RECOMMENDED

Jason Robert Brown’s “Songs for a New World” is a remarkable work, a cabaret cantata or song cycle every bit as evocative as, say, Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” but in a genre, namely musical theater, that doesn’t really do song cycles. After playing Off Broadway and spawning a cast album, the piece went on to become a favorite of theatre companies with smaller resources because it only calls for a cast of four, though it would be hard to imagine a better cast of four than Bohemian Theatre has assembled to raise the rafters with this work. Not only is each cast member a superb singer with an immense dynamic range but each is able to act out the characterizations of each of these character-driven storysongs as if they were truly telling their own story. Fresh from his extraordinary success as Coalhouse Walker in Porchlight’s production of “Ragtime,” Jayson Brooks brings that same prayerful pathos to his “New World” characters, including leading “Flying Home” as an anthem finale (the song order has been shifted here, but quite effectively). Alanda Coon relishes her roles as well, particularly her take on Mrs. Santa Claus fed up with Old Saint Nick but Michael Arthur and Jess Goodwin are equally memorable in their offbeat roles. Also deserving kudos are director Elizabeth Margolius for her convincing conception of the work and music director and pianist Andra Velis Simon for the extraordinary range of moods she is able to evoke. (Dennis Polkow) 

At the Theatre on the Lake, 2401 N. Lake Shore, (312)742-7994. This production is now closed.

Given that the Lloyd Webber version of “Phantom of the Opera” is still selling out on Broadway after nearly two decades, what do regional theaters do to take advantage of the unparalleled public appetite for singing “Phantom”s? They perform Maury Yeston’s “Phantom,” of course, as the late Candlelight Dinner Playhouse did for over a year with great success a decade and a half ago and in the wake of Porchlight Music Theatre’s smash success with “Ragtime,” the company is hoping that lightning may strike twice. In its purest form, “Phantom” is, of course, a classic “Beauty and the Beast” tale, but it is precisely that element which gets lost in the shuffle of this adaptation, which prefers instead to wildly speculate on the nature of the Phantom’s rather dysfunctional family. Instead of an inverted love scene where the Phantom learns that it is he, not Christine, that is incapable of loving his hideous-looking self, this Phantom instead has a love scene of another sort with a long-lost family member that shows that he’s really not so bad, he’s just misunderstood because he was rejected because of a birth defect and was raised hiding around in an opera house. Other than one murder and the chandelier incident—and even those are sympathetically explained away in this telling—all of the villainy and mystery of the original “Phantom” has been cleaned up so that instead of a monstrous genius, we are given the Elephant Man with a cape fetish. The original motivation for the Phantom wanting to help Christine is to take her away from her boyfriend by having her devote herself exclusively to her art form, but here, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend until rather late in the show. This version is willing to go down all sorts of dead-end plot mazes that have nothing to do with the original story, but when all is said and done, the big climax of any “Phantom”—namely, the unmasking—never even happens and the audience is never given the payoff of even a glimpse of the character’s face. Kind of like, uh, forgetting to show us the hump on your back if you’re doing “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” (Dennis Polkow)

At the Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 West Belmont, (773)327-5252. This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

After the most successful, sold-out run in Theatre Building Chicago’s history, Porchlight Music Theatre’s epic production of the mega-hit musical “Ragtime” has effortlessly moved over to the larger Apollo Theatre for an open run. It’s the brainchild of Canadian producer Garth Drabisnky, who had just had a mammoth success restaging “Show Boat” on Broadway and across the world—he wanted to mount a new, uniquely “American” musical (only in Canada) and sought the rights to E. L. Doctorrow’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 he 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. Chicagoan Frank Galati’s staging was so tied to the original show that few have been able to make “Ragtime” work without it, though happily, Porchlight Music Theatre’s artistic director L. Walter Stearns succeeds where so many others have failed by having enough faith in the work itself to let it speak for itself and dictate what happens on stage. This is the largest production that Porchlight has mounted and all of the stops have been pulled out, from first-class leads who can deliver the goods on the show’s eleven o’clock numbers down to singing and dancing children. Experiencing “Ragtime” in a post-9/11 environment offers a fresh examination of our own prejudices and fears with scenarios that could, sadly enough, be culled right out of today’s headlines. (Dennis Polkow)

Apollo Theater, 2540 North Lincoln, (773)935-6100. Thu-Sat 8pm/Sun 3:30pm. $46.50. Open run. 

