Theater

Avenue Q – Mercury Theater – August 15, 2018

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All of the puppets and several of the humans in this wonderful production also were in the 2014 production I saw at the Mercury Theater.

This time, however, I also got to go on a backstage tour. You can go to Playbill to learn about dressers and quick costume changes for actors in Broadway shows, but what if those actors are puppets (and I don’t mean just of the director, but rather actual puppets)? Playbill has some information on that too, as did the tour.

Some of the puppets in the show have several costume changes. So, just like in the movie Baby Geniuses, where real life triplets took turns playing the parts of twins, twins and triplets and more of the puppets, dressed differently, are called into action in Avenue Q, thus avoiding a possible costume malfunction or diva puppet tantrum.

This kind of arrangement is not to be confused with several child actors playing the same part, but on different nights, as when three boys playing Billy Elliot shared the Tony for best actor. Avenue Q won the Tony for best musical in 2004, but while two of the human actors were nominated, none of the puppets were, ironically, as one of the show’s songs is Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.

Hygiene also is a big deal backstage at the show. After each performance, several of the puppets get hooked up to a machine, in a way reminiscent of the movie Coma, that helps clean out their insides. If you don’t have one of those machines at home, there is online help for puppet care and feeding.

The pinnacle of the experience was when I was given the opportunity to try a puppet on for size (see picture above). I was asked to lubricate my hand with a big glob of sanitizer beforehand, almost as if I were going to give the puppet a prostate exam.

Murder for Two – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – August 12, 2018

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What could pull me away from watching Tiger Woods’ attempt to win his first major championship since 2008 (okay, I did record it for later playback and maintained radio silence in the interim) on a day when I warmed up for the spectacle by playing nine holes so that I could compare his comeback progress to the state of my game. (Despite his four back surgeries, he’s still better than I am, but, to be fair, I had a paper cut once.)

I first saw Murder for Two in 2011 when it premiered at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I remembered it as being a big smile. It still is.

If your idea of a fun evening at the theater is a Sam Shepard play at Steppenwolf, you probably won’t enjoy Murder for Two. But if you’re interested in seeing Agatha Christie meets A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (which derives from Alec Guinness playing nine characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets) meets auditions for Second City, where two actors careen around a rotating stage for 90 minutes, with enormous talent and energy, playing multiple characters, mugging for the audience, occasionally trying to crack each other up, singing, and playing the piano, individually and together, then this show is for you.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder has a Tony for Best Musical, but I like M42 better, which reminds me that I haven’t seen Forbidden Broadway in years, but wouldn’t a takeoff of A Gentleman’s Guide’s show stopping I’ve Decided to Marry You, entitled I’ve Decided to Murder You, be a lot of fun?

This show also reminded me of Two Pianos, Four Hands, a 1995 Canadian play I liked, in that there are two guys, who have four hands between them, playing piano. But the comparison stops there, just as it does after noting that Tiger and I both tee the ball up when hitting driver.

Porchlight Music Theater’s Preview in the Park – Washington Square Park – August 11, 2018

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I’m planning on going to the Broadway in Chicago concert in Millennium Park in a couple days, but I guarantee that today’s experience will turn out to be better. And not just because today I got to wear a Washington Square Park Advisory Council badge and carry a clipboard.

At Millennium Park I won’t get to meet and mingle with the performers as I did today. I introduced myself to James Earl Jones II, who is the third cousin of his more famous namesake. I’ve seen, and enjoyed, the ubiquitous Jones in six shows at five different theaters over the last two years alone. He told me, prior to Porchlight’s artistic director, Michael Weber, announcing it to the crowd, that he would soon be leaving Chicago to join the national touring company of Come From Away. I also chatted briefly with Weber and the other very talented performers, Leah Davis, Michelle Lauto, Liam Quealy, all of whom were friendly and gracious.

Like today, I might get to be fifteen feet away from the singers in Millennium Park as they perform, but, for that to happen, I’ll either have to get there three hours before showtime, go through a metal detector, wait in line until they open the gates, and hope I don’t get crushed in the ensuing stampede for the good seats; or pick just the right moment once the performance starts to rush the stage, and run across it pursued by a bevy of security guards.

This was the last Washington Square Park event of the summer, if you don’t count Doggie Yoga, and I don’t. But I’ll be going to Porchlight’s upcoming Chicago Sings the MGM Musicals at the Up Comedy Club, where Jones, Lauto, and many other talented performers again will be on display.

Something in the Game: An All American Musical – Josephine Louis Theater at Northwestern University – August 4, 2018

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One night after Johnny Football threw four interceptions in his first Canadian Football League game, I went to see a musical about famed Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne.

As I sat there watching Notre Dame’s legendary Four Horsemen backfield tap dance across the stage with their lineman and a bevy of chorus girls depicting the invention of the Notre Dame Box variation of the single formation that revolutionized college football (don’t worry, the play doesn’t get that technical), I couldn’t help but think of June Allyson and Peter Lawford, as a college football player, leading a dancing crowd through The Varsity Drag in 1947’s Good News, a movie based on the 1927 Broadway hit musical of the same name, which introduced the song, The Best Things in Life are Free.

