Bring It On

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

by Dan Zeff

Chicago –  “Bring It On” at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is cut from the “Legally Blonde” cloth of contemporary musical theater. Both shows are inspired by motion pictures (“Bring It On” spun off into five movies from 2000 to 2009). Both shows feature a lithe young blonde heroine, a ditsy plot, and a talented youthful ensemble with unlimited enthusiasm and energy romping through some terrific dance routines.

        “Legally Blonde” is an established Broadway hit now enjoying a first class revival at the Marriott Theatre. “Bring It On” is in a state of development as it works its way to New York City. Both shows are a hoot, and “Bring It On” can only get better as some rough spots in the book get smoothed out.

                                             

        “Bring It On” is about the culture of cheerleading at American high schools. If the show is a reflection of prep reality, cheerleading is a semi religion among its mostly female practitioners, much like sports is among the guys.  The top cheerleader at Truman High School is Campbell Davis (Taylor Louderman). She’s all set to lead her squad to national glory when she learns that through a sudden and dubious redistricting decision, she’s been excised out of the Truman high district and into the Johnson High School district. Truman is an upscale suburban-type school. Johnson is inner city. How two such different types of schools could exist virtually side-by-side is just one of the narrative puzzlements the viewer must accept.

        At first, Campbell struggles to fit into the Johnson High mostly African American social stream. The student body even includes an unapologetically transvestite student named La Cienega and a lad who expresses himself in hip-hop. Eventually Campbell convinces the students to organize into a cheerleading squad to challenge the supremacy of the smug Truman High bunch, leading to a dance shootout that ends the show.

        The narrative shifts gears from the cult of cheerleading that opens the show through the exploration of class conflict between the two high schools, touching on teenage problems of fitting in, racial prejudice, and friendship. But nobody should attend the show for its social uplift. “Bring It On” is a singing and dancing extravaganza that will be especially exhilarating for young female viewers (there were numerous school cheerleading jackets among the spectators on opening night). This isn’t exactly the stage equivalent of chic lit. The talent and exuberance that flows from the stage transcends gender, but no question the young ladies in the audience were reacting with particular squeals of pleasure.

        The artistic brain trust for “Bring It On” has major street cred when it comes to this kind of youth oriented, rock music dominated, high motor entertainment. Tom Kitt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Amanda Green, and Jeff Whitty cumulatively have figured in such recent Broadway successes as “Avenue Q,” “In the Heights,” “High Fidelity,” and “Next to Normal.” They have assembled a cast that looks and acts like high school students, but students who can sing and dance and toss off daring gymnastics stunts like Olympians.

        Louderman is a wonder as Campbell. She’s on stage nearly the entire show, acting and belting out one song after another while throwing herself into a glorious series of high velocity dances. Her stamina level is off the charts and she seemed to be having the time of her life, like the rest of the ensemble. The unforced high spirits of the ensemble is not the least of the evening’s joys.

        The production still needs to work out some kinks. The first act moves too slowly between musical numbers. Campbell’s difficulties in making friends at her new school occupy endless nonmusical minutes in the first act, a scene that urgently needs to be compressed, enlivened, or both. The production also is overproduced in spots, with video sequences that distract as much as they inform. And what’s with the blinding spotlights? Every rock-tinged show these days feels it has to scald the audience’s eyeballs with searing lighting flashes. Overall, the show could reduce its electronic special effects by half and lose nothing in visual impact. The cast doesn’t need the help. Their energy lights up the stage enough.

     As Danielle, Campbell’s black counterpart at Johnson High, Adrienne Warren displays great singing chops and plenty of attitude. I even caught a whiff of the “Crispin’s Day” speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” as Danielle rouses the Johnson students to meet the challenge from Truman. Elle McLemore plays Eva, the show’s villain, but McLemore is so petite and so cute she has trouble selling herself as the story’s nasty. But she can sing and dance with the best of them. Ryann Redmond plays Campbell’s chubby sidekick, a standard low comedy role until Redmond pounds out some impressive vocal ballads in the second act.

     The pit band is mostly electronic keyboards and percussion and the musicians romp and stomp through the Kitt-Miranda score with an appropriately potent decibel count. Highest props to Alex Lacamoire for his dance arrangements, abetted by Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography (he also directs). David Korins designed the set, Andrea Lauer the gaudy costumes, Jason Lyons the lighting, and Brian Ronan the sound.

        As it stands now, “Bring It On” is a certified crowd pleaser, especially for the teen-age clientele. The book will never be the show’s strong point, but it can be improved, maybe with a little less commitment to touchy feely explorations of racial and class conflicts. Definitely the first act needs brightening. But the cast deserves a hit and it’s just a matter of time before Louderman gets a star on her dressing room door.

        “Bring It On” runs through March 25 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 a.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on Wednesday, plus Saturday performances at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

           The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.   March 2012

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Memphis

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Memphis” comes to town trying to sell itself as a romping, stomping celebration of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll during its turbulent early years in the 1950’s. There is plenty of energy on the stage at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, especially from the dancers, but the show has a synthetic feeling to it. The book is predictable and the 19 songs emulate the music of the 1950’s, but they sound more like cover versions of the great anthems of the period.

“Memphis” centers on a young white male named Huey Calhoun, an illiterate doofus who falls in love with black music. Battling the racism of Memphis during the early 1950’s, Calhoun rises from local disc jockey to concert promoter, a blend of Alan Freed and Dick Clark. Calhoun falls for a young black singer named Felicia Farrell, an interracial relationship that could be hazardous to their health back in the segregated postwar era in Memphis.

Huey and Felicia ascend in their musical careers as their love interest gets tighter and tighter. Then, inevitably and predictably, they have a falling out. Huey wants to stay in Memphis, rejecting the possibility of a big career jump as a TV dance party host. Felicia wants to move to New York City, where recording offers await and she is free of the racial divide of the Deep South. So finally Huey goes his way and Felicia goes hers, but they have an on stage reconciliation at a Felicia concert to end the story on a warm and fuzzy, if rueful, note.

The familiar trajectory of the Huey-Felicia relationship isn’t the only cliché in the show. Huey’s mother starts off as a low class racist (“She ain’t nothin’ but a colored girl.”) But by the second act Mama has seen the light of racial harmony, belting out a hip-swiveling gospel solo, “Change Don’t Come Easy,” as blatant an audience pandering number as I have ever heard.

Then there is Gator, a bartender at a small African American club in Memphis. Gator has been a mute since the age of five, when he was traumatized by watching his father being lynched. But Gator breaks out of his silence in time to lead the first act finale in “Say a Prayer,” clearly intended to send the spectators into the lobby at intermission with a large lump in their collective throats.

The character of Huey Calhoun may have been inspired by Dewey Philips, a white Memphis disc jockey who was a pioneer in playing black music for white listeners on radio in Memphis. Huey is saved from a lifetime as a loser by his devotion to black music. He rides his brashness, and a bit of good luck, into Memphis stardom as the city’s leading radio personality (goodbye Perry Como, hello Elvis Presley). Anyone in Chicago old enough to remember Dick Biondi knows the DJ type. The love affair between Huey and Felicia is difficult to accept, especially from Felicia’s side, but that’s how Joe DiPietro wrote the book so that’s what the audience is stuck with.

Bryan Fenkart, with a cornpone accent, acts well and sings and dances passably in a demanding role that puts him on stage almost the entire show. Fenkart is locked into a cartoonish role but the opening night audience loved his aw shucks personality. Felicia Boswell displays a big voice as Felicia Farrell, and shows some welcome fire in ripping Huey for not going to New York City with her, away from the racist miasma of Memphis. Her verbal blast about life on the black side of the color line is the most honest moment in DiPietro’s book.

There are only a few supporting roles of consequence. As Mama, Julie Johnson is as persuasive as the writing allows, and she does milk her gospel number to considerable effect. Quentin Earl Darrington plays Felicia’s brother Delray and Will Mann plays Bobby, a black janitor at Huey’s radio station who turns out, surprise surprise, to have great rhythm and blues singing chops. William Parry does a fine job as the white radio station owner who attaches himself to Huey and Felicia as they rise in the music world. Parry doesn’t sing or dance, but he provides a welcome injection of realism into the wobbly narrative.

David Bryan’s music and lyrics superficially recreate the sounds of R&B and first generation rock but there is nothing original in the score and nothing the audience can take with it out of the theater, with the possible exception of the rousing “Everyone Wants to Be Black on Saturday Night.”

The biggest upside in “Memphis” resides in the chorus, full of exuberance and stamina as they jive through Serge Trujillo’s animated if not particularly original choreography. Director Christopher Ashley recreates his Broadway staging. David Gallo designed the skimpy sets and shares the projection design credit with Shawn Sagady. The television simulcasts of the on-stage dancing are the best technical effects in the show. Paul Tazewell designed the costumes, Howell Hinkley the lighting, and Ken Travis the sound. Alvin Hough, Jr., conducts the swinging offstage band.

“Memphis” puts the spectator in mind of “Hairspray,” another musical that dealt with the early years of rock ‘n’ roll and racial conflict, this time in Baltimore during the early 1960’s. But the “Hairspray” dance numbers soared far above anything in “Memphis” and the story was both funnier and more dramatic. The opening night audience at the Cadillac Palace did give the cast a standing ovation, knee-jerk tradition now in Chicagoland theater on first nights. Still, the audience applause sounded sincere. But anyone seeking authentic old-time rock ‘n’ roll in Chicago is advised to check out “Million Dollar Quartet” a couple of miles north of the Loop.

“Memphis” runs through December 4 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 8:30 p.m. (no evening performance on December 4). Tickets are $37 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

The show gets a rating of three stars.

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Mary Poppins

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Mary Poppins” is solid family entertainment. In the pantheon of Walt Disney stage musicals it ranks several steps above “Beauty and the Beast,” though below “The Lion King,” the gold standard for family musicals in our time.

       “Mary Poppins” has quietly become one of the megahits of the new millennium. It’s wrapping up its fifth year on Broadway with no signs of slowing down at the box office. The show has thrived on the road, playing in Chicago for 18 profitable weeks in 2009. “Mary Poppins” has returned to the Loop, this time for only four weeks at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. The current production displays the show’s abundant virtues along with a few lesser qualities.

       The musical is largely an adaptation of the hit 1964 motion picture that starred Julie Andrews in a fantasy about the nanny for all seasons back in late Victorian London. All the familiar songs from the film have been retained along with a handful of additions for the live version. Mary’s main complementary characters are all in place. Bert, the jaunty chimney sweep, still serves as a master of ceremonies. George and Winifred Banks and their children Jane and Michael still live at that famous address on Cherry Tree Lane, served by the irascible cook Mrs. Brill and butler Robertson Ay.

The touring edition features a wonderful performance by Rachel Wallace as an exceptionally young and attractive Mary Poppins. Wallace sings beautifully, dances up a storm when called upon, and has a wry dignity that embellishes the show’s humor and injects a welcome balance to the show’s sentimentality.

“Mary Poppins” has a sketchy book that basically provides the connecting tissue between the production numbers and songs. The lack of a sturdy book is perhaps the musical’s chief weakness. There are only a couple of plot points, neither of which occupies much stage time. One involves George Banks’s difficulties at his office. In the other, a fearsome nanny named Miss Andrew replaces the departed Mary Poppins, but Mary returns to the Banks household and dispatches the nasty lady in a duel out of a Harry Potter film.  Otherwise it’s an all singing, all dancing show that delivers a string of outstanding production numbers.

