Theater

Chicago Sings Broadway’s British Invasion – Porchlight Music Theatre at House of Blues – May 11, 2026

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I’m hard pressed to come up with a logical stream of consciousness regarding this year’s Chicago Sings event, so I will just dive (or diva) into some extremely random thoughts.

I got the chance to have a nice pre-show chat with this year’s Guy Adkins Award recipient, Mark David Kaplan, whom I saw recently as Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors. In addition to his talent, what a nice guy, but I’m afraid, a bit of a close talker.

The room wasn’t as cold as last year, but still not shorts weather.

The British Invasion, as with the Revolutionary War, apparently hasn’t been entirely successful for them, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen less than half the shows that were represented, though only one of them was totally unfamiliar.

One of the shows is coming to Broadway next year – Paddington: The Musical. Seriously?! I think I’ll take a pass, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical.

How do you put out a casting call for a singing bear? Well, if I’m reading the West End production website cast list correctly, you find one person to do voice and remote puppetry and someone else to be the on-stage bear.

I lip synched in a show one year and have worn various furry costumes in other shows, but never combined the two disciplines, or, in my case, undisciplined. So kudos to Paddington, but I still won’t see it.

All of Porchlight’s invading performers, including the band, were wonderful, as usual, even though, unlike last year, when there were three, there were no Moes in the group.

One final note – I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t recognize Aja Alcazar, whom I just saw at Northlight Theatre in the Angel Next Door. But, in fairness to me, she was the angel next door, and the door was usually closed, so I didn’t see that much of her.

The Movement You Need: An Evening with Brendan Hunt – Steppenwolf – May 10, 2026

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Once again I’ve managed to see only the final performance of a show. Such are the vagaries of not being a real critic, which its of no help to those of you who might actually be in interested in my opinion when deciding whether to see a show, why(?).  I swear I don’t do this on purpose, most of the time.

Anyway, Hunt was great. If I had seen him earlier in his run, I may well have gone back for an encore. He often displayed a rat-a-tat delivery unlike anything you’ve seen him do as Coach Beard on Ted Lasso and his timing was impeccable. Even when he spoke about serious things in his life, he didn’t dwell and found a way to create a rousing punchline without making you feel guilty about laughing, and there was a lot of laughing and smiling and head nodding and applause.

Word on the street is that the show may go to Broadway, wind up getting filmed and eventually make its way to a streaming service. I hope so.

Come Blow My Horn

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It’s not a typo. I didn’t see a production of Neil Simon’s 1961 play Come Blow Your Horn. They would have to rewrite the entire script before anyone would put that play on again. Inherit the Wind it is not. 

What I did, however, was send an email to TheatreinChicago telling them that they should be ashamed of having posted links to reviews of the 2023 production of Chicago on their website as if they were reviews of the current production, a fact that I pointed out in my blog yesterday after having seen the show.  

When I checked back a few hours later, I saw that they had removed the offending links, so my very positive review from yesterday now appears to be definitive. Maybe I’m on a roll. Perhaps I should try writing some government officials. 

Fault – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – Through May 24, 2026

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Fault is not as good as Proof or Doubt or any number of musicals with one word titles that I’ve seen, but it had its plusses and its moments, including comedic ones, some of which made you laugh even when it seemed inappropriate.

One of the things that originally drew me to seeing the play was to see Teri Hatcher in the role of Lucy, in retrospect perhaps hoping that she could summon Superman to save the day. Unfortunately, or perhaps not, she withdrew and was replaced by Rebecca Spence, who was excellent.

I give Spence a lot of credit for listening to Enrico Calantoni (Jerry) do his best Al Pacino screaming impression for too much of their hour and a half on stage together. His performance during quieter moments (as in his turn as Mathesar in Galaxy Quest) was much more appealing.

Note to director Jason Alexander: dialogue, just like music, doesn’t get better just by being louder.  The script itself, despite reviews that consider it to be no more than a poor man’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, isn’t too bad, except for one totally unnecessary interlude involving a four letter word, the constant use of which was supposedly a big part of Jerry’s attraction to London. Stupid.

Nick Marini did a nice job as Shaun, complete with some nice physical comedy, I couldn’t help but think that someone, ala Margo Channing, should have told him to fasten his seat belt because it was going to be a bumpy night.

