Merrily We Roll Along – Porchlight Theater – February 24, 2018

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Though I have enjoyed many Porchlight shows, I skipped the recent production of Billy Elliot. Having seen the Broadway in Chicago production in 2010, I wasn’t interested in seeing another version of this cross between Rocky (if he were an 11-year-old who quit boxing to become a dancer despite his father’s fear that people would think he was gay) and The Full Monty (if the men were 11-year-olds who kept their clothes on but wore cod pieces).

I was happy, however, to see Merrily We Roll Along (though now I can’t get the tune to Old Friends out of my head). While not near the top of Sondheim hit shows, the current version (revised in 1994) is said to be far superior to the original 1981 Broadway production, a flop that had 52 previews, but only 16 performances, which isn’t even close to a record. The 1965 musical, Kelly, closed after one performance (which made me think of The Producers, though I’m not suggesting any financial irregularities).

Speaking of financial irregularities (and remember I wasn’t), at dinner after the show (at Hash House a Go Go), the conversation turned to the FBI report on the latest NCAA basketball recruiting scandal, and in particular to the Wichita State University Shockers. This led Cindy, a former Kansas resident, to inform me that the team’s mascot is a shock of wheat named WuShock. As I have never lived on a farm (though I could smell some from my dorm room in Urbana), Cindy also explained to me what a shock of wheat is, which led me to think of Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy (technically an extraterrestial, sentient, tree-like creature), and led the restaurant manager to tell me that, in nice weather, when they have the sliding windows open, birds fly in to peck at the shocks of wheat on display in the restaurant. As far as I know, this is not a recruiting violation (though the NCAA rules are rather arcane), and the birds maintain their eligibility, which is more than I can say for current high-profile college players implicated in the recruiting scandal, some of whom, like Kelly, may soon be one and done.

Narek Hakhnazaryan (cello) and Noreen Cassidy-Polera (piano) – Chicago Cultural Center – February 21, 2018

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Narek and Noreen beautifully played several selections, including one by Robert Schumann, who, according to the program, lived to be 146 years old (1810-1956). Although I know that listening to music is said to provide numerous health benefits, I was pretty sure that his date of death was a typo (it should have been 1856).

Of the Dame Myra Hess concerts I have attended, this was the first time a pianist had a page-turner. (I guess the previous musicians had better memories.) I noted that the page-turner sat on the pianist’s left (upstage, not blocking the audience’s view) and used his left hand, crossing over his body, to accomplish his task. For those looking for a “nerve-wracking” way to see concerts for free, I recommend reading a blog about the fine art of page-turning, which says that the left hand should be used (why?), but shows a picture of someone using her right hand (if I know my left from my right).

Narrow and Noreen (but not the unknown, uncredited, unappreciated(?) page-turner) briefly left the stage after each of the first two pieces. Is this to milk more applause? Or stretch legs? Or clear heads? Or make sure flies aren’t open? (see my blog on Franklinland)

As the music proceeded, I gazed around the room and made note of the famous names carved into the ceiling arches, which included Shakspere (sic – spell check fought me on this one). According to Wikipedia, “(I)n the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling “Shakspere”, as used in the poet’s own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version.” So why did it get changed after that? Four hundred years from now will historians change the spelling of my name? (This assumes that someday I will be known as the Bard of Blog.)

Franklinland – Jackalope Theater (Broadway Armory Park Fieldhouse) – February 17, 2018

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Dinner first at Mas alla del Sol. Blood orange margaritas. Camarones con verdolagas. Chocolate lava cake. All yummy.

Then the potentially life-altering decision. Go to the bathroom at the restaurant or wait to go at the theater. As fate would have it, I chose the restaurant. Stories like this, as in the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, portray how little things can lead to different consequences and life paths (or, as in the movie, parallel universes, but I’ll save the multiverse discussion for another time). My decision’s effects weren’t that dramatic (I don’t think, but how would I know – if I had waited, would Gwyneth somehow have entered my life – and what chaos might that have caused?).

