Steppenwolf Theatre

John C. Reilly is Mister Romantic – Steppenwolf Theatre – Dec. 5, 2025

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I’ve seen Mr. Saturday Night, Mister Roberts and now Mister Romantic, John C. Reilly’s one-man show, if you don’t count the four musicians, but you should, because they’re great.

The evening started when said musicians marched down an aisle to the stage, playing a New Orleans-type walking song. What most caught my attention was the performer who was playing the coronet with one hand, while simultaneously playing the accordion with the other. I later prided myself for this mental note when Reilly, at the end of the show, acknowledged that same skill for the audience.

Reilly, at first, was nowhere to be seen, but suspicions grew when the quartet, after reaching their destination, pulled a steamer trunk, with the words Mister Romantic on it, from stage left. Sure enough, a vaudevillian-like-appearing Reilly arose from the luggage to greet the crowd and announce that he had no memory, other than that he had to find someone who would love him forever in order to be freed from the box.

What followed was Reilly beautifully singing classics such as Dream, What’ll I Do and You Don’t Know Me, accompanied by the musicians he claimed not to know (but was pleased that they knew the same songs he did), and augmented by a lot of amusing schtick, including a fair amount of miming and interaction with the audience, with the hope of finding eternal love and never having to return to his portable home.

He added a little extra spice to the show with a rendition of Earl Okin’s “My Room,” before which he suggested that any children head to the lobby for popcorn.

His quest was not gender specific, as he walked into the audience to engage, rather closely (after asking consent), for a few minutes each, two women and two men, one of whom was me. If I were a rabid fan, I would never wash my eyebrows again.

Front Row: An Insider Series – Steppenwolf Theatre – October 27, 2025

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The next best thing to seeing a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play is to go to a program featuring the director and some of the actors discussing the evolution of the work.

Phylicia Rashad (director), Harry Lennix, Alana Arenas and Glenn Davis came together, in a program moderated by Director of New Play Development Jonathan L. Green, to celebrate A Homecoming for the Artists of Purpose at the theater where the work had its world premiere before heading to Broadway.

That I have not seen the play didn’t affect my interest in hearing about the drama behind the drama, highlighted by a discussion of the final hours before the show took wing. Apparently, quite a bit of the script remained uncompleted until late the day before opening night, when Green rushed into the rehearsal on stage from the room where he had been with the author, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, pages in hand, like a scene out of some other play, announcing the script was done, to the relief of all, but forcing the actors (except for Lennix, who amazed even his colleagues by his quick study) to appear on stage the next night with lines in hand.

The participants used the word canon a lot, describing the play’s status in the theater world and in Steppenwolf’s collection of works, and also spent time articulating their steadfast attitude in bringing the “Steppenwolf way” to Broadway.

All that, and the cookies at the reception were really good.

Noises Off – Steppenwolf – October 16, 2024

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Noises Off is not the kind of show I would expect to see at Steppenwolf, but it’s also the kind of show that I have a hard time resisting, as evidenced by the fact that it’s the third different production of it I’ve seen, in addition to the two productions of the similarly insane, though more physically demanding upon the actors and set, The Play That Goes Wrong that I’ve attended.

I enjoyed this version, but I think I preferred the immersive one I saw at Windy City Playhouse, where we were right on top of the action, and which, speaking of physically demanding, featured a staircase pratfall that outdid even the one performed so well by Andrew Leeds (as Garry) in this production, though not as spectacular as the one in Death Becomes Her. I now am in search of more shows with actors careening down stairs.

For now, I’ll have to be content with checking out the two streaming seasons of The Goes Wrong Show, having already watched part of the play Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which, for my money, went wrong, but not all that amusingly.

Death, Let Me Do My Show – Steppenwolf Theatre – August 24, 2024

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If you were a fan of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which I was, it was impossible to resist the temptation to see Rachel Bloom’s current theatrical production.

That said, I didn’t know what to expect from the show, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t what I got, which was part stand-up comedy about life, death and Bloom’s last few years, and part therapy session for her, with a few typically dirty and/or irreverent Bloom songs mixed in, the last of which, my favorite, may or may not have been titled I Am My Daughter’s Well-Intentioned Dog.

What was promoted as a one-woman show turned out to also include the embodiment of death, as played by David Hull, who played White Josh on Crazy Ex. In retrospect I guess the title of the show should have been my first clue in that regard.

Spoiler alert (not really as the show closes today), Hull, wearing a Covid mask, first inserted himself into the show as a heckler in the audience. Before he did his reveal, Bloom ripped into him in humorously startling fashion.

From there, things got serious, then they got funny, then rinse and repeat for the full 90 minutes.