RECOMMENDED

A president so clueless that he has to be told by his cabinet what to do next?  A president who has extramarital affairs right in the Oval Office?  A president so beholden to oil companies that their corporate scandals are virtually ignored?  A First Lady who leads a childlike president around by the nose?  It could be a parade of recent presidents from Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr. and Reagan, or it could be one single scandal-ridden president from the Roaring Twenties named Warren Harding who, amazingly enough, did all of this and more in less than a single term before dying in office.  If this doesn’t sound like the stuff of vaudeville-style musical comedy, in the hands of a talented ensemble Porchlight Musical Theatre cast and author, librettist and composer Jon Steinhagen, it works remarkably well.  Steinhagen uses the popular musical styles, pop culture references and carefree manner of the day to fashion an immensely entertaining and witty new work that can often make you laugh out loud at the lunacy of a bygone era until you realize with a sock-in-the-gut revelation that we could just as easily be looking in the mirror and laughing at ourselves.  (Dennis Polkow) 

“The Teapot Scandals” runs at the Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 West Belmont, (773)327-5252, through March 11.

RECOMMENDED

Being uncomfortable in a theater can be an indication of the effectiveness of a work when the material itself is uncomfortable. But uncomfortable does not begin to due justice to the feeling you have sitting in the intimate-becomes-claustrophobic space of the Theatre Building Chicago during Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s rarely produced “Assassins” when several notorious presidential sharpshooters start toting their all-too-real looking and sounding guns in your face and sing solo and in chorus about the motivations for their bizarre behavior in wanting to kill a president. Director Michael Weber has taken great care that assassins that we would recognize—John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley and “Squeaky” Fromme—look and sound the parts, and are presented as lost souls who are the dark underbelly of the American dream. They, like the rest of us, want to be noticed, loved and happy, but when they are unable to achieve this or anything else in their lives, they make a downturn with destiny, a narcissistic nod to notoriety. It is a somber story that few of us may want to think about, yet is chillingly compelling precisely because their actions are part of the fabric of our national identity, albeit a dark corner of that identity indeed. (Dennis Polkow)

Fri-Sat/8pm, Sun/2:30pm. Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, (773)327-5252. $25-$32. Through Mar 11.  This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

I love it when life imitates art. Four decades ago a legendary Broadway musical of burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee introduced the theatergoing world to Rose, the meddlesome mother of all stage mothers. Four weeks ago, an article on CNN.com christened micromanaging but well-meaning “hyper-involved” and “hovering” moms and dads as “helicopter parents.” But they don’t hold a candle to the matron who set the standard, especially as played by Rebecca Finnegan in Porchlight Music Theatre’s revival of “Gypsy.” Finnegan possesses a fine belting voice that more than adequately handles Jule Styne’s sumptuous score. And it’s impressive to hear her approach Rose’s songs not just as the series of undisputable showstoppers that they are but—along with a punctilious reading of Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics—as deeply felt musical expressions of character psychology worthy of any dialogue in Arthur Laurents’ equally strong book. Also moving is Jess Goodwin in the title role and her portrayal of the untalented, self-conscious daughter displaying glints of haunting self-awareness into her mother’s emotional blackmail. The rest of director L. Walter Stearns’s deeply satisfying production finds a good balance between comedy and pathos and makes this revival a worthy opener to Porchlight’s eleventh season. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

“Gypsy” plays at the Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, (773)327-5252,through October 30.

