Broadway in Chicago

Broadway x 3 – July 31, August 6, August 12, 2024

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Three different annual Broadway-related concerts, put on by three different groups, in the span of 13 days, and nothing unlucky about it.

The Grant Park Music Festival opened with Broadway Rocks!, which opened with the overture from Tommy. I would have been satisfied with that alone, but the orchestra and a trio of singers kept the energy going through another dozen selections, closing with Don’t Stop Believing (Rock of Ages).

Six days later Porchlight Music Theatre (PMT) wrapped up its Broadway in Your Backyard 12-concert summer series in Washington Square Park (I also saw them June 27 at Seneca Park), opening with, appropriately, Another Op’nin’, Another Show (Kiss Me Kate) (which sent me off into “what if” land, wondering about what the the reception would have been if Mel Brooks had titled the song from The Producers Another Op’nin’, Another Flop, instead of just Opening Night) and closing with Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (which was actually the opener in Hair). These things are important.

Then, another six days later, it was back to Millennium Park for Broadway in Chicago, put on by, wait for it, Broadway in Chicago, featuring songs from 16 shows coming to Chicago (starting today with Back to the Future). Some of the shows have been here before, like Come From Away, Les Miserables, Moulin Rouge and the pre-Broadway run of Tina, but the biggest hits of the night were a couple newcomers, Kimberly Akimbo and Titanique (produced by PMT), both of which brought waves of laughter and enthusiastic applause from an audience that packed the park from front to back.

Finally, I would be remiss if I omitted the fact that two songs were included in both otherwise divergent Millennium Park Concerts, the always crowd-pleasing Proud Mary (Tina) and the always crowd-engaged Sweet Caroline (A Beautiful Noise), which closed the last of the three nights.

My Fair Lady – Broadway in Chicago – Cadillac Palace Theatre – July 2, 2022

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As noted in my last blog, I didn’t go to the show last night. But I changed my mind and went today. Sue me.

I’ve seen the movie so many times that it was very hard to disassociate the play from the film while at the theater. Nevertheless, as with the movie, I loved it, and there were some specifics worth mentioning.

First, the terrific voices. The entire cast was a listening pleasure, although I’ll admit that some of the lyrics early in the show were hard to understand due to the Cockney accents and I was thankful that I was already so familiar with them.

Second, the use of the sets, that is the way in which they were moved around and the actors moved in concert with them. For me, it was beautiful choreography.

The show, as in the movie, doesn’t have a lot of dancing, a waltz here, a gavotte there. Despite the fact that Eliza could have danced all night, she doesn’t. It isn’t like, for example, the current Broadway production of The Music Man, which has added tap dancing, because why wouldn’t you when you have Sutton Foster. The only noticeable addition to me was the drag line helping to send Alfred P. Doolittle off to get married in the morning. That was some party.

Everyone knows the music is great, so no point in lingering, other to say that, with all due respect to the great Cole Porter, my all time favorite rhyming lyric, which I sat in the audience anticipating, continues to be the pairing of Budapest and ruder pest in the song You Did It. Alan Jay Lerner really did it!

My Fair Lady – Broadway in Chicago – Cadillac Palace Theatre

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I thought that for a change of pace I would write about something I didn’t do. This won’t become a habit because, after all, I spend a lot more time not doing things than doing them, and would run out of time not to do things if I had to write about not doing them all the time.

So, first, with hard work and a little bit of luck, I had to find the right thing not to do. I opted not to go see the Broadway in Chicago production of My Fair Lady tonight. It wasn’t an easy decision. I love the movie – who doesn’t. I’ve never seen the play. The woman playing Eliza is receiving rave reviews. But . . .

The Chicago critics are somewhat split about some other aspects of the production. And it’s two hours fifty minutes long. No reclining seats at the Cadillac Palace.

A couple of the reviews I scanned focused on issues with the second act. So, I thought, as long as there were good seats available, at half price, and I know how the play ends, why not just go for the first act. Wouldn’t that be loverly?

But inertia is a cruel mistress. I’ve got two e-books currently on loan from the library, a movie I want to rent, and a reclining chair at home, so, even though the Cadillac is not that far from the street where I live, I figured my time might be better spent writing about not going. After all, I’ve grown accustomed to this pace.

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.

The Book of Mormon – Oriental Theater – November 24, 2018

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There’ve been almost 300 tv episodes of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park, and I’ve never seen even one of them, though I understand that some kid named Kenny has had a rough go of it (having died 98 times in the series, 12 in the shorts, 14 in the video games, and twice in the movie).

But now I’ve seen Parker and Stone’s (and the great Robert Lopez’s – Avenue Q, Frozen) The Book of Mormon twice, and, not being a student of religion, everything I know about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I’ve learned from seeing the play. I’m assuming, of course, that everything in the show is accurate.

Interestingly, in terms of religion-related musicals, I’ve never seen Fiddler on the Roof or Jesus Christ Superstar, though I have seen Damn Yankees.

I got lucky with a main floor discounted ticket and even luckier that no one sat next to me on one side in an otherwise full theater. This did, however, lead to a moment of awkwardness when the woman two seats over, who had put her coat on the seat between us, reached over in the dark to try to get something out of her coat pocket, but instead wound up tickling my shoulder, which reminded me of a joke about a woman and a chicken sandwich in her purse on an overnight bus ride.

