Larry Adams as Harold Hill and Alicia Berneche as Marian Paroo

RECOMMENDED
A onetime flute player for John Philip Sousa and Arturo Toscanini who went on to write operas, symphonies, band music, standards and score radio programs, Meredith Wilson is best remembered these days for his 1957 show “The Music Man.” Inspired by his small-town boyhood in early twentieth-century rural Iowa, Wilson worked on “The Music Man” for eight years and wrote over forty songs for it, less than half of which made it into the show itself. One of these, “Till There Was You,” was the only cover song from a musical ever recorded by the Beatles and became a huge hit for the Fab Four in 1964, having been the second song that the group performed on its initial Ed Sullivan appearance that launched the British Invasion.

Ever since its inception, the role of conman and would-be boys’ band director “Professor” Harold Hill has been the domain of actors rather than singers, with the main musical qualification being the ability to crisply articulate or “speak” most of the sung sections with precise and punchy rhythmic syncopation. That Light Opera Works chose a singer, Larry Adams, to play the role suggested the intriguing possibility that the usually spoken sections of the songs might actually be sung, but Adams flabbily speaks his way through most of the songs yet does not have the acting chops to credibly seduce even the town librarian, let alone the entire town. Marian the librarian has the best singing moments, and Alicia Berneche tosses these off with such flair and style that in this production, it is she, not Hill, who comes off as the charismatic and colorful one of the pair and he, the dullard in need of a makeover.

Thankfully, there is enough else right in this production and full-blown, uncut revivals of the show are rare enough to make seeing this elaborate staging well worthwhile. The townspeople character parts are a hoot, particularly Jo Ann Minds as the eccentric mayor’s wife and Barbara Clear as Marian’s mother, who nearly stole the show at the opening. And with a full orchestra and Kevin Bellie’s imaginative and energetic choreography—some of the best seen at Light Opera Works—along with wonderful performances of Wilson’s score and remarkable counterpoint that, for instance, musically layers cackling gossips with smooth as silk barbershop quartet music, the experience is a welcome and timely look back while we pause to look ahead. (Dennis Polkow)

“The Music Man” plays through January 4, 2009 (including New Year’s Eve) at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson, Evanston, (847)869-6300. $29-$87.

Alan Wilder (Ivan), John Mahoney (Richard) and Francis Guinan (Sharky). Photo by Michael Brosilow.

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Booze and religion have always made strange bedfellows. In Christianity, you have a founder who goes to a party and changes water into wine, and reportedly not the cheap stuff, either. Even the gospels have Jesus being directly accused of being a glutton and a drunkard by his detractors. And that was in a sunny, warm and dry country. In an Irish winter, where the long, cold dark nights howl and days are gray and short, drinking becomes a national pastime. Add Christmas into the mix, and well, you get the idea.

In Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer,” five guys are sitting around and drinking on Christmas Eve having the same kind of dull and meaningless conversations that come up when that happens (if this all sounds familiar, much the same scenario—right down to a dilapidated drunk Christmas in Dublin—occurs in McPherson’s “A Dublin Carol,” which Steppenwolf is presenting upstairs concurrently with McPherson’s “The Seafarer”). One of the guys, however, reveals himself as the Devil to one of the characters in a private moment, and lets the guy know that he would be in hell right now if he hadn’t been able to beat the Devil at a card game when they were in jail together years ago. They’ll be playing again tonight, but the results will be different and the two will enter the netherworld through a hole in the wall. Of course, this all seems quite reasonable when you’re drunk, but the problem for an audience that is sober is how literally this all appears to go down, making you think that you’re suddenly spending the holidays with Mel Gibson.

For my taste, McPherson wants to have the sophistication and metaphor of “The Seventh Seal” with the religious sensibility of “The Omen,” but like booze and religion, these make for strange companions. Perhaps when the brain is booze-soaked, people need more radical wake-up calls, and for those of a fundamentalist disposition who like to get drunk, this is your holiday play. For the rest of us, thankfully, there is enough of McPherson’s eloquent writing and a first-class Steppenwolf ensemble who act the shit out of this material—including Steppenwolf founding member John Mahoney back at the company—enough to make this a worthwhile experience, even sober. (Dennis Polkow)

Through February 22, 2009 at Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (773)335-1650; $20-$70.