The backstage hero of the show is British ballet choreographer Matthew Bourne. Perhaps the best of his dance pieces is the extraordinary “Step in Time” that features Mary, Bert, the two Banks children and a chorus of chimney sweeps. The number’s sheer invention and energy blow away the audience. And yet some viewers might prefer Bourne’s choreography for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” a tongue twister in which the ensemble dances out the song’s title at warp speed in syncopated semaphore signs.

While the show is rightly billed as a family attraction, it’s not for the entire family. This is a long show, at least 21/2 hours, and will stretch the attention span of small children, especially at evening performances. At the Saturday night opening numerous seats were unoccupied for the second act. The production will have more appeal for viewers at the pre-teen and early teen level, many of whom attended the opening night and all seemed armed with picture phones. A reduction of 15 minutes in playing time would be a boom to both youngsters and adults in the audience.

In spite of the relatively short run in Chicago, the show doesn’t stint on production values. Bob Crowley’s sets and costumes remain colorful and creative and Howard Harrison’s lighting delivers some really wow effects. The audience even gets to watch Mary Poppins soar over their heads at the end of the show.

It’s Rachel Wallace’s show, but she gets plenty of help. Laird Mackintosh is every bit the stiff upper lip Englishman as George Banks and Blythe Wilson is his stalwart wife. Both sing and act (and sometimes dance) superbly. The two Banks children are called upon to perform demanding roles as actors and singers. Camden Angelis and Reese Sebastian Diaz are both outstanding troupers (they alternate with Annie Baltic and Dakota Ruiz) and from their first appearance they allayed my normal nervousness about children performing on the live stage.

Nicolas Dromard isn’t exactly a disappointment as Bert the chimney sweep but his personality doesn’t have much impact on the action during his many moments on the stage, mostly singing snatches of “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” But Rachel Izen is just right as Mrs. Brill and Janet MacEwen is affecting in her one song, “Feed the Birds.”

Leaving the theater, I reflected that this show is better than it needs to be. The creators could have coasted on the brand names of Walt Disney and the Mary Poppins children’s stories by P. L.Travers and the 1964 movie and done just fine at the box office with the family trade. Flooding the stage with so many rousing and imaginative production numbers is a gift to the audience. And so is the integrity of sending Chicagoland such an accomplished and professional group of performers.

   

“Mary Poppins” runs through November 6 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30. Tickets are $25 to $90. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.                  October 2011

The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

Contact Dan at  zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. 

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West Side Story

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “West Side Story” has always been about the singing and dancing. Leonard Bernstein’s score, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, and Jerome Robbins’ choreography elevated the show into the top tier of musical theater classics. But the book was always a problem.

        The touring production at the Cadillac Palace Theatre pays triumphant homage to the dancing and the songs and tries to address the potholes in Arthur Laurents’ original book. The remedial efforts are only partially successful. The dialogue still clunks with its “buddy boys” and “womb to tomb” faux gang argot. But this version has gone to a lot of trouble to rethink the show’s strengths and address its weaknesses, and their efforts result in a big payoff by refurbishing the vehicle for the new millennium. Indeed, this revival, which opened on Broadway in 2009, actually ran longer in New York City than the 1957 original.

     “West Side Story” attempts a modern update of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” with the action transferred from medieval Verona, Italy, to the gang infested streets of modern New York City. The feuding Montague and Capulet families are replaced by the rival street gangs, the Jets (recent American immigrant background) and the Sharks (new Hispanic arrivals from Puerto Rico). Maria (Juliet) and Tony (Romeo) still fall in love at first sight, their youthful passion snuffed out in a tragic ending.

    The narrative is carried by Robbins’ iconic choreography, reproduced with great vigor and style at the Cadillac Palace. Joey McKneely is credited with reproducing the 1957 dances and he’s captured the spirit of the original, thanks to an athletic and committed cluster of dancers representing the two gangs and their lady friends. McKneely adds a few new touched (the “Cool” number turns coed) but he nobly honors the Robbins vision.

        The Bernstein score, of course, is one of the most ravishing ever to see a musical stage. All the songs remain as melodic and expressive as ever, the honor roll including the romantic “Maria,” “Tonight,” and “Somewhere” as well as the comical and satirical “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” But every musical note in the show pays its way. It’s impossible to underestimate the value of Sondheim’s brilliant lyrics—marvels of word play and rhyme.

        “West Side Story” has always been Maria’s show, just as “Romeo and Juliet” belonged to Juliet. Ali Ewoldt starts out as a youthful and fetching teenager and grows into the character dramatically and vocally. Her duet with Michelle Aravena (as Anita) was a thrilling operatic climax to the evening’s singing. Aravena is very strong, delivering a spicy and fiery Rita Moreno-ish performance as the Puerto Rican lover of Bernardo, the Sharks leader.

        The male casting is uneven. Kyle Harris is more the well-scrubbed middle class college boy than the streetwise co-founder of the Jets and he has a very un-macho Irish tenor voice, but he has good chemistry with Ewoldt’s Maria and their sexual attraction is palpable in all their scenes. But the actor playing Riff is bland and the Bernardo doesn’t convince me his character is a feared gang leader.

             

        Whatever the weaknesses in the acting, they don’t inhibit the production numbers, notably a violent and convincing rumble at the end of the first act and the dream ballet “Somewhere” with stunning lighting highlights by designer Howell Binkley. The final moments have been revised to enhance the power of the story, though the final image may be confusing to some viewers. The revival also acknowledges the ethnic underpinnings of the story by injecting some dialogue and song lyrics in Spanish. The device does bringing the Puerto Rican side of the story into greater prominence but I thought the lapses into Spanish were arbitrary and occasionally sacrificed intelligibility for non-Spanish speakers in the cause of ethnic balance.

        The current staging brings out the social conflicts built into the story—ethnic rivalries, conflicts with the police, the striving for assimilation balanced against respect for one’s roots, the facile theories to explain complex social ills. “West Side Story” doesn’t attempt to be a documentary on urban problems but it touches on enough issues relevant today (are they ever!) to enrich the basic love story.

        The physical production was a bit minimalist, a necessary evil for productions that travel from city to city. The intimate scenes involving two characters were sometimes swallowed up in the vastness of the Cadillac Palace stage area.

             

        Whatever the blemishes, this production is likely to be the best performed revival of “West Side Story” we will see in a long time. The musical demands a large and skilled multi-talented ensemble and a full pit orchestra, requirements beyond the capabilities of local theaters. Lovers of this show, and of American musical theater in general, should seizes the moment.

        “West Side Story” runs through August 14 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com    July 2011

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Cirque Eloize iD

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – There is a third stream in circus presentation today. We have the traditional sawdust and tinsel productions typified by the Ringling Brothers extravaganzas. Then there is the Cirque du Soleil empire, with its New Age exoticism (and pretensions).

        The third stream has emerged in the last 20 years—productions that eliminate the customary trappings of the circus—animals, clowns, ringmaster, live band—in favor of a gritty, hip contemporary style clearly aimed at the under-30 audience. Locally, “Traces” and “Circus Dreams Illuminations” have carried the banner of the style in recent seasons, and now we are favored with another example, and perhaps the best of them all—Cirque Eloize, like Cirque du Soleil, from Montreal.

        Cirque Eloize (pronounced something like “SIRK ehl oh AZZ) has been touring since 1993. It’s staged six previous shows, and is finally breaking into the Chicago market with its seventh, called “iD” (pronounced eye DEE), in a too-short eight-performance run at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.

       Like “Traces” and “Cirque Dreams,” “iD” strives for an urban edge, drawing energy from, the vitality, and dangers, of the big city. “iD” is drenched in hip hop, rap, and break dancing. The recorded sound track is a high decibel concert of rock and electronic music and the multi-media light show is technologically right up to the minute. Aurally and visually the production is a feast for the eye and ear (or an assault, depending on one’s tolerance for sensory overload).

        But the music and special effects are really just the gift wrapping for the performances, which are terrific. The quality and imagination of the acts are often breathtaking. Take away the light show and the music and you would still have a world class circus.

             

        The company consists of 16 performers, all of whom look about 25 or less. There are familiar acts, like hand balancing, juggling, and aerial derring-do. There are also some superb novelty acts, climaxed by a trampoline demonstration by about half the company that is a dazzler in its precision, creativity, and risk. Not all of the ensemble performs individually, but everyone dances, triumphantly.

        The show pushes a big city ambience, with visual images of skyscrapers, tenements, graffiti, and high rise construction, complemented by the sounds of the city—the automobile horns, the sirens, the noise of street construction. Gangs appear, lightly menacing before the members burst into their acts. A marvelous jump rope number resembles the dance at the gym number from “West Side Story.”                         

    The show grabs the viewer in its first moments with a fine hand balancing demonstration. My favorite of the evening was juggler Nicolas Fortin, who kept in play an endless circuitry of tennis balls bounced off the stage and off clear plastic sheets in a blizzard of motion. The occasional missed ball only emphasized the difficulty and creativity of the act. Then there was Thibaut Philippe, who operated a bicycle like it was a trained animal, even bouncing his way up levels of the set with no safety net and no safety cable and no margin for error.

                   

        Every circus has a contortionist and Cirque Eloize has a doozy in Emi Vauthey, a lithe young lady who can virtually turn herself inside out. Contortionists tend to make me queasy but I couldn’t take my eyes off Vauthey in her representation of a boneless human being.

        The first half of the show has most of the energy. In the second act, the production chooses to turn moody and poetic, running against the grain of the intensity and exuberance that carries us along so mightily in the first hour. But the trampoline finale restores the high energy level to an Olympian level. It’s one of the greatest and most inventive acts I’ve ever seen at the circus and deservedly had the opening night roaring.

        The Cirque Eloize troupe is an international lot, coming from Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. They are all marvelous at what they do, and masters at conveying their joy in performing. Along with the artists mentioned above, the company consists of Dmytro Bogodist, Alona Burlachenko, Melissa Flerangile, Christian Garmatter, Xuan Le, Josianne Levasseur, Richard Maguire, Baptiste Montassier, Forty Nguyen, Hugo Quellet-Cote, Manda Rydman, and Ryan Shinji Muray. Applause to them all.

        The artistic brain trust consists of director Jeannot Painchaud, designers Robert Massicotte, Krzysztof Soroczynski, Linda Brunelle, Nicolas Descoteaux, Alexis Laurence, and Suzanne Trepanier, and composers Jean-Phi Goncalves and Alex McMahon. They are a talented lot. Hurry back!

        Cirque Eloize runs through May 8 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.   April 2011

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Les Miserables

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Local audiences have now been exposed to three separate versions of “Les Miserables” in the last two decades, the original spectacle-laden production in the Loop, the intimate in-the-round staging at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, and now the twenty-fifth anniversary edition at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. No matter what the shape or size, the musical comes out a masterpiece. The producers could probably present an underwater “Les Miz” that would earn a standing ovation.

    The differences between the current version and previous productions start with the opening scene. Instead of breaking rocks at hard labor, the convict Jean Vanjean is now a galley slave. This show is edgier, with bits of brutality and vulgarity I didn’t recollect from other versions. The visuals are probably the most radical departure. The famous turntable has been deleted, though the sets are still elaborate and creative. The projections feature artwork based on drawings by the novel’s author, Victor Hugo, that provide a new look, climaxed by an amazing journey through the sewers of Paris near the end.

