Laura Savage and Creg Sclavi

RECOMMENDED

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly a decade since “Urinetown the Musical” first appeared: it was not only one of the first new shows to reestablish the Great White Way after 9/11 had brought the city’s entertainment infrastructure to a virtual halt, but it was also one of the first of what was to become a subgenre of Broadway shows, the satire musical, or musicals for people who don’t like musicals. What is fascinating about Circle Theatre’s production directed by artistic director Kevin Bellie is that it is done here as if it were a real musical, a daring and delightful idea.

Both the New York and Chicago productions were played so tongue-in-cheek that the actors’ tongues seemed as if they were swollen by the end of the first scene. The irony, of course, is that when you put this show in the hands of someone like Bellie who knows and loves musicals, the satire is actually more biting by the elements being so true to the form. Instead of a blackbox production, there are real sets here and the characters are costumed almost as if we have stumbled upon “Pirates of Penzance” roaming around Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” singing and dancing their naively wisecracking hearts out as they go. Read the rest of this entry »

Aja Goes, Alex Weisman, Michael Reckling, McKinley Carter & Adam Pelty/Photo: Jeremy Rill

Unless you happened to catch one of the first five performances of Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of the Stephen Sondheim revue “Putting It Together,” you missed the principal reason for seeing this show, i.e., Austin Cook’s piano playing and music direction. It seems that Cook became cast as Jerry Lee Lewis in the national touring production of “Million Dollar Quartet” and played only the first week, which was itself two shows short, before departing. The rave reviews being touted about are based on Cook’s initial presence and the only indication theater goers have been given of this monumental change is a program insert with the biography of another pianist. Read the rest of this entry »

Gregg Edelman and Liz McCartney/Photo: Brett Beiner

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Stephen Sondheim has garnered considerable attention recently about how miffed he was concerning changes being made in an upcoming Broadway adaptation of “Porgy and Bess.” Many have applauded his purist stance. Others are genuinely puzzled by it: not so much because of his defense of Gershwin’s original work as the fact that Sondheim himself allowed equally—if not more—radically destructive changes to the film version of the work usually considered his masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd.”   Read the rest of this entry »

Danielle Knox and William Bennett/Photo: Rich Foreman

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Light Opera Works actually giving us—well, light opera works—is always a special treat, given how much emphasis the company has come to place on musicals in recent years. And the only operetta offering of the season is tailor-made for the resources of the Evanston-based company: Sigmund Romberg’s delightful “The Student Prince,” which has not been done at LOW in a decade.

Part “Prisoner of Zenda,” part “Wuthering Heights” set to waltz music and frothy melodies, it is easy to forget that the work is a thoroughly twentieth-century confection that began life on the Broadway stage. It was, in fact, the longest-running show of the 1920s, with more performances during that decade than the far more forward-looking work now so indelibly associated with that time, “Show Boat.” Read the rest of this entry »

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In the most daring piece of music ever composed for a Broadway musical, Leonard Bernstein’s climactic “Quintet (Tonight)” near the end of Act I in “West Side Story” uses the template of a grand operatic ensemble combined with a Bach-like sense of counterpoint with spicy Latin rhythms and contemporary jazz harmonies. Acting as a beacon of clarity within that complex structure are Stephen Sondheim’s masterful lyrics, the best he ever wrote for any show, including his own.

It speaks to the best and to the worst aspects of the current touring production of the 2009 Broadway revival of the show that most musical theater cognoscente would consider the greatest musical ever written that this “Quintet” is delivered with remarkable transparency musically and yet, its meaning muddled by the bizarre inclusion of Spanish—actually Spanglish, in this case—into the mix. Read the rest of this entry »

Dane Agostinis, Emily Behny/Photo: Joan Marcus

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First, the bad news: this non-Equity touring version of “Beauty and the Beast” at times feels rather flat in its energy and timing. It often seems like the performances are being called in and that comic lines and gags, for instance, feel forced and are being laughed at more for the sheer familiarity of the material than for the spontaneity of their delivery.

But there is also good news: while the couple at the heart of “Beauty and the Beast,” Emily Behny’s Belle and Dane Agostinis’ Beast, separately turn in quality performances, this is one of the only times that together the couple has the chemistry of, well, a couple. You actually buy that the pair are falling in love and that doing so has a transformative effect on the Beast. All of this feels organic and like the real deal rather than the more often than not artificial pretense of most incarnations of this production.   

That, taken with Alan Menken’s superb score and the colorful costumes and sets do make this more of a plus than a minus. And children being exposed to Menken’s songs in any way, shape or form will only increase their appetite for good show music in the long run. But taking children familiar with the songs from the animated version to the live version of “Beauty and the Beast” can also be viewed as an investment in their theater-going future. (Dennis Polkow)   

At Ford Oriental Theatre, 24 West Randolph, (800)775-2000. Through August 7. $18-$85.