RECOMMENDED

Workshopped at Northwestern in 1993, premiered at Bailiwick in 1995 and performed as an annual holiday tradition there until 2006, “The Christmas Schooner” has had more than a hundred productions across the country and abroad. Bailiwick had announced 2006 as the work’s final voyage for the company but is presenting the piece as a bittersweet swansong to its Belmont Avenue home with all of the trimmings, including a five-piece orchestra and new direction by Mary Beidler Gearen.

I had never seen a single production of this work at Bailiwick nor anywhere else, nor did the idea of a musical about transporting Christmas trees particularly entice me. “What is at stake?” as a colleague of mine always likes to ask in discussing shows. Well, quite a bit, as it turns out—the traditions and values that make us who we are. The songs do a wonderful job of conveying the emotions that the story needs to communicate and of giving us a sense of what a Chicago Christmas was like more than a century ago.

It’s so ironic that in a year where we are still debating having a smaller tabletop tree vs. the full boat experience, if you’ll forgive the pun, the presence of a nineteenth-century-style tree on stage with fruit and nuts as decorations along with the descriptions of the “magic” of a traditional Christmas tree becomes quite enticing. Long before electric lights, plastic Santas, balloon globes and the myriads of Christmas kitsch that make up the retail-centered holiday season as it exists today that climaxes well before Christmas itself, European immigrants of a century ago had only the Christmas tree as the focal point of their celebrations, mesmerizing all who experienced it. Advent was dark and dreary, but when Christmas Eve arrived and though Epiphany, January 6, or the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Christmas tree warmed hearts at the darkest and coldest point of the year. Up north, as in Michigan, that is not a problem, but when a Chicago cousin writes to her Michigan relatives who are sailors by trade that “there are so many people, so few evergreens” in the city after sharing her searing memories of childhood Christmas trees back home in Germany, the family decides to make one last late November journey of the season. Three generations of the Stossel family all end up deeply impacted by these annual journeys to Clark Street harbor, where not only Germans but immigrants of varied backgrounds end up lining up to get the best pick of the trees.

Ultimately, this becomes a family love story crisscrossing generations as well as a tale of duty and honor and maintaining sea traditions as well as Christmas traditions, passing on what we have been given and as “Opa” (Jim Sherman) observes, that “If we accept our blessings, we accept our pain as well.” Tying up such a message in a Christmas package filled with music makes it all the more palatable, but no less important. (Dennis Polkow)

“The Christmas Schooner” plays through January 4 at Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, 1229 W. Belmont, (773)883-1090. $20-$35.

RECOMMENDED

It was all too easy to identify with a pair of homicidal housemaids but such was the power of Writers’ Theatre’s riveting revival of Jean Genet’s “The Maids” (1947) that when two sister-servants laced their insensitive mistress’ cup of chamomile tea with barbiturates, I was ready to run onstage and serve her the drink myself! I suppose one can blame these tough economic times. After all, in November Crain’s Chicago Business published an article, derided by several readers in the weeks that followed, about how some Kenilworth residents were coping. Sure, you might be laid-off, lose your home and see your retirement savings disappear, but isn’t it reassuring to know that you’re not alone and that in Kenilworth some have had to scale back on the cleaning-lady visits, nix the private French lessons and “downgrade” to $500 winter coats? Tragic, indeed. I hope they’re being nice to their servants when requesting their nightly cup of tea.

Jean Genet, of course, was the poet laureate of the truly poor and oppressed and “The Maids” was his theatrical exploration of the power struggle between the haves and the have-nots—always raging, constantly shifting and all consuming. The play is challenging, to say the least. There is little in the way of action save for some ritualized role-playing such as when the maids try on their lady’s clothes and jewelry and recreate their mistress’ patronizing and humiliating verbal tirades. Emotions and feelings explode but don’t always seem to be motivated. And the psychology of the sisters—stubborn Solange and delicate Claire—demands that a performer vacillate between desperation and liberation.