In any event, as I’m departing a bathroom stall I come face to face with an old friend I hadn’t seen in decades. We say hello and I prudently suggest that he might not want to shake hands with me at that moment. We hold a catch-up conversation while I wash up and he goes about his business (all the while, Gwyneth may have been standing on the street outside the restaurant).

At the armory we are led to the elevator to expedite our trek to the theater itself (see earlier blog on the march required the first two times at this theater). At the theater I run into another old friend – I don’t think I know that many people, but they do seem to show up everywhere. That said, I might not have run into him either if Gwyneth and I, upon meeting on the street, had elected to skip the play.

The play appears to be historically accurate. The two most memorable moments are Franklin’s son appearing to throw up on stage (acting) and Franklin’s grandson appearing on stage with his fly open (not acting). He must have elected to go the bathroom at the theater.

Jasmin Arakawa – Chicago Cultural Center – February 14, 2018

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In case you haven’t noticed, each time I go to one of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts I try to focus on something different, in addition to the music. This week, I’d like to report that Preston Bradley Hall was adorned with Mardi Gras decorations, but, alas, it was not.

I was sitting stage left. The piano is always set up so that the pianist is facing that direction, something I hadn’t thought about before (I must have been preoccupied with world peace or quantum theory), but which makes obvious sense (doh) given the construction of a grand piano (not really an issue with my digital keyboard).

With that weight lifted from my mind, I reflected on the advantages of sitting stage left. Sure, I couldn’t see Ms. Arakawa’s hands move rapidly and flawlessly across the keys, but, because so many others wanted that experience, I had a greater choice of seats on my side, was able to sit on an aisle, with no one next to me, and, in the middle of this horrible flu season, had fewer people around me coughing (I didn’t bring a flu mask, though I spotted someone else wearing one).

When Ms. Arakawa walked out at the beginning of the concert, she just sat down and started playing. Pianists, unlike musicians playing other instruments, don’t fiddle on stage with strings (that would be amusing – I wonder if Victor Borge ever did it) or wait for someone with an oboe in the audience to give them an A (I looked, but didn’t spot one).

She played some Liszt, Haydn and a couple other dead guys I never heard of before (Mompou and Francaix). Francaix was quoted in the program as having quoted French writer Nicolas Chamfort in saying: “When on the stage, if you are a little of a charlatan, the crowd will lapidate you.” I’m happy to report that Ms. Arakawa was not lapidated at any time during her performance.

Women in Jeopardy – First Folio Theater – February 10, 2018

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“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Or not, as there was no mail delivery at my building on Saturday, probably because of the seven inches of snow that fell Thursday night into Friday afternoon. Undaunted by the USPS’s shortcomings, I  didn’t let the snow stop me from driving to Oak Brook to see Women in Jeopardy at the First Folio Theater.

We left early and detoured slightly to head to Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen before the matinee for a drink and perhaps some gumbo or fried alligator (tastes like chicken – if chicken were made of leather). But, at 3:00 in the afternoon, it was jammed and we couldn’t even get a seat at the bar. Beads everywhere, Mardi Gras crowd getting started early.

So, with no food or drink to be had (fortunately we brought our own chocolate), we got to the theater early. I immediately ran into and caught up with an old friend, who was ushering for our performance as a member of the Saints (the volunteer arts organization unrelated to New Orleans and the aforementioned Mardi Gras).

They played the familiar theme from Jeopardy as a lead in to the play, but the show was about women in jeopardy (though a comedy), not women on Jeopardy (darn). Just as in the last play I saw at First Folio (Silent Sky), this production used their ceiling of stars (celestial, not theatrical) as part of the scenery, this time in a camping scene. It reminds me of the ceiling at the Aragon Ballroom (though not nearly as spectacular), which reminds me of the last concert I saw there, Chuck Berry in 1972, when he duck walked and played a very extended version of the lyrically sophisticated My Ding-A-Ling, his cover version of which incredibly was his one number one hit.