Follies – Porchlight Music Theatre at Studebaker Theater – April 26, 2025

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Porchlight’s Artistic Director, Michael Weber, once again put his impeccable casting abilities on display via a 21-person all-star ensemble that featured great individual performances and exquisite matching of characters, in particular the younger and not younger versions of Sally and Phyllis.

I don’t have room to mention everyone’s wonderful performance (and I do mean everyone), but if the audience reaction, in the way of loud, sustained applause and cheering, is a good measuring stick, then three solos are worth highlighting.

First, near the end of the first act, came Susie McMonagle chewing the scenery, in a good way, while belting I’m Still Here.

Next, in the second act, came Michelle Duffy’s rendition of Could I Leave You? Even as I was relishing her bravura performance, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it would be fun to then have Anthony Rapp, as her husband, enter singing If Ever I Would Leave You, from Camelot.

The third thunderous ovation came for Angela Ingersoll’s emotive performance of Losing My Mind. I was close enough to the stage to see tears coming down her cheeks, which she confirmed for me after the show.

I also would like to mention Stephen Wallem singing The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me-Blues because I love the Blues, and hyphens, and because Wallem’s turn reminded me of John C. Reilly, and that’s a good thing.

Finally a shout out to Teagan Earley, whose sophisticated shoulder moves during her dancing caught my attention. It’s the little things.

Oh, and the 12-piece band was terrific.

The Angel Next Door – Northlight Theatre – Through May 10, 2026

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Little did Hungarian Ferenc Molnar know in 1920, when he wrote “Játék a Kastélyba” (Play at the Castle), that it would be the basis for plays that would be making audiences laugh over 100 years later, first in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1924 adaptation, The Play’s the Thing (riffing off Shakespeare), later in Tom Stoppard’s 1984 Rough Crossing, and, most recently in Paul Slade Smith’s The Angel Next Door.

The current production is a nice, fun farewell, as Northlight’s last one before moving to its new castle in the fall. As mentioned in the dialogue, sometimes a couple hours of escapist humor is just what the doctor, or audience, ordered.

The show is a particular treat for people who enjoy theater about theater, complete with an inside joke referencing a 1920 Hungarian play (hmm) and recurring jokes about breaking the fourth wall, though not really, but also is reliant on the relationships between husband and wife playwrights, an actress and her lothario co-actor (as in Lothario, a character in Nicholas Rowe’s 1703 play The Fair Penitent) and the same actress and her would-be suitor, a novelist, whose book the playwrights have adapted for a play, not this one (that might be too much).

But, as good as all those actors were (the real ones, not the ones they were playing), the show is stolen, and at least partly handed to thanks to the script, as comedies often are, by a “secondary’ character, namely the maid, Olga, played in a tour-de-force turn by Erin Grennan, who, in real life, is married to the playwright Paul Slade Smith, which seems only right, as one of the male leads (the play’s playwright) is played by Sean Fortunato, who is married to the play’s director Linda Fortunato.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – Goodman Theatre – April 11, 2026

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The Goodman Theatre website contains the following Content Advisory regarding Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom contains themes of racism and includes racial slurs (the N-word), strong profanity, acts of violence, intimate moments of kissing and discussions about sexual content.“

Spamalot, it is not. The N-word is not a reference to the Knights Who Say “Ni.” And you shouldn’t count the dismemberment of the Black Knight as violence, given that Eric Idle has credited Penn and Teller with creating that illusion for the musical.

Though Ma Rainey takes place in 1927 (1075 for Spamalot), August Wilson wrote it in 1982 (2004 for Idle), and today’s audiences (at least the one I was part of) still recognize its ongoing, harsh realities (as far as I know, the search also continues for the Holy Grail, though Indiana Jones may have had his hands on it for a moment).

I previously had seen the 2020 filmed version of Ma Rainey, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, in his final role. The powerful cast of the Goodman production, starring E. Faye Butler and Al ‘Jaleel McGhee, need not take a back seat to that star-laden movie.

Little Shop of Horrors – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – March 15, 2026

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The only cast member from the 2018 production of Little Shop of Horrors I saw, who also was in this year’s Marriott version, was Lorenzo Rush, Jr. Given that Lorenzo perfectly gives voice to the person-eating plant Audrey II, I’m guessing that he has a repeating gig for life, at one theater after another, if he wants it, given the everlasting popularity of this fun-loving romp.

