Oliver!
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – British composer Lionel Bart had two courses of action in developing the musical that became “Oliver!” In adapting Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” for the stage, he could have created a dark portrait of the lower depths of English mid-Victorian society, or he could have kissed off the Dickens novel with a few broad reference points and concocted a cheerful song and dance show. Bart followed the money, taking the more commercial song and dance route. The result is a musical that took some thumps from the critics but became the most popular English musical until “Evita.”
The Drury Lane Theatre’s outstanding revival of “Oliver!” does what it can to bring alive the callous treatment of the poor in nineteenth century England but the production necessarily throws in its lot with the songs and dances, and being that the show’s director and choreographer is Rachel Rockwell, everything turns out well. The staging burnishes Rockwell’s current status atop the pyramid of Chicagoland musical theater directors.
The musical, like the Dickens novel, follows the adventures and misadventures of an orphan boy named Oliver Twist. He starts out as an inmate in a miserable civic-run workhouse for orphans. He is sold like a slave to work for an undertaker and flees that wretched existence into the company of Fagin, a man who leads a gang of endearing juvenile delinquents. After an improbable series of coincidences, Oliver ends up happily in the household of a wealthy man who discovers the lad is his long lost grandson.
Lionel Bart’s score features a couple of numbers that caught on. The kindly slattern Nancy sings a plaintive anthem to her love for the villainous Bill Sykes in “As Long As He Needs Me” and Fagin and his youthful minions welcome Oliver into their thieving society with the lively “Consider Yourself At Home.” But most of the numbers are set pieces that provide considerable opportunities for high stepping dancing but contribute little to character development or plot advancement. “Oom-Pah-Pah” is a rouser that opens the second act, a fun number that has nothing to do with the story.
Bart sanitizes the Dickens narrative. Fagin is converted from a nasty predator of children into a lovable old codger. In the novel he eventually hangs. In “Oliver!” he is allowed to survive and walk into the sunset, a redeemed man in search of a better life. It’s not good Dickens but it’s a proper finale for a character who has given the audience much pleasure.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
Any musical that puts a bunch of bouncy kids on stage is likely to succeed. Rockwell auditioned scores of youngsters and she has chosen well. The spectator realizes the production is in good hands with the first number, “Food Glorious Food,” which should be a satirical attack on the wretched diets the workhouse provides for its defenseless boys. Rockwell converts the song into a wonderful romp that the boys execute with exuberance and drill team precision. All the production numbers, and there are lots of them, display Rockwell’s trademark creativity, whether it’s the droll “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” or the wistful “Who Will Buy?”
The large ensemble is drawn from the A List of area musical theater talent. The casting goes so deep that stalwarts like Catherine Lord, George Keating, Larry Adams, and Don Forston are assigned to relatively minor supporting roles, which they perform with their usual professionalism. The featured performers are the estimable Heidi Kettenring as Nancy and John Reeger in a delectable turn as Fagin. In the novel Fagin is a vicious Jewish caricature. There is no direct religious or ethnic reference to Fagin’s heritage in the show, though in his big solo number “I’m Reviewing the Situation,” he’s backed by a strong klezmer sound from the orchestra that suggests a folkish Jewish feeling (great clarinet work during the number by Michael Favreau).
John Gawlik isn’t quite as sinister as needed as Bill Sykes. The character’s stage time has been cut at Drury Lane. Just as well. In the show, he’s basically a plot device. But J. D. Rodriguez is a scene stealer as the buoyant Artful Dodger.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
We get a taste of the original novel’s outrage in the portraits of the workhouse tyrant Mr. Bumble (Michael Lindner), his harridan wife to be (Catherine Smitko), and especially telling, through short appearances by the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry and his wife (Benjamin Magnuson and Catherine Lord), who capture the smarmy cruelty of the Victorian middle class toward the unfortunate and impoverished people below them.
Kevin Depinet has designed an evocative set that moves fluidly from Fagin’s garret to the posh drawing room of Oliver’s grandfather, with a dominating backdrop of the mean streets and alleys that enclose the London poor. Theresa Ham has done a spectacular job of designing a massive wardrobe of authentic nineteenth century costumes. Greg Hofmann designed the lighting and Garth Helm and Ray Nardelli the sound. The ubiquitous and resourceful Nick Heggestad has assembled a vast panoply of props to flesh out the superior visual look of the production.
Having seen a half dozen stagings of “Oliver!” over the years, I’m still unconvinced this is a great show, in spite of its popularity. The book is too sketchy, too many of the songs lie outside the narrative, and the final scenes that establish Oliver’s birthright happen so fast and improbably that they are difficult to follow. But lovers of the show will find no reasons for complaint at Drury Lane. Those less enthusiastic about “Oliver!” should enjoy the fine staging, the kid actors who are cute but not cutesy, and the top flight starring performances.
“Oliver!” runs through June 2 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $49 with some meal packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylane.com.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. April 2013
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Sunset Boulevard
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – Area theaters are doing very well by Andrew Lloyd Weber just now. First the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire opened a stunning revue of the composer’s music, called “Now and Forever.” Now the Drury Lane Theatre is reviving Lloyd Weber’s musical “Sunset Boulevard” in a superbly staged production that tries valiantly to mask many of the show’s deep flaws.
“Sunset Boulevard” is Lloyd Weber’s adaptation of the famous 1950 Billy Wilder movie about faded silent film star Norma Desmond, planning a comeback while living in seclusion and cut off from reality in a moldering mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The motion picture was a fascinating mixture of cynicism about Hollywood, nostalgia, and comedy, which the stage version mostly fails to capture.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
The musical, like the movie, starts as a flashback. The body of a man is floating face down in a swimming pool. The man is Joe Gillis, a struggling Hollywood screenwriter, and Desmond has just shot and killed him. The dead Gillis narrates his story, starting from when he is fleeing two men trying to repossess his car for delinquent payments. In his flight Gillis drives onto the grounds of Norma Desmond’s estate, where Desmond lives with her fantasy dreams of returning in triumph to motion picture stardom.
Desmond hires Gillis on the spot to edit her preposterous script about Salome. Norma is convinced the script will be her ticket back to her deserved place atop the motion picture world. Eventually Gillis becomes Desmond’s kept man, leading to the tragic outcome we witness in the first scene.
