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 »

Photo: Robert J. Saferstein

RECOMMENDED

In the climax of the Steppenwolf revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” a polyester-clad, red-faced Tracy Letts tears up the stage, literally, by trashing the contents of a Chicago antique store circa 1975 so violently that audience members actually duck. But Letts’ current work as an actor, however intense and convincing, is nothing compared to the way that he is currently tearing up stages around town as a playwright.

Where else but in Chicago can you see the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright in no less than three fascinatingly different guises during the same week of a dreary February?  There’s the Mamet Steppenwolf revival where you can experience Letts “in the flesh,” as it were, in the work of another playwright who has profoundly influenced him; an explosive performance of Letts’ first play “Killer Joe” in a no-holds barred production at the intimate Profiles Theatre; and the national touring production of Letts’ epic masterpiece, “August: Osage County,” the work that has brought him such unprecedented and award-winning attention and acclaim.

For those of us who missed the original Steppenwolf premiere back during the summer of 2007—which is when the play is set—or in its later incarnations on Broadway and on London’s West End and who therefore may wonder what all of the fuss was about and whether or not a play could possibly live up to all of the hype, the answer is a resounding “yes.” 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 »

Top 5 Shows
“Desire Under the Elms,” Goodman
“Blackbird,” Victory Gardens
“South Pacific,” Lincoln Center Theater
“The Tempest,” Steppenwolf
“Spring Awakening,” Broadway In Chicago 
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Shows
“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” Victory Gardens/Teatro Vista
“An Apology For the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening,” Theater Oobleck
“The Pillowman,” Redtwist
“Frat,” The New Colony
“Red Noses,” Strawdog
—Nina Metz 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 »

The Addams Family at The Oriental/Photo: Samuel Adams

By Brian Hieggelke

As the wind blows the snow sideways this December evening, the weatherman is telling Chicagoans to stay bunkered; the deserted downtown streets reflect their obedience. All save the sidewalk near the intersection of State and Randolph, as TV crews jockey for faces on the red carpet in front of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre, where more than 2,000 patrons, including a who’s who of backstage Broadway, are gathering for the world premiere of a new musical featuring a AAA list of talent, onstage and off. “The Addams Family,” with multiple Tony winners Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in its leads, a book from the librettists of “Jersey Boys” and so on, is certainly Broadway bound, but tonight—tonight—Chicago is the center of theater in the world.

That’s the story of Chicago theater in the zeroes: the decade in which it grew up and got big. Whether it’s the launch and monumental success of Broadway In Chicago, the maturation and astonishing quality of a remarkable number of small and mid-sized companies or the increasing demand for Chicago product and Chicago talent on Broadway, Chicago theater has fully come into its own. Read the rest of this entry »

2000

Milestones

500 Clown, Steep Theatre, the side project and Teatro Luna are founded

Broadway In Chicago launches as a joint venture between Live Nation and the Nederlander Organization

Goodman departs its original home in the Art Institute of Chicago and moves into $51 million new digs in the North Loop

Chicago Shakespeare moves into a $24 million theater on Navy Pier

Collaboraction produces its first Sketchbook

The City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs opens The Storefront Theater

Passings

Michael Maggio, Goodman Theatre Associate Artistic Director and Dean of The Theatre School at DePaul University 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 »

If there is one advantage to a show with such advance high expectations as Mel Brooks’ musicalization of his 1974 film “Young Frankenstein” bombing in New York as badly it did, it is that Chicago gets it sooner than the shows that succeed on the Great White Way so that we have a chance to decide for ourselves. In this case, it becomes an endless and fascinating game of “What went wrong?” as you experience an excessive and heartless show that is to the Broadway musical what George Lucas’ “Howard the Duck” is to the movies. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Perhaps you’ve noticed the lack of daring and imagination being deployed in the Broadway musical as of late where most of the hot and not-so-hot “new” shows tend to (1) musicalize an already well-established brand-name film or other such property, (2) satirize a show-within-a-show with a nod and a wink or (3) string together a pre-fabricated soundtrack with well-established hit tunes.  The fact that “Spring Awakening” does not fit into these tried and true formulae for what makes a hit Broadway musical and yet became exactly that, would be enough reason to check it out, but happily, this unconventional show not only breaks the mold, but does so with considerable flash and style. Read the rest of this entry »