Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

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Brent Barrett, Jenny Guse, Christina Myers, Amanda Tanguay and Amanda Kroiss/ Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Back in the 1990s when Gary Griffin was artistic director of Drury Lane Oakbrook where he had directed some of his first musicals, he programmed Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.” Curiously, despite his longtime love for that show, he allowed his associate director to take it. Thus, despite Griffin’s later reputation for directing Sondheim as associate artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, this much-anticipated production opening CST’s twenty-fifth-anniversary season is actually the first time that Griffin himself has directed “Follies.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Chicago Shakespeare Theater:

Chicago Shakespeare Theater Celebrates 25th Anniversary

SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
Ian McDiarmid Stars in Barbara Gaines’ Staging of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens
Gary Griffin Directs Sondheim and Goldman’s Follies
Artists from Arabic-speaking World in US Premiere of One Thousand and One Nights
Silver Jubilee Gala Launches Celebration June 6, 2011
Honoring Sir Peter Hall, Sir Derek Jacobi, John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe  Read the rest of this entry »

As the economy slowly lifts us back to our feet and we look around, we see a remarkable sight: a performance industry in Chicago that survived the worst recession since the Great Depression wholly intact. Sure, we had a few brushes with death, and no doubt a few very small, very new theater companies threw in the towel, as they do even in good years, but unlike many other cities across the country, we’re in pretty good shape. How good? The League of Chicago Theatres issued a press release last week proclaiming our town as America’s theater leader, with more than 250 professional theaters, including four Regional Tony Award winners, and a combined annual budget of $250 million serving five million audience members. Add in our thriving dance community, a comedy scene that’s the envy of the nation and two world-class opera companies and you’d have to say we’re doing pretty damn good. But neither the economy nor any cultural organization is fully out of the water yet, and the dramatic uncertainty injected into the political sea by Mayor Daley’s decision to call it a day means Chicago’s performance community will need some steady hands at the wheel these next few years. Accordingly, for this edition of The Players, we’ve broadened our horizon and taken a closer-than-ever look at the individuals in charge of the financial fitness of our local institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Chaon Cross as Celia, Kate Fry as Rosalin, and Matt Schwader as Orlando/Photo: Peter Bosy

By Dennis Polkow

When Gary Griffin was hired as associate artistic director at Chicago Shakespeare Theater a decade ago, it was principally to expand the company’s programming beyond the classics. Griffin has done exactly that by directing widely acclaimed productions of Stephen Sondheim, Noel Coward and Peter Shaffer at CST, among others.

And though Griffin has done a number of “Shakespeare Shorts,” as the company calls its one-hour adaptations, it was only a matter of time before the veteran director who is primarily associated with directing musicals—including “The Music Man” at Marriott Theatre through January 9, and more recently, operettas at Lyric Opera, including “The Mikado” which is running through January 21—would at some point tackle a full-boat Bard.

“One of the reasons that I wanted to work here is because it was an opportunity to explore an area of theater that I hadn’t worked in,” admits Griffin, during a break at a New Year’s weekend tech rehearsal at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. “I had never done Shakespeare and as you get older, the classics become more and more appealing. It was unknown territory, and that was exciting. That was a big appeal.”

Griffin admits that being part of the CST has meant that his forays into Shakespeare “both by experience and by osmosis get inside of you. It certainly has been a great experience to spend this much time and watch a lot of people tackle [Shakespeare in] a lot of different ways. Then you discover what your version is, or what at least, at this point, you hope it will be.” Read the rest of this entry »

Toby Spence, Andriana Chuchman, Neal Davies/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

Whenever an opera director makes the decision to “update” the specific time and place of a work—a common occurrence in the opera house—the key question aside from whether or not the libretto or music will support such a shift is: why? How does the work benefit from switching the original and intended time and place to another? Is an allegory being made that can be justified by the transposition?

In the case of Lyric Opera’s new production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” the imaginary, fairy-tale Japan has been cast aside by director Gary Griffin in favor of the Japan of the 1920s. In other words, a “once upon a time” scenario of a Japan that never really existed has been replaced with a very specific Japan where something quite real and not very funny was going on that would ultimately have grave consequences for the world.

The only “Mikado” of the 1920s would be none other than Emperor Hirohito himself, and when the Mikado—played by James Morris—makes his entrance by 1930s motor car in Act II, he is wearing the same military uniform that Hirohito made so infamous during the Second World War. Not since Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” have we had a singing World War II-era dictator on stage, but the distracting problem in the case of “The Mikado” again is: why? Read the rest of this entry »

Nadja Michael/Photo: Robert Kusel

By Dennis Polkow

When outgoing Lyric Opera general director Bill Mason first announced that Chicago Shakespeare founder Barbara Gaines would be making her operatic directorial debut with Verdi’s “Macbeth,” I was skeptical. Not that there wasn’t much to admire in Gaines’ imaginative stagings of more than thirty classics by the Bard at CST; it was the fact that she admitted that her previous opera exposure had been being “dragged” to the old Met as a young girl by her grandmother, that she didn’t know Italian, couldn’t read a score and would be learning the work off of CDs, and had not even known that Verdi had written an operatic adaptation of “Macbeth” before being asked to direct it. As artistic director of CST, would Gaines be willing to hire a director who barely knew the Bard and was illiterate and couldn’t read Shakespeare, I wondered?

Yet as Gaines’ new production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” that premiered at last weekend’s black-tie Lyric Opera Opening Night Gala overwhelmingly demonstrated, it doesn’t matter how you get there—Gaines even admitted having read “Opera for Dummies”—what matters is the end result. And in this case, the end result is something quite extraordinary. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Writers’:

Writers’ Theatre announces 2010-11 Season

Season to feature world premieres by Keith Huff and Brett Neveu,
Shaw’s Heartbreak House and Masteroff,
Bock and Harnick’s She Loves Me

Artistic Director Michael Halberstam,
William Brown and Gary Griffin slated to direct

Glencoe, IL—Writers’ Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce the company’s 19th season, which includes Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me, directed by Michael Halberstam with an all-star Chicago cast; the world premiere of Brett Neveu’s Do The Hustle, directed by William Brown; and George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, directed by William Brown.  As a limited engagement, currently available only to Writers’ Theatre Subscribers and Members, Gary Griffin will direct the world premiere of Keith Huff’s The Detective’s Wife. 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 »

Here’s the press release from the Lyric:

Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 56th season
begins Friday, October 1, 2010, at 7:00 p.m.
Giuseppe Verdi’s MACBETH in a new production
by renowned Shakespearean Barbara Gaines
starring Thomas Hampson and Nadja Michael

Also next season: Carmen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Masked Ball,
The Mikado, The Girl of the Golden West, Lohengrin, & Hercules Read the rest of this entry »