EStrella Piano Duo (Svetlana Belsky and Elena Doubovitskaya) – Fourth Presbyterian Church – December 7, 2018

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I was expecting two pianos (piano duo versus piano duet), but what I got instead was two women, playing selections from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, on one piano, at the same time, hands flying everywhere, occasionally crossing over each others’ hands, and bodies, with such grace and, at times, glorious frenzy, that one had to watch, not just listen, to fully appreciate the experience.

In exploring various combinations, I found four pianists playing two pianos, which I assume would be called a duet duo, or vice versa, and one pianist playing two pianos, whether the pianos be angled, or parallel to each other, including an interesting exhibition by a twelve-year-old girl stretching to use the pedals on both pianos simultaneously.

Speaking of pedals, when I asked the women after the performance how they determined who would play which side of the piano during their duets (it varied), Belsky told me she really likes to use the pedals and that that often affects their decision.

It hadn’t occurred to me watch their feet during the performance, though I did pay attention to who was turning the pages (it also varied, with one incident of an accidental double page turn that was quickly remedied without interruption to the music), so I don’t know if Belsky was pulling my leg. She had displayed a wonderful sense of humor during her introductions to the songs.

Both women in Estrella were born in Russia, so I have no idea why they chose a name that the Urban Dictionary defines as a totally cool Spanish girl (I also should have asked them that), though I concede that they seemed cool, even though their music was hot.

 

Christmas at the Fair: The Joffrey’s New Nutcracker – Newberry Library – December 4, 2018

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The Newberry Library currently has on display Pictures from an Exposition: Visualizing the 1893 World’s Fair, which is why it hosted an event about The Joffrey Ballet’s reimagined Nutcracker, which opened in 2016 and which uses the exposition as its background.

The Newberry also houses Ruth Page’s papers, which include choreography notes from that company’s Arie Crown production of The Nutcracker, which opened in 1965. Page’s notes include pictures, which Newberry curator Alison Hinderliter showed, of nails, staples, pins, and other such items that had to be cleaned from the stage each night after falling with the snow from the rafters.

Joffrey Artistic Director Ashley Wheater said his company has the same problem and uses a sieve when cleaning the snow off the stage to filter out such junk.

Speaking of snow, Wheater added that choreographer Christopher Wheeldon had assured him, in noting concerns about the acceptance of changes made to the classic, that the tree still will grow and the snow still will fall.

And, all this happens as a result of over 2000 production cues in the show, which is a lot of opportunities for something to go wrong, which could drive a person to drink. But if it did, not to worry. Wheater said they spray vodka on the costumes (including perhaps the rat king’s head, which is made up of two IKEA wastebaskets) to keep them fresh (a trick also used by figure skaters), so, “if you need vodka, come to the Joffrey”, they have a lot on hand.

Considering all of the above and more, WTTW critic Hedy Weiss quoted her own review of the production in saying that “[t]he whole event brought to mind Tom Stoppard’s observation from “Shakespeare in Love”: “The natural condition [of the theater business] is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster … but strangely enough it all turns out well.” I hope for the same miracle each time I write my blog.

Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – November 28, 2018

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I missed Saint-Saens’ Romance. Op. 36, but got to the hall in time to hear sustained applause for Sophia Bacelar (cello) and Noreen Cassidy-Polera (piano), which got me thinking about the dynamics of audience applause. I found a study that spoke of it in terms of a disease, saying that “Individuals’ probability of starting clapping increased in proportion to the number of other audience members already ‘infected’ by this social contagion, regardless of their spatial proximity. The cessation of applause is similarly socially mediated, but is to a lesser degree controlled by the reluctance of individuals to clap too many times.”

Midway through the first movement of the second piece, Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19, paramedics from the Chicago Fire Department showed up with a wheeled emergency stretcher, which they pushed up the middle aisle to a row near the front, where they loaded a man onto it, then reversed their course, pushed the cart back onto the elevator, and disappeared, all silently, in a matter of moments, and without causing the slightest interruption to the musicians, neither of whom lost concentration or looked up, perhaps so focused as to be unaware of what was transpiring 10 to 15 feet in front of them. Brava!

As for the man who was removed, from a distance he didn’t appear to be in any great discomfort. Perhaps he just needed a ride to a meeting (he had a briefcase with him) or perhaps, because I had arrived a few minutes late, I was unknowingly in the middle of the filming of an episode of Chicago Fire.

Or, as the sonata was, according to the program notes, among the first of Rachmaninov’s major pieces after he went through hypnotherapy to overcome writer’s block, perhaps the music itself has hypnotic qualities, and there were no paramedics. Is that Rod Serling I see in the corner?

Q Brothers Christmas Carol – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – November 27, 2018

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I keep coming back for more of this hip-hop interpretation of the Dickens classic. But, after seeing it several years in a row, what could still surprise me? This time it was the brief interlude when JQ seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment and go into an improvised description of a dream he had. Scripted or not, it had not only the audience, but also one of his fellow cast members in hysterics.

Everyone knows the Dickens story, but it occurred to me that not everyone may have considered what the Q brothers and their Christmas Carol have in common with the character Q from Star Trek.

