Porchlight Music Theatre

New Faces Sing Broadway 1956 – Porchlight Music Theater, at Arts Club of Chicago – October 30, 2019

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When I saw Angela Ingersoll (who made me a most happy fella as the fair lady hosting New Faces Sing Broadway 1956) as Judy Garland in Porchlight’s production of End of the Rainbow a few years ago, I thought she was great (she won the Jefferson Award for her performance) but I had no idea she was the energizer bunny in disguise, given that the Garland we see in that show is drug addicted and near death.

She didn’t wear a rabbit costume and bang a drum for Porchlight’s New Faces Halloween-adjacent show, but, her monster singing talent aside, Ingersoll’s enthusiasm, energy, and electricity made me think of When Harry Met Sally, as I definitely would like to have what she’s having, and need to add her to my growing list of theater obsessions.

As for the new faces themselves, Porchlight once again pulled off the trick of treating the audience to a frighteningly excellent array of talented artists, none of whom, this time, I had ever seen before. Thus, my impressions were fittingly written on a blank slate, as a couple of the performers will be appearing in an upcoming production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, put on by the Blank Theater Company, which is only a couple years old, and previously unknown to me, though I was at the comfortable, though fairly bare-bones space they inhabit at The Edge Theater for the Hell in a Handbag production of Poseidon: An Upside Down Musical.

As amazing as the never-ending parade of wonderful singers who grace these Porchlight programs is, there also is new blood to be found behind the scenes. This show marked the directorial debut of Brianna Borger, whom I saw perform in Southern Gothic.  Next up in the series, New Faces Sing Broadway Now and New Faces Sing Broadway 1987.

Sunset Boulevard – Porchlight Music Theatre- October 18, 2019

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You get a taste of Norma Desmond’s storied fictional career by seeing the various posters and pictures projected on the walls of the set during Porchlight’s Sunset Boulevard, but it occurred to me while watching Hollis Resnik inhabit the role of Desmond that she was seemingly born to play, that a collage of posters representing Resnik’s real 12 Jefferson Award-winning parts would be even more impressive.

Resnik’s tour de force performance of As If We Never Said Goodbye in the second act could be the impetus for award number 13. The other second act highlight worth mentioning is the bathing suit entrance of Billy Rude, as Joe Gillis, which evoked a bobby soxer reaction from a young lady in the balcony, causing Rude to ever so slightly, and amusingly, break character by giving an almost imperceptible wink to the audience.

Clearly, Mr. DeMille, Rude was ready for his close-up, which leads me to inform that the line made famous by Gloria Swanson in the original screen version came in at number seven on the American Film Institute’s 2005 list of 100 movie quotes. And her “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small” was number 24, which puts Desmond in a very select company of characters with multiple attributions, equaled by the iconic Dorothy Gale, Scarlett O’Hara, James Bond, Harry Callahan and the Terminator, and bested only by the immortal Rick Blaine.

As with other Porchlight productions, I left impressed with creative touches that enhanced the experience. In particular, although there isn’t a lot of dancing in the show, the choreographed movements of a couple of the group scenes have a silent era, controlled Keystone Kops feel that fits perfectly with Norma’s hunger for those past days of movie-making and stardom. She never says it, but she could have inspired the Terminator’s “I’ll be back.”

Upcoming Events

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Normally I don’t take up my extremely valuable time, which could be better spent working on my hip flexors, publishing information about upcoming events, but the website has been acting up lately, causing several problems, like no one receiving newly published posts.  So, after two days of chatting with my new best friends in two different tech departments in two different countries, I feel the need to test the system to see if it’s working properly again, and what better way than to annoy my subscribers with unnecessary, verbose emails.

So, without revealing too much information about my clandestine movements, here’s some things you might consider attending.

Arts in the Dark Parade at 6:00 pm on October 19 on State Street.  You can dress up like your favorite movie character or just watch from the sidelines and admire the total lack of shame of the participants.

Sunset Boulevard just opened at the Porchlight Music Theatre, featuring Chicago legend Hollis Resnik as Norma Desmond.   Having attended an invitational rehearsal, I can tell you that the cast is great and the music is wonderful, but I did catch Resnik smoking in the parking lot during a break, which calls for detention.

The Art Institute is opening its Andy Warhol exhibit for member previews this week, which makes me want to look for clues as to whether he was really an undercover agent spying on extraterrestrial aliens as depicted in Men in Black III.

The Chicago Humanities Festival presents dozens of programs the last week of October.  Just like your insurance company, the festival has been furtively raising prices the last few years, but, unlike your insurer, there’s no competition, so suck it up and treat yourself.

