DRURY LANE ANNOUNCES ITS EXCITING 2012-2013 SEASON

Featuring HAIRSPRAY, THE 39 STEPS, XANADU, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN AND SUNSET BOULEVARD

Oak Brook, Ill.—Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, known for producing acclaimed, innovative and classic musicals and comedies, announces its 2012-2013 season featuring five glorious films brought to new life on stage. The Tony Award-winning phenomenon HAIRSPRAY previews April 12, opens April 19 and runs through June 17; the riveting thriller THE 39 STEPS previews July 5, opens July 12 and runs through August 26; the effervescent Broadway hit XANADU previews September 6, opens September 13 and runs through October 28; the beloved masterpieceSINGIN’ IN THE RAIN previews November 8, opens November 15 and runs through January 13; and SUNSET BOULEVARD, the triumphant Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, previews January 24, opens January 31 and runs through April 7.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Drury Lane:

DRURY LANE ANNOUNCES ITS EXCITING 2012-2013 SEASON
Featuring HAIRSPRAY, THE 39 STEPS, PROMISES, PROMISES, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN AND SUNSET BOULEVARD

Oak Brook, Ill.—Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, known for producing acclaimed, innovative and classic musicals and comedies, announces its 2012-2013 season featuring five glorious films brought to new life on stage. The Tony Award-winning phenomenon HAIRSPRAYpreviews April 12, opens April 19 and runs through June 17; the riveting thriller THE 39 STEPS previews July 5, opens July 12 and runs through August 26; the effervescent Broadway classic PROMISES, PROMISES previews September 6, opens September 13 and runs through October 28; the beloved masterpiece SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN previews November 8, opens November 15 and runs through January 13; and SUNSET BOULEVARD, the triumphant Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, previews January 24, opens January 31 and runs through April 7. Read the rest of this entry »

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

Top 5 Shows
“The Brother/Sister Plays,” Steppenwolf
“August: Osage County,” Broadway In Chicago
“Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
“1001,” Collaboraction
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Play Revivals
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Writers’ Theatre
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Steppenwolf Young Adult
“Private Lives,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater
“After the Fall,” Eclipse Theatre
—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Performances
Brian Dennehy, “Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
Karen Janes Woditsch, “To Master the Art,” TimeLine
Tracy Letts, “American Buffalo,” Steppenwolf
Amy Morton, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
Mary Beth Fisher, “Seagull,” Goodman
—Brian Hieggelke

Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

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 »

Musical theater is such a collaborative art form that it is rare for all of the elements to be so perfectly aligned to make a show really work on every level.  In the 1990s, that happened twice: with “Rent” and with “Ragtime.”

The brainchild of Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky who had just had a mammoth success restaging “Show Boat” on Broadway and across the world, Drabinsky wanted to mount a new, uniquely “American” musical (only in Canada) and sought the rights to E. L. Doctorow’s popular novel.

Doctorow, who had been burned when he allowed the book to be made into a 1981 Milos Forman film that reduced the threads of the novel to a single character and became a comeback vehicle for retired film star James Cagney, had learned his lesson and would only allow the adaptation if Doctorow himself were given full creative control over every aspect of the production, which to Drabinsky’s everlasting credit, he gave.

The carefully crafted end result was a show that in many ways surpassed Doctorow’s book in its pure heart and emotional power, giving audiences an opportunity to actually feel the struggles, dreams, triumphs and tragedies of three diverse American families through a sensational Stephen Flaherty score that mirrors the music idioms of the early twentieth century. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Anthony Stewart, Sara Sheperd/Photo: Johnny Knight

A beloved and iconic 1960s musical that is rarely revived, “Funny Girl” is so associated with canonizing the career of Barbra Streisand and was so tailor-made to her performing style that few attempt to tackle it unless you have one hell of a leading lady who can sing her heart out, make you laugh and break your heart all in the same show.

The great irony, of course, is that vaudevillian Fanny Brice, upon whose career “Funny Girl” is based, was a subtle and smoky contralto, not a belting soprano like Streisand. As an anchor of the Ziegfeld Follies, Brice had made a specialty of comedy along with “victim” torch songs where she came out and poured her heart out about mistreating men, about which she knew so much that a movie was made about her life that so offended her that a successful lawsuit ensued. Her son-in-law and producer Ray Stark sought to set the family record straight with a film version of her life that would be so whitewashed that few took interest, so Stark decided to do a backstage Broadway musical instead.

Unable to secure the rights to Brice’s songs, who was dead by then, a new score was commissioned from Jule Styne, of “Gypsy” fame. As with “Gypsy,” Styne’s score was such a tour de force that Anne Bancroft, the original choice for Brice who was just off of her Tony and Oscar for “The Miracle Worker,” pulled out. Name performers of the day such as Carol Burnett and Edye Gorme were considered but ultimately Streisand, who at that time was still singing at clubs in Greenwich Village, was secured. Though the show was a triumph, it became more about Streisand than Brice, a problem for anyone else trying to do the show ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Paula Scrofano and Paul Martinez

Although the 1967 film is a silly and trivial affair, that spoof of the 1920s featuring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing is a masterpiece compared to this overlong, misconceived mess of a musical that is loosely based on the film. At a time when tuneful Broadway scores are seemingly a dime a dozen, the new songs here are dreadful and are repeated ad nauseum. And if that weren’t enough, there are Asian stereotypes such as dropped r’s and even minstrel-show anthem “Mammy” sung in Chinese!

