Natalie Ford and Cooper David Grodin/Photo: Rich Foreman

RECOMMENDED

“Carousel” was Richard Rodgers personal favorite of all the musicals he wrote, either with lyricist Lorenz Hart or with Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, Rodgers & Hammerstein created a new kind of musical drama with 1943’s “Oklahoma!” where every song advanced the story line and every dance was done in character. The line between music and drama was so magnificently blurred that you never knew when dialogue might turn into song, or when action would turn into dance. “Carousel” followed two years later, developing even deeper characters and containing more music than “Oklahoma!” The R & H “You’ll Never Walk Alone” ending was certainly more optimistic and uplifting than Ferenc Molnár’s “Liliom,” upon which the show is based (Molnár was said to not only have approved, but to have loved it), but much of the play’s bleakness remained intact. Certainly the central character of Billy Bigelow was as earthy and tough as ever, even if he did have his more gentle moments. Indeed, there has been a trend in recent revivals and productions of “Carousel” to have things be so bleak, so dark, and so non-musical in presentation that you often thought you were watching “Liliom” interrupted by background music. Thankfully, Light Opera Works is reminding us why “Carousel” was chosen by Time magazine as the best musical of the twentieth century: the music. Read the rest of this entry »

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Patti LuPone initially came to prominence originating the completely sung role of Eva Peron on Broadway in “Evita,” for which she won a Tony Award. Her career took a tumble however, when after originating the role of Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” on London’s West End, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber abruptly replaced her with Glenn Close for the Broadway run, deeming LuPone’s acting too superficial.

LuPone’s career has since had an unusual renaissance courtesy of the Ravinia Festival, where she has been singing roles of Stephen Sondheim—a composer that she came to late in her career—in various shows there for the past decade. Two of these went on to have Broadway runs: “Sweeney Todd” and later “Gypsy,” which won LuPone her second Tony as Mama Rose, and was briefly reprised in a stellar rendition of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” at Ravinia’s recent Sondheim gala. Read the rest of this entry »

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There have been at least two musical adaptations of Tod Browning’s 1932 “Freaks,” a film about circus sideshow performers. Even so, “Shrek the Musical” comes the closest to musicalizing the dark spirit of the unsettling climax of that film when the “freaks” accept an outsider as one of their own with unison cries of “We accept her! One of us! We accept her! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! We accept her! We accept her!”

Likewise, the evicted fairy-tale characters of “Shrek” decide to unite and “out” Lord Farquaad, a closeted fairy-tale dwarf who does his best to hide his shortcomings throughout the musical (David F. M. Vaughn portrays him on his knees with a false set of short legs dangling in front of his camouflaged thighs). It is a daring moment of social action made all the more powerful occurring when it does in the show and having the fairy-tale characters carrying protest signs and singing like an angry mob (“Freak Flag.”) That is a scene you will not see in the original animated “Shrek,” and is one of many charms unique to “Shrek the Musical.” Read the rest of this entry »

Thea Lux, Tara Sissom, Brandon Ruiter, Chris Gingrich, Henry Riggs/Photo: Anne Peterson

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Could The New Colony’s “That Sordid Little Story” be one of the best original musicals that Chicago has produced in years? I certainly think so. Because while not everyone may be a fan of bluegrass, the storytelling could use a tad more attention and the set design is a bit of an interesting mess, there is no denying that “That Sordid Little Story” is dramatically gripping, musically soaring and oftentimes emotionally devastating.

If you haven’t heard of The New Colony, they are a barely three-year-old Chicago collective of artists who create their work in the ensemble tradition, nurturing their pieces—or so I’m told—through long periods of creative gestation which has their roots in improvisation, workshop and experimentation.

For their latest, Artistic Director Andrew Hobgood had a story in mind about a young man circa the early 1960s who finds personal resonance in the music and lyrics of a band named That Sordid Little Story. He embarks on an arduous trek across the Deep South in search of the band’s next obscure gig—today he’d simply hook up with them via the band’s Facebook or MySpace pages—and along the way meets an eclectic cast of characters who for better or worse shape his journey and impart something on his quest for meaning. This is the simple, heart-on-its-sleeve story, for which Hobgood recruited two musicians, Chris Gingrich and Henry Riggs, to begin composing songs whose lyrics and musical flavor would fit the ideas and moments that were being fleshed out on paper and in rehearsal. Two dozen songs, three credited writers, nine actors playing twice as many characters and a “live” five-piece band later, and you have “That Sordid Little Story.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Chandler, Rashada Dawan/Photo: Foster Garvin, Jr.