“Sunset Boulevard” is very much a Lloyd Weber show, the score sounding like music recycled from “Phantom of the Opera” and “Evita, not necessarily a bad thing considering how effective those scores are. The number “As If We Never Said Goodbye” in particular is a passionate and melodic love song in the Lloyd Weber mold, and overall the music has that ripe, full bodied romantic sound that has made the composer so successful for so many years.
The show, under William Oseteck’s directing, is superbly staged. The set design by Scott Davis frames the stage with a multi-level construction. Scenes change smoothly and swiftly from exterior to interior, using the full panoply of Drury Lane technology, including a stage elevator. One seldom pays attention to the Properties design credit for a show but Nick Heggestad deserves a big shout out for accumulating the furniture and other props that give the production such a vivid sense of variety and place. The staging has a cinematic feel in its rapid scene shifts, enhanced by Mike Tutaj’s creative projections.
But when the physical look of a show takes precedence in our regard, there are problems. The chief problem in “Sunset Boulevard” is the skimpy book. The script follows the broad outlines of the Billy Wilder film minus the sharp satire. The musical has no point of view and the narrative isn’t strong enough to succeed without one.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
Christine Sherrill takes the role of Norma Desmond. Sherrill has a wonderful voice and she’s a solid actress, even carrying off that most problematical of dramatic devices, the mad scene. But we don’t really know how to take her Norma. Sometimes she is realistic and sometimes she’s a loony. Another complication—Sherrill is a very attractive woman. Norma is a grotesque from an earlier time but for much of the production Sherrill looks like a beautiful woman in early middle age who just wears weird clothes. In the film, Gloria Swanson appeared like a figure disconnected from modern times, left behind as the movies passed her by. Physically, Sherrill’s Norma looked like she wouldn’t be out of place acting in a modern film. Her good looks make her love affair with Gillis less bizarre and distasteful but it robs the story of much of its necessary Gothic flavor.
Joe Gillis has more stage time than Norma and more solos and we see the story unfold through his jaded eyes. Will Ray owns a strong singing voice and his rendering of the desperate and self loathing Gillis is persuasive. Ray makes him the most believable character in the story.
There are several supporting characters, none of them contributing much dramatically. Dara Cameron is good as Betty Schaefer, a young screenwriter who falls in love with Gillis. Betty seems inserted into the action just to bring a final confrontation between Gillis and the irrationally jealous Norma. Don Richard replicates the Erich von Stroheim performance from the film as Max, Norma’s butler, protector, and former husband, a pretty unbelievable role that Richard valiantly tries to sell.
The Drury Lane staging carries a full two dozen performers, most of them playing young movie wannabes desperate to break into the business. They make for robust crowd scenes that give the production its energy in the interludes between the intimate action in Norma’s decaying mansion, confined to scenes among Norma, Joe, and Max. This isn’t a dancing show, but Tammy Mader does good work in orchestrating the massed movements in the crowd scenes. The 11-piece orchestra under Roberta Duchak’s musical direction provides the fulsome sound so necessary to a Lloyd Weber score. Rita Pietraszek (lighting), Ray Nardelli (sound), and especially Theresa Ham (costumes) complete the artistic brain trust that make the production look and sound so good.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
“Sunset Boulevard” may be a mediocre musical, but it’s presented superbly. Better that, certainly, than a superb musical offered in a mediocre production. Sherrill doubtless will receive a standing ovation every performance, well earned for her fine singing and her commitment to bringing the strident, demanding, and childish Norma to some kind of stage life. The failings of “Sunset Boulevard” reside with the book. The Drury Lane revival has done everything it can to elevate the show into a hit and I suspect that most patrons will leave the theater satisfied they have seen a major musical. I have strong reservations about the show but I was glad I saw it because the staging does Drury Lane so much honor.
“Sunset Boulevard” runs through March 24 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com February 2013
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Singin’ In the Rain
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace—The reason for the success of “Singin’ in the Rain” at the Drury Lane Theatre is easily identified. The producers simply used the classic 1952 movie musical as a blueprint, preserving the film’s songs, dance numbers, and dialogue, and then hiring a brilliance company to bring the whole enterprise to glorious life.
“Singin’ in the Rain” ranks with “The Wizard of Oz” as one of the two most iconic musicals in Hollywood history. The film is a delicious spoof of 1927, a fateful in movie history when talking pictures displaced the silents. The film featured a superior score by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed and a droll comic book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The cast was headed Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. With that much proven talent on board, “Singin’ in the rain” should have been good, but this time the stars were in alignment and the result is one of the most entertaining and affectionately remembered movies ever made.
Photo credit: Brett Beiner
Curiously, the first stage adaptation originated in England in 1983 and for many years the show was more popular in the United Kingdom than in the United States (the 1985 Broadway premiere was a flop). The show has been revived from time to time by Chicagoland theaters, but the current Drury Lane production tops every one I’ve seen, and by a wide margin.
The Oakbrook Terrace production got off to a rocky start when guest star Sean Palmer, cast to play the Gene Kelly role of movie star Don Lockwood, was forced to leave the show during rehearsals because of a leg injury. That delayed opening night while replacement Tony Yazbeck was brought in from New York City as the replacement. Yazbeck is a decent actor, a good singer, and a terrific dancer, just what the role requires. The rest of the mammoth 30-member ensemble falls into place and the good times roll, headed by Yazbeck’s dance solo in the drenching rainstorm that pelts the stage at the end of the first act, with the audience in the front rows squealing in delight as Yazbeck gleefully splashes the patrons (protective plastic slickers proved to the patrons by management).
The show is a nostalgia piece about Hollywood in the 1920’s and it’s also a love story with Lockwood and young singer-dancer Kathy Seldon falling for each other after the usual misunderstandings and bickering that afflict musical comedy romances. Comic relief is provided by Cosmo Brown (the Donald O’Connor character brilliantly replicated at Drury Lane by Matthew Crowle). The villain is Lina Lamont, Lockwood’s co-star, a bitchy lady with a screeching voice that wasn’t a problem in a silent movie but became a career destroyer in the talkies. The role was a hoot as played on the screen by Jean Hagen and Melissa van der Schyff delivers her own hilarious performance, shrill voice and nasty personality deliciously in place, at Drury Lane.
Photo credit: Brett Beiner
Amber Mak and Crowle share the choreographer credits, with Crowle responsible for “Make ‘Em Laugh,” one of the great set pieces in musical history, with physical embellishments that occasionally trump the movie version. The large chorus handsomely serves up the big production numbers “Beautiful Girl” and Broadway Melody” with Ziegfeld Follies glamour. As Kathy Seldon, Jenny Guse shows a fine pop singing voice “Lucky Star” and “Would You” and she can dance and act, too. The best pure singing of the evening comes from tenor George Andrew Wolff, who leads the pageantry of the “Beautiful Girl” number.
