Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre

DAMN Yankees – Marriott Theatre – May 21, 2023

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Growing up as a White Sox fan, the concept of DAMN Yankees has always been one with which I could identify.

The only other time I’ve seen a theatrical presentation of this show was in 1996, featuring Jerry Lewis as Applegate. The only thing I remember about that production, and not as a highlight, was Lewis bringing the show to a grinding halt by totally breaking character in the second act and committing a crime against nature by going into a “comedic” monologue.

It’s unfortunate that that’s how I look back, but it’s at least partially Fortunato (Sean, that is), who is much better in the same role, letting his comedic acting speak for him, that will cause me to think back more fondly this time.

Add to that, one of my local favorites, Lorenzo Rush, Jr., as Van Buren, the team’s manager, who, as usual, was a strong presence throughout.

And then there’s a relatively new local favorite of mine, Erica Stephan, doing great work as reporter Gloria Thorpe in a role far removed from her recent tour de force as Sally Bowles at Porchlight Music Theatre.

A new face for me was Michelle Aravena, dynamic as Lola, though I will never understand how Who’s Got the Pain wound up in this show. (Apparently it “was a last-minute replacement to substitute for a weird gorilla-suit number.”) It’s much better served as “the only filmed example of Fosse and Verdon dancing together”, which I never tire of watching on YouTube.

Speaking of dancing, a shout out to Sam Linda, a ballplayer wearing number 16 and dancing in a way reminiscent of Ray Bolger.

Watching the players slide and dance across the stage kept the show moving right along, obviously another positive effect of this year’s new rules to speed up baseball games.

Grease – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – February 16, 2020

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According to backstage.com, 2019’s Frankie and Johnny is the first Broadway play to have an intimacy director. Marriott’s production of Grease is the first Chicago play I’ve been to where I noticed a similar attribution, in this case Intimacy Captain, in the playbill. There aren’t any sex scenes in Grease, but there is physical touching.

According to Intimacy Directors International (IDI), founded in 2016, “intimacy directors with IDI are highly skilled collaborators trained in movement pedagogy, acting theory, directing, body language, consent, sexual harassment, Title IX, mental health first aid, and best practices for intimacy direction “ They take “responsibility for the emotional safety of the actors and anyone else in the rehearsal hall while they are present.”

So, while this production is 2020 in regard to backstage sensibilities, it’s still a very senior class of 1959 script, although I think a little of the language from the original has been cleaned up.

The nostalgia regarding a time and place is what drives Grease, along with a raft of great songs, performed beautifully by all in this production, because the plot, whether it be in the original or revised play, or the movie, never wavers from weak, with inexplicable turns.

But when they drive the Greased Lightnin’ car down the theater aisle and onto the stage, twice, one time also lifting center stage and the car up with hydraulics just as if it were in an actual garage for repairs, it’s hard to care whether character transformations are credible.

As for the characterizations, it’s also hard not to start with the understanding that the actors are past high school age, but given the fact that Olivia Newton-John was 30 when the movie was released, they seem young enough, especially given their body language and emotional immersion into their roles. In particular, for me, Michelle Lauto, who always shines, stands out as Marty, with a fierceness and attention to detail.

Something Rotten – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – October 6, 2019

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Nothing is rotten in Marriott’s Something Rotten. While this experience wasn’t quite the same as when I was lucky enough to see Christian Borle in his Tony-award-winning performance as the show’s original Shakespeare, the Marriott production is great, and its Shakespeare, Adam Jacobs, who played Aladdin on Broadway, has the audience in the palm of his hand, just like he had the genie’s lamp.

The show is sort of Forbidden Broadway meets Mel Brooks, with some Puritans thrown in for good measure, and enough colorful costumes to outfit several Renaissance Halloween parties.

If you’ve never seen another musical and know nothing about Shakespeare’s works, you may miss dozens of references and wonder why everyone around you is laughing, but, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be out in public anyway.

If you can’t enjoyably groan when Toby reveals himself to be Shakespeare in disguise by saying Toby or not Toby, that is the question, stay home.

The show-stopping song, A Musical, contains references to 20 other musicals that fly by so fast that you wish you had an annotation with you. Well, here are a couple, one provided by Theater Nerds, and the other by, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.

The show features one slightly off-center soothsayer; two playwriting brothers with writer’s block; triple threat performers who sing, dance, and cook(?); and an omelet, which, I can’t help myself, was an eggcelent addition.

The cast is uniformly outstanding, but I’ll single out Cassie Slater as Bea because it gives me an excuse for saying that I saw her perform at Steppenwolf in We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her. with Meghan Murphy, whom I never miss an opportunity for mentioning and whom I will be seeing soon as The Lady of the Lake in Spamalot at the Mercury Theater.

Holiday Inn – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – December 23, 2018

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The real name of one of the ensemble members in Holiday Inn is Aaron Burr. Really. But nobody in the play gets shot. And while the depiction of the more famous Aaron Burr in Hamilton is interesting, this Burr’s tap dancing skills, along with those of his castmates, are more fun.

Marya Grandy goes so far as to combine the group’s tapping with moves from Stomp, as she dances with buckets on her feet during one of the numbers. And, in what seems to be becoming a trend, the dancers tapped while jumping rope during one song, akin to, though different from, the jump rope choreography used in Legally Blonde.

While the dancing is great, the cast’s skills go beyond that. Unlike the show Beautiful, where, I hate to break it to you, Jesse Mueller and her successors don’t actually play the piano (though faking it nicely while, as that show’s sound designer explains it, speakers in the piano pump out music supplied from the orchestra pit), Michael Mahler, in the Bing Crosby role in Holiday Inn, does play the piano on stage, and quite well. Seems that Mahler, also is a Jeff Award-winning composer (perhaps he’s related to Gustav).

