The beginning and end of this non-Disney adaptation of the 1956 Dodie Smith children’s novel features trained Dalmatians and, every now and then, a couple of them make cameos, usually running across the stage. When they do, the audience “oohhs” and “ahhs,” but when the actual dogs are backstage, there is little onstage to hold our interest, human, canine or otherwise.  And that is a big hole, some two-hours-plus of a two-and-a-half-hour show.

When a show is being produced by a dog-food company, it’s a good bet that you are not in for your standard Broadway fare.  A human playing a dog comes out before the Act II curtain with a bag of said food, pretends to eat it and comments on how wonderful it is, creating in effect a live stage commercial within the fabric of a show.  But as peculiar as that is, the brainstorming session that cooked up the central conceit of this show must have been downright bizarre: let’s take real, trained Dalmatians and mix them in with unruly kids that are supposed to be Dalmatians by just dressing those kids in white shirts and shorts or skirts, with spots, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Anthony Stewart, Sara Sheperd/Photo: Johnny Knight

A beloved and iconic 1960s musical that is rarely revived, “Funny Girl” is so associated with canonizing the career of Barbra Streisand and was so tailor-made to her performing style that few attempt to tackle it unless you have one hell of a leading lady who can sing her heart out, make you laugh and break your heart all in the same show.

The great irony, of course, is that vaudevillian Fanny Brice, upon whose career “Funny Girl” is based, was a subtle and smoky contralto, not a belting soprano like Streisand. As an anchor of the Ziegfeld Follies, Brice had made a specialty of comedy along with “victim” torch songs where she came out and poured her heart out about mistreating men, about which she knew so much that a movie was made about her life that so offended her that a successful lawsuit ensued. Her son-in-law and producer Ray Stark sought to set the family record straight with a film version of her life that would be so whitewashed that few took interest, so Stark decided to do a backstage Broadway musical instead.

Unable to secure the rights to Brice’s songs, who was dead by then, a new score was commissioned from Jule Styne, of “Gypsy” fame. As with “Gypsy,” Styne’s score was such a tour de force that Anne Bancroft, the original choice for Brice who was just off of her Tony and Oscar for “The Miracle Worker,” pulled out. Name performers of the day such as Carol Burnett and Edye Gorme were considered but ultimately Streisand, who at that time was still singing at clubs in Greenwich Village, was secured. Though the show was a triumph, it became more about Streisand than Brice, a problem for anyone else trying to do the show ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Chaz Lamar Shepherd and Moya Angela/Photo: Joan Marcus

RECOMMENDED

There are several show-stopping moments in this all-new spectacular revival of “Dreamgirls,” but two particularly stand out: the eye-popping scenario when the cast is dancing in perfect circular formation with digital images of itself from above reflected against its own background Busby Berkeley-style, and the Act I finale where Effie White—played by newcomer Moya Angela—learns that she is being replaced as part of “The Dreams” and soars her way into the take-no-prisoners ballad “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” until she practically implodes. Usually audiences are running up the aisles at the end of an act, but on opening night at least, after standing and cheering, folks were still catching their breaths and basking in the afterglow of the remarkable energy even after the house lights came up. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Joan Marcus

RECOMMENDED

“In the Heights,” which collected four 2008 Tony Awards including Best Musical, soars with the essence of Washington Heights, a neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan and out of the orbit of most New Yorkers that seems to be at once both familiar and exotic. Here, the “exotic”—by musical-theater standards—is conveyed via the language, which flows freely in Spanish in many of the songs; the music, a fusion of Latin rhythms and hip-hop; and the dance (again, hip-hop and Latin). But then there’s the familiar—the narrative arc is something of an homage to “Fiddler on the Roof” without the pogrom, and the score resonates with a Broadway fusion of ballads and big numbers, albeit often rapped. An authenticity of emotions, a rare commodity in musical theater, resonates in the immigrant struggles being depicted around this one corner up at 181st Street. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Sherman and Laney Kraus-Taddeo/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Yes, Virginia, there is a musical version of “Miracle on 34th Street.”  It is called “Here’s Love” and was written by Meredith Wilson of “The Music Man” fame, and in newer versions is sometimes called “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” since Wilson also wrote that classic Christmas song and it was used in revivals.  Oddly, none of the material from the original 1963 Broadway musical nor its revivals are featured in what is being billed as Porchlight Musical Theatre’s “musical” adaptation of “Miracle on 34th Street.”  “Musical,” in this case, simply means that fragments of a handful of Christmas carols are distractingly used as scene-changing transitions, usually sung in unison by cast members karaoke style to canned accompaniment with varying degrees of successful synchronization.