       

    There are a few minor warts. The deaths of Gavroche and Eponine at the barricades are too perfunctory for such core characters. This is not the best sung “Les Miz” I have ever heard. The most impressive voices belong to Andrew Varela as the implacable Inspector Javert and Chasten Harmon as the adult Eponine. Harmon goes against the grain of the operatic sound of the rest of the ensemble with a powerful pop music style that reminds one of a Dianne Reeves at the top of her game. And Lawrence Clayton’s delivery of Valjean’s “Bring Him Home” is the best rendition I’ve ever heard of this much-ridiculed and much-parodied tearjerker.

  With all its bright new ideas, the new production holds up very well against its predecessors. The battle at the barricades remains powerful and somber. The turntable may be gone but the set design by Matt Kinley is still a sequence of eyefuls, like a series of panels morphing into floor to rafters tenements in mid nineteenth century Paris. New co-directors Laurence Connor and James Powell have put their mark on the show, embellishing virtually every scene while retaining their respect for the iconic original.

        We may get refurbished visions of “Liz Miz” again and again. It’s no stretch of the imagination to anticipate a fiftieth anniversary touring show. But what makes the musical so memorable remains what made it a megahit  back in 1985--a soaring score by Claude-Michel Schonberg and a fascinating adaptation of the Victor Hugo epic novel by Alain Boubil and others.

The scope of the narrative covers several turbulent decades in France during the early nineteenth century. The story is a pageant of French society, especially the injustices inflicted on a politically voiceless lower class. The action moves from the provinces to Paris, climaxed by the ill-fated student rebellion in 1832 that wiped out so many idealistic young men.

        The story moves speedily from incident to incident without losing its coherence. Schonberg harnesses a handful of recurrent musical themes that serve every dramatic situation, leading up to the lump-in-the-throat final scene. As a feat of storytelling, “Les Miz” stands alone in the history of modern musical theater.

        The new production brings in this tapestry of characters and individual storylines in less than three hours, many minutes fewer than previous versions. It’s a matter of pace. Nothing is rushed but there are no wasted moments (excluding a door that wouldn’t open for Valjean on opening night, a comical mishap that surely will never happen again).

        Yes, a few of the voices could have been better, but the show is so superb that its overarching merits trump any nits in the performances.  Welcome back and hurry back!

        “Les Miserables” runs through February 27 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 to $90. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

    The show gets a rating of four stars. February 2011

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Wicked

At the  Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Wicked” ran in the Loop for 3 ½ years starting in the summer of 2005 and then left for other cities. Now it’s back, though for only eight weeks, but the audience reaction remains the same. On opening night the Cadillac Palace Theatre was packed with enthusiastic spectators, with the usual large infusion of females from the 12 to 25 age bracket. And this production is at least as good as the one that set all kinds of records starting five years ago.

        

     The musical, as every theatergoer must know, is a gloss on the classic children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” as immortalized in American pop culture by the Judy Garland-starring motion-picture adaptation. Gregory Maguire wrote a long novel spinning off on the original story, but with some role reversals. The Wicked Witch of the West is now the heroine and the Good Witch of the East is, if not the bad person, at least a character operating on shifting moral ground.

      

         

     This is my third exposure to the musical and my reaction remains the same. The music is terrific, the production values are remarkable, and the book is shaky at best. But what happens on stage is so eye and ear catching that the inconsistencies of the narrative can be tolerated.

          The central characters are Glinda the witch of the east (who tirelessly insists that her name is really Galinda, until she finally gives up) and Elphaba the witch of the west. Glinda is a beautiful blonde, oozing ditzy self confidence. Poor Elphaba has a problem. Her skin is green, and that’s a turnoff for the smug rich kids at Shiz University, where she enrolls as a companion to her wheelchair ridden younger sister Nessarose. Part of the show’s attraction to schoolgirls is the Elphaba as a role model, an outsider swallowing her insecurities to stand up to the smugness and bullying of her classmates.

Through a misunderstanding, the ill matched young ladies are assigned the same room at the university. All this takes us well into the first act, the storyline resembling an airhead plot out of “Legally Blonde.”

          Then the narrative suddenly shifts in tone, and not for the first time. One of the professors teaching Glinda and Elphaba is a sympathetic talking goat named Dr. Dillamond. At one time intelligent talking animals were common on the campus, but they have been snuffed out and Dr. Dillamond is under attack himself from fascist forces never fully spelled out. So from being a chic lit comedy, “Wicked” reaches for social significance. Soon Elphaba turns rebel against the intolerance around her, symbolized by the wizard who lives and rules in the city of Oz. Elphaba proclaims her defiance in an electric first act finale, rising to the theater rafters as she belts out “Defying Gravity.” I can envision the nervous producers at the back of the theater on opening night on Broadway listening to the roaring spectator reaction to that number and realizing that they are soon to become very wealthy individuals.

          The story uses numerous reference points from  L. Frank Baum’s original novel and from the movie, many of them very funny. We get the back story on the Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the show ends with a surprise ending that devotees of Elphaba will find very satisfying.

             

          The stars of the Chicago production are Jackie Burns as Elphaba and Chandra Lee Schwartz as Glinda, and they are both glorious. Composer Stephen Schwartz showcases the characters with superb solo numbers that both actresses knock out of the park. Each lady can also act, either comedy or drama as the scene demands.

         The supporting performers include a couple of Chicago theater veterans. Gene Weygandt repeats his role as the wizard, navigating between genial and sympathetic and vaguely sinister and oppressive. The same contradiction emerges in Madame Morrible, an instructor at Shiz who begins the show as a pleasant and slightly eccentric old lady and morphs into a real villain, with no logical continuity between one and the other. But Barbara Robertson, as we have seen in countless Chicagoland productions, makes her role a success. Richard Blake as Fiyero makes his first appearance as a spoiled playboy, but under Elphaba’s anti-establishment influence he joins her as a  heroic rebel. Why the shift is anyone’s guess, except that maybe he has a thing for young females with green skin.

          There is no point in belaboring the story’s many potholes. The audience obviously doesn’t care and after a while neither did I. There is too much pageantry and fine singing and dancing to fuss over difficulties in the book. Eugene Lee’s set designs are a feast of fairytale-like spectacle, enhanced by Susan Hilferty’s costumes, Kenneth Posner’s lighting, and Tony Meola’s sound. The physical production is Broadway at its most imaginative and resourceful, a perfect environment for all the blockbuster songs and special effects.

          “Wicked” is a pricey show, with a $105 top for tickets, though the patron doesn’t have to pay top dollar to get a decent seat. But consider what the customer gets in exchange. The ensemble consists of a full three dozen people, arrayed in wardrobes of the gaudiest costumes, singing and dancing with immense skill and gusto. And in Burns and Schwartz the spectator will be treated to a pair of magnificent star turns. All that adds up to a pretty good return on the audience’s investment.

          “Wicked” runs through January 23 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Tickets are $35 to $105. For performance times and to purchase tickets, call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

          The show gets a rating of four stars.                   Dec. 2010

                          Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                                    Visit Dan on Facebook.

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The Lion King

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “The Lion King” always amazes. Even after my fourth viewing, the show still ravishes the eye and the ear with its creativity, imagination, and spectacle. The musical is now at the Cadillac Palace, and while it’s likely that we could see a touring production again, and again, it’s best to seize the moment now and journey to the Loop to enter the magic kingdom of Mufasa, Simba, and the evil Scar.

        “The Lion King,” as everyone should know, is Julie Taymor’s adaptation of the Walt Disney animated classic film of 1994. The stage version is closing out its 13^th year on Broadway and none of us will live to see it close. This ultimate family show will just renew its audience from generation to generation.

        “The Lion King” is set in the jungles and plains of Africa. It’s the only Disney movie without human characters, though all the animals in the show talk and behave like humans. The narrative is essentially a politically correct coming of age story about a young lion cub named Simba who flees into the wilderness after the death of his father, the lion king Mufasa. Scar, the king’s brother, wants the throne for himself and kills the king. But Scar convinces Simba that the cub is responsible for his father’s death and orders the lad to run away. Late in the show a grown up Simba returns to give Scar his comeuppance and claim the throne as the lion king.

       Audiences who enjoy this kind of “triumph of the human spirit” story will be emotionally entranced. But the big payoff is the unending and glorious flood of pageantry that covers the stage and often extends into the theater, starting with the parade of animals that surge down the aisles in the opening number, led by a puppet elephant 13 feet long and 11 feet high.

        The puppetry alone makes “The Lion King” a dazzler. The production features more than 200 puppets, designed by Taymor and Michael Curry—rod puppets, shadow puppets, and life-sized puppets.

     The scene stealers are Timon, a wisecracking meerkat who channels Bugs Bunny, and his sidekick, a flatulent warthog named Pumbaa. Both puppets are operated by handlers on stage but the voices and bodies of the two characters merge so seamlessly with their operators that the spectator almost instantly accepts the animals as living and self-contained figures.

        The scenic highlights are beyond counting. The stampede of the wildebeests is staged with eye-popping visual ingenuity. The grasslands of the African savannah are portrayed by massed chorus with boxes of tall grass on their heads. The giant head of the deceased Mufasa materializes to give his young son encouragement and advice. A performer impersonates an 18-foot tall giraffe, one of the 25 kinds of animals, birds, fish, and insects who populate the musical.

        Elton John and Tim Rice composed most of the musical score. None of the songs are memorable in a George Gershwin manner, but they are all functional. In any case, each musical number is enhanced by the sumptuous costumes and often rousing choreography by Garth Fagan. Plus there are the witty film projections, aerial stunts, and stunning lighting effects. In its visual variety, “The Lion King” must be the most exhilarating show in American musical theater history.

        Tickets to “The Lion King” aren’t cheap, but the patron can see where the money goes and every cent is well spent, from the vast wardrobe of sumptuous colorful robes to the birds whizzing above the audience on long poles. And all this came out of the head of one young woman.

        The production values for the touring show are top of the line. There are strong performances by Dionne Randolph as Mufasa, Adam Jacobs as the older Simba, and J. Anthony Crane channeling Cyril Ritchard as Scar. Special bouquets go to Nick Cordileone as Timon and Ben Lipitz as Pumbaa, one of most delightful comedy teams in the Disney motion picture canon. The three jive hyenas are played with hip lip-smacking nastiness by Omari Tau, Monica Patton, and Ben Roseberry.

        I saw the show on a weeknight. There were plenty of children in the audience, some almost babes in arms. They were all up past their bedtimes but I didn’t hear a whine or a fuss from any wee voice. Clearly the kiddies were as entranced by the show as their elders, the ultimate compliment to a truly one-of-a-kind theatrical event.

        “The Lion King” runs through November 27 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $108. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

          The show gets a rating of 4 stars.   October 2010

                        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

                             Visit Dan on Facebook.

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Shrek the Musical

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Shrek the Musical” closed on Broadway in January, after playing for about one year. That’s not a disgraceful run, but the show certainly deserves better if the highly entertaining production at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is any guide to the New York City version.

   Considering that “Mary Poppins,” a far less accomplished show, is well into its fourth year on Broadway, one wonders why “Shrek” earned such a comparatively brief stay. That’s between New York audiences and critics and their consciences. We have “Shrek” for eight weeks. Word of mouth could probably sustain a longer run, but we’ll take what we can get.

     What we get is a lavishly staged and superbly performed charmer of a musical that will cater to the basic needs of young patrons while delighting adults ready for a hip, high energy 2 ½ hours of amusement.