The supporting performers are all well up to the mark, though I had a problem with Scott Calcagno’s overwrought movie director Roscoe Dexter. Calcagno goes way over the top, mugging and simpering like he was in a slapstick B movie instead of a participant in one of the most hip films of the twentieth century. But the opening night audience seemed to love his silly-ass antics and I sensed that my cringing was a minority reaction. There were no such problems elsewhere, with veterans like Renee Matthews, John Reeger, Don Forston (especially good as the movie studio head), and Catherine Lord leading the way. The youngsters in the chorus are all high energy and seem to be having a ball. They combine with Yazbeck, Guse, and Crowle in some of the most athletic and joyous tap dancing seen in area theater for many a season.
Drury Lane really opened its wallet to give the production the most sumptuous look. The costumes by Maggie Hofmann perfectly evoke the Roaring Twenties. Kevin Kepinet’s set designs, frequently enhanced by Julie Mack’s lighting, are models of spectacle and creativity. Ray Nardelli is the sound designer and the music direction is handled by Roberta Duchak and Ben Johnson, with Johnson leading the fine eight-piece pit band.
Pulling it all together is guest director Bill Jenkins. The loss of the male lead shortly before the scheduled opening must have placed considerable stress on Jenkins but when the show did officially open, every element was in place for a feast of singing, dancing, spectacle, comedy, and romance. Jenkins managed to make something of the dud musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” at Drury Lane in 2010 and this production shows how the man can soar with a first class vehicle.
“Singin’ in the Rain” runs through January 13 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
This show gets a rating of 4 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com Dec. 2012
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Xanadu
At the Drury Lane Theater
by Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – In 2009, a production of the musical “Xanadu” opened in downtown Chicago that turned out to be one of the delights of the season. It was a silly show, but hip, satirical, nostalgic, and loaded with energy and visual invention.
Fast forward to today, and the Drury Lane Theatre’s revival of “Xanadu.” The current production still has considerable entertainment value, but it just doesn’t have the comic sizzle of the 2009 version. Audiences coming to the show for the first time likely will take much pleasure in the production, but those of us with fond memories of the Chicago staging might be disappointed.
The
antecedents of “Xanadu” do not inspire confidence. The musical is based on a
1980 motion picture that is generally counted among the worst films in movie
history. The movie gained a perverse
reputation as one of those films that is so bad it’s almost endearing. But
Douglas Carter Beane elevated the book with lots of droll and unexpected bits
of wry dialogue.
Photo
credit: Brett Beiner
The plot of “Xanadu” is build around the nine muses of ancient Greek mythology, all sisters, who were goddesses of various arts. The muse Clio comes down from Mount Olympic to earth to help a struggling ands discouraged artist named Sonny Malone. The time is 1980 and the place is Venice, California. The storyline is not intended to stand logical scrutiny. Clio, renaming herself Kira, assumes a disguise as a young woman with an Australian accent who travels on roller skates and wears leg warmers. The Australian accent is a sly tribute to the Australian singer Olivia Newton-John, whose participation in “Xanadu” ruined her Hollywood career.
One plot thread has two of the muses putting a curse on sister Clio to fall in love with a mortal, a no-no among the Olympian gods. That mortal is Sonny, trying to fulfill his dream with Clio’s assistance, of opening a roller disco that would be a haven for all the arts. Then there is scheming millionaire Danny McGuire who fell in love with Clio 35 years earlier and let her get away because he was too busy accumulating a fortune as a property developer.
The unapologetically inane plot is just an excuse for Douglas Carter Beane’s dialogue, a clever blend of satire, sarcasm, in jokes, and nostalgia. There is gay humor, jive wisecracks from a black muse, lots of listenable pop/rock/disco songs like “Evil Woman” and “Have You Ever Been Mellow,” wry pop cultural references, and an overall hip feeling that validate “Xanadu” as a pretty sophisticated piece of work beneath its facetiousness.
So where does the Drury Lane production come up short, especially compared to the 2009 show? The current version has an unnecessary intermission that expands a swift 90 minutes of stage time into an inflated two hours. The earlier show broke down the wall between the audience and the performers. A couple dozen spectators were seated on the rear of the stage with the actors humorously mingling with them. The performers increased the energy of the show by scooting up and down the aisles. Before entering the theater, patrons received small gizmos that lit up when shaken. The audience was encouraged to wave the lights during the show’s final scene. It all contributed to a happy time, what-next atmosphere that made the show such a shared fun experience.
Photo
credit: Brett Beiner
The Drury Lane cast throws itself into the show with gusto and there are no complaints about the quality of the singing. Chris Critelli as the doofus hunk Danny Malone and Gina Milo as the muse Clio stay in character the whole show. The other seven performers play multiple roles, including two males (Sean Blake and Gary Carlson) cast as a pair of muse sisters. The sisters are rounded out by Stephanie Binetti, Tammy Mader, Christine Sherrill, and Nancy Voigts (who is continuously over the top, not that the acting calls for Chekhovian realism). Gene Weygandt plays the ruthless Danny McGuire and then dons a fake beard and white robes to play the Greek heads god Zeus in the final scene, where he is joined by a centaur, a one-eyed Cyclops, and Medusa with a snake headdress—all clever visual gags.
The production values are first rate. As usual, Mike Tutaj is front and center with some terrific and witty projections. Kevin Depinet’s set design is an open stage enclosed by Greek columns. Jesse Klug’s lighting design is flashy and creative. Garth Helm is the sound designer. Erika Senase is credited as costume coordinator, which presumably means she is responsible for the faux Greek costumes and the modern outfits circa West Coast 1980.
Rachel Rockwell is the director and choreographer, which normally guarantees an inventive production. The dancing is certainly enthusiastic but the sass and offbeat comedy need some amping up. There isn’t much chemistry between Critelli and Milo as the young lovers, though this isn’t a show that tries to cut very deep emotionally. The orchestra under Roberta Duchak’s direction certainly does its part with the high decibel but tuneful rock score by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar. There are a few nifty special effects, notably stage smoke that was pretty funny except for those unfortunates in the front rows who were engulfed by the billowing clouds.
