Theater

Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar – Writers Theatre – September 21, 2025

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The show probably should have been called Down and Out in Beverly Hills, where the less than jovial Rachmaninoff, played by Felder, recaps his life, in his garden, in 1943, shortly before his death, and less than a year after he moved there for his health.  But that title was already taken.

The Tsar in the name of the show is Nicholas II of the House of Romanov, which makes me want to sing (if not for the restraining order) – Romanov, Rachmaninoff, lets call the whole thing off.

I’ve seen several of Felder’s shows, the most recent being when he played Tchaikovsky, and his piano playing was, as always, wonderful. He delves deeply into his characters, but, I must admit that I wasn’t that interested in the long conversations he had with the Tsar about missing Russia and about the downfall of the Romanovs.

Fortunately, however, there was a fair amount of time spent discussing Nicholas’s daughter Anastasia, which allowed me to daydream about Ingrid Bergman while waiting for more music and led nicely to a more interesting discussion in the Q and A postscript.

Such sessions can often be deadly, but not with Felder. I enjoyed his lengthy, informative, detailed responses more than the brooding dialogue that preceded it.

Ashland Avenue – The Goodman – Through October 5, 2025

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Ashland Avenue has been heavily promoted as a vehicle for Jenna Fischer of The Office fame, but Francis Guinan, as her father (not a bartender on the Enterprise), is the focus and star of the show.

I’ve never seen a complete episode of The Office. Jenna could have been Bobby Fischer and I wouldn’t have known the difference, so I had no particular expectations and she was fine, if not memorable.

I have, however, had a special fondness for alliterative play titles ever since Neil Simon took us through all the B’s. Had this world premiere been called The Life and Times of a TV Salesman, I probably wouldn’t have gone.

Guinan’s character is someone you can feel for and, at the same time, want to strangle, especially since the playwright, who, by the way, is Fischer’s husband Lee Kirk (they didn’t promote that fact), decided to go for an abundance of repetition. I’m not into storming stages, so I settled instead for shaming the woman next to me into turning off her phone screen.

The first act was so-so, but the second was somewhat worth the wait, if only the wait had been shorter, with a lot of laughs; a few twists and turns; and a satisfying, unforced resolution to the play, which didn’t seem like a sure thing, until it was.

Porchlight Music Thetare’s ICONS Gala – Ritz-Carlton – September 14, 2025

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Another year, another great Porchlight season-opening event. Where to start. I was able to have a short, one-on-one conversation with the honoree, Leslie Uggams. Lovely woman, strong handshake.

For those not so lucky, local TV celebrity Paul Lisnek interviewed her from the stage. Afterward I told Paul I would mention his name. So there. I did. Paul did his usual well-prepared, informative job. And you can see more by watching his interview of Uggams on his show, Behind the Curtain.

Some tidbits. During her acceptance speech prior to the interview, Uggams gave us a little treat with her Carol Channing and Chita Rivera impressions, while recalling her interactions with them.

After seeing the tribute to her via commentary; photos; and songs performed by talented Porchlight pros Juwon Tyrel Perry, Ava Stovall, Bethany Thomas and Aerie Williams, Uggams proclaimed “Wow, I did a lot of stuff . . . and I’m still going.”

No kidding! She had a regular 20-minute act at New York’s famous Apollo Theater when she was nine years old and at 82 is appearing in movies and TV shows on regular basis, while acknowledging that ‘Everything is not a success. Every decision is not a good one.” (referencing, in particular a musical she had long wanted to appear in, only to be stuck in an awful production over a decade ago) .

The gala is, of course, a fundraiser (insert subliminal message here – “send Porchlight a donation”). This year Patrick Desmond took over auctioneer duties and, in addition to his excellent job, had, perhaps, the best joke for the day, poking good-natured fun at an earlier mispronunciation by someone else of the word philanthropy.

Also of note, the brunch provided by the Ritz-Carlton again justified my day-before starvation diet. I feel confident in this appraisal, as one of Chicago’s top chefs, sitting at my table, cleaned his plate, as did his wife.

That’s What Friends Are For: Gladys, Dionne, and Patti – Black Ensemble Theater (BET) – August 10, 2025

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Another final performance. My way of avoiding any readers saying that they relied upon my “review.”

I hadn’t been to the BET in almost 6 years, but some things never change. Though she has turned a lot of the creative work over to Daryl Brooks, who wrote and directed this production, Jackie Taylor is still the driving force behind the theater. And it was her birthday! Following the performance, the audience joined the cast in a joyful version of Happy Birthday I had never heard before. Unfortunately, no cake was served in the lobby, as had been the last time I was there, for The Other Cinderella.