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There is a line in “The Drowsy Chaperone” that asks, “Please, Elton John, must we continue this charade?” referencing the British rocker’s ongoing attempts to write Broadway musicals.

Curiously, that trajectory began indirectly when John was asked to write five songs with lyricist and former Andrew Lloyd Webber partner Tim Rice for Disney’s 1994 animated film “The Lion King.” Those hugely popular songs—John’s best “stage” songs to date even if they had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of “The Lion King,” such as it was—became part of Julie Taymor’s stunning 1997 Broadway production, due back here next September.

The duo was re-engaged by Disney to score two additional animated films, “The Road to El Dorado,” released in 2000, and “Aida,” which was never made. Based on the Verdi opera as it was adapted for a children’s book by soprano Leontyne Price, the definitive “Aida” of her generation, an “Aida” concept album was recorded in 1998, much as Rice had done with Lloyd Webber for properties such as “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita” before they became stage works.

When the animated version fell through, Disney Theatricals put together a mammoth stage adaptation with Goodman Theatre’s Robert Falls as director and one of three credited co-writers, always the signal of a troubled past. It was that version that previewed in Chicago with Heather Headley (Nala in the Broadway “Lion King”) and Adam Pascal (the original Roger in “Rent”) in late 1999 before hitting Broadway in March of 2000, though not before the elephantine scenery that had so many problems—even infamously injuring Headley and Pascal here in Chicago—was simplified before opening on the Great White Way. That version won four Tony Awards, ran for four years and spawned a national tour that ran for another three years but ironically, never came back to Chicago (Joliet was the closest it came). Read the rest of this entry »

Trinity Murdock, Rhonda Preston and Rick Stone/Photo: Danny Nicholas

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Any new show at the Black Ensemble Theater remains the perfect introduction for anyone who hasn’t experienced this troupe before. Their show template, or formula, or whatever you want to call it, just keeps getting better. Those God-given, up-to-the-rafters vocals still bring down the house, but there’s more control and texture to them. The quality of the sets and costumes look more and more like something you’d see on another big stage in the city. The song selections remain strong and fabulous, but the play list is more varied and allows for more of the singers’ divergent personalities to shine through. And the band! The five-piece band, led by musical director Robert Reddrick, alone is worth the price of admission. There will always be room for improvement in the book department, that thin narrative line on which those musical numbers are sometimes haphazardly hung. Still, you can’t fault BET too much for this, especially when they’re conscious of it themselves and can turn a lack of dramatic motivation into a humorous moment of meta-theatrics. And you have to give credit to an ensemble that will admirably toss political correctness to the side for the sake of an honest line and genuine social observation. In their new show, when one character is at the end of her rope with a nasty landlord and another asks if they can get their “boys” to “take care of things,” her response doesn’t mince words: “Oh, please negro, your boys are probably dead or on Social Security.” This gets one of the biggest laughs of the evening, as it should. Read the rest of this entry »

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Kinda schlocky. Kinda brilliant. Totally fun. That’s “40 Whacks,” the new show from the Annoyance Theatre.  It’s based upon the infamous Lizzie Borden murder case and trial from the late nineteenth century, and this original work, by writer Aggie Hewitt and director Irene Marquette, with musical direction by Lisa McQueen, appropriates something between a melodramatic play and an old-fashioned musical, between the “dark comedy” that the folks at the Annoyance are calling it, and an improvisational romp for which the Annoyance (I think) is known (“40 Whacks” is the first show I’ve seen by this company).

