Photograph 51 – Court Theatre – February 10, 2019

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The title, Photograph 51, refers to Dr. Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray diffraction photograph of the B form of deoxyribonucleic acid that helped lead to the discovery of the double helix, referred to in the play as the secret to life.

Photograph 51 is not to be confused with Area 51, the top-secret military base in the middle of the Nevada desert that has been the subject of much speculation as to its possible contents, including spacecrafts of aliens who, some would suggest, actually are the secret to life on earth.

On the other hand, ever since I was taken on a research tour of pizza places in the early 1970s by one of the eventual founders of Rocky Rococo Pizza and Pasta, it has always been my understanding that olive oil is the secret to life, though there also is support for yogurt in that regard, and the nucleic acid drink available prior to the performance at the Court Theatre wasn’t too bad either.

As to the play, Chaon Cross, whom I have seen in the last few years as Ella in Life Sucks and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, once again gives a strong performance, this time as Dr. Franklin.

The set of Photograph 51 includes two not too subtle spiral staircases and a second level walkway between them that reminded me of the set of Jailhouse Rock, which reminded me that the name of another prison, Attica, sounds a lot like the name of the great 1997 science fiction movie Gattaca, whose title letters G, A, T, and C, stand for guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA, thereby bringing us back to where we started, except that I would be remiss not to also mention Fahrenheit 451 and Dick Butkus as other famous 51s. Now you know why I don’t get much sleep.

 

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder – Porchlight Music Theater – February 2, 2019

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It seems to me that A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love & Murder could have been titled How to Succeed in Murder Without Really Trying. I easily could envision a young J. Pierrepont Finch (spoiler alert) rising to the top of the D’Ysquith family, to become the Ninth Earl of Highhurst, through cunning, good fortune, and the cool clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth.

As with last year’s Memphis, I preferred Porchlight’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to the Broadway in Chicago version I saw a few years ago, due, in large part, I suspect, to the intimacy of the venue, which is, nevertheless large enough to provide the set designer the creative liberty to forge a functional and entertaining backdrop to the action.

As with Porchlight’s Gypsy, I was fortunate enough to see the first table reading of A Gentleman’s Guide, which, in this case, afforded me the opportunity to observe Matt Crowle working on the voices he would use for the nine different characters he portrays. And, while that was playful and interesting, it could not have prepared me for the way in which he distinctly inhabits all of them once he’s in costume and afforded the chance to add physicality to the roles. There are many famous death scenes in the theater. For my money, Crowle’s turn as Reverend Lord Ezekial D’Ysquith may be the most entertaining.

That said, I guess I need to see a production of The Complete Deaths (74 of them from the Bard of Avon’s works), which I missed at ChicagoShakespeare Theater in 2016. Hopefully, the play itself will rise from the ashes so that l’ll have another chance.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to be satisfied with a website I found chronicling 100 of the most memorable on screen movie deaths, led, coincidentally, by Alan Rickman, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who gained his greatest fame in America, without really trying, as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

The Beatles: Love – Cirque du Soleil – Mirage Theater, Las Vegas – January 24, 2019

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All You Need is Love, and I got 90 minutes of it, attacking my visual and auditory cortices from every direction (not to mention those parts of my brain related to long-term memory, as it has been over 50 years since the Beatles first gained our attention). The problem with the show is that, if you focus too much on one thing, you don’t notice five other things that are happening at the same time. There’s no pause, rewind, or instant replay. I’m sure there must have been a kitchen sink thrown in somewhere that I missed.

The varied and spectacular exhibitions of strength, grace, and agility by the show’s performer/athletes, as they danced, twisted, stretched, and threw their bodies around, made me think of Katelyn Ohashi, the UCLA gymnast who is the current queen of YouTube because of her amazing routine at the recent Collegiate Challenge at the Anaheim Convention Center, which undoubtedly will lead her to the greatest reward a gymnast can attain, no not being awarded a gold medal at the Olympics, or getting a job with Cirque du Soleil, but rather winning the mirror ball on Dancing With the Stars.