And, while I have seen and enjoyed Mahler and his costar, Johanna McKenzie Miller, in other shows, I was, as always, relieved to also see one of the Moes, in this case Lorenzo Rush, Jr., who, in the last 15 months, I have heard in Little Shop of Horrors and seen in Five Guys Named Moe, Memphis, and They’re Playing Our Song.

Will Burton, who does a fine job as Ted Hanover, won’t make you forget Fred Astaire (who would?), and there’s no Thomas Jefferson or George Washington dancing with Burr in the ensemble, but I left the theater humming many of the (Irving Berlin) songs, which I didn’t do after Hamilton.

Sweet Charity – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – September 27, 2018

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I’d never seen Sweet Charity, so, in memory of the recently departed Neil Simon, I stayed in the suburbs beyond the limits of my golf visa, knowing that, at a minimum, I would enjoy the show’s two most well-known songs, Big Spender and If My Friends Could See Me Now.

What I didn’t know was that early in Act 2, a scene, including the song Rhythm of Life, seemingly stolen from from Hair, except that Hair debuted the year after Sweet Charity, comes out of nowhere, adding absolutely nothing to the story, but giving me time to daydream, and briefly consider opening the iPad on my lap to resume reading my latest ebook (about pioneering women pilots), as the scene bored me and I couldn’t understand most of what the chorus of hippies was singing anyway.

An exchange between the two main characters as they exited the scene, however, brought my attention back, as it was apropos of my attendance at the show and of my blog. Charity asks Oscar how he found out about the Rhythm of Life Church event they’d just attended under the Manhattan Bridge, and he responds that he’s on the mailing list for the Church of the Month Club. Sounds like me, except it’s theater and music email lists, and never under a bridge.

The rest of the show was solid, if unspectacular, except for the famous scene where Charity and Oscar get trapped in an elevator. Alex Goodrich, as Oscar, played the physical comedy of the scene and his claustrophobia to the hilt, eliciting roars of laughter from the audience as he climbed the walls of the elevator. Wouldn’t it be fun if, instead of showing the always depressing news, hotel elevators with television screens in them showed a version of this scene instead?

Murder for Two – Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre – August 12, 2018

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What could pull me away from watching Tiger Woods’ attempt to win his first major championship since 2008 (okay, I did record it for later playback and maintained radio silence in the interim) on a day when I warmed up for the spectacle by playing nine holes so that I could compare his comeback progress to the state of my game. (Despite his four back surgeries, he’s still better than I am, but, to be fair, I had a paper cut once.)

I first saw Murder for Two in 2011 when it premiered at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I remembered it as being a big smile. It still is.

If your idea of a fun evening at the theater is a Sam Shepard play at Steppenwolf, you probably won’t enjoy Murder for Two. But if you’re interested in seeing Agatha Christie meets A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (which derives from Alec Guinness playing nine characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets) meets auditions for Second City, where two actors careen around a rotating stage for 90 minutes, with enormous talent and energy, playing multiple characters, mugging for the audience, occasionally trying to crack each other up, singing, and playing the piano, individually and together, then this show is for you.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder has a Tony for Best Musical, but I like M42 better, which reminds me that I haven’t seen Forbidden Broadway in years, but wouldn’t a takeoff of A Gentleman’s Guide’s show stopping I’ve Decided to Marry You, entitled I’ve Decided to Murder You, be a lot of fun?

This show also reminded me of Two Pianos, Four Hands, a 1995 Canadian play I liked, in that there are two guys, who have four hands between them, playing piano. But the comparison stops there, just as it does after noting that Tiger and I both tee the ball up when hitting driver.

The Rest of Theater 2017

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In other posts I’ve singled out some of the plays I went to in 2017. Here’s a quick survey of the rest of them to wrap up 2017 (you’ve probably received all your bank tax statements by now also).

I saw two plays at the Porchlight Theater, Scottsboro Boys and Woman of the Year (at the theater’s new location), where I discovered Meghan Murphy (see blog on Big Red and the Boys). Both are Kander and Ebb shows, but otherwise couldn’t be more different, one serious and based on a true story, the other lighthearted and not, like me.

When the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre wasn’t underwater from flooding, I saw She Loves Me and Honeymoon in Vegas. Same usher, coincidentally. She remembered me because we discussed at length the need for me to keep my legs out of the aisle the first time (as my friends know, I always try to get an aisle seat). If the usher is reading this, I was just kidding about tripping the actors, really.

I saw Parade on my first trip to the Writers Theater. The play introduced me to the music of Jason Robert Brown, which is what led me to see Honeymoon in Vegas, for more music from him. That and the flying Elvises.

Five Guys named Moe (also my first time at the Court Theater) is not actually a show about five guys named Moe. What little story there is, is just an excuse for Big Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe, No Moe, and Little Moe to sing and dance. Worked for me. Give me Moe.

But not more King Charles III (Shakespeare Theater). I’m not an Anglophile. I just didn’t care about the characters. But I ran into an old friend at the show, who bought me a drink, so all was not lost.

The two characters in Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth (Lookingglass Theater) are storytellers, which was appropriate given my foray into storytelling in 2017. But the best thing in the show was a giant, mythological boar (as opposed to the real bore in King Charles III).

The lead actress in Born Yesterday at the Greenhouse Theater was like a medium channelling Judy Holliday, but not in a cataleptic state. She was able to move about the stage.  Indeed, this medium was well done.