There was a lot of emotion during the finale – That’s What Friends Are For – as the mature and young versions of the three leading ladies gathered together one last time. All six are good actresses, but they weren’t acting, the tears were real.

The crowd was engaged and enthusiastic throughout, including one woman in the front row doing lot of chair dancing. But the highest energy of the day was provided by Tamara Batiest, as the mature Patti Labelle, pushing both the vocal and physical edges of the envelope in her take on Labelle. Just when you thought she had taken it as far as she could, she would find another layer and milk it for all it was worth.

I won’t be waiting so long to return to the BET, going back in the fall for Blue Heaven, also written and directed by Brooks, which was on display in 2022, when a lot of people, myself included, were not yet back to normal theater-going. I’ll be going out on a limb, attending before the final performance, so I’ll have to stall writing about it for a day or two afterward.

Iraq, But Funny – Lookingglass Theatre – Final Performance July 20, 2025

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The title of this show reminded me of the pool party scene in La La Land where Emma Stone requests a song from the band. It was I Ran (but funny).

As to the play itself, I’d love to take my red pen to the script. It provides a lot of information and has quite a few funny moments, but it tries to do too much and winds up being a little inconsistent, scattered and too long for it’s own good, losing some impact along the way and drifting into nonsense near the end.

There really wasn’t a need for an out-of-place Jennifer Coolidge impression (there never is) and the penis joke scene could easily be snipped.

That said, Atra Asdou, the playwright and lead, is a force. Her character is memorable and her interaction with the audience is first rate.

There was some interesting staging, including the boxing match depicting the battle between Iraq and Iran and the British-devouring quicksand that included an allusion to Dune (also too long) Sandworms, though I thought the lightning sand from The Princess Bride might have been a better reference.

And the show made the best use of video backdrop maps since Spamalot. High praise indeed.

Kimberly Akimbo – CIBC Theatre – Through June 22, 2025

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Apparently there was a lot of action going on in the streets near the theater, but I was oblivious, lost in 1999 Bergen County, New Jersey, watching actors wearing ice skates glide across a stage coated with a solution of one part glycerin to seven parts water, on blades dipped in the same mixture, but not slipping when back in their regular shoes.

That might have been enough, but, oh yes, this show about a teenager with an extremely rare terminal disease was, amazingly, laugh-out-loud funny, and, of course, heartwarming.

The “kids” (five actors in their twenties playing 16-year-olds, not an uncommon occurrence in the theater) are great, especially, for me, Miguel Gil, who, as Seth, hit me directly in my not so inner nerd.

I wondered as the show progressed whether anything physical would happen between Gil and 62-year-old Carolee Carmello, also playing, with grace and skill, 16, but going on 70 thanks to her illness, in a role with an age gap even greater than 40-year old Mary Martin as Peter Pan. Fear not, there is never a moment of discomfort.

I apparently saw Carmello in 2009 in the pre Broadway run of the Addams Family, but don’t remember her (I will now) or most anything else about that show, except the wonderful Kevin Chamberlain, as Uncle Fester, singing The Moon and Me.

The Strawberry Moon was reaching full as I left the theater last night, which, appropriately, given the underlying cause of the earlier unrest, reminded me that the word “lunatic” derives from Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon.

R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) – City Lit Theater – Through June 15, 2025

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If you’re into science fiction, you know that this 1920 Czech play by Karel Capek introduced the word robot into the vocabulary, and that it’s been a wild ride ever since, with famous examples such as R. Daneel Olivaw, Gort, Robby the Robot and Marvin the Paranoid Android, to name but a few.

As terminology has developed, androids have been designated as a subset of robots that are designed to look like humans, deriving from the Greek andro, for man. Therefore R2-D2, visually, is not really a droid, as in “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” but 3-CPO is. Of course, these entities existed “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” when there was no Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction or Wikipedia to consult.

A cyborg, a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism introduced by a couple scientists in 1960, is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts, like RoboCop, the Borg in Star Trek, and arguably anyone who’s had knee or hip replacement surgery, especially if the new joint comes with microprocessor control.

City Lit’s production, with significant alterations, for better or worse, from the original, has some humor and initiates some interesting discussions, but, in the end, becomes tedious, and would be better as a shorter, one act play. Though it may have been the forefather to much that followed, its themes are addressed more satisfactorily elsewhere, such as in I Robot and in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man, which features a trial to determine whether or not Data is sentient and should have the right to make his own choices.