Little Shop is in a select group of movies that have become musicals and then movie musicals. I add Hairspray and The Producers to that short, great list (but not Mean Girls, because I would never admit to seeing any version of it, as much as I love Tina Fey).

I would have loved to be in the room when Howard Ashman took a Roger Corman movie and wrote the book and lyrics for a musical version of Little Shop. He, and everyone around him, must have had a great time.

I always wonder how decisions are made regarding character names. The wonderful chorus of Crystal, Ronnette and Chiffon is obvious, but what about Audrey? When Corman picked that name, he couldn’t have known that Ashman would later rhyme it with tawdry in the lyrics of The Meek Shall Inherit. Our good fortune.

And what about Orin Scrivello, D.D.S., played to the hilt, along with several other characters, by Andrew Mueller? My rampant curiosity led me to discover that scrivello is actually a word meaning, according to Merriam-Webster, an elephant’s tusk of a small size commonly used for making billiard balls. Tusk – incisor tooth – dentist – coincidence?

There were other welcome, familiar faces in the cast, for example Jackson Evans, always a treat sharing the stage with a puppet, like the time I saw him in 2014 in Avenue Q. And Mark David Kaplan, set to receive the Guy Adkins Award from Porchlight Music Theatre in May at Chicago Sings Broadway’s British Invasion.

Holiday – Goodman Theatre – February 14, 2026

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I’ve seen the 1938 movie Holiday, based on the 1928 Philip Barry play, several times. It’s a favorite of mine, but I’d never seen the play.

With the original play’s copyright expiring on January 1, 2025, the time was ripe for an updated adaptation and the now late Richard Greenberg jumped right in and had a new script ready to go before the expiration, as evidenced by the October 21, 2024 one-night only benefit reading done by The Acting Company in New York.

I’ll start by saying that, alas, there was no Cary Grant (Johnny Case) or Katherine Hepburn (Linda Seton) in the Goodman cast. (Rachel Brosnahan played Linda in the benefit reading – that would have been fun to see.)

The Grant and Hepburn characters had great chemistry in the movie. I didn’t feel that in this production.

What did jump out at me was that Ned, the alcoholic brother, had all the best lines, all the laughs, and the actor, Wesley Taylor, did not go too far over the top, as often can be the case when heavy drinkers are portrayed.

That said, I agree with one review I saw that spoke to the relative lack of “investment in the very real issue of addiction.” But it’s basically a romantic comedy, despite it’s philosophical overtones, so two hours away from real life is okay for me.

And speaking of the laughs, I didn’t think the actors did a great job of letting them happen, walking into some of their lines a little too quickly.

The sets were excellent, but the changeover during the second act, done behind a dropped curtain while the audience sat in the dark and silence wondering what the hell was going on, needs to be addressed.

Greenberg didn’t miss a trick in updating the 1920’s script, keeping the skeleton of the show, but throwing in NFTs, cryptocurrency, text messaging, social media, red eye flights and the kitchen sink.
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The play is set in Dec. 2019-Jan. 2020, which makes it the second show I’ve seen recently (after Eureka Day) that is placed on the cusp of Covid. Strangely, it reminds me of the way plot lines had to change when cell phones took over the universe.

The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way – Porchlight Music Theatre – Feb. 6, 2026

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I wrongly assumed that the play, The Irish . . .  And How They Got That Way, was about the University of Notre Dame not getting picked for the recent 12-team college football playoff and announcing thereafter that it would reject any other bowl bids that might be made, which, to me, seemed antithetical to their nickname, the Fighting Irish, which was approved by the university’s president in 1927 as being “preferable to the school’s more derisive nicknames,” and with the “hope that we may always be worthy of the ideal embodied in the term.”

So, no football, but a lot of drinking, as if at a football game, unaccompanied, however, by the Irish bar classic Whiskey in the Jar. 

There were 34 other songs in whole or part, but not the Notre Dame Victory March (acknowledging, I suppose, that you can’t win if you don’t play), which Sports Illustrated, in 2019, ranked as the fourth best college fight song.

The players (I mean the cast, not the members of the football team), all of whom I have seen before, were up to their usual high standards, but I would have liked to hear more from violinist Elleon Dobias, who was a standout.