It may be unfair to compare the 2009 and current productions. The Chicago version played in a small venue that accommodated audience participation not possible in the expansive Drury Lane interior. But the Chicago version demonstrated what a droll hoot “Xanadu” could be. The Drury Lane revival does entertain, just not as well.
“Xanadu”
runs through October 28 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances
are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m.,
Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46.
Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. Sept. 2012
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By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – They say that timing is everything. Timing certainly is everything in “The 39 Steps” the English spy spoof that occupies a delightful, often amazing, and even suspenseful two hours at the Drury Lane Theatre.
The antecedents of “The 39 Steps” go back almost 100 years to John Buchan’s 1915 thriller novel about a man on the run from both the police and international spies. The novel was then converted into a 1935 classic motion picture by Alfred Hitchcock and finally to a farce adapted by Patrick Barlow in 2006. The Barlow comedy became enough of a hit in London to transfer to Broadway, where it ran for a profitable two-year run.
The hero of the story is Richard Hannay, a 37-year old Canadian bachelor who finds himself bored while in London and decides to go to the theater for a little diversion. His boredom ends spectacularly that night and in a matter of hours he is being pursued by British police who think he murdered a woman he took home with him from the theater. The woman actually sought Hannay’s protection from pursuing spies who seek The 39 Steps, not explained until the final moments of the play but definitely a secret that will imperil the Great Britain’s security.
That’s the crux of the plot, which takes Hannay from London into the Scotland and then back to London where all is revealed during a performance at the famous Palladium music hall. Hannay is exonerated of the murder, the villain is unmasked, The 39 Steps are revealed, and Hannay even finds himself a wife.
That’s the substance of he show narrative-wise. But it’s the manner that gives so much pleasure. The entire story is performed by just four actors, one playing Hannay and two men (Clown 1 and Clown 2) and a woman portraying multitude of other characters. The number of characters who whizz through the stage version has been given at 150, and I won’t challenge the figure. I know that the three cumulatively play a milkman, a newsboy, traveling lingerie salesmen, all sorts of English and Scottish policemen, secret agents, Scottish politicians, a train conductor, a cleaning woman, theater performers, and an elderly husband and wife who operate a Scottish hotel.
What elevates this basically silly play to triumphant heights is the astonishing quick-change artistry executed by Angela Ingersoll (the sole woman), and Jeff Dumas (Clown 1) and Paul Kalina (Clown 2). Their genius at switching characters, and genders, in the blinking of an eye is a continuous wonder and had the opening night audience hooting their approval. The skill at donning and discarding costumes, wigs, and accents could make the show a one-joke exercise, but the humor and dexterity of the quick changing is continuously fresh and right on schedule every moment. Occasional flubs are built into the performances to give the spectators some additional laughs.
The play follows the Hitchcock film closely, which means there is derring-do at a bridge and hair-breadth escapes. All are mimed on the Drury Lane stage with impressive athleticism as when Hannay fights off a couple of policeman on a Scottish bridge constructed of two ladders and a plank or when Hannay struggles to escape advancing policemen by clinging to the outside of an invisible moving train.
Photo Credit: Brett Beiner
“The Thirty Nine Steps” is really a celebration of the artifice of the theater. The audience is gripped by Hannay’s struggles to clear himself of a murder charge and solve the mystery of the third nine steps. At the same time, spectators can revel in a dazzling demonstration of how live theater fools the audience with lighting and makeup and props and other tools of stagecraft.
Drury
Lane hired the perfect Richard Hannay in Peter Simon Hilton. He’s lanky and
suave, unflappable and resourceful, urbane to his fingertips—altogether the
perfect hero for the never-never land of espionage and danger that makes “The 39 Steps” a classic of the spy genre in the years before the
realism and moral ambiguity of John LeCarre changed the genre forever.
Dumas and Kalina work together seamlessly, shifting characters with such ingenuity and speed that one suspects that the management has actually sneaked extra actors on stage. How else to explain the micro second switches between the Scottish hotel operators and the pursuing spies almost in front of our eyes? At such moments the play resembles a magic show more than a thriller satire.
David New has directed the show with wondrous facility. The rehearsals to hone the action to its pinpoint precision must have been pretty intense. The design team is a full partner in the success of the evening. Kevin Depinet frames all the action within the stage of the Palladium music hall, complete with second story boxes from which shots are fired at the beginning and end of the story. Tracy Dorman’s costumes and Rick Irvine’s wigs give the quick changing a credibility one must see to believe. The lighting by Rita Pietraszek, the sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, and Nick Heggestad’s properties are full partners in the exceptional production values.
The show runs a bit over two hours with one intermission. The vehicle would work even better at about 90 minutes with no intermission. A few scenes, like Hannay and his lady friend handcuffed in a hotel room, and a scene at a Scottish political rally, lasted several minutes beyond their shelf life and could be condensed with profit. But I suspect that’s not a unanimous opinion. The opening night audience clearly loved every moment of the show and would object to eliminating any of the fun.
“The 39 Steps” runs through August 26 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at c2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. July 2012
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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At the Drury Lane Theatre
by Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – A successful revival of “Hairspray” demands pinpoint casting in two roles. Tracy Turnblad, the show’s central character must be short, exceedingly stocky, look like a high school girl, and have a performing motor that doesn’t stop for more than two hours. And Tracy’s mother Edna must be credibly played by a man.
The Drury Lane Theatre comes up very big in both roles. As Tracy, Lillian Castillo looks like a fireplug with feet. She has a huge voice, an endearing stage personality, and enough energy to heat Oakbrook Terrace for an entire winter. And Michael Aaron is the best Edna Turnblad I have ever seen—funny, sympathetic, and not the least bit campy. This is no simpering drag performance. Lindner makes a real person out of Edna, with an emotional depth that enriches the entire production. Plus Lindner can really sing.
BRETT BEINER PHOTOGRAPHY
The two core characters are the show’s pillars of strength, but they get plenty of support from a complementary cast of young singers and dancers who keep the dancing throttle wide open virtually from opening moment to the final blackout.
“Hairspray” is an adaptation of the John Waters 1988 motion picture about teenage life in Baltimore in 1962. Tracy, the daughter of blue collar parents, wants to dance on the local hit TV teenage dance show, a Dick Clark clone (or Jim Lounsbury for Chicagolanders of a certain age). Tracy makes the TV show as a dancer in spite of sneers from self appointed teen queen Amber Von Tussle and her super bitch mother and show producer Velma. The big conflict comes when a group of local black teenagers try to perform on the segregated all-white TV show. Eventually everything works out, with a climax that blends American Bandstand with Soul Train.