However, aside from that considerable caveat, the show is delightful. This is a story that works wonderfully well as a live theatrical experience since the audience, as it were, ends up acting almost in notary fashion for the proceedings, which as lovers of the classic 1947 film or its remakes know, climaxes in a courtroom. Along with the judge, it is we who end up deciding whether or not “Kris Kringle” is the real deal or a lunatic.  As played by veteran Chicago actor Jim Sherman—without whom it would be impossible to imagine all of this working—we are totally taken in. Sherman’s entrance as part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is handled with great fanfare and when he takes the stage, he is irresistible. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Joan Marcus

By Dennis Polkow

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky / Mysterious and spooky…”  Well, at least they used to be, before the Addams Family became a Broadway-bound musical.

It all looked so great on paper: Broadway superstars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia, the librettists (Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice) and choreographer (Sergio Trujillo) of “Jersey Boys”—how could it miss?

Oddly enough, by forgetting that the perpetual appeal of the Addams Family and the common thread running through its incarnation from magazine cartoon characters to television series to hit movies has been the dark and macabre sensibility of the family itself.

Despite a blizzard, there was not an empty seat in sight at last Wednesday’s world-premiere performance of “The Addams Family: A New Musical” and anticipation was high, even with a slightly delayed curtain due to the weather.

When the lights began going on and off to loud electrical noises and the theater darkened and a spooky, four-note ostinato began sounding, the crowd response was that of rock-concert excitement. By the time a spotlight shown on a single hand (i.e., Thing) peaking out of a red curtain that pulled back to the entire “family” in a cemetery under a full moon facing the audience in its familiar and iconic pose, the cheers were deafening.

As things calm down, Nathan Lane’s Gomez sighs and in a slightly Latino accent says, “Ah, it’s bad to be alive,” before leading the family and its dead ancestors in a low-energy opening number called “The Clandango” that seeks to draw ties to its past that is, as Lane keeps singing, “We are part of a chain.” It is a remarkably squandered moment that cuts the high-energy anticipation level in half. Read the rest of this entry »

John Sanders, Kate Fry and Rob Lindley/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

When the Noël Coward revue “Oh, Coward!” opened in late 1972, Coward himself was still around but his detached and wry style had fallen way out of fashion. British actor/director/playwright Roderick Cook thought that the time was right to remind us all of what an original voice Coward had been, and the result was a hit show that even Coward himself came to check out in early 1973 in what turned out to be his last public appearance (he died in March of that year).

Cook’s idea was astonishingly simple: two male performers—one was originally Cook himself—and one female performer, all in evening clothes and sipping champagne, singing Coward songs and acting out scenes from his best-known plays. It was a passport to another era, and nearly four decades later, it feels as fresh as ever, at least in the hands of Writers’ Theatre. Entering the performance space in the back of a suburban bookstore, you are offered a glass of champagne as you head into an intimate theater transformed into an elegant, art deco nightclub of the 1930s. Music director Doug Peck greets you in tails as he is playing Coward songs on a grand piano and you find your way to small tables encircling the space in inviting, cabaret style. Read the rest of this entry »

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

Sergio Trujillo has a talent for continuing a conversation exactly at the point where he left off, something that serves the choreographer well during an extended interview at the Argo Tea near the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre. It’s where his latest project, the highly anticipated musical version of “The Addams Family,” is in previews for a December 9 world premiere.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and he’s in the middle of relating how Debbie Allen (of “Fame” fame) became his sponsor for his Green Card in the early nineties—Trujillo is Canadian by nationality and Colombian by birth—when he leaves briefly to retrieve a tomato-goat-cheese quiche and nonfat latte. He is describing his collaboration with “Addams Family’”s innovative co-directors/designers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (“amazing but a new way of working for me”) when he answers his iPhone to clarify a note to an assistant. There is the time Trujillo has to excuse himself for twenty minutes in order to run back to the Oriental to give notes to the cast. Later, at the brand-new Puma flagship store across from the theater (“I’ve been dying to check this place out,” he says), he begins telling me how he had been mugged two weeks earlier on State Street following a late-night production meeting, then stops to admire a pair of black Pumas.  “I love these,” he says.