Apparently, there also was a 1930 movie based on that play that was taken out of circulation due to its pre motion picture code censorship content, which included sexual innuendo and lewd suggestive humor. Anybody have a copy?

The Four Horsemen tap dance, along with a number of other scenes, takes place in Jimmy the Goat’s, a then South Bend establishment of ill repute frequented by the players for drinking, gambling, and whatever. The ever-present James Earl Jones II plays Jimmy the Goat, in anticipation of which, prior to the show, I tasted the goat at Evanston’s Mt. Everest restaurant (thumbs, or horns, up), which not surprisingly features Nepalese cuisine.

All American status should be conferred on the entire cast, especially the vocal skills of Stef Tovar (Rockne), Dara Cameron (Rockne’s wife Bonnie), and Rashada Dawan (Thelma, the lady of the house at Jimmy the Goat’s).

Also, I loved the theater, which features comfortable seats, plenty of leg room, and ample parking (the best things in life are free).

Support Group for Men – Goodman Theater – July 22, 2018

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In any theater larger than a breadbox, house VIP seats, which you know are the best seats, typically do not start before row five. Yet, when you order tickets for a play online and ask for the best seats, the computer generally starts with the row closest to the stage. This makes me think that the computers are programmed by massage therapists, looking to bring in new customers with stiff necks.

If you buy a ticket close to the date of the show, you might get lucky enough to get a VIP seat that has not been taken. Such was the case for this show, which resulted in me sitting two seats away from chef Rick Bayless, or so I was told, because I wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a five-man lineup, even with Lenny Briscoe whispering in my ear to pick suspect number two.

Governor Bruce Rauner also was pointed out to me in the audience. This is only worth mentioning in that my seat was better than his.

If you have read previous blogs, you know that I generally shy away from the Goodman Theater, but I took the word of several friends who had seen this show (including one whose high praise was that she didn’t walk out on it) and thus made a last minute decision to go. I was rewarded, not only with the VIP seat, but also with some laughs. Good enough for me.

The play as a whole made me think of Wild Men (though that was a musical), a 1992 play with George Wendt, Pete Burns (with whom I had improv classes), and Rob Riley (from whom I took an acting class) about the so-called men’s movement, which featured men beating drums in the woods, as opposed to men passing around a baseball bat as a talking stick in Support Group. We’ve come a long way, baby.

The Buddy Holly Story – American Blues Theater at Stage 773 – July 6, 2018

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Spoiler alert – Buddy Holly dies. He does, however, return to play two encores.

Interestingly enough, the big number at the end of this show is a Chuck Berry song, Johnny B. Goode, which is made even more interesting by the fact that the last song Holly actually played at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake Iowa, before his ill-fated decision to fly to the next destination so he could get his laundry done (couldn’t he just turn his underwear inside out?), was a different Berry song, Brown Eyed Handsome Man.

This reminded me of the Chuck Berry Greatest Hits double album I owned in college, from which my roommate, Wasil Pahuchy, Jr., accidentally broke one of the records. Though Wasil could have squashed me like a bug (and could chug a pitcher of beer, for what that’s worth – ah, Friday afternoons at Kam’s), he lived in mortal fear that I would retaliate against him for destroying my most prized possession.

I never saw Buddy Holly in concert (I did see Chuck Berry on three occasions), though I have seen the Gary Busey movie and three different live productions featuring doppelgangers, of which this was my favorite, with the lead at one point playing a guitar while holding it behind behind his neck, which, if you’re interested, you can learn to do on the Guitar Player website.

The Buddy Holly story would be unbelievable if it weren’t true, but the music is the reason to go. I don’t know who had more fun, the performers or the audience.

On the way out, an audience member asked a cast member, who had come back out on stage to put away his guitar, whether the producers of the show had looked for musicians who also were actors, or actors who also were musicians. His answer was “yes.”

The Light Fantastic – Jackalope Theater – June 7, 2018

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Promoted as funny and scary, the show featured good special effects and one moment early on when everyone except me (low blood pressure) jumped out of their seats.

The song Time in a Bottle became an element near the end of the play, which reminded me of the parody about drug testing, Mine in a Bottle, we did in the Bar Show years ago, which then reminded me of the show Urinetown (I would have liked to have been in the room for the discussion about naming that show), which was mentioned at this week’s Porchlight Music Theater New Faces Sing Broadway 1975 event in conjunction with John Cullum, who appeared in Urinetown, and won a 1975 Tony for Shenandoah, which I never knew, as it was only recently that I learned he was a Broadway star for years before appearing on Northern Exposure, like so many other Broadway stars who move to television, which made me think of Jerry Orbach, who starred on and off Broadway (two Tonys and the original El Gallo in the Fantastiks) before becoming Lenny Briscoe on Law and Order, though he never sang or danced on that show, which reminded me that I keep waiting and hoping that Sutton Foster (whose brother Hunter was in Urinetown with Cullum) will break into a tap dance on Younger, which is also how I felt about Dule Hill on West Wing, though they did figure out a way to let him tap dance a couple times on Psych. But I digress.