RECOMMENDED

Seeing this production of “Chicago” reminded me what a great musical this is, from the Bob Fosse/Ann Reinking choreography to the Kander-Ebb score and songs (“All That Jazz”) to the sexy urban costumes and funny, sardonic book that turns Chicago’s twenties jazz age into a carnival of decadence. When a national tour rolls through town long after the Broadway heyday (there have been at least ten North American tours since the 1996 revival), you always worry that you’ll see a show that cuts corners in talent and in other ways and ends up being a shadow of itself. Happily, this is far from the case. John O’Hurley is famous for playing the quirky J. Peterman on “Seinfeld,” but his vocal mannerisms are absolutely perfect for unremittant cynicism of champion barrister Billy Flynn, and his singing ain’t bad either. Terra C. MacLeod and Tracy Shayne as rival murderesses-cum-celebrities-cum-vaudevillians Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, respectively, are seasoned Broadway musical vets, and they bring the perfect mix of sex appeal and cynicism to their roles. With the orchestra stationed front and center on stage in a vertical black box—the conductor is a frequent part of little stage bits with the cast—the usable stage area is a tightly constrained area front and center. Fortunately Fosse’s signature moves—the crowded dancers, etc.—tend to require little space to work their magic. (Brian Hieggelke)

At the Oriental Theatre, 24 West Randolph,  (800)775-2000. Through June 12. $30-$95.

Alexis J. Rogers and Todd M. Kryger/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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Despite the cultural issues and problems engulfing “Porgy and Bess,” and they are myriad, the principal reason it survives is George Gershwin’s sumptuous score. By and large, it is faithfully rendered in this streamlined and minimalist Court Theatre production by a talented group of singing actors who have obviously in each and every case really upped their game to an entirely new level.

Of course, those used to the complete work in full score will have a lot to miss: entire characters, scenarios and musical bits that flesh out Catfish Row are AWOL here. Most of the beloved songs are here, to be sure, although the iconic “Summertime” has been given a lower key in the opening scene and tilted towards its jazz standard polarity rather than rendered as a sumptuous aria.

Such changes are distracting, at first—almost like Aretha Franklin singing Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” or a Handel reconfiguration such as “The Gospel Messiah”—but on its own terms, it does work. Likewise when Bethany Thomas starts her funeral cry of “My Man’s Gone Now,” she does it an octave lower in a restrained, poignant almost Billie Holiday-like manner rather than the all out take-no-prisoners loud lamentation as written. The overture is omitted at the beginning of the work, but somehow mysteriously pops up in the rape scene, albeit at a snail’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »

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Opening with a surprise party gone awry and a murder to be solved, “Murder for Two—A Killer Musical” (penned by Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair) quickly explodes into self-aware musical campiness; puns and slapstick abound in a way that would no doubt make Mel Brooks giggle giddily. Officer Marcus Moscowicz (Alan Schmuckler) arrives at the scene of the crime with hopes of becoming a detective and ineffectively strives to corral a host of feisty suspects that includes an aloof ballerina, a gruff psychiatrist, a bickering older couple, a bookish grad student and the victim’s attention-grabbing wife (all played with gusto by Kinosian). The straight-man/funny-man combo works wonders here, with Schmuckler’s earnestness giving Kinosian free rein to send his characters over the top and director David H. Bell has instilled this world premiere with a sense of excitement and experimentation throughout that caters to the show’s irreverent strengths. Those looking to use their detecting skills may be disappointed, but those looking for a laugh will be more than satisfied. (Zach Freeman)

Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 East Grand (at Navy Pier), 312.595.5600. $25-$30. Through September 4.

Carol Rose, Jessie Fisher, Kelly Davis Wilson, Sadieh Rifai, Jessica Diaz/Photo: Brett Beiner

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It’s hard to remember so much excitement about a theatrical production in such a small space before the show even opened, but this is no small affair. “Grease,” the biggest show to ever come out of Chicago, once owned the  record for Broadway’s longest run and resulted in one of the most successful movie musicals (and soundtracks) in history. But on its way to becoming America’s sweetheart, “Grease” lost its Chicago soul. Until now.

You know it’s an unusual opening night when you have to squeeze past Marilu Henner to leave the show. Her presence in the audience was not coincidental; she’d been an undergrad at the University of Chicago when she was cast in a rinky-dink production of a new musical in the old Kingston Mines Theatre, as the first incarnation of Marty. The rest, as they say, is history. “Grease” was set in Rydell High, a stand-in for the Taft High School of co-creator Jim Jacobs’ youth, and the characters and much of the play’s songs and references were inherently Chicago.  And, befitting the story of hormone-raging high schoolers at the end of the fifties, it was raunchy. Jacobs’ partner in grime Warren Casey is no longer with us, but, at the urging and assistance of American Theater Company artistic director PJ Paparelli, who directs this show, Jacobs reconstructed the now-ubiquitous sanitized and Chicago-free “Grease” back to a reasonable approximation of the show that audiences saw that  fateful night in 1971 when it first opened. With tales of the reconstructed, R-rated and Chicago-centric production seemingly everywhere these past weeks, curiosity was certainly piqued. But would it be more than a mere curiosity? Read the rest of this entry »