The best line in the show, “progress is the root of all evil,” was put to better use as a song in L’il Abner in 1956.

Porchlight Music Theatre – Chicago Sings 30 Years of Porchlight- House of Blues – May 12, 2025

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Twenty-one songs, played by a top-notch band and performed by an extraordinary cast of 20, not counting, though I should, the additional eight “Youth Performers” who joined in for They’re Playing Our Song, as a prelude to the irrepressible auctioneer Greg “G-man” Dellinger once again doing his thing by racing around the room to help unburden willing attendees from any up-to-that-point unspent charitable contributions weighing them down.

The room was too cold for my comfort, making me think of the book I’m currently reading – FROSTBITE: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves – but the music was hot, especially, for me, starting right before intermission, when the legendary E. Faye Butler resurrected her award-winning Mama Rose.

First act rabbit hole for me – I had to look up the show Closer Than Ever (and its song – Fathers of Fathers), which apparently came out in 1989, with music by David Shire, who I knew had previously given his name to Talia Shire, née Coppola, but who, I didn’t know, has long been married to Edith Bernstein – Didi Conn of Grease fame.

You know you’re in for a great show when three of the Five Guys Named Moe (Court Theatre – 2017) are in the cast. One of them, Lorenzo Rush Jr. provided one of the evening’s highlights when he used his performance of Honeysuckle Rose, from his award-winning performance in Ain’t Misbehavin’, to further honor the evening’s Guy Adkins Award winner Heidi Kettenring, presenting her with a long-stemmed beauty.

Having thus resurrected the rose theme, Erica Stephan did the same for the mama through line, giving us Don’t Tell Mama from her award-winning performance as Sally Bowles, and making me glad that I hadn’t listened to Randy Newman’s warning in Mama Told Me Not to Come.

Hadestown – CIBC Theatre – May 6-18, 2025

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Hadestown is good enough to see at least once. The cast is good, but no one jumped out at me. The music is good, if mostly unmemorable (at least to me), except for the catchy Way Down Hadestown. (Loved the band, however, and agree with reviews that have singled out the trombone player.) Also, I’m not a big fan of recitative shows.

Seeing Hadestown completed a musical triple play of sorts for me, having previously seen Wonderful Town and Urinetown. (I’ve never seen a theatrical version of On the Town, which is a pity, as in a town without.)

As far as Hades, the character, goes, I preferred the devil in Damn Yankees and the devil disguised as the snake in The Diary of Adam and Eve (in the Apple Tree), though the devil in Randy Newman’s Faust, which was so good that I left at intermission, left much to be desired. (The Devil Wears Prada doesn’t count, and is best forgotten.)

At the point in Hadestown when Orpheus is asked by Hades to play a song, I hoped he would break into The Devil Went Down to Georgia, but no such luck, just a lot of la la las.

The show can definitely make you think about serious things going on in the world today, but don’t I go to musicals to get away from that? I thought the song When the Chips Are Down was particularly relevant – “Now that the chips are down, Help yourself, to hell with the rest, Even the one who loves you best”.

The ending of the show differs from the classic versions and is a total sellout. Virgil or Ovid or whoever (other than Tony voters) is turning over in his grave, though, spoiler alert, Orpheus and Eurydice aren’t.

Sunny Afternoon: The Story of the Kinks – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – Through April 27, 2025

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As I was entering the theater, the usher handing me my program pointed to a jar containing plastic bags with two little orange items in each and asked “Do you need earplugs?”, to which I responded “Do I need ear plugs?”, to which she responded “I’ve been told that the music is pretty loud.”

I hesitated for a moment, concerned that I might not be able to hear the dialogue with the plugs inserted, but quickly decided that I probably wouldn’t be able to understand the British accents anyway, so I might as well wear the protection, while also berating myself for not going to one of the open caption performances.

In retrospect, I probably only needed the plugs twice, the first time being near the beginning of the show when the lads are trying to determine just how loudly they should play the first five signature chords of You Really Got Me, which reminded me of the movie The Italian Job when Lyle gets “speakers so loud they can blow a woman’s clothes off.”

I have read that, not surprising, a lot of creative license is taken with events depicted in the show, but the story is kind of secondary anyway. I’ve seen the tropes before in other behind-the-scenes stories. More importantly, the cast treated us to a highlight show of 1960s Kinks, augmented by a raft of energetic dancing emblematic of that era.

The crowd, which was on its feet for the closing medley, would have been alright with the music continuing all day and all of the night.