Why the creators dumped some of the best period songs of the film in favor of such inferior new material is a mystery, but at least the Drury Lane choreography by Tammy Mader and swing band directed by Ben Johnson evoke a sense of the raucousness of the era.  Holly Ann Butler is a likeable Millie, though there is little of the initial naïveté that the character calls for.  By contrast, her suitor Jimmy (Mark Fisher), who is supposed to have street smarts, comes off as the one who needs to be shown the ropes.  The other lovers (Randall Dodge and Dara Cameron) do exhibit some chemistry in their scenes but it is Melody Betts who steals the show with a knockout performance as Muzzy. (Dennis Polkow)

“Thoroughly Modern Millie” plays through December 20 at Drury Lane Oakbrook, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, (630)530-0111. $19-$61.

Here’s the press release announcing the Jeff noms for Equity:

Chicago Theatres Shine in Outstanding Jeff Nominated Productions of 2008-2009 Season

Goodman Theatre and Drury Lane Oakbrook
Top List of Award Nominees

50 Years of The Second City to be Spotlighted
at The Jeff Awards

Thursday, August 27, 2009 – Chicago, IL.   The Jeff Awards today announced 179 nominations in 35 categories for Chicago Equity theatrical productions which opened between August 1, 2008, and July 31, 2009. The Jeff Awards sent judges to the opening nights of 141 productions offered by 57 producing organizations. From these openings, 98 Equity productions were “Jeff Recommended,” which made them eligible for award nominations.

The 41st Annual Jeff Awards ceremony, honoring excellence in professional theatre produced within the immediate Chicago area, will be held on Monday, October 19, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, 9501 Skokie Boulevard. A pre-show Appetizer Buffet will run from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and the Awards Ceremony, directed by Michael Weber, will begin at 7:30 p.m. The Second City, celebrating 50 years as a producer, will play a featured role at the Jeff Awards ceremony. Advance purchase tickets, which include the ceremony and the pre-show buffet, are $75 ($55 for members of Actors’ Equity Association, United Scenic Artists, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and The Dramatists Guild of America). The evening is black tie optional and the public is cordially invited to attend. To purchase tickets, visit the Jeff Awards website at www.jeffawards.org. For more information, contact Equity Chair Diane Hires at equitywing@jeffawards.org. Read the rest of this entry »

Patrick Andrews with Nicole Pelligrino, Amanda Tanguay, Amber Mak and Summer/Photo: Johnny Knight

RECOMMENDED

Jim Corti has had a long association with “Cabaret,” as Joel Grey’s understudy and then taking over for Grey as the Emcee for the national tour of the Hal Prince Broadway revival of the show, and also having worked with Bob Fosse, who directed the movie version.  Both of those versions added new material so how refreshing to see that as director and choreographer of this often misunderstood show at Drury Lane Oakbrook, Corti has gone back to basics.  Fosse, of course, turned an ensemble show into a diva vehicle, and even got Kander and Ebb to write a new song for Liza Minnelli, “Maybe This Time,” which most stagings begrudgingly include.  It’s a great song, but it makes the character of Sally Bowles larger than life, a repressed diva.  Not this time: Zarah Mahler plays Sally as an ordinary girl with lots of dreams who wears her heart on her sleeve.  Read the rest of this entry »

Jessie Mueller and Sean Fortunato

It’s always great to see an area theater get the first post-Broadway rights to a show, and in the case of “Curtains,” Drury Lane Oakbrook is deservedly presenting the first regional theater staging of the work less than nine months after it closed on Broadway last June.  Of course, the fact that the show went straight to regional theaters rather than have a big, splashy national tour with its star David Hyde Pierce—who won the Tony Award last year for Best Actor in the show—and has even already been licensed for college and high school performances so soon, might tell us something.

Like “Robbin’ Hood!  A New Musical of the Old West,” the show-within-a-show that “Curtains” satirizes, this is a show that never seems to quite get off the ground.  The fact that this is the umpteenth Broadway show to satirize the making of a show within an actual show since “The Producers” doesn’t help: there are such better examples of this genre out there.  For starters, “Robbin’ Hood!” is not credible even as a bad musical with good or even bad intentions; you have to buy that the show-within-a-show could actually pass for, well, a show, and said show has to be bad enough yet clever enough as a show and yet somewhat still reflect the qualities of a Broadway musical.  Likewise, the characters in the show who are supposedly Broadway musical personnel have to reflect some awareness of the form they are satirizing.  Read the rest of this entry »