Brandon Chandler, Rashada Dawan/Photo: Foster Garvin, Jr.

RECOMMENDED

There is a line in “The Drowsy Chaperone” that asks, “Please, Elton John, must we continue this charade?” referencing the British rocker’s ongoing attempts to write Broadway musicals.

Curiously, that trajectory began indirectly when John was asked to write five songs with lyricist and former Andrew Lloyd Webber partner Tim Rice for Disney’s 1994 animated film “The Lion King.” Those hugely popular songs—John’s best “stage” songs to date even if they had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of “The Lion King,” such as it was—became part of Julie Taymor’s stunning 1997 Broadway production, due back here next September.

The duo was re-engaged by Disney to score two additional animated films, “The Road to El Dorado,” released in 2000, and “Aida,” which was never made. Based on the Verdi opera as it was adapted for a children’s book by soprano Leontyne Price, the definitive “Aida” of her generation, an “Aida” concept album was recorded in 1998, much as Rice had done with Lloyd Webber for properties such as “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita” before they became stage works.

When the animated version fell through, Disney Theatricals put together a mammoth stage adaptation with Goodman Theatre’s Robert Falls as director and one of three credited co-writers, always the signal of a troubled past. It was that version that previewed in Chicago with Heather Headley (Nala in the Broadway “Lion King”) and Adam Pascal (the original Roger in “Rent”) in late 1999 before hitting Broadway in March of 2000, though not before the elephantine scenery that had so many problems—even infamously injuring Headley and Pascal here in Chicago—was simplified before opening on the Great White Way. That version won four Tony Awards, ran for four years and spawned a national tour that ran for another three years but ironically, never came back to Chicago (Joliet was the closest it came). Read the rest of this entry »

Heather Wood

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In an ambitious departure from the topical, highly contemporary milieu she’s become known for (most recently evidenced in finest form with “The Crowd You’re In With”), Rebecca Gilman’s “A True History of the Johnstown Flood,” now in its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre,  strives, mostly successfully, to reveal layers of truths about the times we live in through the retrospective craft of a giant historic epic.

A touring second-generation “first family of theater,” the Baxters (Cliff Chamberlain as Richard, Heather Wood as Fanny and Stephen Louis Grush as James, all in fine turns) find their lives and careers intersecting with the vast wealth of the Lippincotts, represented in compelling embodiments of noblesse oblige by Janet Ulrich Brooks as the benevolent patron and Lucas Hall as her son, Walter. When the manmade mountain lake that provides recreation for the rich floods and destroys the working-class town of Johnstown below (in reality, killing more than 2,200 people in 1889, the most devastating disaster in U.S. history at the time),  the play takes a definitive shift in tone. The humorous, airy comedy of manners that makes up the first act suddenly becomes a tragedy that overtly echoes the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from the Goodman:

MARY ZIMMERMAN REIMAGINES BERNSTEIN’S CANDIDE IN A MAJOR FALL MUSICAL EVENT;
ROBERT FALLS RE-EXAMINES CHEKHOV’S THE SEAGULL; PLUS NEW WORKS BY SARAH RUHL,
REGINA TAYLOR AND THOMAS BRADSHAW HEADLINE GOODMAN THEATRE’S 2010/2011 SEASON

***THE GOODMAN CELEBRATES A DECADE OF ACHIEVEMENTS AS ANCHOR OF THE NORTH LOOP

THEATRE DISTRICT, STARTING WITH A SEPT. 27 EVENT AT THE ART INSTITUTE’S MODERN WING*** Read the rest of this entry »

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

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The constant level of high-quality theater to be had on both the Equity and non-Equity levels in Chicago is nothing short of astonishing, to be sure, but every now and then a performance comes along that manages to stand in a class all by itself. Such is the case with the double-bill of two one-act masterpieces by two fascinatingly different yet similarly iconic twentieth-century playwrights of Irish descent, Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett, performed by a single extraordinary Irish-American actor—Brian Dennehy—who came up with the inspired idea of pairing and performing these two works together.

The Dennehy/O’Neill alliance originated under Robert Falls at Goodman nearly a quarter of a century ago and climaxed with last season’s O’Neill Festival which spotlighted the Dennehy/O’Neill/Falls “Desire Under the Elms.” In fact, Dennehy and Falls actually presented “Hughie”—a forty-minute work O’Neill wrote during the period of his greatest genius at the end of his life as part of a planned series of short plays that became a rara avis when he destroyed the other entries—just six years ago, at that time simply allowing it to stand on its own.

That experience proved inadequate enough that Dennehy began experimenting with adding another one-act to be paired with “Hughie” at other venues, initially settling upon a comedic Sean O’Casey opus that Falls came and saw and thought was a mismatch that trivialized O’Neill. It was Dennehy who finally came up with “Krapp’s Last Tape,” a forty-five-minute Samuel Beckett work also from the period of his greatest genius, as a bookend for “Hughie,” and that configuration was presented two summers ago at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, with Falls directing “Hughie,” Canadian director Jennifer Tarver helming “Krapp’s Last Tape” and Dennehy in both. A huge success, that experience has been enlarged and brought to Chicago, with New York and national tour aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Tarver/Photo: Liz Lauren

This week Goodman opens its highly anticipated marriage of two one-acts about aging, regret and mourning lost choices:  Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.” The lineup of artists involved is formidable: Robert Falls continues his collaboration with Brian Dennehy in “Hughie,” who plays against Joe Grifasi in this play about the ways we deceive ourselves in order to go on. This act about the tragedy of “just going on” culminates in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” Beckett’s masterpiece of a one-man show about an aging performer who confronts his early self through recorded diaries that painfully chronicle a lost love. “Krapp’s Last Tape” relies on the contrast between the youthful hope in the tapes and the decayed abjection of older Krapp—also played by Dennehy and directed by Toronto-based director Jennifer Tarver.