     “Shrek the Musical” is based on the enormously popular series of animated films, the fourth and final one now in area movie theaters. The title character is a green-skinned ogre and the paper-thin storyline traces Shrek’s journey from grumpy misanthrope to a character redeemed by the love of a good woman.

                      

        The musical lightly carries the footprints of “The Wiz,” “The Lion King,” “Spamalot,” and maybe “Wicked” and ”Into the Woods.” That’s heady company but the comparisons are defensible. 

        “Shrek” is a fantasy, fleshed out with super heroes of the fairy tale and nursery rhyme world like the Three Little Pigs, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio. But the core characters are the ogre himself, a princess named Fiona, and a wisecracking donkey. Every fairy tale needs a villain and “Shrek” comes up with the pompous Lord Farquaad, possibly the most amusing and unthreatening bad guy in fairy tale-dom.

        After a brief prologue, we meet Shrek living a sullen life alone in a swamp. Lord Farquaad dumps a passel of fairy tale characters on Shrek’s land, and Shrek is not amused. That triggers a lurching plot that takes Shrek and his donkey sidekick to the lair of a dragon to rescue Princess Fiona so she can marry Lord Farquaad, Shrek’s reward being the removal of the fairy tale characters from his swampland. After the usual misunderstandings, Shrek and Fiona fall in love and it gives away nothing to announce that everyone lives happily ever after, Lord Farquaad the notable exception.

        David Lindsay-Abaire’s book is serviceable, but his lyrics to Jeanine Tesori’s lively music are better. The score runs from Broadway pop to rhythm and blues, soul, and folk, with periodic snatches of classical melodies. The score won’t send the spectator out into the night humming, but the numbers are better than adequate within the framework of the show.

        The physical production is superior, from Tim Hatley’s scene and costume designs (Hatley also designed the many witty puppets) through Hugh Vanstone’s lighting and Peter Hylenski’s sound design. All the color and spectacle are put to exemplary use by a large ensemble that thrives on Josh Prince’s high stepping choreography. Co-directors Jason Moore and Rob Ashford get the highest marks for sustaining the zest and buoyancy of this complex production.

The clever visual bits keep on coming, from the massive dragon operated by a staff of visible stagehands to the little Gingerbread Man chattering away on his cookie platter.

        “Shrek the Musical” is a comedy but it’s a comedy with feeling. And there are easily digested morals in the narrative. Beauty is only skin deep. People should not be pre-judged on their appearance. We are all entitled to love. Building self-esteem may be work, but it’s worth the effort.

        Eric Petersen is just right as Shrek, tracing the ogre’s rise from misanthrope to hero and lover with charm and humor and some poignancy. He builds a character filled with real human emotion, and his performance is a major factor in elevating “Shrek” beyond a cartoon.

      Petersen receives abundant help from Haven Burton as a fetching and often swinging Fiona. This is not simpering princess waiting limply for her prince charming to sweep her away. The young lady has guts as well as beauty and Burton has a belting singing voice that fills the theater.

Alan Mingo Jr. does a crowd-pleasing Eddie Murray impersonation as the donkey, and David F.M. Vaughn is a sophisticated hoot as Lord Farquaad. It’s too bad the lord doesn’t have more stage time.  Vaughn plays Farquaad as a midget, his real legs cleverly concealed in his costume as he scuttles around the stage on his knees masked by artificial legs. The explanation of the lord’s ancestry as a midget is the funniest twist in a show loaded with funny moments. It’s also a prime example of the droll comedy that may elude the kiddies in the audience, but will tickle the older folks.

The pit orchestra under Andy Grobengieser’s musical direction is top of the line, from full-bore instrumental accompaniment to a couple of interludes using only acoustic guitar.

Frankly, I didn’t expect to get this much show from “Shrek the Musical.” But it’s all there, the professionalism, the creativity, the enthusiasm, the humor, and the heart. The first act is a little slow and the narrative is mostly a loosely connected string of set pieces. But that’s a small quibble stacked against the production’s many pleasures.

  “Shrek the Musical” runs through September 5 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $90. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.                        August 2010

 

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Beauty and the Beast

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—The many youngsters at the opening night performance of “Beauty and the Beast” sat rapt throughout the long show. Only a rare chirp was heard from kiddies who were too young to be in any theater. The current touring production of the Disney musical has some soft spots, but obviously not enough to mar the pleasure of the boys and girls in the audience at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.

        “Beauty and the Beast” is in the top echelon of Disney stage musicals, not at the level of “The Lion King” but still a canny blend of spectacle, a solid score, a romantic story, and a cluster of delicious comic characters.

        The stage vehicle is an adaptation of the classic 1991 Disney animated film. The live musical ran from 1994 to 2007 on Broadway and continues to have a vigorous extended life on the road. The film score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman has been augmented by addition numbers by Menken and Tim Rice.

        The “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale dates back at least to the 1500’s and tells the story of a beautiful girl whose love for an enchanted prince frees him from a spell as a hideous beast ands allows him to turn back into a prince and get the girl. The story has been Disneyfied with the addition of comic humanized household objects who serve the beast in his enchanted castle in the dark, dark woods.

        The heroine is Belle, a girl considered odd by the residents of her village because she loves to read books. The villain is Gaston, a blowhard hunk of a young man who fancies Belle as his wife and is furious when the girl rejects him. 

        Belle becomes a forced guest in the beast’s castle and the crux of the story resides in the blossoming affection between the two. The disagreeable Gaston provides some conflict, leading up to a duel to the death with the beast that may be a little intense for some young viewers. But the show ends on an ostentatiously happy note with true love rewarded, the bad guy suitable dispatched, and the supporting characters paired off neatly.

        The production at the Cadillac Palace looks very good for a touring production. The costumes are opulent, occasionally even sexy. The sets are splashy, slid on and off stage by mute characters dressed in weird outfits. The special effects hold up, especially in the final scene when the beast levitates into the air and turns back into the handsome prince.

        The two best songs in the score are “Be Our Guest” and the title song. “Be Our Guest” is the major production number in the show, a full-tilt song and dance extravaganza that puts the entire ensemble on stage hoofing and singing and wearing gaudy costumes.

        The production profits enormously from Liz Shivener’s performance as Belle. Shivener has a strong, pure voice and a sturdy stage presence. Her Belle is no simpering maiden in distress awaiting rescue by a dashing hero. This Belle can take care of herself very nicely, standing up firmly to both the bullying Gaston and the fearsome looking beast.

        Shivener’s co-stars don’t match her performance. Justin Glaser lacks menace as the beast in his early scenes. Hopefully, Glaser was just having a bad night singing. Nathaniel Hackmann has the looks for a Gaston but he needs to ramp up the nastiness. At present his Gaston is just petulant.

        This production caters to children more than other productions I’ve seen. Earlier versions were darker and more firmly dramatic. This one descends into silliness, mugging, and pratfalls too much. Possibly the action has been watered down because Disney considers the original version a little too scary for the youngest members of the audience on the road.

        The supporting performers are all well up to the mark. That includes Sabina Petra as Mrs. Potts, Merritt David Janes and Keith Kirkwood as Lumiere and Cogsworth, and Jen Bechter as the madame. Erin Elizabeth Coors is fine as Babette, but I never figured out why the character was in the show. She does look good in a skimpy costume. Christopher Spencer gets what he can from the role of Belle’s dotty father (who looked more like her grandfather). Michael Fatica got lots of laughs in the slapstick role of Gaston’s much-pummeled sidekick Lefou, which shows there is no accounting for taste.

        Matt West’s choreography is sprightly, if not particularly innovative, and the pit orchestra sounded good.

        “Beauty and the Beast” is a good enough show not to require the slight dumbing down of this production. But young patrons will have fun and the adults should enjoy the professionalism of the staging. Everyone will applaud Liz Shivener, a performer with leading lady written all over her.

        “Beauty and the Beast” runs through April 4 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. (no evening performance April 4). Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.   March 2010

                   Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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An Evening with

Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—The Cadillac Palace Theatre was loaded with Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone idolaters on Tuesday night. What they saw and heard was a lot of charm from the stars, plenty of unfamiliar songs, and surprisingly few of the vocal fireworks they might have expected from such a dynamic duo.

        Patinkin and LuPone have been touring as a concert pair since 2007 in a show neutrally titled “An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin,” and it’s stopping in Chicago for a paltry six performances. 

        “An Evening With…” was co-conceived and directed by Patinkin and consists of selections from the twentieth century American musical theater, especially music by Stephen Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The only dialogue comes from scenes from “South Pacific” and “Carousel.” Otherwise, the show is a steady flow of music, which mercifully limits the intrusive bursts of knee-jerk audience applause that would erupt if the performers paused after each number.

        There is no narrative to the program, but overall the music deals with romantic relationships, sometimes humorously but more often ruefully. Patinkin and LuPone play off each other, LuPone singing in her straight ahead often belting style while Patinkin performs in his highly personal emotions-on-his-sleeve manner.

        The production focuses entirely on the stars. There is no scenery other than a scattering of stage lights. Props consist of two pairs of chairs. Both singers are dressed all in black, LuPone in a plain and unflattering dress. The musical accompaniment is provided discreetly at the side of the stage by pianist and music director Paul Ford along with bassist Scott Rosenthal. The minimal choreography by Ann Reinking adds grace notes to the staging without unduly taxing the stars, now firmly in middle age. Eric Cornwell designed the mood-setting lighting.

        The highlight of the first act was a sequence from “South Pacific” with LuPone as nurse Nelly Forbush and Patinkin as French planter Emile DeBecque. For me, the key first act moments came in two selections from Sondheim’s “Company,” a duet of “Another Hundred People” and LuPone’s delicious tongue-twisting rendition of “Getting Married Today.” Some local theater needs to revive this masterpiece. We’ve been without a production of “Company” far too long.

        The first act songs leaned toward the passionate and the reflective, but there were comic numbers like “April in Fairbanks,” which segwayed neatly from “April in Paris.” LuPone and Patinkin mugged it up gleefully in “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and they collaborated on a moving rendition of “A Quiet Thing.” But in spite of numerous stirring moments the opening act lacked the electricity one would have anticipated from two such show stopping performers.

        The second act allowed the stars to loosen up and display more of their personality. Patinkin especially played to his strengths as an actor/singer in  “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues” from “Follies” and “Franklin Shepard Inc.” from “Merrily We Roll Along.” But the heart of the act, and maybe of the evening, was a sequence from “Carousel,” with its gorgeous melodies and heartbreaking emotion.

        Many audience members doubtless expected a more personal stamp to the show, with byplay and chat from LuPone and Patinkin. This is a carefully crafted production with almost no spontaneity, not necessarily a bad thing normally, but with two outsized musical divas like LuPone and Patinkin one would have hoped for informality to enhance their connection with the spectators.

        Many of the songs have no context. Very few patrons have been exposed to the Sondheim commercial flop “Merrily We Roll Along” and yet we heard a package of five songs from the show. Here’s where a little casual exposition from the stage would have been helpful. The success of the “South Pacific” and “Carousel” sequences partly lies in audience familiarity with the shows.

        The show ran barely 90 minutes of stage time, plus an intermission, with no encores. And the LuPone signature number “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” listed in the playbill as the first act finale, was omitted without explanation. 

