Photo: Johnny Knight

By Patrick Roberts

Actor John Mohrlein is, by all appearances, a gentle man. His red-frame glasses and black derby hat tell me that. His charming laugh confirms it. Really, it’s more like a giggle that springs from a mind delighted with discovery. We get comfortable in a booth at Clarke’s Diner on Lincoln Avenue. Hat and glasses come off, coffee is poured, a little cream and sugar are added. Just as we settle into our conversation, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” spills out of the diner’s speakers. Mohrlein pauses a moment and cocks an ear. “I love Johnny B. Goode,” he says. “It’s my theme song.”

For ten years now, Mohrlein has performed both the good and the bad as Clarence and Mr. Potter in American Blues Theater’s warm, inviting production of “It’s a Wonderful Life: Live at the Biograph!”  Mr. Potter, most everybody knows, is the “warped, frustrated old man” who taunts, tempts and torments uber-mensch George Bailey in an effort to wrest from him control of the Bailey Building and Loan. Clarence is the easily flustered guardian angel who helps convince George that it’s a wonderful life after all. Mr. Potter ranks number six on the American Film Institute’s list of the fifty greatest movie villains (Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter ranks first). Take that, Mr. Scrooge.

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Amber Wagner, Brandon Jovanovich/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

During the recently ended Bill Mason era at Lyric Opera, the philosophy was that works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss had to alternate for attention to contain costs of the huge orchestra needed for these works. This year, however, the Strauss opera presented, “Ariadne auf Naxos,” employs a chamber orchestra, yet nonetheless was left to stand as the single season ambassador to represent the vast canvas of German Romanticism.

This production was originally mounted for soprano Deborah Voigt, who had sung the role here in 1998 and was to have sung this revival, “Ariadne” being one of her signature roles. However, soon after a Chicago Symphony concert over the summer spotlighting Strauss and Wagner roles associated with her where Voigt was having obvious vocal trouble, she abruptly withdrew from these performances with a statement that she was “focusing increasingly on dramatic soprano roles and thus has decided to drop the part from [her] repertory for the time being.” Read the rest of this entry »

The newly launched national touring production of “Memphis” that has landed in town for a short run features such dazzling choreography from Sergio Trujillo and such a hard-working and energetic cast that it almost makes you forget what a mediocre show it actually is. Almost. Basically a dishwater “Dreamgirls,” the premise is much the same: that during the days of segregation, white artists were derivative and took everything from more innovative black artists. (Odd though, to attempt to make that point by offering a sappy parody of Perry Como, of all people, a true original of his own.) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

When Mitchell Fain breezes into the theater encouraging everyone in the audience to join him in a round of shots, it becomes pretty clear right off the bat that this will not be your typical heartwarming holiday story. Fain, standing in for satirist David Sedaris, may be a little jaded, but “A Christmas Carol” this is not. Indeed, the way he tells it, you sort of wonder why he wasn’t drunk the whole time he desperately took a job as an elf in the New York Macy’s Santaland. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Scott and Karen Janes Woditsch/Photo: Eric Y. Exit

By Rachel Helene Swift

This week, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim took the stage in the Goodman Theatre’s thirty-fourth annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” Veteran director Steve Scott, who last presented the show in 1992, reimagines Charles Dickens’ classic story with new special effects, music and choreography. We recently caught up with Scott, who also serves as the Goodman Theatre’s associate producer and has directed nearly 200 plays in Chicago.

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Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theatre/Photo: DeanPaul

RECOMMENDED

Bright colors and Latin rhythms come to the fore in this autumn’s Global Rhythms program, with performances by Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater and the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago. The latter will be accompanied live by Sones de Mexico during the Sunday performance. Step Afrika! also returns with new pieces exploring the multifaceted world of stepping—the high-energy, rhythmic stomp-clap-and-shout form that came out of African-American fraternities and sororities in the early twentieth century. Read the rest of this entry »

Kelvin Roston Jr

RECOMMENDED

The stakes are high for any theater on opening night, but they were doubly, or triply so for the Black Ensemble Theater this weekend. For not only were they reviving one of their most acclaimed shows, “The Jackie Wilson Story,” but they were sharing the realization of theater founder Jackie Taylor’s dream, the nineteen-million-dollar Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, which debuted to the public with this opening. Taylor is a marvel, and this new facility is nothing short of a jaw-dropping accomplishment for her, but the risk at hand was how the particularly singular “Black Ensemble experience” would make the transition from the scrappy basement confines of the Hull House Uptown Center to such relatively upscale surroundings. The answer, phew, is marvelously. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

As a high-school freshman, studying the works of Homer—dense, dry and infinitely long as they seemed to be—was the last thing I wanted to be doing. Little did I know at the time, or maybe I just forgot, that Homer didn’t so much write down his epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” as he did sing them, improvising and tailoring his performances for whatever crowd he was working. Denis O’Hare’s and Lisa Peterson’s one-person show brings the story of the Trojan War closer to this original, much more entertaining mode. Read the rest of this entry »

In a Cincinnati basement crowded with Star Wars paraphernalia (eBay must have gotten a workout from set designer Jacob Christopher Green) three lifetime best buds in their late twenties and a shrill girlfriend clumsily conspire to rob a massive collection of valuable toys from “a major fucking corporation here, dude” while avoiding any interaction with an offstage mother who sounds like Adam Sandler. Read the rest of this entry »

Howie Johnson, Cyd Blakewell, Calliope Porter and Keith Neagle/Photo: Ben Chandler

Anna Carini’s play, her first but a remount of SiNNERMAN’s first-season hit, is something of a sentimental juggernaut. Her writing displays a high fidelity to traditional play structure while at the same time attempting to reach a level of emotional honesty difficult to achieve in eighty minutes. The play is set in a bathroom where Amy’s (Cyd Blakewell) separated husband has just attempted suicide. Read the rest of this entry »