I first saw Cirque du Soleil when it was performing Saltimbanco under a tent in the early 1990s. For some bizarre reason my most vivid memory of that show is the guy who climbed up chairs that he piled on top of each other. I always wondered what his mother thought as she grounded him, literarily and figuratively, sending him to his room, in the hopes of interrupting him as he went about wrecking furniture in pursuit of a career in the lost art of hand balancing.

In addition to the music, special effects, and huge cast, Love features hundreds of garish costumes, not unlike what you see on the street in front of the hotel.

Moby-Dick Read-a-Thon – Newberry Library – January 19-20, 2019

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The closest I had ever come before to reading past the first three words of Moby-Dick was to see the Gregory Peck movie and the Star Trek movie First Contact, wherein Captain Picard is accused of being like Captain Ahab.

In case you were wondering, Moby-Dick, the novel, is 206,052 words long. It took over 150 of us a little over 24 hours, taking turns, to read the whole thing aloud. I was assigned the last 1158 words of Chapter 134.

In case you were further wondering, the Smithsonian tells us there appears to be absolutely no good reason why the title is hyphenated (the name of the whale is not hyphenated inside the book, except, mysteriously, in one place), it possibly being a typographical error or the result of a long-obsolete custom. Melville originally titled the book simply, The Whale, but then apparently changed it for marketing purposes, which didn’t really work as it had “tepid reviews and miserable initial sales.”

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Why Read Moby-Dick and the introductory speaker leading into the read-a-thon (or as the lead staff person for the occasion called it, the Moby-Dickapalooza), advised us that, back in the day, “if you liked Moby-Dick you had literary cred”, that Faulkner said it was the one book by another author he wish he had written, and that Hemingway, in writing The Old Man and the Sea, admitted that he was trying to best Moby-Dick.

Along with the unwashed masses, such as myself, reading from the book, there were quite a few ringers – Sara Paretsky, for one, and Dave Catlin, who directed Moby-Dick at Lookingglass Theater, for another. I mention him because he introduced himself to me in the ready room after I impressed him by knowing my left from my right.

Upon conclusion of the event, it was determined that three people (plus the staff person in charge) had stayed for the whole thing (giving more meaning to the unwashed masses). Their presence throughout made moot my intellectual curiosity as to whether, like that tree in the forest, if no one had been there to listen to the readers in the middle of the night, they would have made a sound.

Chen Family Quartet, Fourth Presbyterian Church, January 11, 2019; Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Symphony Hall, January 15, 2019; Phillppe Quint, Violin and Marta Aznavoorian, Piano, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert, Chicago Cultural Center, January 16, 2019

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While others listening to classical music may try to appreciate its finer points or focus on getting inside the composer’s head, I just like the way it sounds, which leaves my brain free to wander during concerts.

Some day I might pick up a copy of Classical Music for Dummies, cowritten by David Pogue, whom I usually only think about as Techno Claus on CBS Sunday Morning, when I think about him at all, but who also is a monthly columnist for Scientific American.

But, until then, I think about things like the different shades of varnish on the cellos used in the Chicago Civic Orchestra’s terrific concert, which led me to an applied physics article on ‘the importance of the vibro-mechanical properties of varnish, its chemical composition, thickness and penetration into wood.”

It wasn’t so much during Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Robert Chen’s brilliant violin solo at Fourth Presbyterian Church, but rather after, that I began thinking about the space itself, when Rush Hour Concerts Artistic Director Anthony Devroye, who filled in on viola with the Chen Family Quartet that day told a couple of us who had trouble seeing from the back that the quartet didn’t use the stage because the asymmetrically curved wall behind it caused acoustic problems – more science.

No science entered my head during the Dame Myra Hess concert, which featured the music of Charlie Chaplin. Quint and Aznavoorian closed with Chaplin’s Smile, from Modern Times, which reminded me of Jimmy Durante singing Make Someone Happy at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, which reminded me of its screenwriter and director Nora Ephron, who was an answer on Jeopardy this week.