        One’s reaction to “An Evening With…” resides with one’s expectations. The music was fine. How could it not be with two such eminent performers? But some of us would have enjoyed hearing some words along with the music. Patinkin in particular is a Chicagoan and his anecdotes about his local background would have added spice the evening. They certainly ornamented his previous solo concerts in the city. LuPone’s glorious history on the musical stage surely could have elicited some comments for audience enjoyment. LuPone and Patinkin go back decades, with both starring in the original Broadway production of “Evita” in 1979. They could have shared a tale or two about their show business lives together.

        But “An Evening With…” isn’t designed as a show catering to informality and anecdote. Taken on its own terms, it’s a success. But it could have been a more expansive evening with an intimate touch the adoring audience would have lapped up.

        “An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin” runs through Sunday at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Weeknight performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday night performances start at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 to $120. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.         March 2010

                Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
************************        101 Dalmatians

 At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

   CHICAGO —The kids on stage in “The 101 Dalmatians Musical” are loaded with energy and talent. The dogs in their brief appearances are a delight. Everything else about the show is pretty bad.

        “101 Dalmatians” is in Chicago for a two-week visit as part of a cross-country tour that will end in New York City, but prudently not on Broadway, where reviewers would massacre the vehicle in its present form.  This is basically a children’s show that would entertain kiddies in a local park field house on a Saturday morning. But as a full-blown production charging Loop prices, it’s a disaster, the child performers and doggies excepted.

        The musical is based on a popular 1956 children’s novel by Dodie Smith that was adapted into a classic animated movie by the Walt Disney studio in 1961. The setting is London, in 1957. The main characters are a pack of cute Dalmatian dogs and a villain named Cruella De Vil, one of Disney’s great character names. Cruella kidnaps Dalmatians to use their white and black coats as fabric for her line of designer furs.

       What’s wrong with the musical is almost everything. The book by BT McNicholl lacks narrative drive and suspense. The humor ranges from the inane and silly to the occasional off color line, a startling lapse for a show so clearly aimed at a young audience. The score was composed by Dennis DeYoung, a founding member of the rock group Styx. The “Dalmatians” producers may have hoped to introduce a fresh new voice to American music theater in DeYoung. Instead, the audience hears an unmemorable, derivative score with too many echoes of previous Broadway musicals.

       And then there are the stilts. The show puts all the human characters on stilts to elevate them in size over the canine characters. The gimmick succeeds only in making the actors teeter perilously across the stage, distracting the audience with expectations that sooner or later someone is going to take a painful tumble. The stilts contribute to the uninspired choreography by Warren Carlyle. How much creative dancing can one expect from performers who mainly are trying to remain upright?

        The nominal star is Sara Gettelfinger, who plays Cruella. The nasty Cruella should dominate the show, but she only appears in a handful of scenes, the final one showing her being burned alive on stage, an odd conceit to put before an audience filled with youngsters. Rachel York began the tour as Cruella and received rave reviews. But she left the show on January 31 and the Chicago run is breaking in Gettelfinger, who looks physically awkward in the role (those darn stilts again), and belts her numbers like she was aiming at the world record for decibel count.

        The show’s visual look is perplexing. The time is supposed to be 1957 but Robert Morgan’s costumes look like we are in a more Edwardian “Mary Poppins” chronological period. The dog impersonators wear white suits with black spots to simulate Dalmatians, an OK if not very imaginative concept.

        The English setting requires English accents, which are all over the place in this production. And the dog characters speak with an American accent. Maybe it’s too difficult to teach American child actors to speak with an English brogue, but the scrambled dialects further minimized the show’s sense of atmosphere. The scenic design by Heidi Ettinger leans toward elementary stylized cutouts. There are some amusing stick puppet appearances but this is not a visually striking production.

        The material is weak but the staging doesn’t help, lacking sparkle, wit, or drama. The usually reliable Jerry Zaks directs but he hasn’t found the keys to turn this limp enterprise into the charming, invigorating show it should be. What we end up with is a game cast of 30 humans and 15 cute dogs vainly seeking an entertaining musical. The only winning moment of the evening comes at the end of the show when several of the Dalmatians dash about the stage performing delightful pets tricks.

        The enterprise is so dispiriting, again excusing the kids and the dogs, that one leaves the theater wondering if a workable musical could be carved out of the story. Yet consider the success of “Mary Poppins,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Beauty and the Beast.” They all found a way to translate children’s literary classics into successful stage musicals that appeal to children without boring adults.  Not so here.

        “The 101 Dalmatians Musical” runs through February 28 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. (no evening performance February 28). Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 200 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of two stars.     February 2010

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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Dreamgirls

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—The new revival of “Dreamgirls” has assembled as impressive a collection of big voices as I’ve ever heard on the musical stage. And do they ever sing big! Lovers of blast furnace vocalizing will be in pure heaven as one singer after another raises the decibel count to the stratosphere. And these performers do this eight times a week?

        “Dreamgirls” opened on Broadway in 1981 and ran well into 1985. Then came an all-star motion picture version released in 2006 and now the show has been remounted, starting its national tour last November at the legendary Apollo Theatre in Harlem, a plausible venue for a show business story about a black girl signing group in the 1960’s that just might be modeled on the Supremes.

    The “Dreamgirls” story is the conventional backstage saga about star struck young people who struggle for recognition, reach the top as a singing group called the Dreams, and then fracture under the pressures of success before a touchy feely final scene of reconciliation. Nothing new here, but it’s the manner more than the matter that should make the “Dreamgirls” revival as big a hit as the original.

        First, there are those voices, especially among the young females. The central character is Effie White, sung with leather-lunged ferocity by Mora Angela. She’s in the line of full figured powerhouse singing Effies that began with Jennifer Holliday on Broadway and continued with Jennifer Hudson in the movie. But Angela is only the first among equals. There’s Syesha Mercado as the Diana Ross component of the Dreams, and Adrienne Warren and Margaret Hoffman as the remaining Dreams. They all get multiple opportunities at breaking the sound barrier, and the second-act duet between Mercado and Angela on “Listen” resembles a vocalizing gunfight at the OK Coral.

        The male end of the belting is led by Chicago’s own Chester Gregory, brilliant as the James Brown-like James “Thunder” Early. Gregory has grown in physical and artistic stature since his early glory days at the Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago. He tears up the stage in his musical numbers and also delivers the best shaded acting job in the cast as a womanizer and a man tortured by the possibility that he has become obsolete in modern show business.

     Chaz Lamar Sheperd gives a persuasive performance as Curtis Taylor, Jr., the Svengali manager of the Dreams who manipulates them to the top by fair means and foul. Presumably Taylor is the villain in the story and Effie the heroic victim after Taylor replaces her as the Dreams lead singer by the more petite and smoother Deena. But in this production Taylor comes across as a man just doing what he needs to do to muscle the Dreams and James Early to the head of the line in the white dominated music world of the 1960’s. And Effie acts like a petulant diva, plenty talented but temperamental and self absorbed.

       Other performing contributions come from Trevon Davis as Effie’s songwriting brother, and Milton Craig Nealy as a show business manager of the older, more courtly school. A collective salute goes to the large, skilled, and exuberant chorus of dancers.

        The story touches on how the white pop music establishment stole from the more authentic African American performers and forced black singers and musicians to dilute their style to gain commercial acceptance among white audiences. But this is not a show of deep racial or social commentary. At its best it’s a glorious celebration of rhythm and blues music, and “Dreamgirls” is at its best a gratifying amount of stage time.

         There is talent aplenty on stage but there is just as much ability behind the scenes. Lighting designer Ken Billington, set designer Robin Wagner, and an organization called Howard Werner/Lightswitch have collaborated to create a spectacular light show for the production numbers, using revolving floor-to-ceiling panels as screens for dazzling multi media visual effects. William Ivey Long designed a massive wardrobe of costumes that go in heavily for colorful pastels to capture the gaudy Motown era of the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

     Choreographer Robert Longbottom (who also directs) created dances that reflect the synchronized dance movements of the disco period. There is one weird interlude in the long “Steppen’ to the Bad Side” production number that reverts to the Busby Berkeley-June Taylor style of massed dancers, complete with day-glo suitcases and hats.  It was great to look at but its retro style seemed to plummet in from a musical of a generation earlier.

        A special note of commendation goes to the off stage dressers who enable the stars to change from one glitzy outfit to another in a nanosecond. Their feats of costume prestidigitation are breathtaking.

        The first act of “Dreamgirls” is the stronger of the two. It contains the best production numbers and the largest helping of Chester Gregory. The second act concentrates mostly on the romantic and career strife among the main characters. As I didn’t get emotionally involved with any of the characters, Effie included, the resolution of their personal and professional anxieties didn’t move me much. Less soap opera and more singing and dance would buff up the concluding act nicely.

        Whatever the weaknesses in Tom Eyen’s book and the relentless volume of the singing, they are dwarfed by Henry Krieger’s music (Eyen wrote the lyrics) and the sheer energy of the ensemble. Combine that with the eye popping physical production and you have a show of uncommon professionalism and entertainment value.

        “Dreamgirls” runs through January 31 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street, as a presentation of Broadway in Chicago. Most performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. (no evening performance January 31). Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayinChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.   January 2010

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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In the Heights

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—Lin-Manuel Miranda became the buzz figure of American musical theater last year with the success of “In the Heights,” an exuberant slice-of-life portrayal of life in the Washington Heights Latino neighborhood of New York City. The Heights is to Latinos what Harlem is to African Americans, an ethnic oasis nestled within white America.

        Miranda provides the music and lyrics for the show and also was the star, playing Usnavi, an upbeat young rap-singer who owns a small grocery and serves as the audience’s guide in the Heights. Usnavi, we learn halfway through the evening, really stands for “U.S. Navy” for comical reasons.

        The show tries to carry the audience along with its Latin beat and high velocity dancing. The score is a mixture of rhythmic numbers in the Latin style and sentimental ballads. The rhythm numbers tend to sound alike but they provide the superstructure for plenty of joyous dancing choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler.

        “In the Heights” is making a three-week stop at the Cadillac Palace. The cast is first rate, filled with strong and expressive voices and exuberant dancing feet. This is a musical with lots of heart that wants to be loved by the audience. I admire its zest and the performances and I wish I enjoyed the show more than I did.

      The main difficulty resides in the squeaky clean book by Quiara Alegria Hudes that offers a very soft focus view of the barrio. Life in the Heights may have its problems, but in the Hudes book they don’t include gangs, drugs, crime, and violence. The biggest dramatic conflict lies with whether Nina will return to Stanford University after dropping out for lack of money. Or whether her father will accept Benny, a non-Latino young man and a lowly employee in the father’s gypsy cab company, as her beau.

     There are other conflicts among the dozen or so main characters, but they are all of a soap opera nature. The book needs some edge to leaven the sweetness and light of endearing characters like Usnavi’s abuela (grandmother) and the local color figures like the man who sells flavored snow cones from a pushcart. Dance numbers on the order of the Mambo from “West Side Story” or the satirical “America” from the same show would lend some grit to the musical’s pervading niceness. The most anti-social action comes from a young man who sprays graffiti onto walls in the neighborhood.

        Right now the show lacks tension and runs too long, even at the traditional 2½ hours of modern musicals. The final scenes where the locals depart for other parts of the city should bring a lump to the viewer’s throat like the residents of Anatevka leaving their village in “Fiddler on the Roof,” but it doesn’t rise to the desired emotional pitch.

        The ensemble certainly does what it can to keep the show buoyant with high spirits and salsa-flavored sass. Kyle Beltran assumes the role of Usnavi. He is an appealing performer and his frequent excursions into rap singing come trippingly off the tongue. Whether the audience can keep up with his high speed rapping is a matter for each spectator to deal with.

