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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.

A Wonderful World – Cadillac Palace – October 18, 2023

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The first big dance number gave me great hopes for this pre-Broadway show, but they were dashed.

James Monroe Iglehart does a great Louis Armstrong, though he’s the biggest seven-year-old I’ve ever seen. Dewitt Fleming, Jr. is a terrific tap dancer, whose one scene wasn’t enough. A Wonderful World is too long, too talky and has too many endings – I counted three.

I was fine with the show depicting Armstrong’s four wives, who represented different phases of his life, but did we really have to suffer through his courtships and marital spats, when all we wanted was his music. And how many times did we have to see a motion picture assistant director tell Armstrong the same thing? No times would have worked for me.

To help keep it from becoming a four hour show, Armstrong’s gangster manager goes from tough guy to wimp in about two seconds. And, thankfully, all of Armstrong’s alleged hundreds of extra-martial affairs aren’t itemized.

Despite all the problems, it might still have been an okay, if not wonderful world, if the guy sitting behind me hadn’t insisted on singing along with every song, even though his name was not in the cast list in the program.