The score by Marc Shulman (music) and Scott Williams (lyrics) is a joyous tribute to the early days of rock ’n’ roll, when the music was fun. The book by Mark O’Donnell and Schulman deftly satirizes the first generation rock music era and also portrays a period in American life when racial jokes and stereotypes were openly flaunted before they went underground. Without losing its sense of humor, “Hairspray” presents a realistic look at the prejudice that blacks experienced in daily life, especially black teenagers enduring a double standard in school.
The racial element does get a little intense in the second act but it never diverts the show from its primary purpose, offering audiences a succession of high velocity dance numbers created by choreographer Tammy Mader, who also directs. Castillo is onstage virtually the entire show, having the time of her life, her stamina never flagging. Castillo also has the acting chops to carve out a delightful portrait of one feisty and plucky young lady. Tracy’s parents are poor and Tracy is no beauty by conventional and superficial standards, but there is no self pity in the girl, just resolve and a very large heart. Castillo’s Tracy should be the poster girl for every teen-age girl who feels the pressure of not being rich and gorgeous.
Lindner is paired with Tim Kazurinsky as Edna’s dreamer of a husband, Wilbur. Kazurinsky is about half Lindner’s size and the Mutt and Jeff physical disparity between the two enhances the comedy without denigrating the real affection that connect Edna and Wilbur. Their duet “You’re Timeless to Me” is wryly humorous and warm, never descending to cheap laughs or mawkish sentiment.
BRETT
BEINER PHOTOGRAPHY
As the black blues diva Motormouth Maybelle, Felicia Fields belts out the emotional “I Know Where I’ve Been” and has some fun with aisle-sitters who are the happy victims of her saucy burlesque humor. Rebecca Pink is terrific as Penny Pingleton, Tracy’s best friend and a mousy little girl under her mother’s thumb until Seaweed J. Stubbs comes into her life at high school. And then does the worm every turn! Jon-Michael Reese sings and dances up a storm as Seaweed.
There is a half pint 12-year old named Joshlyn Lomax who participates in only one musical number but she has the lung power to shatter crystal. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and if a producer has any plans to revive “The Wiz,” here is the perfect Dorothy.
The roll call of solid supporting performers includes Rod Thomas as Corny Collins, the host of the TV show; Erik Altemus as Lint Larkin, Tracy’s eventual love interest; and Keely Vazquez and Holly Laurent as the contemptible Van Tussle women, mother and daughter.
As both director and choreography Tammy Mader keeps her large chorus literally hopping all night. This is not a show for performers who get short of breath after eight or ten go-go-go numbers. The bi-level set by Marcus Stephens is elaborate and resourceful, but does the production really require so much scenery? The evening was at its best when a couple dozen dancers did their thing on a basically empty stage. Charles Cooper designed the lighting, Ray Nardelli designed the sound, and Kurt Alger is the costume designer, responsible for the huge wardrobe of sixties teen-age outfits that add a nostalgic flourish to the proceedings. Alger is also credited as wig designer, meaning he created the monster head of hair that Tracy proudly totted around the entire show.
“Hairspray” is one of the great audience shows in modern American musical theater. Its dancing is irresistible, Tracy Turnblad is a genuine heroine, and the view of racism is apt without taking over the show. Plus Drury Lane audiences get an introduction Joshlyn Lomax, a lass with star written all over her.
“Hairspray” runs through June 17 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. April 2012
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by Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – “Gypsy” is a musical theater biography of striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee. But it’s really about Gypsy’s mother, Mama Rose, immortalized by Ethel Merman in the original 1959 production. Merman’s performance set the bar for all future performers brave enough to take on the role. Every revival of the show becomes a referendum on how the actress meets the Merman standard.
The revival of “Gypsy” at the Drury Lane Theatre stars Klea Blackhurst as the indomitable and domineering Rose in a performance that holds up solidly in the Merman tradition. Blackhurst is the chief ornament in the production, but she’s complemented by a fine supporting cast, quality production values, and the brilliance of the show itself.
Blackhurst doesn’t quite have the powerhouse Merman voice (who does?), but she sings in the belting Merman manner, and even physically resembles the great lady. Blackhurst gives the fearsome Mama Rose a light touch in the early scenes but she grows in dramatic weight as the bossy, domineering Rose ratchets up her stage mother ferocity. Blackhurst caps her star turn with a searing solo in the show finale, the epic “Rose’s Turn,” one of the great tour de forces in musical theater as the woman, abandoned by her daughter, has a singing nervous breakdown on stage.
Brett Biener Photography
“Gypsy” was inspired by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee. The story, in a superb book by Arthur Laurents, traces how Mama Rose bullies and cajoles her daughters Louise and June through an endless series of two-bit vaudeville houses, relentlessly trying to make them stars. First in the Mama Rose spotlight was June, a child actress who finally escaped from her mother’s smothering clutches and eventually became film actress June Havoc. After June’s departure, Rose turned to the shy and less talented Louise, who by a twist of fate started on the lowest dregs of burlesque and become a celebrity in American show business and even something of an intellectual.
Rose is one of the great characters in American musical theater and also perhaps the most unsympathetic. Her obsession to see her daughters as show business stars thinly masks her own insecurities, her pathological need for control, and her inability to keep the affection of those who love her (she had three husbands and a prospective fourth walks out on her in “Gypsy”). The audience may see Rose as humorous and pathetic, but the woman surely must have been hell to be around. The audience might get some pleasure from a comfortable distance watching the tyrannical Rose rejected and humbled at the end of the show, notwithstanding the touchy-feely final moments.
Jule
Styne (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) gave “Gypsy” one of the great
scores in music theater history. The songs contribute mightily to the narrative
and character development, but they also hold up as stand-alone hits. Very few
musicals have amassed a roll call of quality numbers like “Some People,” “Small
World,” “You’ll Never Get Away from Me,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and
“Together Wherever We Go.”
Brett Biener Photography
Drury Lane’s production employs more than 25 performers, several of them children who all perform like real troupers. Andrea Collier plays the adult June, who manages to break away from her mother’s emotional tentacles. She’s excellent, but Andrea Prestinario is even better as Louise because the role has greater acting opportunities. Prestinario deftly develops Louise from a diffident and intimidated young woman into the self-confident stripper who blossoms into Gypsy Rose Lee, a personality ahead of her time as a People Magazine heroine.
