New Faces Sing Broadway 1956 – Porchlight Music Theater, at Arts Club of Chicago – October 30, 2019

When I saw Angela Ingersoll (who made me a most happy fella as the fair lady hosting New Faces Sing Broadway 1956) as Judy Garland in Porchlight’s production of End of the Rainbow a few years ago, I thought she was great (she won the Jefferson Award for her performance) but I had no idea she was the energizer bunny in disguise, given that the Garland we see in that show is drug addicted and near death.

She didn’t wear a rabbit costume and bang a drum for Porchlight’s New Faces Halloween-adjacent show, but, her monster singing talent aside, Ingersoll’s enthusiasm, energy, and electricity made me think of When Harry Met Sally, as I definitely would like to have what she’s having, and need to add her to my growing list of theater obsessions.

As for the new faces themselves, Porchlight once again pulled off the trick of treating the audience to a frighteningly excellent array of talented artists, none of whom, this time, I had ever seen before. Thus, my impressions were fittingly written on a blank slate, as a couple of the performers will be appearing in an upcoming production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, put on by the Blank Theater Company, which is only a couple years old, and previously unknown to me, though I was at the comfortable, though fairly bare-bones space they inhabit at The Edge Theater for the Hell in a Handbag production of Poseidon: An Upside Down Musical.

As amazing as the never-ending parade of wonderful singers who grace these Porchlight programs is, there also is new blood to be found behind the scenes. This show marked the directorial debut of Brianna Borger, whom I saw perform in Southern Gothic.  Next up in the series, New Faces Sing Broadway Now and New Faces Sing Broadway 1987.

Porchlight Sings Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – April 30, 2019

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.