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 »

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

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 »

Renée Fleming/Photo: Dan Rest

By Dennis Polkow

When Lyric Opera recently sent out engraved invitations for a “special announcement” that also included “distinguished guest” Renée Fleming, opera websites were abuzz with wild rumors that the opera megastar would be taking over the company as successor to Lyric’s general director William Mason, who is retiring after the 2011-12 season.

Such speculation seemed bizarre at the very least: why would Fleming, currently the most popular operatic soprano on the planet and at the height of a spectacular career, give all of that up to take an administrative position at an opera company?

As media, donors and the cultural elite of Chicago began gathering late Thursday afternoon on the stage of the Civic Opera House, it was clear that something big was indeed up. The two dailies were given advance word, but the rest of us learned only an hour before the official announcement via email that Fleming had accepted a position as Lyric Opera’s first-ever “creative consultant” for a five-year period “effective immediately,” which also included guarantees of Fleming performing here across that time in a concert appearance, a gala, an opera and a “staged concert opera.” Fleming had also been elected to Lyric’s Board of Directors as a vice president, as had Lyric Opera’s decade-long music director Sir Andrew Davis.

All of this was stunning news on so many levels, particularly given Lyric Opera’s long and conservative identity. Anyone who knows the company history knows that change happens slowly and reluctantly. Of the three general directors that Lyric Opera has had in fifty-plus years, the first was its founder, the second her assistant and the third a company insider who had been involved for most of Lyric’s history. The company has had only two music directors. Only a coup could have brought about such radical change so quickly and decisively, and indeed, as Lyric Board president and CEO Richard P. Kiphart began addressing the gathering, a clearer picture began to emerge. Read the rest of this entry »

Sondra Radvanovsky, Frank Lopardo/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

It is unclear why Lyric Opera is suddenly marketing this Verdi opera under the translation title “A Masked Ball” rather than the Italian title “Un ballo in maschera” that it is known by internationally, even when it has been presented in other languages (the Met premiered it in German!). So do we start calling “La traviata” “The Fallen Woman,” “Il trovatore” “The Troubadour” and should we start adding an “h” to Verdi’s “Otello?”

To further complicate matters, Verdi had to set “ballo” in seventeenth-century Boston, believe it or not (translation, “once upon a time” or “in a galaxy far, far away” as far as nineteenth-century Italian audiences were concerned), so that a European monarch would not be assassinated onstage. Instead, Riccardo, the philandering “Duke of Boston” gets his own, and Italian censors were okay with that.

“Ballo” is vintage Verdi in his middle-period glory; legendary tenor Luciano Pavarotti considered this his favorite role—it was the last staged opera he sang at Lyric—and indeed, it is the perfect “tenor” opera, although finding the perfect tenor to sing it is another matter altogether.

Happily, Frank Lopardo foots the bill surprisingly well, having not only the vocal chops but the dramatic range to add some welcome depth to the lead character. Riccardo is known in this version as Gustavo, attempting to restore Verdi’s “intention” of making the character the assassinated eighteenth-century King of Sweden Gustavus III that the libretto was loosely based on; even the court here is eighteenth century, complete with characters in powdered wigs for the final party scene. Read the rest of this entry »

David Daniels (top) Esteban Andres Cruz/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

For those who musically associate Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the mirthful music of Mendelssohn, Benjamin Britten’s modern operatic setting of the Bard’s comic masterpiece will come as something of a culture shock.

Written for the 1960 opening of an expanded Jubilee Hall at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival, the composer’s decision to write an opera for that reopening was made so late in the process that a ready-made libretto was needed. Britten and his longtime companion, the tenor Peter Pears, set about taking the Bard’s original text and streamlining it to its essentials, ultimately cutting the play’s prose in half and cobbling the remainder into a libretto that unlike, say, Verdi’s operatic Shakespeare adaptations which also needed to be translated into Italian, form a marriage of language and music that brilliantly preserves the character of the original. Here actual lines and soliloquies are recognizable not merely for exposing plot details—in many ways, the least essential element of the original play in any case—but for their sheer linguistic beauty with the added dimension of their being sung, or in the case of Puck, recited to notated rhythms against the score. Read the rest of this entry »

Katharine Goeldner, Yonghoon Lee/Photo: Dan Rest

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is not the only arts organization that has experienced an unexpected cancellation this fall: Lyric Opera planned an entire production of Bizet’s “Carmen” around the Lyric debut of mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich in the title role a mere five years after it last presented the popular warhorse, only to have Aldrich cancel due to complications from a pregnancy.

Though one sympathizes with Lyric, a pregnant Carmen canceling can hardly be a surprise, especially when Aldrich also recently cancelled an engagement at the Met. Lyric’s solution was to simply cast the Carmen it had originally scheduled for a single October 29 matinee that Aldrich could not make—Iowa mezzo-soprano Katharine Goeldner—in all of the Carmens that Aldrich was originally scheduled to sing.

There is no question that Goeldner, heard here as Suzuki two seasons ago in “Madama Butterfly,” has a pleasing voice and stage presence, but when you’re doing “Carmen,” the one opera that virtually everybody knows—even those who have never been in an opera house thanks to countless parodies, cartoons, sitcoms, plays, movies, commercials and the like—you need someone who can be dramatically as well as vocally convincing as the gypsy temptress. 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 »

"Candide" production photo by Liz Lauren

By Dennis Polkow

When Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman is due in early at Goodman Theatre to discuss taking on her first musical, Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” it is obvious that she is tired, having stayed up most of the night revising script pages after a day and night of rehearsals. Today will also be a full day of rehearsals, but tonight will be the first preview of the work. As she is making her way to the table and chairs that her press folks have set up in a quiet area of the building, a beautiful large dog briskly enters, checking out both the area and the reporter. The dog has a Goodman Theatre security tag attached to his collar with his picture that identifies him as “Beary.”

“When I first got him, he was a wreck. He was a pound dog, so he is quite devoted. He is a mix—at the pound they said shepherd-husky, but a lot of people see beagle in him as well. Beagles have that black saddle but huskies often have a very thick double coat and little star as he does. I’m sure he is more than two breeds, by the way. But he’s a good old fellow. I’ve had him since “Pericles” in D.C. This is probably his fifteenth show, maybe? He was full grown when I got him and I’ve had him eight years, so he’s at least ten. I hope he’s only ten. I don’t know how old he is, I have no idea. He’s holding up, and he’s a sweet boy. Tonight he will be exiled from the theater for the first time and will be in the dressing room. He’s just sort of curled up by me in rehearsals most of the time.” Read the rest of this entry »