Given Writers’ recent output, it’s not surprising that this revival has met all these challenges and surpassed them to amass a production of considerable intellect and artistry: director Jimmy McDermott’s staging is the epitome of finesse; Elizabeth Laidlaw’s Solange, Helen Sadler’s Claire and Niki Lindren’s Madame offer performances of psychological precision; and the design team has transformed the intimate, fifty-seat Books on Vernon venue into a gorgeous and claustrophobic French boudoir setting replete with ornate floral prints, black crystal lamps and pink velvet walls.

These qualities would make any production worthy of professional admiration. What makes McDermott’s worthy of excitement is how much passion it ultimately oozes. From the crime passionnel of its story to a passion for subversivness—McDermott admirably doesn’t shy away from Genet’s hints at incestuous lesbianism—I doubt you’ll see a finer or more resonant production of “The Maids” in the Chicago area for some time to come. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At Writers’ Theatre, 664 Vernon Avenue, Glencoe, (847)242-6000. Mon 7:30pm/Tue 7:30pm/Wed 2pm & 7:30pm/Thu & Fri 8pm/Sat 4pm & 8pm/Sun 2pm & 6pm (performance schedule varies). $40-$65. Through April 5, 2009.

RECOMMENDED
A show that understands that language and love are just games we play, however seriously we take them. Director Libby Ford plays with us by presenting three farcical scenes tracing the stages of marriage, framed by the truly moving and poignant romance “Lady with a Lapdog,” so that the show ostensibly refuses to take humankind’s drama seriously but leaves a slight “what if” quality to that refusal. The three stories, respectively about a ridiculous and petty courtship, the unbearable life of a commuting family man and the monologue of an old man beaten down by a tyrannical wife, point sometimes a little obviously at the absurd and disheartening monotony and predictability of love and social life, but by placing “Lady with a Lapdog” at the center, the show frames all human encounters as kinds of illicit affairs, heightening the rest of the material. The acting isn’t always as controlled as it should be, sometimes approaching the mania of an improvised skit that’s gone on too long, but the overall effect is substantial and thoughtful. Chorus repetition during transitions feel repetitive during the show but reach a surprising cohesion and new meaning by the end of the show, which at the very least is proof that you can produce a show that’s both light and eloquent. (Monica Westin)

At Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, (773)404-7336. Through December 21.

RECOMMENDED

One of the most cohesive groups of ten-minute plays I’ve seen, with a thoughtful transition from exploration of romance to war so nuanced that the change of themes is almost imperceptible. The strongest of the plays are stunning, especially the first, “78,” in which a couple lives a lifetime together in a single, repeated day; “Yes to Everything,” a vague but compelling monologue about being stuck in love, unable to move on, that cleverly appropriates stand-up conventions, camera phones and Dictaphones as instruments of paralysis; and Brett Neveau’s chilling and subtle “Ethnic Cleansing Day” that stages a creepy rhetoric of silence about hate crimes in a very recognizable family. The plays aren’t all consistently effective, of course, but the range of quality is less dramatic than in most groupings of short plays, and there’s a well-chosen variety of formats as well as ideas so that visually and theatrically the series remains dynamic and creative. (Monica Westin)

At the side project, 1439 West Jarvis, (773)973-2150, Fr-Sat/7:30pm, Sun/2pm, through December 21. $20.

It’s hard to trace a coherent thread between these four short plays; Adam Webster, the curator of the “Cut to the Quick” festival, in which this series participates, argues that they share a common concern with the ways that we skew our perception of the world, but their strongest commonality seems to be a vague exploration of excess: in violence, confession and socially tabooed language and subjects. This isn’t to say that the show is always offensive, but it’s often hard to know how to take the plays; for example, in “Three Hymns of Apathy,” a couple perform alternating and hyperbolically dramatic monologues about terrible events in their past, centering somewhat vaguely around the crumbling of their relationship and September 11th, seeming to border on parody at moments (for example, what do we make of lines like “I was five years old for fuck’s sake! Why did he show me that dying pigeon?!”) but inconsistently so. “Dead Weight” marks the high point of the night, with Rebecca Buller and Catherine Price as hilarious and beautifully controlled cold-blooded teenagers who crack racial jokes as a war rages outside, but the rhetorical ends of the juxtaposition are unclear. “Little Green Man,” ostensibly about an alien held captive and forced to learn American culture from TV, has great potential that doesn’t quite pan out; and “Autophagy” fulfills the hipster-mocking and android quota of the evening in a well-timed and funny but fairly incoherent final show. Ultimately, an intense but uneven and confusing evening. (Monica Westin)