The only other role of importance is Herbie, the theatrical agent who for some reason loves Rose until he just can‘t take the woman anymore. David Kortemeier gives a humane, low-keyed performance that contrasts neatly with Blackhurst’s relentless, brash Rose.
“Gypsy” has several production numbers but not much pure dancing. Most of the production numbers replicate the tacky, zero talent choreography of the second rate vaudeville houses of the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Choreographer Tammy Mader doesn’t stint on the silliness of those numbers, but when she gets a chance to choreograph some real dancing, she comes up big, notably with Matthew Crowle’s terrific tap dancing turn in “All I Need Is a Girl.” The “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” number ranks along with “Rose’s Turn” as the sure-fire musical moment of the evening. Three burlesque strippers demonstrate to the wide-eyed Louise how a gal needs a gimmick to set herself apart in the competitive world of burlesque. Props to Susan Lubeck, Cheryl Avery, and Frances Asher (who looked like a caricature from a William Hogarth cartoon) for capturing the hilarity of the number with commendable vulgarity.
The strong design team consists of Martin Andrew (scenery), Jesse Klug (lighting), Sarah Pickett (sound), and especially Melissa Torchia (costumes). Roberta Duchak and Ben Johnson supply the music direction. William Osetek directs with zest and a good sense of when the show should be funny and when it should be serious. But the night belongs to Klea Blackhurst, who nails her daunting, exhausting role. Merman would approve.
“Gypsy” runs through April 1 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. January 2012
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The Sound of Music
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Lincolnshire – The Drury Lane Theatre extended the run of its revival of “The Sound of Music” even before the show opened. The theater might want to consider finding a couple more weeks to add the musical. This is a production every fan of “The Sound of Music” will want to see. And even those theatergoers who find the show nonessential viewing will be impressed by the creativity of the performances and staging.
The glory of this staging begins with the casting of Jennifer Blood as Maria. I don’t know Blood’s real age but on stage she looks about 16. Her youth and exuberance explain how Maria is able to bond so readily with the love-starved seven von Trapp children. Blood’s Maria is practically their peer who understands and sympathizes with the tribulations of growing up, especially in a household ruled by their widower father, the stern Captain von Trapp. Maria’s youth gives the story a freshness lost to the older actresses who typically take on the role. Mary Martin was 46 when she opened the show on Broadway in 1959 and Julie Andrews was 30 when she made the film version in 1964.
Blood capitalizes on her beautiful voice and unforced charm. She doesn’t play Maria simply as a cutesy scamp, and she leads the audience to easily accept her transformation from endearing teenager to von Trapp’s loving wife.
The revival also benefits from winning performances from the seven youngsters who play the von Trapp children. It’s hard to cast the roles with boys and girls who look the proper age and can still sing and act. Every production I’ve seen has the 16-year old Liesl played by a female at least in her mid 20’s. At Drury Lane, Katie Huff looks 16, a lovesick 16 at that, and her credibility in the part is a major contributor to the evening’s success. But all the children look and sound authentic. They take Rockwell’s direction beautifully and their first act “Do-Re-Me” number with Maria is a show-stopping delight.
The Drury Lane production seems fuller than others I’ve seen. I don’t recall so much beautiful liturgical singing from the nuns at the abbey. The wedding between the captain and Maria, normally a throwaway scene, is both dramatic and touching. All the Rodgers and Hammerstein favorites never sounded better, starting with the title song and continuing melodically with “Maria,” “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” “The Lonely Goatherd,” “How Can Love Survive?” and “Edelweiss.” And then there’s “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” sung twice by the Mother Abbess of the convent. Yes, the song is emotionally manipulative and as usual I choked up.
The supporting performances are superbly handled by an ensemble of mostly familiar faces. Larry Adams is a wonderful Captain von Trapp, never overdoing the martinet posturing for an easy laugh. Adams explores the humane man beneath the tyrannical exterior, an expansive piece of acting. Patti Cohenour gives a wry performance as the Mother Abbess, and her operatic delivery of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” is thrilling. Those Chicagoland veterans John Reeger and Paula Scrofano are fine as the captain’s major domo and housekeeper respectively.
McKinley Carter is outstanding as Elsa Schraeder, the worldly woman who almost lands the captain as a husband until Maria innocently inserts herself into the picture. Peter Kevoian provides a deft comic touch as Max Detweiler, a music impresario and the captain’s friend. There are also cameos by local favorites Craig Spidle, David Girolmo, and Catherine Lord.
A special shout out, of course, goes to the lads and lasses who play the von Trapp children. Two sets of performers alternate in the five younger roles. Katie Huff and Zachary Keller play Liesl and Friedrich, the oldest of the captain’s offspring, in all performances. On opening night the remainder of the children were played by Laura Nelson, Arielle Dayan, Ben Parkhill, Emily Leahy, and Julia Baker. Well done by all!
Kevin Depinet’s set designs creatively move the story between the abbey and the von Trapp mansion with the shifting of a few architectural arches and a stairway. A diorama of the Austrian Alps at the rear of the stage lends a subliminal sense of atmosphere to the action. Theresa Ham designed the numerous colorful period costumes. Jesse Klug designed the lighting and Garth Helm the sound. Roberta Duchak is the music director and Ben Johnson the conductor of the excellent pit orchestra.
The Drury Lane revival is something of a revelation. Patrons who expect to see a familiar (or over familiar) “Sound of Music” oozing sentimentality and adorable children will be impressed by Rockwell’s vision and blown away by Blood’s brilliant reinvention of Maria. Who would have thought this warhorse offered so much intelligent emotion and honest warmth?
“The Sound of Music” runs through January 8 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. October 2011
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Sweeney Todd
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace—Only Stephen Sondheim could take an outrageous early Victorian potboiler like “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” and turn it into a stunning piece of music theater. And the Drury Lane Theatre continues its ascendancy as a major regional house for musicals by providing a gripping, and often humorous, evening of entertainment by actually taking the preposterous melodrama seriously.
“Sweeney Todd” originated as a serialized story in England
during the mid 1840’s. Sondheim was inspired by the most recent incarnation of
the story, a 1973 comic play by English dramatist Christopher Bond. “Sweeney
Todd” opened on Broadway in 1979 to divided audience and critical reaction,
based largely on the viewer’s attitude toward the horror elements in the story.
“Sweeney Todd” is an over-the-top tale of vengeance, with lots of on gory killing, garnished with rape and insanity. Sondheim converted this overheated narrative into what he called a “dark operetta,” as good a term as any for this one-of-a-kind vehicle.