        Beltran is assisted by an exemplary ensemble. In no particular order, there are star turns by Elise Santora as the abuela, Arielle Jacobs as Nina the Stanford drop-out, Daniel Bolero and Natalie Toro as Nina’s conflicted parents, Isabel Santiago as Daniela, the saucy owner of a local beauty shop, Genny Lois Padilla as Carla, another feisty local lass, David Baida as the street vendor, Rogelio Douglas Jr. as Benny, Shaun Taylor-Corbett as Usnavi’s wiseguy teen-age cousin Sonny, and the sexy Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer as Vanessa, a young woman who wants out of the ‘hood. The bright dancing and singing chorus representing other denizens of the neighborhood also does its part in sustaining the show’s energy.

        Anna Louizos’s set is a marvel of atmospheric detail, the George Washington Bridge looming in the background with and orchestrations with Bill Sherman a foreground of seedy shops and apartments. There is expressive and dramatic lighting designed by Howell Binkley and a large wardrobe of colorful costumes designed by Paul Tazewell. Thomas Kail is the director.

    Under Alex Lacamoire’s directing and orchestrations and arrangements with Bill Sherman, the band is one of the most exciting I’ve ever heard in a musical orchestra pit. If the group ever gave a concert of salsa and Latin jazz music, it would blow the roof off.

        The audience reaction on opening night was rousing, which is normal on opening night. But clearly many attendees responded to the enthusiasm of the performers, the exhilaration of much of the music and dancing, and the yearning and optimism of the main characters. For these spectators, the tepid book is no impediment to having a great time. So be it. I was close to bored for much of the show, especially as the second act slowly wound down in a gush of sentimentality. But Lin-Manuel Miranda is certainly a composer to be watched. Hopefully his next show will supply him with a story that matches his skills as songwriter and lyricist.

        “In the Heights” runs through January 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performance times vary with the holidays. Tickets are $18 to $90. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.   December 2009

                     Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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Young Frankenstein

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—There is one glorious scene late in “Young Frankenstein,” when the monster in white tie and tails sings and dances to Irving Berlin’s “Putting on the Ritz.” Finally, after a long evening of mere professionalism the show finally reaches a moment of inspiration.

        “Young Frankenstein” is playing the Cadillac Palace Theatre for a six-week run. It comes to the Loop with the highest artistic credentials and an accompanying reputation as something of a disappointment.  This was a musical based on the 1974 movie that has become one of the most affectionately remembered comedies in American cinema history. Mel Brooks, the creator of the movie, wrote the score and co-wrote the book with Thomas Meehan. The full and immodest title of the musical is ”The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein.”                           

        Brooks and Meehan were the guys who concocted “The Producers.” No wonder anticipation was high when “Young Frankenstein” opened on Broadway two years ago. But the New York reviews were mixed and the ticket prices massive (up to $450 for a premium ticket), so a show that was expected to be a mega hit closed after less than 500 regular performances.

        “Young Frankenstein” certainly is eager to please. Brooks tries everything to make the audience laugh, from vaudeville and Borscht Belt humor (especially the heavy handed sexual double entendres) to referential jokes and sight gags about old movies, including Brooks’s own canon of film comedy. And the show certainly isn’t done on the cheap. The original Broadway production was rumored to carry a $16 million tab. The touring version at the Cadillac Palace has a Broadway sheen to its production values, always a hallmark of Broadway In Chicago attractions in the Loop.

     The cast includes two of the stars of the Broadway staging, Roger Bart as Dr. Frankenstein and Shuler Hensley as the monster. They are ably buttressed by Cory English as the wily dwarf Igor, Beth Curry as Frankenstein’s pampered fiancé Elizabeth, Anne Horak as the buxom Inga (all the females in the ensemble qualify as buxom), and Joanna Glushak as the sinister housekeeper Frau Blucher. And Brad Oscar does deft double duty as the Transylvanian policeman Inspector Kemp and the blind hermit in the forest who briefly becomes the monster’s well-meaning but destructive host.

        Bart tries to channel Gene Wilder’s performance from the film version but he lacks Wilder’s quirky comic flair. Shuler’s monster makes a comparatively late appearance and spends much of his stage time making inarticulate roaring sounds, yet he’s the most three-dimensional character of the evening.

        The book follows the movie closely, down to incorporating lines from the film into the dialogue and song lyrics.  But the Brooks score strikes no sparks and most surprising, Susan Stroman’s choreography is only adequate, always excepting the terrific “Putting on the Ritz” number. 

        Robin Wagner’s sets, Jonathan Dean’s sound design, William Ivey Long’s costumes, and Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting effects are all impressive, and occasionally blinding and ear shattering. The laboratory where Frankenstein creates his monster has all kinds of mock scientific gadgets, especially flashing coils and tubes and sparks. No question, “Young Frankenstein” is a state-of-the-art technical achievement. You can certainly see where the $16 million went.

        But a musical cannot rely too much on special effects. There needs to be some genuine and sustained wit in the dialogue and songs, and a little recognizable humanity in the characters. The sexual innuendos shouldn’t be so desperate or obvious. And the narrative, so clever and seamless on the screen, is reduced to a choppy sequence of scenes that turn too much of the show into a hit or miss revue. “Spamalot” follows the same format and does it better.

       “The Producers” was a natural for adapting to the stage. After all, it was a movie about putting on a show. As a film, “Young Frankenstein” was a marvelous parody of the horror movies of the 1930’s, but maybe the material just doesn’t translate comfortably to the stage.

     Still, “Young Frankenstein” is by no means a disaster.  Lovers of the movie will take pleasure in all the in jokes. Some of the giggles are legitimate, and the Brooks brand of genial vulgarity has its irresistible moments. Horak and Glushak are really good and everyone on stage does work so hard to sell the show.

     So “Young Frankenstein” is no “The Producers” (a comparison Brooks must be sick of by now). But a show can be pretty good and not be as good as “The Producers.” “Young Frankenstein” never sinks below the modestly entertaining level and rises above that in much of the second act. That may be faint praise, but so be it.

        “Young Frankenstein” runs through December 13 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $30 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.            November 2009

                  Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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Mary Poppins

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—An east wind has blown Mary Poppins to the Cadillac Palace Theatre where the indomitable English nanny will enthrall packed houses for the next four months.

   “Mary Poppins” is the season’s most highly anticipated musical and it doesn’t disappoint. Sure, Julian Fellowes’s book might be a little stronger, but the cast is sensational, the spirit and music of the beloved 1964 movie version have been retained, the staging is dazzling, and the show injects just enough moral lessons and sentimentality to give the evening (or matinee) a bit of substance.

         

   The touring production features the original Broadway stars in Ashley Brown as Mary Poppins and Gavin Lee as Bert, the roles immortalized by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in the film.  They are surrounded by a huge and exuberant cast, all of Broadway caliber. The performances are exemplary, but the physical production is the stunner, thanks largely to an English genius named Bob Crowley who has designed a spectacular array of colorful costumes and imaginative sets.

        The red hot contemporary ballet choreographer Matthew Bourne has created the terrific dances, capped by Bert hoofing his way up the side of the proscenium, upside down on top of the stage, and back down again on the other side. In the original Mary Poppins novels by P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins flies with the aid of her open umbrella, and Mary levitates in the musical, soaring high above the main stage and over the balcony in the show’s finale.

        The show is set roughly in the Edwardian era of the early twentieth century in London, especially at the famous address of Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the home of George and Winifred Banks and their two bumptious children Jane and Michael. Mary appears magically one day in response to an advertisement for a nanny after the two children had driven away a half dozen ladies with their noisesome behavior. Mary Poppins immediately takes charge, and that’s about all there is to the story.

     Indeed, the show is more a procession of production numbers than a coherent narrative. There is one episode in which Mary Poppins overcomes a nasty nanny named Miss Andrew in a battle that resembles the conflict between the good witch and the evil witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” Then there is Mr. Banks’s problems at the bank where he works, ending happily with the virtues of decency and compassion triumphing.

       Possibly the many children in the audience will profit from the uplifting message of the show, but the big payoff resides in the sheer theatricality of “Mary Poppins.” In one scene in a London park, classical statues come to life perform a ballet on the stage. The “Step in Time” number in the second act displays a battalion of chimney sweeps in one of the most exhilarating dance number’s I’ve ever seen.

        The music is a blend of the original movie score by Richard and Robert Sherman and new material composed by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. The familiar film numbers are all present, like “Chim Chim Cher-ee” (a running theme), “Practically Perfect,” “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Anything Can Happen,” and, of course, “Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious,” the inspiration for another terrific dance number.

        Crowley’s sets take the audience from the interior of the Banks home to local parks, the rooftops of London, and up into the sky, harnessing the latest in stage technology. In years to come, smaller and less equipped theaters will have their shot at “Mary Poppins” but the show needs to be seen in all the high tech splendor now so gloriously on display at the Cadillac Palace. Crowley’s wardrobe of countless costumes covers the entire spectrum of the color wheel. Howard Harrison’s lighting is state of the art.

        There has been some criticism of the musical for playing down the darker elements of the Travers novels. Ashley Brown plays the lady with spirit, implacable self confidence, humor, and feeling.  If that isn’t exactly what Travers had in mind for her heroine, it’s plenty good enough for this show. Plus Brown sings and dances like a dream.

        Gavin Lee’s Bert is the audience’s guide through the musical. He’s breezy, charming, and a superior dancer. That’s what the role requires and that’s what Lee delivers.

        Karl Kenzler and Megan Osterhaus are very strong as Mr. and Mrs. Banks, carrying the weight of the show’s forays into narrative substance. The characters touch on feminism and parenting issues, but without slowing the show down with excessive soap boxing. Valerie Boyle is just right as the blustery and lovable housekeeper Mrs. Brill and Ellen Harvey does a nice nasty turn as the disagreeable Miss Andrew. Mary VanArsdel has a moving solo as the bird woman and Q. Smith as the mysterious and exuberant Mrs. Corry leads the ensemble in the high energy “Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious” number.

     “Mary Poppins” is the best family musical to play the Loop since “Beauty and the Beast,” and its warmth and spectacle exceed that show by a wide margin. The opening night audience was heavily populated by children up way past their bedtimes and I didn’t hear a discordant whine from any of them. They were totally entranced by the show, but then so were their parents and guardians.

        “Mary Poppins” runs through July 12 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $90. Call 312 902 1400 or visit www.BroadwayinChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com                       March 2009

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Dirty Dancing

At the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—Will “Dirty Dancing” be the next big thing on the American musical stage? Very likely. It certainly has plenty going for it.

        The show is based on one of the iconic American movies of the 1980’s. It’s been fine tuned since 2004 with popular stagings in Australia, Germany, England, and Canada. The production features plenty of high energy dancing, some superb visual effects, terrific performances by the two principle females, and a knockout closing number.

That should be enough to promote the show to hit status, especially because it has a build-in audience ready to squeal their delight throughout the evening, at least on the evidence of the opening night reaction at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.

The show does have its imperfections. The first act starts too slowly and the story meanders at low wattage until the second act. The chemistry between the two leading characters isn’t hot enough and there are so many musical numbers that the plot gets squeezed.

The musical, portentously titled “Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage,” is basically a familiar nostalgic coming of age tale, a saga of an idealistic teenage girl who bumps into some of life’s hard realities during the summer of 1963 and finds romance, ballet, and rock and roll dancing along the way.