And though I receive no commission for my continuing promotion of her (but should I?), don’t miss Meghan Murphy in Spamalot at the Mercury Theater.

 

 

 

 

 

Chicago Sings 25 Years of Porchlight – Museum of Contemporary Art – August 5, 2019

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The first Porchlight production I ever saw was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in the 2014-15 season. Portentous perhaps, as a funny thing happened to me on the way to their 25-year celebration – my “good” knee collapsed 5 days in advance.

But, on the hope that the pre-show hor d’oeuvres would be comforting, I decided not to let a little thing like another grade whatever sprained ligament deter me from attending, though I decided to forego the cocktails given how wobbly I already was on two bad knees and a single vintage 1968 wooden crutch that made me look like I was there to audition for the role of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.

There were luminaries in the audience and the performances were great, but the highlight of the evening for me was very slowly and carefully making it down and up the stairs to my seat and back twice without further injury, which leads me to my one complaint about the evening – NO DESSERT at intermission, even though it had been promised.

Among the performers, I’ll mention two Five Guys Named Moe alumni, Lorenzo Rush, Jr., and James Earl Jones II, who is back in town with the touring company of Come From Away; the wacky Bill Larkin, whose one-man show I recently wrote about; and triple threat Laura Savage, whom I’ve had the good fortune to see recently in Sweet Charity, Holiday Inn, A Chorus Line, and The Music Man.

The evening also included the presentation of the Guy Adkins Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Music Theater in Chicago to Gary Griffin. Having seen nine productions directed by Griffin, I can attest to his results, but listening to his choppy, rambling, somewhat incoherent acceptance speech (he assured us he was only drinking water), I wondered how he communicates with his actors. Perhaps, as in The Music Man, it’s the think system.

A Chorus Line – Porchlight Music Theatre – May 24, 2019

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Here’s a multiple-choice quiz. A triple threat is a football player skilled in running, passing, and kicking; a 2019 movie described on Rotten Tomatoes as an “adrenaline fueled and gritty action thriller”; or a performer who can act, sing, and dance.

Of course it’s all three, but the changes in football over the years have eliminated that triple threat and there’s no chance of me ever seeing a mixed martial arts movie. But the Porchlight MusicTheatre’s stage is filled with theatrical triple threats for its production of A Chorus Line, where the adrenaline is flowing and the dancers do a lot of kicking, albeit without a football, because, after all, they are part of a chorus line.

I was at a Porchlight reception two days earlier where I was told by a Board member that the show was sold out for the rest of the run. except for one seat on one night. I’m thrilled to say that that one seat turned out to be right in front of me, a cosmic apology for having placed the tall guy in front of me at West Side Story three nights earlier.

As a result, my biggest problem was deciding where to focus my attention throughout the show, given that there are often 16 people on stage. So I did the only thing that made sense. I spent a lot of time watching Taylor Lane, as Judy Turner, because she’s the granddaughter of a friend of mine.

She didn’t disappoint, and demonstrated even more acting skills after the show by pretending to be excited when I introduced myself and a couple friends to her, going so far as to request that we have a photograph taken with her to show her grandfather, though perhaps she’s really just a secret fan of my blog.

New Faces Sing Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – April 30, 2019

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This was the fourth Porchlight Sings event I’ve gone to in the past year and they’ve all been great. Hosted by local favorite Lorenzo Rush, Jr., it featured an extremely talented group of ten young performers. Three of them, Chloe Nadon-Enriquez, Kaiman Neil, and Drew Tanabe, are in the current Porchlight production of A Chorus Line.

Nick Druzbanski was clearly a favorite of his fellow performers, bringing hoots and hollers from them even before he opened his mouth. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Drunk Shakespeare. And Cecelia Iole. in singing Phantom of the Opera, hit a note so high that it hasn’t been named yet.

But the highlight of the evening was the Broadway trivia game. Often the audience members selected to play have an impressive knowledge of Broadway. Not this time. The two contestants were right out of a Saturday Night Live skit. It would be kind to say they were pathetic.

They were presented with three questions dealing with Disney productions, none of which either of them came close to answering correctly, either standing there dumbfounded or making unimaginably ridiculous guesses, which I would have written down if I weren’t laughing so hard.

Though everyone else somehow restrained themselves from shouting out the answers, even as the level of ineptitude reached epic proportions, it was clear that the organizers had managed to draw the names of the two least knowledgable people in the room to participate in the game.

And keep in mind, this wasn’t Jay Leno picking people off the street. This was a room full of people who theoretically were big theater fans, even though that wasn’t really necessary. One question asked the name of the play based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Shouldn’t that be enough? The lead character was raised by apes. They still had no idea.