The title character is really Benjamin Barker, a London barber who was railroaded into a life prison sentence in Australia by Judge Turpin so the judge could have free access to Barker’s innocent and beautiful young wife, Lucy. The story opens 15 years after Barker’s transportation to Australia. He has escaped and returned to London under the name Sweeney Todd to wreak vengeance on the judge, and before the story ends, on the general population of London.
The story is drenched in blood and violence, Todd’s favorite method of dispatching his victims being to cut their throats while they sit in his barber chair. Todd has the luck to lodge with Mrs. Lovett, a slatternly woman who ekes out a living selling “the worst pies in London.” The woman tells Todd his wife committed suicide years earlier and his daughter Johanna is now the ward of the villainous Judge Turpin, who plans to make the girl his bride.
Mrs. Lovett hits on the brainstorm of converting Todd’s victims into ingredients for her meat pies, which become an immediately commercial success as the customers consume the newly constituted baked goods with enormous relish. The story ends in a cataclysm of violent demises, with the only surviving major characters being Johanna and a young sailor who had brought Todd/Barker to London and instantly was smitten with his daughter. One of the deaths provides a surprise ironic twist to the storyline, a surprise, that is, for the few people in the audience who won’t spot it early in the first act.
Sondheim tells his story mostly in song. Some of the numbers are tuneful and melodic (“Pretty Woman” and “Johanna” in particular) but most are performed with the dissonance that suits the frights and heightened emotions of the story. There are also some darkly humorous songs that in a way are more chilling than the dramatic pieces. The most delightful number in the score is “A Little Priest,” in which Todd and Mrs. Lovett compare the savory qualities of the flesh of various classes of English society.
Every production of “Sweeney Todd” I’ve seen capitalizes on the nightmarish quality of the story, loading the staging with expressionistic lighting and sound effects. At Drury Lane, director Rachel Rockwell dares to look at the story realistically. Her production trusts the psychological power of the story and Sondheim’s vivid music to deliver the action with a convincing naturalism that is remarkably effective given the fantastical nature of the characters and events. Rockwell does inject unsettling elements at appropriate moments in the action but her staging asks the audience to accept the people and events on stage as something more than grotesque cartoons. And we do, because of Rockwell’s insights into the material and the brilliance of her ensemble and designers.
We may not hear a better sung show this season. Every voice has expressive operatic force, starting with Greg Edelman as Todd and continuing with Liz McCartney as Mrs. Lovett, Emily Rohm as Johanna, and William Travis Taylor as her sailor love interest. Edelman’s tightly wound but naturalistic performance sets the tone for the entire evening. He even eschews the English accent cultivated by the rest of the ensemble with no harm done.
The playbill doesn’t give the age of Jonah Rawitz, who plays young Tobias Ragg. Rawitz looks to be maybe 13 years old but he has the voice and stage presence of a Broadway veteran. There are also major contributions from Chicagoland A list players like Heidi Kettenring as the Beggar Woman, Kevin Gudahl as Judge Turpin, George Andrew Wolff (especially effective as the judge’s smarmy beadle), and George Keating as a rival barber whose violent demise triggers the change in Mrs. Lovett’s recipe for meat pies.
Kevin Depinet has designed a flexible and atmospheric set that enhances the creepy and sometimes scary physical action. Theresa Ham’s costumes are pure Charles Dickens, and there are valuable contributions from Jesse Klug for his evocative lighting, Garth Helm for his dramatic sound design, and Mike Tutaj, who is everywhere in Chicagoland theater these days, for his projection design. Roberta Duchak’s music direction gets a wonderfully full and various sound from the small pit orchestra, which includes an organ that evokes a sinister “Phantom of the Opera” aural flavor.
For potential spectators who might cower at the spectacle of characters getting their throats cut on stage, don’t fret. Rockwell treats the murders discreetly so no gazes need be averted. Just one more enhancement in a production that gives exceptional value to one of the unique theatergoing experiences of the last few decades.
“Sweeney Todd” runs through October 9 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46 with lunch and dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com .
The show gets a rating of four stars. Sept. 2011
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Broadway Bound
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – Neil Simon will go down in American theater history as the country’s most popular comic playwright, but during the 1980’s he demonstrated that he could write moving and well-crafted dramas that stand just as tall as his one-liner dominated comedies like “The Odd Couple.”
Simon wrote a trilogy of loosely autobiographical plays that began with “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1983) and continued with “Biloxi Blues” (1985) and “Broadway Bound” (1986). The trilogy traces the coming of age of a Jewish boy from Brooklyn named Eugene Jerome as he breaks loose from his troubled family to begin a career as a comedy writer.
The Drury Lane Theatre, in a rare departure from its musicals scheduling, is reviving “Broadway Bound” in a wonderfully performed production, demonstrating that Simon at the top of his game is a fine dramatist as well as a bottomless fountain of wisecracks.
“Broadway Bound” is set in the late 1940’s in Eugene’s Brooklyn, New York, home. World War II is over and Eugene and his older brother Stanley are ready to free themselves from their cloistered domestic existence and enter the brave new world of comic writing for radio and the new medium of television.
The comic struggles of the Jerome brothers to break into show business are played out against their difficult home environment. Their parents’ marriage is disintegrating. Mother Kate stays home to cook and raise a family like a good Jewish mother of the period. Husband Jack is having an affair with another woman. He’s an unhappy, unfulfilled man going through a middle-aged crisis and he wants out of a marriage that no longer brings him satisfaction.
The fifth member of the household is Kate’s 77-year old father Ben, an old time socialist and lovable curmudgeon who still spouts the Trotskyite slogans of a bygone era. There is also a cameo appearance of Kate’s sister Blanche, who has committed the sin of marrying a man who has become wealthy, antagonizing the left-wing Ben and incurring some resentment from Kate when Blanche offers some of her money to alleviate the family’s financial struggles.
The narrator is Eugene but the heart of the play is Kate, perhaps Simon’s finest female creation. His writing and Carmen Roman’s luminous acting combine to elevate Kate far above the stereotype Jewish mother, that house-proud, loudly martyred woman who has become such a dreary caricature in American culture.
Kate’s world may not extend further than her house and her family, but she’s content with her life as a homemaker, wife, and mother. Now Kate is angered and embittered by her husband’s philandering. In the last act, reflecting on earlier and happier days, she describes the night she danced as a teenager with George Raft in the Primrose Ballroom. It’s a great set piece and Simon never wrote anything more sensitive or deeply felt.