Tarver, who directed Dennehy in the play at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival two years ago, is no Beckett newbie. She garnered acclaim for her curation of five Beckett shorts in 2006, and with a background in music as well as dramaturgy, she’s an easy match for the musicality and rhythm of Beckett’s prose. Newcity talked with Tarver the week before previews about space, composition and the demands of directing Beckett. Read the rest of this entry »

Tara DeFrancisco, No. 36

In this town of performers—theater makers, dancers, comedy creators—you’d think it’d be pretty easy to assemble a list of artistic influencers and innovators. And it is. The challenge is paring that list down to a mere fifty. It’s a testament to the wonders of the performing-arts culture in Chicago that we easily came up with about 200 names when we set out to create this year’s version of The Players. Unfortunately, we’re only listing a fraction of those worthy of your attention, but that’s the problem with an abundance of riches. Hopefully you’ll see a handful of recognizable names and a whole lot more you’ll start noticing from this point on. We’ve retooled the criteria for this year, focusing on onstage artistic achievement, rather than the backstage influence of artistic directors, executive directors and the like—who will get their day again next year. Let the arguments begin. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Peter Wynn Thompson

By Whitney Dibo

In another life, Steve Scott might have directed high school musicals. The prolific Chicago director actually got his start in the classroom—teaching high school and then college in his home state of Kansas. “I originally taught at a small religious university,” he says with a laugh. “Let’s just say I didn’t fit in terribly well.”

That life is a far cry from Scott’s current career as a sought-after freelance director and associate producer of The Goodman Theatre (a job he’s held for twenty-two years). But it wasn’t the straight-and-narrow path that led Scott to his current post. “I never had a system,” he says, “I never had a plan for the next ten years.” In fact, the reputable Scott has no formal directing training—whatever that may say about the necessity of pricey MFA training programs. The origin of Scott’s career stems from directing one-acts in grad school (“They asked me to help because everyone else was busy,” he says) and later from running a summer-stock company in Kansas.

After skipping out of Kansas and heading for the big city, Scott landed a job as The Goodman Theatre’s Director of Education, due to his extensive teaching background. Around that same time, he started directing at small theaters around town. “I would do a production that was reasonably good, so another theater would call me up,” Scott says with a shrug. It was a slow burn, but the consistent high quality of Scott’s work eventually earned him the most valuable currency in the theater community: a good reputation. Seven years later, after a stint as a teacher at The Latin School of Chicago, newly crowned Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls brought on Scott as his right-hand man. “Bob didn’t want to be burdened with administrative work,” the persistently jolly Scott says without a trace of resentment. “He is impatient with details.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: nick mangafas/linz09

We received the following response to Goodman’s cancellation of Joan D’Arc this morning from the artistic director for the performing arts at 2009 Linz European Capital of Culture. (The European Capital of Culture is a one-year designation of a showcase city by the European Union.) In the email, Airan Berg takes strong exception to the Goodman’s characterization of the show as “not ready” and suggests “censorship” on the Goodman’s part and pledges to “take all necessary steps to present the work in Chicago.” Needless to say, this is an unusually strong manifestation of “artistic differences.” We’ve asked Goodman for their response, if any, and will add it to the mix when we get it.

Below is the email from Berg in its entirety and original form:

URGENT – response from linz09 to JOAN DARK & a statement by the goodman theatre Read the rest of this entry »

Citing “additional time for artistic development prior to the show’s scheduled Chicago opening in September,” Goodman Theatre’s artistic director Robert Falls today announced that the Aida Karic-directed “Joan D’Arc,” its planned world-premiere adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s “Die Jungfrau Von Orléans (The Maid of Orléans),” would be replaced on the fall schedule by the Chicago premiere of Dael Orlandersmith’s solo performance,  “Stoop Stories,” which will run September 11-October 11 in the Owen Bruner Theatre. A spoken-word artist best known for her play “Yellowman,” a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize,  Orlandersmith also received an OBIE Award for “Beauty’s Daughter.”

Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Whitney Dibo

The old saying, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity” seems an appropriate adage for Charlie Newell’s directing career. When the D.C. native originally applied for the associate artistic director position at Court Theatre back in 1993, he couldn’t have known the company was actually in search of a replacement for their retiring artistic director. A lucky break to be sure—but Newell was also firmly prepared for the opportunity: his very first directing gig for Court, a production of Marivaux’s “Triumph of Love,” won a Jeff Award for Best Production. “After that, I guess Court felt comfortable handing over the reigns,” Newell says with a modest laugh.

Fast forward to 2008—fourteen years into Newell’s successful tenure at Court Theatre. Tom Stoppard’s new music-infused play, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” opens on Broadway, and Court tries to nab the production rights for the Chicago premiere. “They got back to us on a Thursday and told us our request had been declined,” Newell says.

Newell was naturally disappointed, and wondered which major Chicago theater had successfully wooed the producers of “Rock ‘n’ Roll” with bigger royalties and larger production capabilities. The answer came the next day, with a phone call from The Goodman Theatre. “On that Friday, the folks at Goodman called me up and asked me to direct the show,” says Newell, obviously still tickled by the serendipity of it all. “Rock ‘n’ Roll” started previews in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre on May 2 and will run through June 7, with a cast comprised almost entirely of Chicago-based actors. Read the rest of this entry »