Photo: Joan Marcus

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How “The Lion King” became king of the Broadway jungle is one of those lion’s tales so odd, it could almost be made up. 1994, the year that the original animated version of “The Lion King” was released to theaters, was also the year that Disney Theatrical, the stage arm of the Disney company, opened its first Broadway production, “Beauty and the Beast.” Though a huge commercial success, the show was snubbed by the Tony Awards, having been nominated in nine categories but only winning Best Costume Design.

That was taken as a clear message to Disney from the theatrical community that such ready-made shows that did not depend on the talents and contributions of that community were not going to be acknowledged by that community. To its credit, Disney got the message, and when it set out to transform “The Lion King” from cartoon to stage, it allowed director Julie Taymor a complete re-imagining of the property that was so stunning that it won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Read the rest of this entry »

The Broadway cast/Photo: Joan Marcus

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Jon Bon Jovi is the highest-grossing rock tour in America this year so far. Your reaction to this is 1) Bewilderment, 2) Of course! or 3) Who’s Bon Jovi? If you answered #2, You probably already have tickets to “Rock of Ages.”

A very well produced and performed product engineered with precision to target the demographic of folks between the ages of, say, 35 and 50, “Rock of Ages” is a jukebox musical that wears its cynicism as a badge of honor, with a narrator who openly consults “Musicals for Dummies” as an expository device. Though self-deprecating fourth-wall-crashing awareness is certainly not new to the theater, it probably feels fresh to an audience for a show that was likely weighing this versus spending an even greater sum to see Roger Waters solemnly recreate “The Wall” as an act of rock theater at the United Center. And if not, who cares? Sometimes you just want to have some dumb fun, and “Rock of Ages” is absolutely perfect in that regard. 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 »

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 »

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There are no seats for “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up”; you’ll spend the entire sixty-five minutes standing on the stage of the Auditorium Theatre. Actually, you’ll spend most of the time jumping, cheering and dancing along with the joyous cast of this truly spectacular event, leaving the theater in a state of euphoria, wanting more. Or not, if your idea of a night at the theater is a well-defined personal space and a performance that at least attempts to create a cohesive narrative. Cohesion is consciously, anarchically rejected in “Fuerza Bruta,” as evidenced in one of the pieces—the show is made up of a series of disconnected performance fragments—when the cast is crammed into a too-small room above and in front of the audience, fidgeting to the point of destruction, where walls made of boxes, furniture in the form of checkered-tableclothed plastic tables, chairs and trash cans are soon rained down toward us. Soon free of the confines of conformity, the cast breaks into a joyous dance before descending the stage to frolic amongst the audience, dancing, breaking harmless styrofoam forms over unexpectant heads and then suddenly disappearing to regroup for the next piece.

A cultural mashup that might be the perfect entertainment for our times, “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up” is a burst of joy, a feast for the eyes, ears and mind. A fin-du-monde what-the-hellness seems to wash over the whole affair, sometimes decadent, sometimes erotic, always playful. The cast is a handsome mix of youngish boho chics, with a vaguely exotic aura emanating from the Argentinean origins of the work’s artistic director/impresario Diqui James (who also co-founded the seminal “De La Guardia”), composer Gaby Kerpel and many of the other key creators and cast members. The show’s pieces seem to alternate between a dystopian futurism and a utopian surrealism, with tableaus distinctly conjuring up visual art motifs from those movements. Or, alternately, men suffer, women play. As in a man, in a suit and tie, running on a giant treadmill for no apparent reason. He is shot, wounded and keeps running. Does he represent the seemingly constant state of political turmoil, with coup d’états and brutal military regimes that haunt Latin America? Or perhaps the inextricable blend of big business and violence that accompanies commercial power flexed outside its natural borders? Juxtaposed with such dramatic imagery, women soon frolic balletically on a giant shimmering wall, as if dancing on the wind. Later, erotic nymphs enchant the crowd in a giant overhead dipping pool of sorts, conjuring up Homerian Sirens, Surrealism and synchronized swimming at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Parkinson, Eric Hissom, Ted Deasy/Photo: Craig Schwartz

The premise of this show is simply to take the shooting script for the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film “The 39 Steps”—one of the best films Hitch made in England before he moved to Hollywood—and have it acted out with a clever cast of four, with three of the actors taking on multiple roles, often right within the same scene. Add to that constant references and canned soundtrack bits from Hitchcock’s later, better-known American films and popular television series and you have an evening of live thriller references that may send sleuth nerds into orbit as they one by one tally up the source of the allusions.

Would that all of this added up to a meaningful whole worthy of the Master of Suspense by actually supplying some, but the references themselves are usually so forced and clichéd that they tend to stick out of the plot like a sore thumb: “Which way did they go?” “North by Northwest.” Yikes. Add to that a detachment of the cast from each other and to the audience and you have a rather wooden evening, a bit like trying to stage a game of “Clue.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Joan Marcus

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Hit shows don’t come any bigger or fatter than “Billy Elliot—The Musical.” Technically, it’s a stunner.  Choreographically, it’s beautiful to behold, and the dancing is energy incarnate. And the sweet, simple and sentimental story of a coal miner’s young son who becomes a ballet dancer against the odds has been translated from the screen—the feel-good movie of the same name is from 2000—to the stage with admirable aplomb. But after all the hype, the fact remains that “Billy Elliot—The Musical” is simply not a great musical. It’s a great theatrical experience and a great dance show, but one that’s sadly been saddled with an undistinguished score and unmemorable music. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Glaser and Liz Shivener

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Theater purists scoff at the notion, but one significant reason for the resurgence of the Broadway musical in recent years has nothing whatsoever to do with the Great White Way itself, but rather, with the resurgence of superb show music in full-length Disney cartoons.

Everything about Alan Menken’s score and songs for “Beauty & the Beast” is theatrical in conception, so much so, in fact, that had it appeared on Broadway without having first been a cartoon, it could have done quite well on its own. The fact that is was a cartoon first, however, meant that there isn’t a child in America who grew up with these songs who doesn’t know them inside and out, an unlikely phenomenon if “Beauty and the Beast” had begun life on Broadway.

Luckily, the songs are quite good, and children being exposed to them in any way, shape or form will only increase their appetite for good show music in the long run. Thus, taking children familiar to the live version of “Beauty and the Beast” can be viewed as an investment in their theater-going future. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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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 »