The stage also went dark when they blacked it out a couple times during the Turn It Off tap dance. I guess tapping in the dark isn’t that hard for a professional, though I know how hard it is for me to stand on one leg with my eyes closed, which, fortunately, I’m not called upon to do all that often, and never on stage.

And, despite the darkness of the humor, Jacob Ben-Shmuel could be seen stealing scenes as Elder Cunningham, while Kayla Pecchioni lit up the stage as Nabulungi.

Tootsie – Cadillac Palace Theater – October 7, 2018

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The Tootsie Roll company was founded in Chicago in 1907 by Leo Hirshfield. This has absolutely nothing to do with the musical Tootsie.

Al Jolson sang Toot, Toot, Tootsie! in The Jazz Singer in 1927. This also has absolutely nothing to do with the musical Tootsie.

Mrs. Doubtfire was a 1993 movie, which has never been turned into a play (although it’s under consideration), starring Robin Williams, in which he pretended to be a woman to get a job as a nannie for his ex-wife. And, although that movie has absolutely nothing to do with the musical Tootsie, an inordinate number of people attending Tootsie seemed to think they had come to see a theatrical version of Mrs. Doubtfire, as evidenced by confused discussions overheard during intermission.

I guess it could have been worse. They could have thought they were watching a revival of the play Sugar, based on the movie Some Like it Hot (more men pretending to be women), or wondered why they weren’t seeing Al Jolson sucking on a Tootsie Roll.

My favorite bits in the show were an x-rated song by Tootsie’s roommate, a rant of a song by Tootsie’s friend Sandy, and some dance instruction by the director of the show within the show that channelled Robin Williams, but still, no, this wasn’t Mrs. Doubtfire.

Santino Fontana was a terrific Tootsie. And no one confused him with Santino Corleone, Carlos Santana, or Fontana, Wisconsin. However, his part of Greg on Crazy ex Girl Friend is being taken over by Skyler Astin, which is sure to produce some confusion.

Tootsie is scheduled to open in previews on Broadway in March 29, 2019. Though its competition in the musical category may include Beetlejuice, Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations, The Cher Show, and King Kong, I believe that Tootsie, which is a laugh a minute, will win, at a minimum, some individual Tony awards. But who knows. The part of King Kong hasn’t been cast yet.

Rush Hour Concerts and Broadway in Chicago

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Fifth House Ensemble – Rush Hour Concert – St. James Cathedral – July 2, 2018 (better late than never)
Broadway in Chicago – Millennium Park – August 13, 2018
Avalon String Quartet – Rush Hour Concert – St. James Cathedral – August 14, 2018

The abbreviation used for the Fifth House Ensemble is 5HE. Since the group I saw play was composed of three women, I thought 5HE was supposed to look like SHE. Very clever. But no. The musicians I saw are part of a larger group that makes up 5HE and some of the members are men. Oh well.

Anyway, it was a wonderful musical performance, BUT, the videos that went with it, didn’t. The one during the first movement displayed a vague nothingness that made me instead think of the song Nothing from A Chorus Line, which actually is about something.

During the second movement, they showed someone painting a picture, which struck me as a poor man’s version of Bill Alexander on the PBS tv show, The Magic of Oil Painting, in the 1970s.

The cellist did a lot of head shaking, which suggested that she probably doesn’t play golf, or at least not well.

The Avalon String Quartet added another cellist and beautifully played Schubert’s String Quintet (four plus one equals five) in C Major, which the program notes said ends in a slightly ambiguous note. My only confusion was as to the basis for that statement.

The upright bass player in the orchestra backing up the performers (who were shuffled on and off stage as if they were the singing waitstaff at Ellen’s Stardust Diner in Times Square) at the Broadway in Chicago event kept looking at his top hand, which led me to a fun online response to a question about guitarists doing that, which ended by saying that “if your eyes are closed all of the time you may miss important visual cues like when the song is supposed to end”, which reminded me of my torts law professor’s unambiguous declaration that if you change the facts, you may change the result.

 

Broadway in Chicago – 2017

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I don’t have a subscription to any theaters because I like to pick and choose (waiting to see reviews first if possible) and it’s always possible to get a ticket if you’re flexible. My schedule is and I take Pilates.

It won’t come as a shock that all four shows I saw in 2017 in the Broadway in Chicago series were musicals, though the list may seem peculiar – Something Rotten, Aladdin, An American in Paris, and the pre Broadway opening of Escape to Margaritaville (which did not receive the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama).

Something Rotten was only here for a two-week run. I had some hesitation about seeing it here because my experience seeing it in New York seemed unbeatable. I had blown out of a reception and purchased a last minute ticket at the Times Square discount TKTS booth and arrived at my seat less than ten minutes before curtain. And what a seat – seventh row center, and with an empty seat next to me. And Christian Borle, who won a Tony for his role, was playing Shakespeare in his next to last performance. Great show – in my top five all-time. But I digress (as always). I also loved the Chicago production.

Aladdin brought a constant smile to my face. Tap dancing and the show stopping Friend Like Me. I have a friend who wouldn’t go to the show with me because she doesn’t think much of Disney shows – big mistake. (She has since softened her opinion, but that’s for another time.)

I agreed to see An American in Paris even though I wasn’t interested in doing so, and I didn’t like it. I found the book of the show to be inconsistent and the attempts at humor unfunny. The ballet numbers were beautiful, but, you know, not tap dancing.

I went to Escape to Margaritaville with a friend as a lark. My expectations were low and were met. But, I have to admit, I caught myself smiling. Good enough for me.