Photo: Carol Rosegg

RECOMMENDED

Only in America could a boy’s desire for a harmful weapon be turned into a charming musical. But it has, and good thing. This production adds a great deal to the story we’ve all seen a gajillion times on TBS.

Ralphie (Clarke Hallum) wants (all together now) an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, but has to circumvent his parents (solid troupers John Bolton and Rachel Bay Jones) and teacher (cabaret legend Karen Mason), who are certain that he’ll “shoot his eye out.”  It’s the epic holiday struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Let It Ho

Chicago is lousy with holiday shows. Want to see the “Christmas Carol?” Choose from six different versions. Or if your fancy is the “Nutcracker,” there are three of those. Not to mention three takes on “It’s A Wonderful Life.” It’s gotten to the point that almost every theater in town is putting on some kind of holiday-themed show. And almost every show, no matter if it’s a comedy poking fun at the holidays or a dramatic original, still falls  into the category of traditional holiday theater with themes of a heart-warming character. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last several years, we’ve watched helplessly as zombies have run (or stumbled, I guess) rampant through television, film and even classic novels that we thought were safe (check out “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”). But director Chad Wise (co-writing with Sean Harklerode) thinks it’s about time zombies made their way to the Christmas dinner table. And for the opening ten minutes of this sketchy mashup of the original “Night of the Living Dead” with everything Christmas, it seems like maybe it could work. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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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RECOMMENDED

The House Theatre’s third rendition of Phillip C. Klapperich and Jake Minton’s adaptation of the E.T.A. Hoffmann holiday standard “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” marks a self-described “new tradition” for the ten-year-old company. And it’s a welcome one. Opening with a ten-minute introduction that’s as emotionally charged (and devoid of dialogue) as the memorable intro to Pixar’s “Up,” Christmas joviality is transformed into calamity with the news of a son’s death at war. As a fallen Christmas tree is carried from the stage, so is all the joy, until a year later when the rambunctious Uncle Drosselmeyer presents young Clara with the magical nutcracker and the wonder begins. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

When Irving Berlin wrote the song “White Christmas” for his 1942 film “Holiday Inn,” the story goes that he was expecting “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” the Valentine’s Day number, to be the big hit. Bing Crosby never saw the popularity of “White Christmas” coming either—he reportedly laid down the track that remains the best-selling single of all time in eighteen minutes—but it was Crosby gently crooning to a country newly navigating its way through the horrors and sacrifices of World War II that ended up nostalgically reminding everybody of exactly what we were fighting for in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Denis Lambert and John Scherer/Photo: Tanner Photography

When Irving Berlin wrote the song “White Christmas” for his 1942 film “Holiday Inn,” the story goes that he was expecting “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” the Valentine’s Day number, to be the big hit. Bing Crosby never saw the popularity of “White Christmas” coming either—he reportedly laid down the track that remains the best-selling single of all time in eighteen minutes—but it was Crosby’s gently crooning it to a country newly navigating its way through the horrors and sacrifices of World War II that ended up nostalgically reminding everybody of exactly what we were fighting for in the first place.

Ironically, though “Holiday Inn” was made during the war, the film itself exists in a warless vacuum aside from a patriotic montage of troops, weaponry and FDR shown during the Fourth of July sequence. Thus, its lavish, widescreen and Technicolor remake twelve years later made sure to refocus the attention and title on its breakout song, “White Christmas,” and that song’s own nostalgic relation to the war itself now that the country had successfully achieved victory, peace, stability and prosperity with weapons that had included songs to inspire both the front lines and the home front. Read the rest of this entry »

Ricardo Santos/Photo: Herbert Migdoll

RECOMMENDED

The Tchaikovsky holiday confection is so gooey sweet that many dance cognoscente view it much the way theater aficionados view productions of “A Christmas Carol.” Thankfully, the late Robert Joffrey did not share that view. As a choreographer, Joffrey came to “The Nutcracker” rather late, offering the premiere of his “American” slant on the ballet for what turned out to be the last Christmas of his life, in 1987.

Once the ballet company that bears Joffrey’s name made Chicago its home in 1995, it was inevitable that Joffrey’s particular conception of the work would make its way into the already crowded local “Nutcracker” marketplace. At that point in time, the Ruth Page “Nutcracker” had held sway here since 1965, but ceased in 1997, six years after Page’s death.

In the decade and a half that Joffrey’s “Nutcracker” has been presented in Chicago, however, it has emerged as the definitive version. For most of those years, Joffrey’s partner and company co-founder Gerald Arpino lovingly looked after Joffrey’s vision until his death in 2008, and the details and choreography of both Joffrey and Arpino are carefully preserved in the current production. Read the rest of this entry »