, from Mack and Mabel.

Among others, we also heard songs from the more well-known Chicago and A Chorus Line, the latter of which won nine Tonys to Chicago’s zero. But, although A Chorus Line also won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and became one of the longest running shows in Broadway history, it still takes a back seat to a show from that year that only lasted one month on Broadway – The Rocky Horror Show, the movie version of which is considered to be the longest-running release in film history. The performers led the audience in the Time Warp, which made sense since we were trapped in 1975.

Stories From the Beat Lounge – Second City – June 4, 2018

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Judy’s Beat Lounge is the fourth different venue where I’ve seen storytelling. The emcee proclaimed how wonderful it was to see such a good crowd at their inaugural storytelling event (promoted to occur on a Monday once a month), as I looked around and saw about 35 people, including presenters, in a half empty room. There’s a place for her estimating crowd size in Washington DC.

A local comedian, Chris Trani, led off with a few short jokes about himself before launching into a story that left me wondering how good it might have been had he taken the time to work it out. I found an online video of him doing a standup routine that showed more promise.

Then a former professor opened by saying that she forgot to tell the emcee that all her stories are tragic. She must not have taught Shakespeare. Although her story was serious, no one died (which can nevertheless be funny, as exemplified by Chuckles Bites the Dust).

A self-proclaimed comedienne followed by playing two original musical compositions, one on guitar and one on keyboard, about a failed relationship she had. Her lament may or may not have been interesting, as she had a soft voice that made it hard to hear anything she was singing over the music.

The best story of the night wasn’t really a story, as a woman (whom the emcee described as her second mother) read a long list of one liners, musing about her hair, her aging neck, her therapist and her lust for Woody Allen. I think she would be a hit at Louder Than a Mom.

The last storyteller reflected on what he did and didn’t experience in1963, including mentioning that he didn’t see Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald in living color. Well, neither did anyone else. The broadcast was in black and white.

Grand Hotel – Theater Wit – May 26, 2018

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Help, I’m stuck in 1928! The Front Page, which I blogged about last week, premiered in 1928. Grand Hotel opened on Broadway in 1989, but takes place in 1928. I wonder whether anything significant will happen in 1929.

Tommy Tune won the Tony Award for best choreographer (and best director) of a musical for Grand Hotel, and it was easy to see why when the show’s big dance number rousingly filled the stage with all but one of the 20 cast members, and brought the biggest applause of the night.

The cast was good, across the board (and the boards), with a special shout out to Leryn Turlington as Flaemmchen and Jonathan Schwart as Kringelein, who nailed their juicy roles. It is a testament to either their acting, or my lack of cognitive abilities, that I’ve seen at least four of the show’s actors (including both of the above) in other plays in the last year and a half, and didn’t recognize any of them.

Grand Hotel’s original logo added the words “The Musical.” This got me to wondering when plays first started adding some such designation to their names, presumably so that no one in the audience would be confused when one of the characters started singing. (I have a friend who won’t go to see musicals because he finds it unbelievable that someone would just break into song for no reason. This same friend is an ardent follower of The Avengers. Nothing unbelievable there.)

The oldest Tony-nominated musical I could find with “The Musical” officially listed in its name (not just on the logo) was Cyrano: The Musical, in 1994. In 2018 we have SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. I’m eagerly anticipating the opening of Musical: The Musical; Drama: The Drama; and, eventually, Drama: The Broadway Musical.

 

Do Re Mi – Porchlight Theater – May 24, 2018

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Thomas Wolfe, not to be confused with the Tom Wolfe who recently shuffled off this mortal coil, was the author of the 1940 posthumously-published book, You Can’t Go Home Again, a catchphrase that has become an essential part of our culture. The Porchlight Theater disdains this advice by producing its Porchlight Revisits series, unearthing musicals that have been laid to rest long ago.

In the past year I have seen Woman of the Year, Merrily We Roll Along, and They’re Playing Our Song, all for the first time, as part of this series, and am looking forward to seeing 1776 in the fall. (Seats will be a lot cheaper than Hamilton, which I understand covers some of the same material.)

The 1960 musical Do Re Mi, which is not to be confused with the song Do Re Mi from the 1959 Broadway show The Sound of Music, or the 1958-1960 television quiz show Dough Re Mi, should be packed back in its box and left to be a footnote, along with many other shows that produced one memorable song. And that song in this case, Make Someone Happy, is best remembered by me for the version by Jimmy Durante at the end of Sleepless in Seattle.

The best thing about this production was the always-interesting, detailed background and historical context of the show that the theater presents prior to the opening act of each revisited play. Also, the actor playing the lead not only looked like Phil Silvers, who created the role on Broadway, but also played the role to the hilt, as if he had been a vaudeville star like Silvers.

But we also had to suffer through songs like What’s New at the Zoo, which had nothing to do with the plot, and made me yearn for If I Could Talk to the Animals. All this after having to change seats because the air conditioning system was dripping on ours. I love the Porchlight Theater, but stay away from seat F20 in warm weather.

Front Page – St. Sebastian Players (at the St. Bonaventure Church) – May 19, 2018

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This was the second play I’ve seen in a church in the past 13 months (see blog on Forty-Two Stories). As with the last one, there were bothersome stairs to navigate, in this case steep ones leading into a basement that, at least based upon the signage, had only one exit (even the No Exit Cafe has two).

The St. Sebastian Players are a membership-based theater company. If you, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland have a barn and want to put on a show, there is a handy website with information on how to start a membership-based company.

The League of Chicago Theaters says that it has over 200 members, including the St. Sebastian Players. By my quick count, with this addition, I now have seen shows produced by at least 45 of them.

The beauty of a neighborhood company like St. Sebastian producing a play like Front Page is that the show has a large cast, which can help bring in customers. There were 20 actors, and we may have been the only two audience members who didn’t know any of them personally, although I admit knowing one of the company’s Board members.  In particular, the actor playing Hildy Johnson displayed physical comedy skills, as well as the ability to speak rapid-fire dialogue in the manner we expect from this show (though not in the same league as Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the 1940 movie adaptation His Girl Friday, or Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien in the 1931 movie version, which, help me, I still recall watching on TV in my unproductive childhood).

The theater had a nice period-evoking set, including (spoiler alert) the iconic roll top desk used in the show to hide Earl Williams after he breaks out of jail (nothing like an escapist show about an escapee). We were very impressed by the actor’s ability to cram himself into the desk for an extended period of time. Apparently many more people suffer from stage fright (up to 80%!) than claustrophobia (perhaps 5-10%), so perhaps the inside of the desk was a welcome relief for him.