I saw the Organic Theater Company’s original production of Bleacher Bums in 1977. This world premiere celebration of Cub fans is a much different animal. It’s a musical (promoted as 108 years in the making), there’s no gambling, and no one takes their shirt off in the bleachers, although one of the actors forgot to button up his shirt for one scene, creating quite the pink elephant in the room for an entire song.

Spoiler alert – the Cubs win the 2016 World Series. Diehard Cubs fans who want to relive that moment (that would be all of them) will love this multimedia production and would no matter what got slapped on the stage. But what about the rest of us?

Surprise! I liked it. I’d like it more if the ending had a twist, like Cleveland winning game seven. Maybe save that miracle (currently 71 years in the making) for the national touring company.

I liked the score, with the exception of one song, which I think could be fixed, not that anyone is asking me.  The script is pretty tight, although I spotted an error that can’t easily be fixed, but that shouldn’t be something that would prevent the run from being a hit. I liked the use of the visuals, although the amount of them is a little too much for those of us who would rather not be distracted from the live performances on stage, which are excellent.

Randomly singling out a couple of the actors, I need to see more of Allison Sill, whom I previously loved as Inga in Young Frankenstein at Drury Lane. And I’m looking forward to seeing Jonathan Butler-Duplessis, whose Jeff Award-winning performance in Parade I saw at the Writers Theater, in Goodman Theater’s production of The Music Man, as a warm up for me for the highly-anticipated Broadway revival of the same show next year starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.