Patrick Stewart, who, as Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, had several encounters with Q, also for many years performed a one-man, award-winning show of A Christmas Carol, playing more than 30 characters. Coincidence? I think not.

Q, in Star Trek, is of unknown origin. The Q brothers are of known origin, the northern suburbs of Chicago. I know this because a couple years ago I met an usher at the show who was their high school drama teacher. She was very proud.

Q, in Star Trek, is an extra-dimensional being. The Q brothers are multidimensional, namely writing, singing, dancing, and acting.

Q, in Star Trek, possesses immeasurable power over time and space. The Q brothers, as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future in their Christmas Carol, possess power over time and space, constrained only by the music the live DJ spins and the 75-minute duration of the show.

Q, in Star Trek, used his powers to pass judgment on humanity.

The Q brothers use their powers in Christmas Carol to pass judgment on Scrooge and get him to have some humanity. Spoiler alert – it works.

The Book of Mormon – Oriental Theater – November 24, 2018

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There’ve been almost 300 tv episodes of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park, and I’ve never seen even one of them, though I understand that some kid named Kenny has had a rough go of it (having died 98 times in the series, 12 in the shorts, 14 in the video games, and twice in the movie).

But now I’ve seen Parker and Stone’s (and the great Robert Lopez’s – Avenue Q, Frozen) The Book of Mormon twice, and, not being a student of religion, everything I know about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I’ve learned from seeing the play. I’m assuming, of course, that everything in the show is accurate.

Interestingly, in terms of religion-related musicals, I’ve never seen Fiddler on the Roof or Jesus Christ Superstar, though I have seen Damn Yankees.

I got lucky with a main floor discounted ticket and even luckier that no one sat next to me on one side in an otherwise full theater. This did, however, lead to a moment of awkwardness when the woman two seats over, who had put her coat on the seat between us, reached over in the dark to try to get something out of her coat pocket, but instead wound up tickling my shoulder, which reminded me of a joke about a woman and a chicken sandwich in her purse on an overnight bus ride.

The stage also went dark when they blacked it out a couple times during the Turn It Off tap dance. I guess tapping in the dark isn’t that hard for a professional, though I know how hard it is for me to stand on one leg with my eyes closed, which, fortunately, I’m not called upon to do all that often, and never on stage.

And, despite the darkness of the humor, Jacob Ben-Shmuel could be seen stealing scenes as Elder Cunningham, while Kayla Pecchioni lit up the stage as Nabulungi.

Porchlight Revisits 1776 – Porchlight Music Theater – November 15, 2018

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Kevin Rosten Jr., as John Adams, had ongoing problems keeping his microphone on during the first half of the show, but his performance, and his cheek, glistened after someone offstage Scotch-taped the mic into place.

Several of the other men who signed the Declaration of Independence were depicted in the show by female actors. That casting enabled me to watch Heather Townsend, with whom I had the great fortune to act in a short video a few years ago (or rather she acted and I muddled), excellently bring to life John Dickinson, one of the other main characters in the play.

Similarly, Teressa Lagamba gave a rousing performance as Richard Henry Lee.

There also were women playing women in the show (though no men playing women). In particular, I’ll mention Lucy Godinez as Martha Jefferson, a part originally played on Broadway by a right-off-the-bus, 21-year-old from Texas, Betty Buckley, whom I also mentioned recently as the original Edwin Drood and in my blog about Hello Dolly, even though, I reiterate, she was a no show the night I saw that show, not that I’m upset about that.

I saw Godinez, along with Lagamba, in Legally Blonde, where Godinez was a wonderful, high energy member of the Greek chorus. And, as when I saw her perform at Porchlight’s Preview in the Park and Chicago Sings the MGM Musicals, Michelle Lauto, here as Abigail Adams, impressed with her beautiful voice.

Unfortunately, Joseph Foronda, a well-respected member of the acting community, did no justice to the role of Benjamin Franklin. Porchlight’s revisits shows are very short runs that don’t claim to be full-out productions, so I’m not bothered by an actor carrying a script, but Foronda’s eyes almost never left his, giving the impression that he was reading it for the first time, and making me wish that he was the one with mic problems.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood – St. Sebastian Players – November 9, 2018

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How ironic that the same week that I missed seeing Betty Buckley in Hello Dolly because she was sick, I saw The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the first time, given that Buckley was one of the stars of the original Broadway production in 1985, playing Drood, and, perhaps needless to say, I missed seeing her again, as she isn’t a member of the St. Sebastian Players.

Actually, only three of the 20 cast members of Drood are St. Sebastian Theater company members, including one whom I have seen before and who. as the program correctly suggests, has the “creepy parts cornered.”

The rest are all ringers, so why not Betty Buckley? That would have brought some heat to the drafty church basement theater.

That said, the show is unsophisticated fun and young Sarah Myers (new to Chicago), as Drood, showed me enough that I expect to see a lot more of her in productions around town.