To witness Trujillo squeeze an in-depth interview, lunch, a notes session and window shopping on Black Friday into ninety minutes is to receive a master class in the art of multitasking. But it makes sense given how busy he’s been. “This is probably the best year I’ve had choreographically,” he says modestly. “It started with ‘Guys and Dolls’ [the Broadway revival], then I did ‘West Side Story’ [for Canada’s Stratford Festival], then ‘Next to Normal’ [Off-Broadway, since transferred to Broadway], then I did ‘Tarzan’ [in Germany], then ‘Memphis’ [also on Broadway] and now ‘Addams Family.’” And if you count the blockbuster “Jersey Boys,” which Trujillo also choreographed, you have to include productions in New York, London, Chicago, Australia, Las Vegas, Toronto and on tour.  Should “Jersey Boys,” “Normal” and “Memphis” run through April of next year in New York, by which time “The Addams Family” will open, Trujillo will have four shows running simultaneously on Broadway, a huge achievement.  How does he do it? Read the rest of this entry »

Paula Scrofano and Paul Martinez

Although the 1967 film is a silly and trivial affair, that spoof of the 1920s featuring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing is a masterpiece compared to this overlong, misconceived mess of a musical that is loosely based on the film. At a time when tuneful Broadway scores are seemingly a dime a dozen, the new songs here are dreadful and are repeated ad nauseum. And if that weren’t enough, there are Asian stereotypes such as dropped r’s and even minstrel-show anthem “Mammy” sung in Chinese!

Why the creators dumped some of the best period songs of the film in favor of such inferior new material is a mystery, but at least the Drury Lane choreography by Tammy Mader and swing band directed by Ben Johnson evoke a sense of the raucousness of the era.  Holly Ann Butler is a likeable Millie, though there is little of the initial naïveté that the character calls for.  By contrast, her suitor Jimmy (Mark Fisher), who is supposed to have street smarts, comes off as the one who needs to be shown the ropes.  The other lovers (Randall Dodge and Dara Cameron) do exhibit some chemistry in their scenes but it is Melody Betts who steals the show with a knockout performance as Muzzy. (Dennis Polkow)

“Thoroughly Modern Millie” plays through December 20 at Drury Lane Oakbrook, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, (630)530-0111. $19-$61.

David Pittsinger/Photo: Joan Marcus

By Dennis Polkow

Of all of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, 1949’s “South Pacific” has the distinction of boasting the duo’s most well-known and beloved score. Considered by many to be the most romantic musical ever written, its tale of two star-crossed lovers—each involving American service personnel stationed in an exotic island locale—really struck a deep and resonant chord with postwar America.

And yet, because one lover was a Pacific Islander and the other a widower who had fathered children with a native, “South Pacific” also tackled what was a truly taboo subject matter in its day, one that remains a hot-button issue six decades later: racial prejudice. Although based on James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Tales of the South Pacific,” which had placed the “n” word on the lips of American nurse Nellie Forbush, R & H were content to change this to “colored,” the politically correct 1940s Caucasian term for any darker race or nationality that wasn’t white or Asian. Even that was too much for 1949, as it turned out, but the duo would not back down.

The Act II song “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” which had caused trouble from the first New Haven previews of the show, was widely and immensely criticized, even despised. But the song would stay, even if it meant the failure of the show. Even the Navy itself became involved when a lieutenant commander wrote the duo a letter in effect ordering that the song be cut, as if to question R & H’s patriotism if they did not. Oscar Hammerstein II quickly and carefully responded, “I am most anxious to make the point not only that prejudice exists and is a problem, but that its birth lies in teaching and not in the fallacious belief that there are biological, physiological, and mental differences between the races.” Read the rest of this entry »