Theater

New Faces Sing Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – April 30, 2019

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This was the fourth Porchlight Sings event I’ve gone to in the past year and they’ve all been great. Hosted by local favorite Lorenzo Rush, Jr., it featured an extremely talented group of ten young performers. Three of them, Chloe Nadon-Enriquez, Kaiman Neil, and Drew Tanabe, are in the current Porchlight production of A Chorus Line.

Nick Druzbanski was clearly a favorite of his fellow performers, bringing hoots and hollers from them even before he opened his mouth. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Drunk Shakespeare. And Cecelia Iole. in singing Phantom of the Opera, hit a note so high that it hasn’t been named yet.

But the highlight of the evening was the Broadway trivia game. Often the audience members selected to play have an impressive knowledge of Broadway. Not this time. The two contestants were right out of a Saturday Night Live skit. It would be kind to say they were pathetic.

They were presented with three questions dealing with Disney productions, none of which either of them came close to answering correctly, either standing there dumbfounded or making unimaginably ridiculous guesses, which I would have written down if I weren’t laughing so hard.

Though everyone else somehow restrained themselves from shouting out the answers, even as the level of ineptitude reached epic proportions, it was clear that the organizers had managed to draw the names of the two least knowledgable people in the room to participate in the game.

And keep in mind, this wasn’t Jay Leno picking people off the street. This was a room full of people who theoretically were big theater fans, even though that wasn’t really necessary. One question asked the name of the play based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Shouldn’t that be enough? The lead character was raised by apes. They still had no idea.

Poseidon! An Upside Down Musical – The Edge Theater – April 28, 2019

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This was my first time at The Edge Theater. I like it. It has about 100 seats, very comfortable, with lots of leg room, and cup holders to help you take advantage of the bar, where, appropriately enough for a show about a disaster that disrupts a New Year’s Eve party on a cruise ship, you can preorder drinks for the second act before the show starts.

The show had men in drag playing the parts made famous by Shelley Winters and Carol Lynley in the movie, an ensemble doing double duty in the play as people watching the movie from the front row of the theater and secondary characters acting in the movie, and actors ad-libbing beautifully when a prop misbehaved.

Unfortunately, however, I had trouble hearing the lyrics in several songs, which I confirmed was not about me upon speaking with another attendee after the show. A small theater shouldn’t have this problem.

I also must object to the serious, heartfelt soliloquy in the middle of the first act that discussed the author’s childhood and why the movie was important to him. I didn’t care. I was there to have fun, and, for most of the show, had a smile on my face. But the speech was too long, too slow, too boring, and more appropriate for the playbill.

That said, slow can be good. I was delighted by the slow motion ballet of furniture being moved and people falling this way and that all over the stage to simulate the capsizing of the ship, although it made me wonder whether, if The Windy City Playhouse, with its affinity for untraditional staging, had been putting on this production, would it have left the stage as is and found a way to turn the audience upside down.

Icons Gala – Porchlight Music Theater – Ritz Carlton – March 31, 2019

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Porchlight Music Theater’s Icons Gala fundraising event included silent and live auctions and a tribute to director and choreographer Jerome Robbins.

While the tribute included some dancing, I doubt that it was original Robbins choreography. There was much more singing, with performances from Robbins shows such as Gypsy, On The Town, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

The inclusion of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at an event featuring an auction was particularly appropriate. The first recorded auctions were in Greece around 500 B.C., though oddly, the word auction derives from the Latin word that translates as an increase.

The main items sold at early Greek auctions were daughters, sold to be brides. Courtesans also were sold, as in A Funny Thing Happened, which was set around 200 B.C., although, fortunately for me, Porchlight produced a 2015 version that I was around to attend, as I was unavailable in 200 B.C.

Porchlight offered a variety of items for purchase at the gala, 59 in the silent auction, and 6 in the live auction, but, fortunately, unlike ancient Greece, none of them involved the transfer of people, although there were a few that involved people agreeing to subjugate themselves by preparing dinner for the winning bidders. In the hope that someone, anyone really, would prepare a dinner for me, I bid vigorously on one such item, but, alas, came up short.

Bill Kurtis and Donna La Pietra served as emcees for the introductions of the live auction items, or rather she did as he stood by her side looking legendary, before they turned things over to a real auctioneer, who put on a show of his own, compete with flashing lights, but no courtesans.

Noises Off (Nothing On) – Windy City Playhouse – March 17, 2019

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I think the cast of Noises Off did a really good job (as opposed to the squabbling, irresponsible cast of Nothing On, the play within the play), but how would I know? The breakneck pace of Noises Off, which tells the story of an incompetent acting company, allows for the possibility of the cast doing almost anything they want, going off script and improvising, and having it seem like it’s part of the play.

Once again, as it did with Southern Gothic, the Windy City Playhouse does things a little differently. In traditional productions of Noises Off, the Nothing On stage is turned around in the second act to reveal the backstage deterioration of the show. But Windy City leaves the stage as is and takes the audience around back for the second act, which is still the first act of Nothing On, except on a different night, then returning the audience to their original seats to watch the third act, still the first act of Nothing On, except on yet another night, as that show falls deeper into theatrical hell.

Some of the audience gets to climb a ladder to sit on a second level landing during the second act, with their feet hanging over the backstage. I’m not sure whether this is considered prime seating, but it is voluntary. Maybe next time.

Special mention to Rochelle Therrien, as Brooke Ashton, as Vicki, or really to Vicki, who never drops a line in Nothing On no matter what mayhem is going on around her to cause the line to no longer make any sense whatsoever, which would be confusing to the Nothing On audience, but is priceless to the Noises Off audience.

And to Ryan McBride, as Garry Jejune, as Roger Tramplemain, for the best live pratfall I’ve ever seen at the theater, giving no regard for life or limb as he careened down a staircase. He could make a lot of money doing that as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

The Woman in Black – Royal George Theater – February 14, 2019

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In a 1969 appearance on The Tonight Show, George Gobel famously quipped to Johnny Carson, “did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” The reviews of The Woman in Black, a show that has been running in London for 30 years, have unanimously been highly laudatory, until this one. I’m the brown shoes.

The Playbill notes say that the “early reviews in 1989 paid tribute to [the adapter and director’s] ability to take the audience on a journey whose transport is its own imagination.” During most of the play, I imagined being somewhere else.

The show is supposed to be scary, but my boredom was interrupted only momentarily by some of the sound effects. And though the fog machine at times made it hard to see, there was nothing to see in the first place, including the imaginary dog Spider, the use of which more properly belonged in an introductory improv or mime class. And Spider didn’t even get a credit in the program.

One favorable review admits that “[t]he show is slow to get started.” I’m still waiting. Another admits that “[t]he play [has a] less-than-watertight plot” and a “contrived storyline”. In what universe does that justify a highly recommended?

Yet a third review states that there are three reasons to see the show, one of which is so that you don’t have to go to London to see it.  I can think of other reasons not to go to London, like the food and the weather.  That review also suggests seeing the show because “it has brought light to the long-darkened stage of the Royal George Theatre.” I like the theater, but the play actually brought blackouts and the aforementioned fog, very little light.

If fog is my incentive, I would prefer seeing The Hound of the Baskervilles, which includes a dog that isn’t invisible.

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.

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 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.