But the real ringer is Darryl Maximilian Robinson, as the Chairman of the Music Hall Royale. It’s a huge part that demands not just talent, but also charm during his frequent interactions with the audience in a show that looks for a joke at every turn and has no respect for the fourth wall.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that Robinson is “best known for his original one-man show of Shakespeare and time-travel comedy” called A Bit of the Bard, which I find all the more significant now that it has been suggested that Stephen Hawking, in his final book, has allowed for the possibility of time travel, in contradiction to his earlier “chronology protection conjecture,” in which “the laws of physics do not allow time machines,” thus keeping “the world safe for historians.”

Of course, with time travel, I might have opted to see Buckley in Drood in 1985, and then not bothered to see this production or think about, or use, time travel, and then we’re right back to where we started.

 

Hello Dolly – Oriental Theater – November 6, 2018

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So excited to see Betty Buckley as Dolly. She had a cold on opening night, but the reviews of the show were glowing nonetheless. I waited two weeks to let her recover, which was perfect timing as I could then not be in front of a television watching election pundits drone on for hours about things that either were obvious, irrelevant, undecided, or wrong. I prefer to just see the results the next day.

But, in the immortal words of Robbie Burns, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” And so, upon arriving at the theater, I learned that Buckley would not be appearing, due to illness, replaced by her understudy Jessica Sheridan.

Based upon conversations around me, I wasn’t the only one initially disappointed, but Sheridan won us over with her singing, dancing, and acting. In particular, her performance during the courtroom dining scene brought howls of laughter from the audience, which led me to a website discussing what Carol Channing and Bette Midler were actually eating in that scene in Broadway productions.

The second best ovation may have been when the train between Yonkers and New York City rolled onto the stage. Just one of many impressive costume and set design elements of the show that presented a cornucopia of colors.

The dancing waiters also were a crowd pleaser, though I was struck not so much by their considerable terpsichorean skills, but rather by the grace of one waiter who elegantly reached down in mid-routine to grab something that had been dropped on the stage and toss it into the wings, without missing a beat in his choreographed movements.

All in all an enjoyable evening, capped off by listening to Buckley show off some of her skills in the hysterical Hymm to Her when I got home.

1968: Song by Song – Chicago Humanities Festival – November 5, 2018

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The good news – the program featured great performances by the singers and musicians and, for those of us who were of a certain age in 1968, was a very nostalgic evening, complete with covers and quotes from The Chicago Seed, the underground newspaper of the day, which was edited by Abe Peck (who was in attendance), the father of Doug Peck, the musical director of the program. They even added an Aretha Franklin tribute at the end that extended the program well past its scheduled finish time, to the delight of the audience.

The bad news – what the hell were they thinking by including MacArthur Park as the song representing August, 1968?! Miami Herald readers polled by Dave Barry in 1992 voted the 1968 recording as the worst song of all time. The only redeeming thing about it is the instrumental interlude. If not for all the horrible things that happened in 1968, Richard Harris’s singing and the nonsensical lyrics of this song would take the cake, whether or not it was left out in the rain.

A much better choice would have been People Got to be Free by The Rascals, which was a chart topper that August and was a far more representative song of the feeling of the times that this program was trying to convey.

But if MacArthur Park it had to be in some fashion, why not Al Yankovic’s 1983 parody of it, with his far better lyrics, which included, “Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark/All the dinosaurs are running wild/Someone shut the fence off in the rain/I admit it’s kind of eerie/But this proves my chaos theory.”

After all, chaos abounded in 1968.

 

Tom Hanks – Uncommon Type – Chicago Humanities Festival – November 2, 2018

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My guess is that a majority of the audience at the Harris Theater came not to hear about Hanks’ book, Uncommon Type, which includes, often very minimally, mention of a typewriter in each short story, but rather because Hanks is their type of guy.

He didn’t disappoint. When asked by interviewer Peter Sagal about all the real life people he’s played, many of them heroes, Hanks told of how, when meeting Chesley Sullenberger, James Lovell, and Richard Phillips, he said to each of them in regard to his portrayal: “I’m going to say things you didn’t say, go places you’ve never been, and do things you’ve never done – live with it.”

In particular, he recounted Sullenberger telling him that his instrument panel went dead before landing his plane on the Hudson River and Hanks replying that a blank panel wasn’t dramatic enough, so in the movie it would instead act “like this”, which Hanks then demonstrated by flailing his hands to simulate the needles out of control. Sagal suggested that using those hand gestures in the movie would have been a crowd pleaser, as it was to this audience.

After Hanks mentioned a new movie coming out, Greyhound, where he plays the captain of a ship in World War II, Sagal noted that Sullenberger, Lovell, Phillips and John Miller in Saving Private Ryan all were captains, and suggested that Hanks couldn’t seem to get a promotion. Hanks added that Greyhound would forever be known as the movie where he doesn’t play Mr. Rogers (given the great anticipation of the release of that movie).

Hanks then responded to several questions submitted by the audience prior to the program, the final one of which inexplicably asked Hanks what his favorite sandwich is. Hanks went into a long, amusing explanation of his dietary restrictions, though clearly the perfect answer to close the program would have been “a hero.”