Erica Stephan

New Faces Sing Broadway 1976 – Porchlight Music Theatre – The Biograph – Sept. 16, 2026

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New faces, new season, new venue. Add in a new director (long-time singing and acting favorite Lorenzo Rush Jr. stepping into the role for this show), a new host (the wonderful Erica Stephen, who wowed us in Cabaret, among other shows), and a new energy resulting from all of the above (I even walked up and down the stairs to the second floor theater instead of taking the elevator) and you’ve got a great evening.

The new venue gave the new director and the new faces a new freedom to explore staging and performance possibilities previously unavailable in these annual shows. So, instead of a parade of people walking on and off the stage, we had an actual set that allowed interaction throughout the night, thereby enhancing the experience and allowing performers to show off a little more of their personalities.

The event still features a few more unfamiliar songs than I would like, as there is very little room in my brain to process new information, but the mix was good, and the ever-present photos shown on a screen behind the stage and the background information articulated by Stephan were easily interesting enough to keep my mind from wandering. Not once, until now, did I think about John Dillinger having been shot as he left The Biograph after seeing Manhattan Melodrama. I do wish, however, that autocorrect would stop trying to change Biograph to Biography.

To add to everything else, there was actual room to mingle in the lobby and there were comfortable seats in this, the smaller of the two spaces in the building. I peeked into the larger one, which will be the site of Little Shop of Horrors, starting November 4, and it looked terrific. Suddenly I want to see more and can’t wait to see what Porchlight feeds me in that production.

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.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical – Marriott Theatre – December 3, 2023

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For those of us of a certain age, Carole King’s music is fundamental. And, for me, seeing a member of the extremely -talented Mueller family playing a part in King’s story is also basic.

In the first national tour I saw Abby Mueller, replacing her Tony award-winning sister Jessie in the part of King, and now I’ve seen brother Andrew as Gerry Goffin, after loving him in the off-beat Ernest Shackleton Loves Me earlier this year.

I also have now seen Erica Stephan, who plays Cynthia Weil, in four shows in just over a year – Clue, Cabaret (Jeff Award as Sally Bowles), Damn Yankees and Beautiful. There’s a reason she’s so in demand.

But, of course, Kaitlyn Davis, who, based on her bio, apparently was born to channel Carole King, is the star. And though the music is what draws people in, as it does in any jukebox musical, the show provides enough story such that the biggest round of applause of the night was when Davis, as King, tells her husband and lyricist Goffin, that she’s through with him and his philandering ways and sends him on his way.

Another appeal of the show for me is the complementary story of Weil and Barry Mann, King’s friends from the start of her career, who also wrote a myriad of hit songs, half a dozen of which are part of the score, and also are in the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame, and who, unlike the other couple, remained married for 62 years, until Weil’s death this year.