Akropolis Reed Quintet – Chicago Cultural Center – Feb. 7, 2018

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I’m of the generation of men whose parents told them to tuck their shirts into their pants. A bass clarinet makes me think of someone who doesn’t. It seems to hang too long and not neatly tucked in like a soprano clarinet. In any event, both types of clarinets, an oboe, a bassoon, and a saxophone comprise the five instruments played by the members of the Akropolis Reed Quintet at this week’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert at the Chicago Cultural Center.

After the first selection, I watched as the musicians dried the insides of their instruments by pulling swabs through the bores. It reminded me of a magician apparently pulling streams of cloth out of his mouth, only these swabs were black and one-piece, not multicolored and knotted together. Also, the musicians didn’t say “tada” when they were done, though they may have been thinking it as they finished with a flourish. Fortunately for the audience, the musicians were deft not only at drying their instruments, but also at playing them. I played the trumpet briefly and badly as a preteen. I now wonder if the problem was that I just wasn’t good enough at emptying out the spit valve. Yes, that must have been it.

The musical highlight of the concert was the group’s rendition of An American in Paris. Although I loved the music, it reminded me of how much I didn’t like the play when I saw it last year. Also, I wondered whether a French composer had ever written about being in America? Well, it turns out that the French composer Darius Milhaud was commissioned by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra in the 1960s to write a companion piece for An American in Paris, and thus composed A Frenchman in New York. See, it wasn’t such a stupid question.

 

Trivia Nights – Ongoing

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I competed in intramural trivia contests when I was in college and law school, and was on the team representing the University of Illinois in what was billed as the first National Collegiate Invitational Trivia Tournament (or something like that). In those days I studied the almanac. There was no internet or social media. Countries weren’t changing their names every ten minutes. There weren’t 1780 television channels. No Star Wars characters to learn. No Harry Potter to study.

For the last four months or so my friend Bill and I have been going to a weekly trivia night (Brain Sportz) at a local establishment. Based on the results of our first excursion into this highly-competitive underworld, we named our team Dead Last, which, I’m proud to say, has turned into a misnomer, mostly.

Bill and I know almost nothing anything about music (who the hell is Richard Cheese?) or pop culture (I’ve never watched the Simpsons) from the last 30 years. But, and this is important, I’m a really good guesser.  It’s a skill that helped me get good scores on standardized tests in my youth, which in turn got me into school so that I could enter collegiate trivia contests (unfortunately there was no major offered in trivia – law was as close as I could get).

These days we usually finish third, typically out of five or more teams. We’ve risen to second a couple times and miraculously finished first once! The categories that night were in our sweet spot – old stuff.

A couple of the other teams have six members, Millennials all. With two players (we’ve lately expanded to three), each of you must be a jack-of-all-trivia, whereas with six players you can specialize. I asked one of the other teams about this, and was told that one of their members specialized in Andy Samberg movies. Who? What? We are in desperate need of Millennials on our team.

Super Bowl Sunday – February 4, 2018

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Nine friends from the hood came over to watch the game. Though I knew they were coming, I provided no chicken wings, no chips, and no beer (I know that sounds unAmerican – I’ve never seen Gone With the Wind either), but someone brought a ten pound slab of chocolate, so we were all set. I finished it off for breakfast (just kidding – or am I?).

Two of the nine friends left the opera early to arrive in time for the game, not because they are such big football fans but because they thought the opera was so awful that they couldn’t leave fast enough (they did wait for intermission so that they wouldn’t be banned for life – a poor motivation in my opinion).

One attendee, who was rooting for the Eagles, as was most everyone in the room who knew we were watching football (remember we had opera lovers there), kept reminding us that the Patriots always came from behind to win. Even after the game was over, she seemed concerned that she would arrive home to discover that something had happened en route, well after the final whistle, to change the result in the Patriot’s favor (no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition and no one trusts the Patriots).