At the side project, 1439 W. Jarvis, (773)973-2150, Thu & Sun/7:30pm, through December 21.$15.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This a new version of the review of this play, based on the critic’s viewing of the second act. See this for the original and the comments that accompanied it.

Having now seen both halves, I still find that the high point of of Zeljko Djukic’s production takes place in its very first moments, when two suspicious Capulet servants circle one another ambivalently and vulnerably, creating a tension and hypersensitivity that could have set an exquisite emotional compass for the play, but unfortunately the aura evaporates almost immediately. Instead, the show feels increasingly less controlled and meaningful throughout the first act, as actors rush on and offstage with little palpable motivation and with a real sense of free-floating anxiety as they attempt to maintain one high note of emotional timbre. The second half suffers from the overzealous intensity of the first; when the real climaxes should occur, they feel curiously stilted, and the final scene, which is performed silently and with arresting visual effect, feels like the result of exhaustion and tacked on rather than in dialogue with the rest of the show. Romeo and Juliet come across as more childish than foolishly adolescent, with a Juliet who seems to be always on the verge of stamping her foot and whose most memorable gesture is curling up in her mother’s lap; during the lovers’ “morning-after” scene there’s no sense of motivation for their pairing, sexual or otherwise. With the exception of Carolyn Hoerdmann’s earthy Nurse and Peter DeFaria as a Friar Laurence who creates something close to a moral center of the play, the actors seem apprehensive rather than commanding, the show seems to be stuck in the text rather than deploying or appropriating it. And at the risk of sounding like a philistine, I might suggest that for a production that deliberately doesn’t try to do anything progressive, three hours plus is simply too much to ask of an audience.  (Monica Westin)

At Chopin Theater, 1543 W. Division. www.tutato.com. Through December 21.

Its fifth year running, Theater Wit’s one-man adaptation by Joe Mantello of the classic David Sedaris tale is starting to wear a bit thin, but luckily the brilliance and durability of the humor in the writing carries through. Mitchell Fain, though charming, charismatic and graced with perfect timing, works a little too hard to convince the audience that he’s charming, charismatic and graced with perfect timing, splicing in innumerable asides to the audience and dirty jokes told over a martini glass that he occasionally thrusts towards the audience as a toast—the whole effect just feels a bit too forced and more like stand-up than a theatrical adaptation of an almost perfectly constructed and beautifully cynical radio essay. Still, Fain feels like your bitchy best friend, over-the-top and indulgently offensive, and some absolutely hilarious moments, such as his fantasy of Billie Holiday performing a burlesque “Away in a Manger” make “Santaland” worth seeing. (Monica Westin)

At Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252. Through January 3.

RECOMMENDED

A humane and droll play about memory and loss, examining four quintessential adolescent-boy archetypes in a small town in Scotland. The story meanders between their 1980s boyhood and adult years in fleetingly short scenes that are sometimes rich with the transient nature of memory and sometimes just a bit underbaked. The plot is formulaic enough, with familiar characters challenging one another about a mysterious tragedy in the past and their own hypocrisies, and when the final revelations come as the boys, now grown men, betray one another angrily, one feels a slipping of the real genius of this show, which is watching all four delicately controlled actors maneuver with remarkable skill in portraying the characters from childhood to adulthood, with an especially nuanced performance from Dan Behrendt as the incorruptible protagonist. Director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia understands that their town is another silent character, and the presence of Girvan, Scotland hangs heavily over the play, where the show’s aesthetic of stylized cliffs, tiny school chairs, and an eighties indie rock soundtrack anchors the story and keeps it from drifting too far into the world of stereotype. (Monica Westin)

Mary Arrchie Theatre’s production plays at Angel Island, 731 W. Sheridan, 773-871-0442. Through December 21.