American Blues Theater

The Last Wide Open – American Blues Theater – August 16, 2024

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Thank you to the American Blues Theater for using the American spelling of theater in its name and on the building it moved into last year, which I visited for the first time for this show. Noah Webster would be proud.

Now that I’ve experienced their flexible studio space, dressed up as a diner, with the audience at tables, in this immersive experience, I’ll have to go back some time for a different production in their larger space, perhaps their annual production of It’s a Wonderful Life.

To augment the diner experience, each member of the audience even got served cheese and sausage (presumably Polish, given the show we were seeing), but only one piece per customer, so I’m glad I stopped first at BryAnna’s down the block, my first time at this nice restaurant, to have some Salvadoran and Guatemalan cuisine, though I found their pollo amarillo rather bland for my taste buds. I don’t know what sensation “Guatemalan spices” are supposed to elicit, but it just tasted like chicken to me. I only saw one item on the menu that used the word “spicy”. Next time.

In any event, the show was excellent. Real life husband and wife Michael Mahler and Dara Cameron play two people who may or may not be destined for each other in a multiverse that, fortunately, merely asks for acceptance rather than trying to explain itself in 80 minutes, for as much as I enjoy listening to Max Tegmark and Brian Greene, they make my head spin, at least in this incarnation.

Chicago Live – Navy Pier – September 23-24, 2023

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Navy Pier, it’s not just for tourists. Well, maybe most of the time, but not at Chicago Live.

Important information I picked up.

From Theo Ubique Theatre – how they pronounce Ubique. Their presentation of Sondheim songs, including Not Getting Married Today, led me to watch again, online, the great rendition by Katie Finneran.

From the Filament Theatre two-person presentation of something (I don’t what, I was just passing by the stage when they caught my attention) that “It’s hard to balance on invisible legs.”

From the young lady at the Hot Tix booth with an acting degree who currently works as a carpenter at local theaters, that the Nacirema (Society), in the name of the current play at the Goodman, is American spelled backwards. Doh!

Also, it sounds like Hot Tix is considering a membership that would allow you to pick your seat, something I could get behind.

From the marvelous Lucy Darling, that she is going to be the emcee of the new Teatro ZinZanni show opening in October. Lucy did a standard empty bag trick, while insulting audience members in a way that would make Don Rickles proud. The contortionist, Ulzii Mergen, also appeared, being attractive, impressive and cringeworthy all at the same time.

Other stuff I saw.

Porchlight Music Theatre promoting its upcoming Cole Porter Festival, which, I am excited to say, will feature Meghan (Big Red) Murphy in the role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. I have it on good information that playing this part has been on her bucket list. I liked Porchlight’s rendition of Now You Has Jazz better than Bing Crosby’s in High Society, though, I admit, having Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet did work in Crosby’s favor.

Lots of percussion – from third Coast Percussion and from a Chicago Philharmonic trio, whose sound was such that I kept waiting for dancers wearing big construction boots and carrying large trash cans to appear.

Dancers did appear for me at Culture Shock Chicago and Chicago Tap Theatre (as my readers know, you can never have enough tap).

Victor Garcia giving a master class on the use of the trumpet mute.

A DJ at a classic show tunes stage presenting a geographical music tour – I heard Kansas City (Oklahoma), Iowa Stubborn (Music Man), and Ohio (Wonderful Town).

Chronologically, the American Blues Theater’s road trip had me from the 50s opening Chuck Berry guitar riff of Johnny B. Goode (though sadly no duck-walking) and cemented my interest with the 60s CCR hit Down on the Corner (which was the song that sustained me while poring over the course catalog junior year of college looking for a new major). I’ll skip ahead to the 2000s to mention Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off because her appearance at the Bears game was apparently the biggest news in the NFL Sunday and thankfully overshadowed the high school team wearing their jerseys against Kansas City.

I love the Black Ensemble Theater but I have to say that I would have liked to hear the performance of Piece of My Heart emulate, not Janis Joplin, but rather the original Emma Franklin version.

Dee Alexander was new to me, but smooth as could be (with a great band behind her). I’ll watch for her in the future and be back at Chicago Live for more next year.

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.”