The story takes place at a Catskills, New York, summer resort called Kellerman’s. Frances “Baby” Houseman and her sister and parents come to the resort of a family vacation. There Baby starts a steamy relationship with a handsome and rebellious dancer on the resort’s entertainment staff. The story also lightly touches on social issues, like the civil rights turmoil of the time and a then illegal abortion.

But mostly “Dirty Dancing” is about dancing, with the focus on Baby Houseman and the dreamboat staff dancer Johnny Castle. Johnny teaches Baby how to dance and also initiates her into the wonderful world of sex.  In the original movie Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey heated up the screen with their erotic frisson. In the musical, the roles go to Amanda Leigh Cobb and Josef Brown.

Cobb is sensational. She looks a lot like Grey, dances superbly, and brings the character alive emotionally as matters of social justice, family conflict, and a sexual connection with Johnny all turn her safe suburban world upside down.

Brown has the looks and dancing skills, but his Johnny doesn’t have the James Dean-young Marlon Brando intensity that Swayze brought to the role.  There is more confusion than rebellion in his performance but the guy sure looks great with his shirt off.

The show is a progression of short scenes, most of them involving dancing to either original music or many of the rock/pop standards of the early 1960’s. The finale is reserved for the film score’s big hit, “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life,” a number that had the Cadillac Palace crowd whopping with pleasure as Baby and Johnny took over the stage for their final, smoldering duet.

Right behind Cobb in merit is a long legged blonde stunner named Britta Lazenga, a member of the Joffrey Ballet from 2000 to 2007 and a brilliant dancer who also can act. She plays Johnny’s fellow staff dancer whose seduction and pregnancy provides the show’s attempts at serious narrative.

The 39-member cast is filled with quality performances, notably Katlyn Carlson as Baby’s shallow sister, John Bolger and Kaitlin Hopkins as Baby’s parents, and Adam Overett as the young heir apparent to the Kellerman resort domain. Michael Lluberes, a Tom Bosley look alike, is a hoot as the resort’s harassed social director.

The large youthful chorus dances up a storm at the drop of a downbeat. Special mention must go to Molly Callinan, as luscious an example of womanhood as we will see on a local stage this season. Her character isn’t important but the show would be much poorer visually without her.

The physical production features some brilliant video and projection designs by Jon Driscoll that take the viewer into a ferocious rainstorm, into a lake, and into a waving field of grain among other splendid effects. Kate Champion’s choreography is abundant and runs the gamut from sultry to feverish. James Powell is the director, Stephen Brimson Lewis the set designer, Tim Mitchell the lighting designer, Jennifer Irwin the costume designer, and Bobby Aitkin the sound designer. Together they have put together a production that meets the highest technical standards of a Broadway musical.

“Dirty Dancing” should serve the expectations both of the nostalgia crowd who will still throb to the revival of numbers like “In the Still of the Night, “Wipe Out,” “Duke of Earl,” and “Save the Last Dance for Me.” Young people, especially females, will relate to Baby, possibly as warmly as they do to Elphaba in “Wicked.”

And yes, the audience roared its approval and recognition when Johnny proclaimed near the end of the show “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

“Dirty Dancing” runs through January 17 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre,151 West Randolph Street

. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $100. Call 312 902 1400 or visit www.dirtydancingamerica or www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.     Oct. 2008

             Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com  .

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Avenue Q

at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

CHICAGO—“Avenue Q” has been called Sesame Street for adults. That’s become a cliché, but like all clichés, it is rooted in truth. The musical is populated by comical Muppet figures, with characters that kind of resemble Fozzie Bear and the Cookie Monster and Bert and Ernie.  But Sesame Street fans never heard their heroes sing songs like “It Sucks to Be Me,” “If You Were Gay,” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist, and “The Internet Is for Porn.”

        “Avenue Q” is heading toward completing its fifth year on Broadway and should have played Chicago four years ago. But the producers cancelled a national tour in favor of an exclusive deal to perform in Las Vegas, to the consternation and resentment of regional bookers.

        The Las Vegas production limped along for several months and then folded. The producers now mounted a road tour, the regional producers being in a forgiving mood in deference to the drawing power of the show. Thus “Avenue Q” is finally stopping at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, though for only a modest three week run.

        Better late than never.

     Avenue Q is the unfashionable address “in an outer borough of New York City” for the musical’s characters, a weird collection of misfits and losers trying to get a life before they grow out of their 20’s. The show doesn’t have much plot. It’s mostly a sequence of songs that gradually coalesce into a series of highly stressed romantic relationships in various gender combinations.

        The characters are operated on stage by a half dozen skilled handlers who sing and talk as they manipulate the mouths and body movements of their Muppets. It’s the same principle that makes “The Lion King” such a hoot and it operates on the audience’s sensibilities the same way. Initially the viewer may pay more attention to the Muppets’ human handlers, but pretty soon the Muppets themselves take over. It’s remarkable how physically expressive those critters are with their sewn-on eyes and wide flapping mouths.

        The delights of “Avenue Q” mostly reside in the resemblances to the original Jim Henson characters, ratcheted up to an R rating. The show retains its Sesame Street tone of wide-eyed innocence and breeziness, even to the TV screens lowered from the rafters periodically to teach vocabulary and counting in the pre school Sesame Street manner. Except the lesson may teach the difference between “one nightstand” and “a one night stand,” with graphic animation. Then there is the passionate on-stage lovemaking between a pair of drunken Muppets who briefly turn the evening into a hilarious stag show.

        The air of good-natured raunchiness and political incorrectness dominates the show, but the creators do slip in a few moral lessons in the Sesame Street manner, like tolerating people who may be different. The show’s ending is swamped in good feeling, with the major characters happily paired off, gay and straight as circumstances dictate.

        In addition to the stock Muppet figures, the show injects a couple of fresh characters that add to the edgy looniness of the production. There is a Japanese lady, named Christmas Eve for no reason I could gather. And there is a black actress who plays Gary Coleman, the TV child actor, scoring repeated comic points with references to the real Coleman’s financial disasters and his situation at finding himself a has-been at age 15.

        The seven main human actor/singers are marvels of versatility. The show may have taken its time getting to Chicago, but this version is strictly top drawer in its performance level. First among equals are David Benoit and Kelli Sawyer, both having superior musical comedy voices and acting talents, even though the spectator quickly endows those attributes to the Muppets they operate so skillfully. Sawyer in particular has the talent and looks to star in a major musical, without the appendage of a Muppet figure to operate.

        Filling out the opening night ensemble were Robert McClure, Angela Ai, Minglie Chen, Carla Renata (who will be replaced as Gary Coleman on May 27 by Danielle K. Thomas), and Cole Porter (replaced for the second act for no announced reason by Cullen Titmas).

        The physical production is dominated by the façade of the slum apartment building where most of the characters reside. For a basically intimate show, “Avenue Q” has some impressive visuals, created by Anna Louizos (set design), Howell Binkley (lighting design), Robert Lopez (animation design), and Mirena Rada (costumes).

        The real joint heroes of the evening are Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who conceived the show and wrote the music and droll lyrics, and Rick Lyon, who conceived and designed the puppets. Jason Moore is responsible for the zesty directing and Ken Roberson for the clever and witty choreography.

        If there is a quibble about “Avenue Q,” it’s the length. The current production runs about 2 hours and 15 minutes with an intermission. The show could profit from some tightening to a sleek 90 minutes with no intermission. Still, as presently constituted, “Avenue Q” remains audacious and highly entertaining, the most unlikely hit we’ll see locally all season.

        “Avenue Q” runs through June 7 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $75. Call 312 902 1400.

        The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.             May 2008

For more information visit:  www.avenueq.com.

Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Sweeney Todd

at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        CHICAGO—“Sweeney Todd” may be the most improbable masterpiece in American musical theater. Consider the premise—a barber named Sweeney Todd in Victorian London is so crazed by injustice that he slits the throats of those he feels wronged him. Then he passes the corpses to a widow named Mrs. Lovett, who owns a pie shop downstairs from Todd’s barbershop. Mrs. Lovett bakes the flesh into meat pies that her customers buy as delicacies.

        With that storyline “Sweeney Todd” should be either laughable or a gross-out. But thanks to Stephen Sondheim’s score and some masterful staging, the show has become a classic. When it opened on Broadway in 1979 “Sweeney Todd” employed a cast of almost 30.  In 2005, English director John Doyle reconfigured the show, reducing the cast to 10 and in a move of astounding audacity, he eliminated the orchestra and drafted the cast to play Sondheim’s score throughout the performance. In the Doyle staging, the performers not only sing and act, they play multiple instruments and never leave the stage.

        The 2005 version of “Sweeney Todd” is now appearing at the Cadillac Palace Theatre for a too-short two week run. Connoisseurs of “Sweeney Todd” productions won’t want to miss this production. But first timers should be blown away. Indeed, it’s striking how easy it is to accept Doyle’s unconventional vision of the show.  Audiences unfamiliar with the original may conclude that this is the way Sondheim wrote the musical.

     Doyle sets the action in an insane asylum with the performers generally wearing modern clothes. The story remains the potboiler tale of Benjamin  Barker, a barber in early Victorian London. Fifteen years before the narrative begins, Barker was a happy man with a beautiful wife and a young daughter. But a corrupt and powerful judge named Turpin fancied the wife, so he railroaded Barker into a life sentence to be served in Australia. With Barker out of the way he rapes and discards the wife and takes the daughter as his ward.

        As the musical begins, Barker has returned to London after escaping from Australia. Taking the name of Sweeney Todd, he is now bent on revenging himself against the man who destroyed his family. He falls in with Mrs. Lovett and they soon come to a business agreement. He provides the human flesh from his lethal barber chair, which she bakes into meat pies. Eventually, virtually everyone in the story dies violently with the final body count up in the “Hamlet” range.

        It’s an outlandish story but a powerful one as the bitter Sweeney Todd relentlessly goes about cutting the throats of those who have injured him. The Doyle production eliminates the bloody on stage scenes that were essential to standard versions of the show. At the Cadillac Palace, every throat slicing is mimed with a sudden burst of crimson light accompanied by a long, shrill screech. So those with weak stomachs won’t have to look away from fake blood spurting from Sweeney Todd’s victims. After a character dies, he or she dons a white doctor’s coat with crimson stripes down the front to symbolize their gory death.

        There is plenty of humor in “Sweeney Todd,” though the comedy couldn’t be much blacker. The first act finale is a number called “A Little Priest,” in which Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett hilariously compare the flavors produced by the meat from their various victims, depending on their profession in life. Even more grotesquely funny is Mrs. Lovett’s song “By the Sea,” where she  musically flirts with Todd when she cleans the many utensils she uses to dismember the corpses to get them ready for the baker’s oven.

         The Sondheim score also includes a couple of lovely melodies, “Johanna” and “Pretty Woman,” while Mrs. Lovett sings the charming and moving “Nobody’s Going to Harm You” to a frightened shop assistant.

        The show has its humor but the dominating tone remains one of rising intensity and horror as Sweeney takes his revenge against his enemies and learns a shattering secret about a crazed beggar woman he kills to keep her quiet. The show’s emotions may be outsized and the action grand guignol, but by the end of the evening the audience is riveted by the intensity of the passions on stage.

        The Doyle interpretation isn’t as over the top as some productions I’ve seen. In particular, the modern dress gives the action a more realistic tone. Davis Hess, who led the strong revival of “Shenandoah” at the Marriott Theatre last season, is a convincing Sweeney Todd, a man driven to desperate acts by his lust for revenge. Hess makes Todd’s pain and hatred palpable, not just melodramatic.