On opening night, Hewitt and Marquette took the stage to deliver the customary thank-yous to collaborators and supporters. What struck me, however, was how charming, down-to-earth and genuinely grateful these artists seemed, the kind of young ladies with whom you could see yourself sharing a drink and a devilishly good and smart conversation. It’s that sense of fun, accessibility and beguilement that allows “40 Whacks” to be so good in spite of itself. Because as a play, the story is perfunctory at best; I don’t think I walked out knowing anything more about Lizzie Borden than I did walking in, something that had been limited to the catchy rhyme, “Lizzie Borden had an axe/And gave her mother forty whacks/When she saw what she had done/She gave her father forty-one.”  There’s an underdeveloped romantic subplot involving Lizzie’s uncle and an Irish maid. And the second act court sequence is less about the actual Lizzie Borden case than it is any famous person who has ever stood trial and walked free thanks to celebrity razzmatazz, media distortion and courtroom theatrics. Read the rest of this entry »

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Following hugely successful Broadway efforts such as “Gypsy” and “Funny Girl,” Jule Styne set the Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot” to music in a show called “Sugar.” Part of the reason that “Sugar” did not have the success of those earlier shows is that it was unable to secure the rights to the title of the film though, curiously, that has happened twice since: when Tommy Tune did a production on London’s West End and when an elderly Tony Curtis toured with it—including a stop in Chicago—nearly a decade ago (he played the Joe E. Ross character), “Sugar” was redubbed in both cases “Some Like It Hot.”

Whatever you call it, “Sugar” is basically “Some Like It Hot: The Musical,” and that is how director and choreographer Jim Corti has decided to stage it for his Drury Lane Oakbrook production; Corti has the story unfold on a mock soundstage complete with movie spotlights and prop-moving crew members in stenciled jumpsuits (thank goodness, no bulky cameras). It should be said that while this is a distracting element at first, every other aspect of this production is so well-served that the movie trappings can be easily disregarded. Read the rest of this entry »

Gregory Porter and Mississippi Charles Bevel/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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“Low Down Dirty Blues” is the new songbook-style musical revue from Northlight Theatre and it offers everything you’ve come to expect from musical entertainments at Northlight:  great songs, fabulous voices and strong production values. That makes the show worth praising. What makes the show worth experiencing, however, is what you don’t expect to get:  a lot of raunchiness and just enough racial bite.

The actors/singers are Sandra Reaves-Phillips and Felicia P. Fields—the women—and Mississippi Charles Bevel and Gregory Porter—the men. They’re backed by a three-piece blues band and the song list consists of nearly two dozen blues standards. Whether putting you through the emotional wringer with the torchy “Good Morning Heartache” or the plaintive “Grapes of Wrath,” or making you blush with the delicious double-entendre of “My Stove’s In Good Condition” and “If I Can’t Sell It, I’ll Keep Sittin’ On It,” the production breathlessly moves from number to number without bothering to stop and articulate some feeble storyline. Instead, the arrangement of the songs—sometimes to maintain a celebratory mood, sometimes to provide humorous ironic counterpoint, other times for reflection and introspection—provides the evening with its strong emotional arc. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Luppas George and cast

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There are so many overblown, satiric musicals for people who hate musicals, but “The Drowsy Chaperone” is a musical unabashedly yet satirically written for people who actually love musicals.

It is a bold and curious paradox for Marriott to be staging the show, given that “Man in Chair,” as he is billed in the show and here played by James Harms, begins his unassuming diatribe about theater complaining about performers running down aisles and breaking the fourth wall in a theater whose calling card is doing exactly that.

The audience howled as Harms, unseen in complete darkness, makes these and other wry and real observations—“How long, Elton John, can we continue the charade?” got the biggest laugh, given the current success of “Billy Elliot” downtown—until we hear about an unlikely 1928 show called “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a faux musical, of course, that we begin to hear through the static of an old record. Suddenly, the show comes to life with characters coming down the aisles and into Harm’s mind’s eye, as it were, as a send-up of one of those extravagant and exuberant musicals of the 1920s.

Here, unfortunately, is where the Marriott production falls short in that the characters are treated so outrageously that the approach is decidedly tongue-in-cheek all evening. The beauty of the original production, of course, is that none of the outrageous characters in the fictional show know that they are outrageous, which is what made the original so much fun. Read the rest of this entry »