In the immortal words of The Statler Brothers’ classic (not classical) Flowers on the Wall (I counted 12 on my guest bathroom wall), “Now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.”

 

Holiday Inn – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – December 23, 2018

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The real name of one of the ensemble members in Holiday Inn is Aaron Burr. Really. But nobody in the play gets shot. And while the depiction of the more famous Aaron Burr in Hamilton is interesting, this Burr’s tap dancing skills, along with those of his castmates, are more fun.

Marya Grandy goes so far as to combine the group’s tapping with moves from Stomp, as she dances with buckets on her feet during one of the numbers. And, in what seems to be becoming a trend, the dancers tapped while jumping rope during one song, akin to, though different from, the jump rope choreography used in Legally Blonde.

While the dancing is great, the cast’s skills go beyond that. Unlike the show Beautiful, where, I hate to break it to you, Jesse Mueller and her successors don’t actually play the piano (though faking it nicely while, as that show’s sound designer explains it, speakers in the piano pump out music supplied from the orchestra pit), Michael Mahler, in the Bing Crosby role in Holiday Inn, does play the piano on stage, and quite well. Seems that Mahler, also is a Jeff Award-winning composer (perhaps he’s related to Gustav).

And, while I have seen and enjoyed Mahler and his costar, Johanna McKenzie Miller, in other shows, I was, as always, relieved to also see one of the Moes, in this case Lorenzo Rush, Jr., who, in the last 15 months, I have heard in Little Shop of Horrors and seen in Five Guys Named Moe, Memphis, and They’re Playing Our Song.

Will Burton, who does a fine job as Ted Hanover, won’t make you forget Fred Astaire (who would?), and there’s no Thomas Jefferson or George Washington dancing with Burr in the ensemble, but I left the theater humming many of the (Irving Berlin) songs, which I didn’t do after Hamilton.

Santaland Diaries – Goodman Theater – December 18, 2018

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Santaland Diaries, David Sedaris’s 1992 essay about working as an elf at Macy’s during the Christmas season, is supposed to be a comedy. Perhaps it was in 1992, but not anymore. The Goodman Theater would be better off just shutting down for the holidays. Its 2016 production, in concert with Second City, of Twist Your Dickens, was unwatchable. Santaland Diaries isn’t that bad, but it’s boring and out of step with the times. Even its mystifyingly good reviews admit that.

The Chicago Reader review of the 2006 Stage 773 production of the Santaland Diaries said “some of the script’s pop-culture references are beginning to show their age” and gave the show a “somewhat recommended”. Yet, interestingly, twelve years later, the Reader gave the Goodman production a “highly recommended”, even while acknowledging that “a few lines in the script have unintentionally traded their comedic weight for dramatic over the years. One antiquated reference to mentally handicapped people, for instance, landed like the proverbial turd in an otherwise tasty punchbowl; it was 15 minutes before [Matt] Crowle regained the trust of the audience.”

Fifteen minutes, out of a 65-minute performance! How can that be a description of a highly recommended show? I don’t know Macy’s return policy, but perhaps this dinosaur can be relegated to Jurassic World. Jokes about cash registers really don’t register anymore. The best line in the show was Crowle’s put down of an unruly audience member.

None of this is meant as a knock on Crowle, soon to star in Porchlight Music Theater’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (where he’ll play eight characters), and whom I’ve seen in other productions around town. He does a fine job. Most memorably for me, his Billie Holiday impression, which obviously transcends the written script, was terrific.  Maybe next year the Goodman should do a Holiday show instead of a holiday show.

The Nutcracker – Joffrey Ballet – Auditorium Theater – December 14, 2018

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I broke my coat’s zipper while getting ready to leave for the theater. Coincidentally, though the term zipper didn’t come into use until 1923, Whitcomb Judson, who is sometimes given credit as the inventor of the zipper, debuted his clasp locker at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which provides the background for the Joffrey’s production.

“Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”

How times have changed. Plastic is now the devil (subtle reference to the Devil in the White City, which also is set at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair).

Chicago voters have expressed their desire to ban plastic straws. What about plastic wrappings at cultural events? I had to give the woman behind me my best death stare during the second act of The Nutcracker to get her to stop playing with her candy packaging. I wonder how Tchaikovsky felt about people eating M&Ms and checking their cell phones (woman in front of me) during performances.

He supposedly didn’t care that much for the Nutcracker story as adapted for the ballet. Picking up on that in the biography Tchaikovsky, David Brown writes “The Nutcracker is meaningless in the profoundest sense.” Nice juxtaposition.

And, as I agree, it’s not surprising that I enjoyed the second act a lot more than the first (during which I would have rather watched a Charlie Chaplin silent film synched to the music) because the second act was almost all about the wonderful music and, at times flexibility-defying, dancing.

But enough culture for one weekend. I’m planning on spending the next two days watching the ballet that is football. Also meaningless.

The Play That Goes Wrong – Oriental Theater – December 11, 2018

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While the comparison to the play Noises Off is obvious, if it weren’t for all the farcical humor of The Play That Goes Wrong (The Play), one might think of Michael Crichton’s original Westworld, “the ultimate resort, where nothing can possibly go wrong, go wrong . . . .”, and yet everything does.

So, to paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as it might apply to the play, The Murder at Faversham Manor (The Murder) within The Play: How does thee go wrong? Let me count the ways.

Forget the occasional forgotten line, The Murder goes into full Brannon Braga, Star Trek; The Next Generation, Cause and Effect episode, time loop mode with the actors becoming increasingly irritated as they can’t find a way to stop repeating the same lines. If it weren’t so funny, I would have thought it was written into the show as filler.

And then there was the set, or what was left of it by the end of the show. The comic timing of The Play is not limited to the actors. So, while the actors in The Murder break the fourth wall, the walls in The Murder almost break the actors, creating the need for some deliciously funny stand-in work by the crew of The Murder. I would love a behind-the-scenes tour of The Play by its crew, not the dangerously inept crew of The Murder, to see how they manipulate everything.

Query, by the way, are the actors in The Play breaking the fourth wall when the actors in The Murder are speaking to their audience, which, of course, happens to be the same as The Play’s audience?

In the end, despite set deconstruction, doors banging into heads, and actors in The Murder engaging in foul play, the only real injuries are to the ribs of The Play’s audience members, who are bent over in laughter.

Big Red and the Boys – Venus Cabaret – December 9, 2018

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Secretariat, widely considered the greatest race horse of all time, was nicknamed Big Red. He wasn’t part of the show at the Venus Cabaret.

But Meghan Murphy, also nicknamed Big Red, was. This was the first stop on what Murphy described as the act’s world tour – Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.

I love the Venus Cabaret, which opened this year adjoining the Mercury Theater (get it?). It’s an attractive space, with its own bar, and without a bad seat in the house, though there was some glare off the screens behind the stage, which I didn’t hesitate to tell management about when they sent me a survey after the show.

In honor of Big Red, the bar offered a couple of red drinks, one with vodka, one with whiskey. I wonder what they’d have at the bar if Michael Lee Aday (Meatloaf) were performing there.

Though there was some new material in this, their eighth annual show, Big Red and the Boys pleased the crowd by performing the group’s “standards”, like Get Your Holiday On, often encouraging the audience to sing along.

Big Red also broke out her holiday costume, complete with well-placed lights outlining her physical assets. The costume, along with the boys’ flashing bow ties, came in handy when Murphy occasionally had a hard time finding her spotlight, which just served as another excuse for some of her off-the-cuff, contagious humor. Murphy, whose website describes her as actor, singer, dancer, and badass, always seems to be having a good time on stage.

I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of perverse show could be created by combining Big Red’s with the play next door, Avenue Q, having Murphy as Lucy, who is described as “a vixenish vamp with a dangerous edge.”