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 »

Aja Goes, Alex Weisman, Michael Reckling, McKinley Carter & Adam Pelty/Photo: Jeremy Rill

Unless you happened to catch one of the first five performances of Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of the Stephen Sondheim revue “Putting It Together,” you missed the principal reason for seeing this show, i.e., Austin Cook’s piano playing and music direction. It seems that Cook became cast as Jerry Lee Lewis in the national touring production of “Million Dollar Quartet” and played only the first week, which was itself two shows short, before departing. The rave reviews being touted about are based on Cook’s initial presence and the only indication theater goers have been given of this monumental change is a program insert with the biography of another pianist. Read the rest of this entry »

Gregg Edelman and Liz McCartney/Photo: Brett Beiner

RECOMMENDED

Stephen Sondheim has garnered considerable attention recently about how miffed he was concerning changes being made in an upcoming Broadway adaptation of “Porgy and Bess.” Many have applauded his purist stance. Others are genuinely puzzled by it: not so much because of his defense of Gershwin’s original work as the fact that Sondheim himself allowed equally—if not more—radically destructive changes to the film version of the work usually considered his masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd.”   Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

In the most daring piece of music ever composed for a Broadway musical, Leonard Bernstein’s climactic “Quintet (Tonight)” near the end of Act I in “West Side Story” uses the template of a grand operatic ensemble combined with a Bach-like sense of counterpoint with spicy Latin rhythms and contemporary jazz harmonies. Acting as a beacon of clarity within that complex structure are Stephen Sondheim’s masterful lyrics, the best he ever wrote for any show, including his own.

It speaks to the best and to the worst aspects of the current touring production of the 2009 Broadway revival of the show that most musical theater cognoscente would consider the greatest musical ever written that this “Quintet” is delivered with remarkable transparency musically and yet, its meaning muddled by the bizarre inclusion of Spanish—actually Spanglish, in this case—into the mix. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Porchlight Music Theatre:

Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago
Announces its
2011–2012 Season Featuring
the Sondheim Musical Revue Putting it Together,
the Chicago Premiere of Harvey Fierstein’s A Catered Affair,
and Jonathan Larson’s Rock Musical tick, tick… BOOM!

CHICAGO—Porchlight Music Theatre, nationally recognized for developing innovative new works, reimagining classic productions, and showcasing musical theater’s rising stars, announces its 2011-2012 season.  The season will open with legendary composer Stephen Sondheim’s musical revue Putting it Together (September 2 to October 16, 2011), followed by the Chicago premiere of multi-Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein’s A Catered Affair (February 17 to April 1, 2012), and conclude with tick, tick… BOOM! (April 27 to June 10, 2012), an internationally acclaimed musical by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winner Jonathan Larson. Putting it Together will play at Theater Wit, 1229 W Belmont Ave. The remainder of the season will play at Stage773, 1225 W Belmont.  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 »

Here’s the press release from Writers’ Theatre:

Writers’ Theatre announces 2011/12 20th Anniversary Season

20th Anniversary Season to feature work by Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Randall Colburn, Stephen Sondheim and Robert Hewett
Michael Halberstam, Ron OJ Parson, Stuart Carden and William Brown slated to direct   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 »

Photo: Johnny Knight

RECOMMENDED

The works of Stephen Sondheim have been a Porchlight Theatre staple over the years, though thus far, the company has presented mostly Sondheim’s linear works with clear narrative and straight-ahead musical numbers; “Sunday in the Park with George,” the 1984 far more abstract and, at times, virtually operatic Sondheim work about the genesis and contemporary significance of a major work of art that is a Chicago institution, namely, Georges Seurat’s “Un dimanche à la Grande Jatte” (“A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”), is an immense undertaking for the company that, happily, is paying off handsomely. Read the rest of this entry »