Colette Todd/ Photo: Chris Ocken

RECOMMENDED

Consider yourself at home with Light Opera Works’ short-run production of “Oliver.” Disguised as community theater, “Oliver” is every bit up to the high standards set by this company. A delightfully vibrant and talented cast make this show worth the commute for city theater-goers. A full orchestra and decidedly dark staging make this show aesthetically pleasing as well.

For many, the idea of singing and dancing children can be nauseating. A show like “Oliver” inherently comes with such misconceptions. What’s surprising about this show is that after the ever-popular “Food, Glorious Food” number, the show primarily focuses on the flawed adults rather than the gamin they’re supposedly helping. Dickens’ twisted sense of irony is thoughtfully paired with upbeat show tunes of the old school and thankfully performed by adults. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Sandys and Jennie Sophia Photo: Chris Ocken

RECOMMENDED

Because “Camelot” had been the favorite show of President John Kennedy, the term was quickly applied to the Kennedy era after his tragic assassination—that “one brief shining moment”—as the real Camelot itself was said to have been a millennia and a half earlier.  The original king, Richard Burton, told me in 1980 when he was reprising the role here that as one who used to drink with JFK when he was a young senator, that even he was yearning—back in the “good ol’ days” and just like the rest of us—for the “good ol’ days.”

That road show allowed Alan Jay Lerner to make revisions that kept all of the comedy but following Lerner’s screenplay for the 1967 film version, the melodrama of the story was maximized by removing some of the more abstract, magical scenes and songs, and by framing the entire story as a nocturnal flashback that Arthur has while waiting to go to battle with Lancelot.
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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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LIGHT OPERA WORKS Announces 2012 Season

EVANSTON, IL: Light Opera Works’ 2012 season will begin with CAMELOT June 1-10, followed by MAN OF LA MANCHA August 11-26, OPERETTA’S GREATEST HITS October 5-14, and OLIVER! December 22-31.

The 2011 season concludes with THE SECRET GARDEN December 26, 2011-January 1, 2012.

The October operetta concert will be performed at Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston. All other productions are at the company’s home base, Cahn Auditorium in Evanston. The Light Opera Works box office is located at 516 4th Street in Wilmette. To purchase tickets call (847) 920-5360 or order online at LightOperaWorks.com  Read the rest of this entry »

Danielle Knox and William Bennett/Photo: Rich Foreman

RECOMMENDED

Light Opera Works actually giving us—well, light opera works—is always a special treat, given how much emphasis the company has come to place on musicals in recent years. And the only operetta offering of the season is tailor-made for the resources of the Evanston-based company: Sigmund Romberg’s delightful “The Student Prince,” which has not been done at LOW in a decade.

Part “Prisoner of Zenda,” part “Wuthering Heights” set to waltz music and frothy melodies, it is easy to forget that the work is a thoroughly twentieth-century confection that began life on the Broadway stage. It was, in fact, the longest-running show of the 1920s, with more performances during that decade than the far more forward-looking work now so indelibly associated with that time, “Show Boat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Light Opera Works:

LIGHT OPERA WORKS’ 2011 Season continues in October

Evanston, IL: Light Opera Works’ 2011 season continues in the fall with RODGERS & HART: A CELEBRATION (October 2-November 6) on the Second Stage, and Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s THE SECRET GARDEN (December 26-January 1) on the mainstage. To purchase tickets call (847) 869-6300 or order online at www.LightOperaWorks.com Read the rest of this entry »

By Dennis Polkow

Okay, so it’s Christmas week and Newcity isn’t publishing again until January 6, so no print review of this show is able to appear before it closes on January 2. Nonetheless, there are some troubling issues raised by Light Opera Works’ production of “Hello, Dolly.”

As the world knows by now, Lyric Opera announced earlier in the month that soprano superstar Renée Fleming is becoming the company’s first-ever “creative consultant” and wants Lyric to start doing annual musicals, which will commence with “Oklahoma!” Lyric also has now performed operettas two years in a row, once a great rarity at that company which had thought for decades that operetta—let alone musical theater—was beneath the operatic mission and identity of the company.

Less known is that the Evanston-based Light Opera Works was founded thirty years ago to perform the very genre that Lyric ignored—namely, operettas—as its mainstay repertoire and core identity as the company name might suggest, and used to do exactly that, only performing musical theater pieces as a rarity. That formula has reversed itself at LOW to where operetta is now the exception—generally one out of four works per season—and musical theater the rule. The company has justified this by claiming that this is the ratio that its audiences preferred and that LOW was still contributing much to the local arts scene by showcasing musical theater works with trained singers and as they were meant to be heard with original full orchestrations and choruses, something rarely heard even on Broadway these days. 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

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Catherine Lord and Larry Adams/Photo: Rich Foreman

Kudos to Light Opera Works for once again digging into the canon of classic neglected works of the American musical-theater tradition for this year’s “Second Stage” presentation rather than presenting another revue as became custom for a few seasons.

“I Do! I Do!” was the third follow-up to Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’ stellar success “The Fantasticks,” which opened in 1960 and would go on to break all records and play until 2002. Even in 1966 when “I Do! I Do!” opened, however, “The Fantasticks” had already been running for six years.

Written for Broadway veterans Mary Martin and Robert Preston, “I Do! I Do!” is a two-person show that traces the effect of marriage on a couple across a fifty-year period from the turn of the twentieth century. Since neither performer could sing at that point, the songs are largely recitative and require Broadway-style sprechstimme in the manner Lerner and Loewe had perfected for Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady” and for Richard Burton in “Camelot.” Though Ed Ames did have a hit with “My Cup Runneth Over” at the time, none of the songs are particularly melodic, which makes it an odd choice to be staged by a company known for bringing high musical quality to its productions. Read the rest of this entry »

Natalie Ford and Cooper David Grodin/Photo: Rich Foreman

RECOMMENDED

“Carousel” was Richard Rodgers personal favorite of all the musicals he wrote, either with lyricist Lorenz Hart or with Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, Rodgers & Hammerstein created a new kind of musical drama with 1943’s “Oklahoma!” where every song advanced the story line and every dance was done in character. The line between music and drama was so magnificently blurred that you never knew when dialogue might turn into song, or when action would turn into dance. “Carousel” followed two years later, developing even deeper characters and containing more music than “Oklahoma!” The R & H “You’ll Never Walk Alone” ending was certainly more optimistic and uplifting than Ferenc Molnár’s “Liliom,” upon which the show is based (Molnár was said to not only have approved, but to have loved it), but much of the play’s bleakness remained intact. Certainly the central character of Billy Bigelow was as earthy and tough as ever, even if he did have his more gentle moments. Indeed, there has been a trend in recent revivals and productions of “Carousel” to have things be so bleak, so dark, and so non-musical in presentation that you often thought you were watching “Liliom” interrupted by background music. Thankfully, Light Opera Works is reminding us why “Carousel” was chosen by Time magazine as the best musical of the twentieth century: the music. Read the rest of this entry »