As the game ended my guests established a new world indoor record for quickest departure from a Super Bowl party because they wanted to get home in time to watch the special episode of This Is Us airing after the game (the intricacies of recording a show after a live sporting event apparently had eluded most of them and they were worried that the artificial intelligence of their DVRs wouldn’t pick up the slack). I‘ve never seen the show, but I gather that night’s episode was revealing the cause of a lead character’s death. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t J.R. Ewing’s and that Bobby wasn’t coming out of the shower, but who knows. After all, the Patriots were four-and-a-half point favorites.

The Rest of Theater 2017

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In other posts I’ve singled out some of the plays I went to in 2017. Here’s a quick survey of the rest of them to wrap up 2017 (you’ve probably received all your bank tax statements by now also).

I saw two plays at the Porchlight Theater, Scottsboro Boys and Woman of the Year (at the theater’s new location), where I discovered Meghan Murphy (see blog on Big Red and the Boys). Both are Kander and Ebb shows, but otherwise couldn’t be more different, one serious and based on a true story, the other lighthearted and not, like me.

When the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre wasn’t underwater from flooding, I saw She Loves Me and Honeymoon in Vegas. Same usher, coincidentally. She remembered me because we discussed at length the need for me to keep my legs out of the aisle the first time (as my friends know, I always try to get an aisle seat). If the usher is reading this, I was just kidding about tripping the actors, really.

I saw Parade on my first trip to the Writers Theater. The play introduced me to the music of Jason Robert Brown, which is what led me to see Honeymoon in Vegas, for more music from him. That and the flying Elvises.

Five Guys named Moe (also my first time at the Court Theater) is not actually a show about five guys named Moe. What little story there is, is just an excuse for Big Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe, No Moe, and Little Moe to sing and dance. Worked for me. Give me Moe.

But not more King Charles III (Shakespeare Theater). I’m not an Anglophile. I just didn’t care about the characters. But I ran into an old friend at the show, who bought me a drink, so all was not lost.

The two characters in Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth (Lookingglass Theater) are storytellers, which was appropriate given my foray into storytelling in 2017. But the best thing in the show was a giant, mythological boar (as opposed to the real bore in King Charles III).

The lead actress in Born Yesterday at the Greenhouse Theater was like a medium channelling Judy Holliday, but not in a cataleptic state. She was able to move about the stage.  Indeed, this medium was well done.

Museums – 2017

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In 2017 I visited exhibits at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Art Institute, American Writers Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), and Musical Instrument Museum.

The Musical Instrument Museum is supposedly in Phoenix, but I didn’t see anything but desert for miles around it, which reminds me, I also visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, where I learned that javelinas look similar to, but are not pigs. Okay, good to know. The special exhibit at the instrument museum was Dragons and Vines: Inlaid Guitar Masterpieces. The guitars were much more attractive than the javelinas.

The Breakup exhibit at the MCA was mostly related to a serious topic, but what caught my attention was that it also had some cool memorabilia related to theories on the timeline of the breakup of The Beatles. Spoiler alert – they’re not getting back together.

The Saturday Night Live: The Experience exhibit at the Museum of Broadcast Communications offers you the possibility of paying more money on top of your admission fee to have your picture taken behind the Weekend Update news desk. I passed on that part of the experience, went home, and sat behind my own desk for free.

I went to the Rodin exhibit at the Art Institute expecting to see paintings of a giant flying monster from a 1956 Japanese horror film (oops, that was Rodan), but instead saw a bunch of sculptures, including one of some naked guy thinking. I wonder whether he was thinking about giant flying monsters.

I’ve been to Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell Massachusetts (wasn’t my idea), and seen Jack Kerouac Alley across the street from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, but I’ve never read On the Road Again, even though it was the anthem of my generation, or so I’m told. I loved Canned Heat’s hit On the Road Again, way before Willie Nelson recorded it. I’m not sure what to make of all that, but it was still interesting to see the 120-foot-long roll of paper upon which Kerouac typed the On the Road manuscript, which was on display at the American Writers Museum last October. By the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s not toilet paper, though that would have made an even better story.