Royal George Theatre

Miracle – Royal George Theatre – May 12, 2019

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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.

The Woman in Black – Royal George Theater – February 14, 2019

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In a 1969 appearance on The Tonight Show, George Gobel famously quipped to Johnny Carson, “did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” The reviews of The Woman in Black, a show that has been running in London for 30 years, have unanimously been highly laudatory, until this one. I’m the brown shoes.

The Playbill notes say that the “early reviews in 1989 paid tribute to [the adapter and director’s] ability to take the audience on a journey whose transport is its own imagination.” During most of the play, I imagined being somewhere else.

The show is supposed to be scary, but my boredom was interrupted only momentarily by some of the sound effects. And though the fog machine at times made it hard to see, there was nothing to see in the first place, including the imaginary dog Spider, the use of which more properly belonged in an introductory improv or mime class. And Spider didn’t even get a credit in the program.

One favorable review admits that “[t]he show is slow to get started.” I’m still waiting. Another admits that “[t]he play [has a] less-than-watertight plot” and a “contrived storyline”. In what universe does that justify a highly recommended?

Yet a third review states that there are three reasons to see the show, one of which is so that you don’t have to go to London to see it.  I can think of other reasons not to go to London, like the food and the weather.  That review also suggests seeing the show because “it has brought light to the long-darkened stage of the Royal George Theatre.” I like the theater, but the play actually brought blackouts and the aforementioned fog, very little light.

If fog is my incentive, I would prefer seeing The Hound of the Baskervilles, which includes a dog that isn’t invisible.