        Judy Kaye’s Mrs. Lovett isn’t as extravagantly acted as the portrayals by Angela Lansbury or Patti LuPone, which doesn’t make Kaye any less good, just different. In the same spirit, Keith Buterbaugh’s Judge Turpin is more cold-blooded bureaucrat than cartoon villain.

        The other seven members of the ensemble all do outstanding work—Edmund Bagnell, Diana DiMarzio, Benjamin Eakeley, Benjamin Magnuson, Steve McIntyre, Lorena Molina, and Katrina Yaukey. They sing and act well in multiple roles, but the musicianship of the entire cast is remarkable. These people play cellos, trumpets, clarinets, saxophones, keyboards, a violin, an accordion, and assorted percussion instruments, and they play them professionally.

         John Doyle’s single set is dominated by a towering rack of accumulated small objects that resemble a giant collection of Victorian knickknacks. The performers change props on stage as the scenes dictate. The lighting design by Richard G. Jones and the sound design by Dan Moses Schreier re-enforce the nightmarish world of the story.

        “Sweeney Todd” runs through May 4 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street, Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:309 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m./ (no evening performance on May 4). Tickets are $25 to $75. Call 312 902 1400.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.               April 2008

For more information contact: www.broadwayinchicago.com

Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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The Drowsy Chaperone

at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

CHICAGO—The modern musical theater hasn’t lacked for spoofs of 1920’s musicals. Consider “Dames at Sea,” “The Boy Friend, “ the revamped “No, No, Nanette,” and “My One and Only.” The latest entry in this nostalgia derby is “The Drowsy Chaperone,” born in Canada in 1999 and a major Broadway hit in 2006.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” delivers all the clichés of the 1920’s musical—the silly plot, the cartoon characters, and the major production numbers, heavy on tap dancing. But “The Drowsy Chaperone” separates itself from the rest of the spoof field because it boasts The Man in the Chair.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” is playing a brief two-week run at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. I suspect the show would be solid for a much longer stay in the Loop because the word of mouth should be exalted. This is a happy, feel-good musical, handsomely staged and guaranteed to send the audience into the night in very high spirits about the 100 minutes they just enjoyed.

        But back to the Man in the Chair. This unnamed character is the audience’s guide through the show. He lives, apparently alone, in a cramped studio apartment, and he loves old-fashioned musical comedies, the ones written by the Gershwins and Cole Porter. At the beginning of the show, we meet him sitting in his chair, ready to put on the original cast vinyl recording of a 1928 musical called “The Drowsy Chaperone” on his phonograph.

        As the Man plays the album, the show comes to life on the stage. It’s a harebrained story about a beautiful musical comedy star on her wedding day. If she marries, she claims she will retire from show business, a calamity for the producer, who needs her star power to put on the show and keep a pair of comic gangsters at bay. The storyline is ostentatiously flimsy, but it provides the stimulus for a string of chirpy dance numbers, and after all, isn’t that what 1920’s musicals were all about?
                                   

        The Man in the Chair is a fountain of knowledge about the characters in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and the real-life actors and actresses who play them. He’s droll, witty, self referential, and as ingratiating a companion as any patron could hope to meet in the theater.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” may be silly, but it’s not stupid, thanks to creators Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison (music and lyrics) and Bob Martin and Don McKellar (book). As one might expect, the show is loaded with enough jokes about the musical theater to keep fans in the audience cheerfully nudging their companions in smug recognition. The evening ends with a salute to the airplane scene in the movie musical “Flying Down to Rio,” only the last of many insider gags, all explicated by the Man in the Chair, just in case the customer missed one.

        The show is filled with post-modern bits, like the injection of a musical number from an East Meets West musical that landed on the Man in the Chair’s phonograph by mistake. Or near the end of the show when the lights mysteriously go out in the Man’s apartment, presenting opportunities for some kidding of modern musicals.

        The Man in the Chair begins as the stereotype of the gay man who adores the musical theater (one almost looks for publicity photos of Judy Garland and Bette Midler on his wall). But the Man’s gender persuasion isn’t so cut and dried, as he wryly observes in a couple of the show’s best lines.

        The musical does have a few minor defects. The characters of the twin gangsters aren’t funny enough for the amount of stage time they occupy. The caricature of the Latin lover grows tiresome with all that over the top acting. But considering how badly the comedy of the 1920’s musical translates in the new millennium, the humor holds up pretty well. Of course, the audience would love some of those magical Gershwin and Cole Porter and Jerome Kern songs, but viewers will have to be satisfied with the buoyant, serviceable music and lyrics composed by Lambert and Morrison.

        The quality of the performances is first rate, no small thing in a show with a dozen significant roles. The show’s management did not stint on the casting. This might be a road company but the performances are Broadway quality.

         

        First among equals in the ensemble is Andrea Chamberlain as Janet Van De Graaff, the glamorous star who must decide between the stage and matrimony. Chamberlain soars in the evening’s best number, called “Show Off,” in which Janet demonstrates that she won‘t miss the attention and applause that she would abandon with retirement by going all out to sing and dance and cavort for audience approval, including cartwheels and escaping from a straightjacket.

        Mark Ledbetter is appropriately handsome and confused as Janet’s fiancé and tosses off some nifty tap dancing throughout the evening. The only performer with name recognition in the cast is Georgia Engel, fondly remembered as a continuing character in the old Mary Tyler Moore sitcom. Engel hoofs and sings jauntily as a ditzy woman named Mrs. Tottendale. I must have missed the lady’s introduction at the beginning of the show because I had no idea what the woman was doing in the story, but Engel still makes her fun to hear and see.

        The title character is played by Nancy Opel. The chaperone is supposed to keep an eye on Janet before the wedding but feels a stronger responsibility to the liquor bottle and to the amorous advances of that Latin lover, played to the hilt and beyond by James Moye.

        The gruff producer is neatly played by Cliff Bemis, who bears an eerie resemblance to Mike Ditka. His giddy young girl friend is portrayed with delightful dumbness by Marla Mindelle. Robert Dorfman plays Underling, the butler who winds up paired off with Mrs. Tottendale. Richard Vida plays a man who is running the wedding (and does some very agreeable tap hoofing). Peter and Paul Riopelle play the cartoon gangsters. Fran Jaye plays a rough and ready African American aviatrix who lands her bi-wing airplane on the stage in time for the finale.

        The inventive multi-purpose set was designed by David Gallo. Gregg Barnes designed the period costumes, Ken Billington and Brian Monahan the lighting, and Acme Sound Partners the sound. Casey Nicholaw recreates his original directing and choreography.                  

   That covers just about everyone except Jonathan Crombie as the Man in the Chair. The actor and the role are funny, incisive, genial, endearing, and at the end, legitimately poignant. Crombie should take great satisfaction in knowing that he is creating a fresh and original character who elevates a pretty good take-off on old-time musicals to the level of a must- see event.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” runs through April 13 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $75. Call 312 902 1400.

        The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.          April 2008

       For more information, please visit:
www.drowsychaperone.com or www.broadwayinchicago.com.

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My Fair Lady

 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        CHICAGO—The touring production of “My Fair Lady” at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is the perfect revival of a perfect musical. The staging honors the original while applying enough new touches to freshen up the classic. The only complaint is that this version will be in town for a paltry two weeks. 

       It seems impossible that more than half a century has elapsed since this masterpiece first lit up Broadway with its irresistible tale of an English phonetics teacher converting a Cockney flower girl into a duchess just by teaching her how to talk posh. Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle have achieved musical comedy immortality, thanks to an incandescent score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and a scintillating book carved out of George Bernard Shaw’s satiric comedy “Pygmalion.”

     ^{Shaw’s play remains the heart of the musical. Lerner wisely retained as much of the Shavian dialogue as possible, which gives “My Fair Lady” perhaps the most literate book in} the twentieth century music theater. The Lerner and Lowe score does the rest. Every number works perfectly to further the story or enhance the character. From the opening scene, with Higgins’ scoffing “Why Can’t the English” and Eliza’s plaintive “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” the hits just keep on coming, like “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” and the exhilarating “The Rain in Spain.”

     The The touring production originated in England under the co- sponsorship of Cameron Mackintosh and the National Theatre of Great Britain, a heady duo which guarantees a revival that will travel first class all the way. The costumes generally echo the glamorous Cecil Beaton original designs but still establish a plush Edwardian style all their own. This production does depart a bit from Beaton’s stunning back and white motifs in the Ascot races scene, but still comes up with its own feeling of elegance.   

         

       Matthew Bourne, the hottest young choreographer in ballet today, has put his own stamp on the dances. “With a Little Bit of Luck,” with its clanging garbage can covers, recollects “Stomp” in its noisy exuberance. And Bourne has opened up the “Get Me to the Church On Time” number, taking reluctant bridegroom Alfred P. Doolittle on a pub crawl that escalates into increasing inebriation as the panicky dustman prepares to face his marriage vows.

        Director Trevor Nunn has rethought the major dramatic scenes. The quarrel between Higgins and Eliza after her triumph at the Embassy Ball has genuine intensity, anger from Eliza and perplexity and exasperation from Higgins. Nunn has also reshaped the end of the first act that traditionally concludes with Eliza at the ball. In the Nunn version, the curtain comes down as Eliza, Higgins, and Colonel Pickering depart for the big event that will make or break the girl in society. The ball scene in its entirety opens the second act. The story works either way, but Nunn’s version does give the pivotal ball episode greater unity.

        Christopher Cazenove can take his place among the great Henry Higgins impersonators in the history of the show. Cazenove is a slightly portly middle-aged man of commanding stage presence, perfect for evoking Higgins’ egocentric and intimidating personality as well as his wit and his passion for the English language. We truly see the confirmed old bachelor very satisfied with his life. That’s important because the story flies in the face of popular expectation that waits for the professor and Eliza to fall into a romantic clinch after spending most of the narrative willfully battling each other. Nunn devised just the right final moment of reconciliation for the two, not as lovers but as soul mates.   

            In Lisa O’Hare, the production has a delectable Eliza, spunky as a Cockney and radiant after completing the professor’s elocution course. O’Hare has a dancer’s background and she brings a marvelous grace to the Embassy Ball dance. Her emotional battle of wills with Higgins in he second act evokes real feeling, demonstrating that O’Hare not only sings beautifully and moves well, she’s a spot-on actress and should have a limitless future on the musical stage.

            The supporting cast is well up to the mark. Tim Jerome is an especially expansive Alfie Doolittle, a real rogue and not just an endearing curmudgeon. Marni Nixon plays Higgins’s mother in what superficially seem like a bit of camp casting. Nixon was Audrey Hepburn’s singing voice in the film version of “My Fair Lady.” But Nixon’s performance isn’t a sop to nostalgia. She is witty and commanding as the professor’s mother and holds the stage nicely even though she doesn’t sing a note.

        Walter Charles is properly dithering as Colonel Pickering and Justin Bohon gets plenty of mileage out of the silly-ass Freddie Eynsford-Hill and his single memorable song, “On the Street Where You Live.” Barbara Marineau contributes a sturdy performance as Higgins’ housekeeper Mrs. Pearce.

        “My Fair Lady” runs through February 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., with no evening g performance on February 3. Tickets are $25 to $75. Call 312 902 1400.

            The show gets a rating of four stars.  

    For more information contact:  www.broadwayinchicago.com

                Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com            Jan. 2008

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