RECOMMENDED

Part of Porchlight Theatre’s ambitious Finn Fest at the Theatre Building, “A New Brain” dramatizes writer/composer William Finn’s brush with death shortly after receiving the Tony Award for “Falsettos” in 1992. On paper, the plot of “A New Brain” is relatively slight: Finn’s stand-in, writer/composer Gordon Schwinn, suffers a brain seizure, faces the possibility of death, and recovers. But director L. Walter Stearns, music director James Collins, and choreographer Kevin Bellie have realized to the fullest extent the humane vision within Finn’s alternately harrowing and hilarious piece. Finn’s aim, like Gordon’s, is to tell stories through his songs, and the rich chromatic score does just that, illuminating by turns the stoic heroism of Gordon’s mother Mimi, the cool reserve of his lover Roger, and even the inner life of the “nice nurse” Richard (who’s “poor, unsuccessful, and fat”). Stephen Rader is riveting as Gordon: from his hospital gurney, he commands attention and sympathy even when Gordon’s self-pity obscures his charm. The cast as a whole brings a fiery verve to Finn’s web of relationships. Finn, like Sondheim, has reinvented the musical form for the way we live now: Porchlight’s festival is an apt tribute to his remarkable voice. (John Beer)

This production is now closed.

At its best, William Finn’s revue of songs about dying takes on the quality of the New York School poetry of Frank O’Hara or James Schuyler: a lovingly detailed evocation of artistic and gay life in New York. Songs like “Peggy Hewitt and Mysty De Giorno,” “Mark’s All-Male Thanksgiving” or “The Ballad of Jack Eric Williams (and Other Three-Named Composers)” manifest Finn’s deep affection for the people he depicts. His sharply observed, bitingly funny and poignant portraits bring them, for a few minutes, back to life. But Finn gives his late associate Bolek Greczynski the best critical take on the project of “Elegies”: Bolek would have called it “bourgeois shit.” And when Finn strays from documenting the world he knows best, particularly in the closing scene dramatizing the events of 9/11, his lyrical imagination goes mushy, even if the score remains lush. Porchlight’s performers (“Elegies” is part of their Finn Fest) are enormously gifted, and perform Finn’s songs with great spirit and humor. When not singing, though, their jokey interplay comes off as contrived and distracting, only underlining the show’s potential for a gooey sentimentality. (John Beer) 

This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

With its infectious but raw score, frenetic central character and perfunctory plot (a man’s newfound homosexuality threatens his marriage), composer/lyricist William Finn’s “In Trousers” is the musical theatre equivalent of a cupcake—sweet and temporarily energizing but ultimately leaving you craving for more. This is not a bad thing, however, since dramatic nourishment can be found in its companion piece, “Falsettos” (see separate listing), a continuation of this wonderful cast of characters and a testament to the development of Finn as a first-class musical theatre artist. But if you can’t get to the other show, the indelible performances in this one—especially that of Joe Schenck as Marvin—make “In Trousers” essential viewing. Wearing heart on sleeve and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Mr. Schenck is a natural song-and-dance man who never misses a beat. “In Trousers” is being presented in repertory along with the later piece, “Falsettos,” by Porchlight Music Theatre and if you take in both, watch them in non-chronological order: “Trousers” will be a buoyant lift from the heart-wrenching finale to “Falsettos.” (F.O. Almeida) 

This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

The charm of “Falsettos”—part of Porchlight Music Theatre’s ambitious festival of the works of composer and lyricist William Finn—is in how much fun it has taking that old adage, “you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family,” and turning it on its head. Indeed, Marvin—the central character—has a quandary: how to build a family out of an unlikely cast of loved ones that includes a male lover, an ex-wife and an abandoned son. There’s a lot of fun to be had from these imbroglios but the musical’s gravitas comes from how poignantly yet unsentimentally it makes a case for family based not on biology but on love. “Falsettos” brings together the irreverent “March of the Falsettos” (Act I) with the lyrical “Falsettoland” (Act II), pieces that along with “In Trousers” (see separate listing) formed Finn’s “Marvin Trilogy.” There is little in between, but “Falsettos” is also the musical cartography of the 1980s gay urban experience (from early halcyon to AIDS-pogrom days) and the tonality of the piece reflects these extremes. This historical insight, along with Finn’s fine score, provides the dramatic payoff. (F.O. Almeida) 

This production is now closed.