The Light Fantastic featured a monitor displaying the dialogue (and considerable sound effects), from the written script, which reflected some inconsequential differences from what the actors spoke, although I did notice one time when the reversal of order of a sentence killed a would-be comedic moment.

Other than that, and the moment when an audience member had to be helped from the theater after nearly passing out in the front row, the show seemed to go as planned.

New Faces Sing Broadway 1975 – Porchlight Music Theater – June 6, 2018

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First things first – special thanks to the Arts Club of Chicago, where the event was held, for serving red wine. Are you listening American Writers Museum?

If you like trivia and Broadway musicals (and who doesn’t, except one friend of mine), this was the place to be. We heard I Don’t Want to Go Over to Vietnam, from The Lieutenant, which holds the record for shortest run, nine performances, for a show with a Tony nomination for Best Musical. The show is a rock opera about the court martial of Lieutenant Calle. I prefer I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.

The Magic Show was another play with which I was unfamiliar. But this vehicle for magician Doug Henning ran for four years on Broadway, and the music and lyrics were written by Stephen Schwartz, who, among other things, did okay with Wicked. A bit of trivia I discovered that they didn’t tell us – the show was produced by Edgar Lansbury, Angela’s brother.

My favorite among the songs I hadn’t heard before was Emily Senkowsky’s energetic rendition of Look What Happened to Mabel, from Mack and Mabel.

Among others, we also heard songs from the more well-known Chicago and A Chorus Line, the latter of which won nine Tonys to Chicago’s zero. But, although A Chorus Line also won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and became one of the longest running shows in Broadway history, it still takes a back seat to a show from that year that only lasted one month on Broadway – The Rocky Horror Show, the movie version of which is considered to be the longest-running release in film history. The performers led the audience in the Time Warp, which made sense since we were trapped in 1975.

Grand Hotel – Theater Wit – May 26, 2018

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Help, I’m stuck in 1928! The Front Page, which I blogged about last week, premiered in 1928. Grand Hotel opened on Broadway in 1989, but takes place in 1928. I wonder whether anything significant will happen in 1929.

Tommy Tune won the Tony Award for best choreographer (and best director) of a musical for Grand Hotel, and it was easy to see why when the show’s big dance number rousingly filled the stage with all but one of the 20 cast members, and brought the biggest applause of the night.

The cast was good, across the board (and the boards), with a special shout out to Leryn Turlington as Flaemmchen and Jonathan Schwart as Kringelein, who nailed their juicy roles. It is a testament to either their acting, or my lack of cognitive abilities, that I’ve seen at least four of the show’s actors (including both of the above) in other plays in the last year and a half, and didn’t recognize any of them.

Grand Hotel’s original logo added the words “The Musical.” This got me to wondering when plays first started adding some such designation to their names, presumably so that no one in the audience would be confused when one of the characters started singing. (I have a friend who won’t go to see musicals because he finds it unbelievable that someone would just break into song for no reason. This same friend is an ardent follower of The Avengers. Nothing unbelievable there.)

The oldest Tony-nominated musical I could find with “The Musical” officially listed in its name (not just on the logo) was Cyrano: The Musical, in 1994. In 2018 we have SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. I’m eagerly anticipating the opening of Musical: The Musical; Drama: The Drama; and, eventually, Drama: The Broadway Musical.

 

Do Re Mi – Porchlight Theater – May 24, 2018

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Thomas Wolfe, not to be confused with the Tom Wolfe who recently shuffled off this mortal coil, was the author of the 1940 posthumously-published book, You Can’t Go Home Again, a catchphrase that has become an essential part of our culture. The Porchlight Theater disdains this advice by producing its Porchlight Revisits series, unearthing musicals that have been laid to rest long ago.

In the past year I have seen Woman of the Year, Merrily We Roll Along, and They’re Playing Our Song, all for the first time, as part of this series, and am looking forward to seeing 1776 in the fall. (Seats will be a lot cheaper than Hamilton, which I understand covers some of the same material.)

The 1960 musical Do Re Mi, which is not to be confused with the song Do Re Mi from the 1959 Broadway show The Sound of Music, or the 1958-1960 television quiz show Dough Re Mi, should be packed back in its box and left to be a footnote, along with many other shows that produced one memorable song. And that song in this case, Make Someone Happy, is best remembered by me for the version by Jimmy Durante at the end of Sleepless in Seattle.

The best thing about this production was the always-interesting, detailed background and historical context of the show that the theater presents prior to the opening act of each revisited play. Also, the actor playing the lead not only looked like Phil Silvers, who created the role on Broadway, but also played the role to the hilt, as if he had been a vaudeville star like Silvers.

But we also had to suffer through songs like What’s New at the Zoo, which had nothing to do with the plot, and made me yearn for If I Could Talk to the Animals. All this after having to change seats because the air conditioning system was dripping on ours. I love the Porchlight Theater, but stay away from seat F20 in warm weather.