Mike Nussbaum, a Chicagoland theatrical treasure for decades, delivers a superbly nuanced performance as Ben. Nussbaum, now in his late 80’s, doesn’t settle for Ben as an endearing old gaffer who culls easy geriatric laughs from the audience. Nussbaum does earn smiles and chuckles from the role, but he never patronizes Ben. The old radical has his comical interludes but he’s also a man of political passion and he sees with unflinching realistic eyes how his daughter’s marriage is coming apart.
Max Polski is a credible and entertaining Eugene on the cusp of manhood, a genial and insightful guide to the turbulence within the Jerome household and his dream of carving out a career in comedy writing. Jason Karasev is fine as Stanley (modeled on Simon’s real life brother). Stanley is a more two-dimensional character, a manic comic figure driven by his fierce desire to success as a writer. And yet Stanley gains stature and maturity in our eyes when he tears into his father for betraying his mother.
Richard McWilliams gives a strong, even sympathetic performance as Jack, or as sympathetic as an adulterer can be, especially one who abuses a caring, giving woman like Kate. And Paula Scrofano nails her one scene as Blanche, who finds her husband’s wealth a barrier between her and her family.
David New, one of the area’s best actors, takes on the director’s hat for “Broadway Bound” with assurance and taste, orchestrating the production so the laughs successfully coexist with the drama, though occasionally the dialogue does lapse into Simonized verbal zingers.
Collette Pollard has designed a detailed and authentic-looking two floor set that brings the Jerome household alive in all its period atmosphere. Becky Marshall is credited as properties master, meaning that she is responsible for accumulating all the knickknacks, lighting fixtures, and linen that animate the home. Linda Roethke designed the costumes, Jesse Klug the lighting, and Michael Griggs the sound.
On the evidence of this superior revival, Drury Lane has the resources and talent to put on hit mainstream Broadway plays of the past, a product almost entirely ignored by the rest of the Chicagoland scene. Presuming the scheduling makes box office sense, there are gems by Simon, Kaufman and Hart, Thornton Wilder, William Inge, and others that would look mighty fine on the Drury Lane stage.
“Broadway Bound” runs through July 31 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $45. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2011
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Aida
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrance – “Aida” wasn’t a very good show in its Chicago pre Broadway run. In spite of some tweaking, the show got dismissive to brutal reviews when it moved Broadway in 2000, but still managed to run more than four years.
“Aida” is now back in the metropolitan area in a revival at the Drury Lane Theatre. It’s still not a very good show, though Drury Lane deserves commendation for a laudable effort, notably some intriguing choreography and effective staging. But at the end of the evening, “Aida” is pretty much where it was back in its pre Broadway tryout period, a show that just doesn’t work.
“Aida” comes with impressive credentials. Elton John wrote the score and Tim Rice wrote the lyrics. The story is suggested by the Verdi masterpiece, one of the great love stories the opera repertoire. The Broadway production made a star of Heather Headley in the title role and had enough stunning visual effects to win Tony awards for best scenic design and best lighting. John and Rice even won the Tony for best original score, topping one of the weakest fields in recent Broadway history.
The show may have looked impressive during its Broadway run, but it collapsed under the burden of the one defect no musical can survive, a bad book. Three writers are credited with the show’s book, suggesting a script by committee, always a danger sign. The dialogue is stilted and the plot thin and unconvincing. The audience immediately recognizes an Elton John score because the music sounds the same, whatever its tinges of Motown, country, and disco. The Tim Rice lyrics are uniformly unmemorable.
The plot can be summarized in a single sentence. Aida and Radames fall in love and then are buried alive for their illicit passion. That summary omits nothing of narrative significance, though there are a string of incidents, some intended to be humorous and others dramatic.
Aida is a Nubian princess captured by the Egyptians, the two countries having been long at war. Aida, her true royal identity unknown, is given as a slave to Amneris, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh. Amneris is betrothed to Radames, an Egyptian military captain, but he and Aida fall in love, sealing their doom. The only other characters of any significance are the Pharaoh (Nicholas Foster) and Zoser (Darren Matthias), Radames’s father, a schemer slowing poisoning the Pharaoh to grease his son’s path to the throne of Egypt. A Nubian named Mereb, now an official in the Egyptian government, appears from time to time trying to facilitate the course of true love between Aida and Radames, and dies at the end for his efforts.
The Nubians are played by black performers and the Egyptians by whites. The Nubians are portrayed as oppressed and sympathetic and the Egyptians as the oppressors and cruel, Radames excluded. Verdi set up a similar conflict in his opera “Nabucco” between the Israelites and the Assyrians to considerable emotional effect, but this pop “Aida” does little with the opportunity beyond exploiting the Nubians as plucky victims.
Drury Lane has neither the financial or technical resources to replicate the lavish Broadway staging, but director Jim Corti and his design staff still manage an interesting visual production built on dramatic lighting and the movement of large Plexiglas shapes that stand for ancient Egyptian pyramids. The costumes are a hodge podge of styles but colorful and numerous.
“Aida” is supposed to be a tragedy but there are some peculiar comic interludes, most of them concentrated around Amneris (Erin Mosher), an Egyptian princess incarnated as a ditsy valley girl. One of the best numbers in the show is “My Strongest Suit,” in which Amneris morphs into a Diana Ross wannabe leading a group of ancient Egyptian Supremes in a Motown song and dance that was much fun but had nothing to contribute to the central love story.
The singing by Stephanie Umoh as Aida and Jared Zirilli as Radames is strong, though much of its strength came from the aggressive Drury Lane amplification system. Unfortunately, the two performers don’t exude much chemistry as star-crossed lovers. There some fine pure singing by James Earl Jones II as Mereb.
Jim Corti’s choreography suggests the angular movement one associates with the stylized posture of figures in ancient Egyptian wall paintings. The choreography is the most distinctive element in the show, whether it is Soul Train or modern dance.
Visually, the production profits from Jim Dardenne’s scenic design and projections, maximizing the opportunities offered by the limited Drury Lane facilities. Recognizing the DL revival couldn’t match the Broadway version in extravagance, Corti makes a virtue of necessity by going for intimacy instead of glitz. It’s a wise decision but the inadequacies of the book and score can take him just so far and no farther.
Let the record show that the opening night response to the production was enthusiastic, as opening night audiences tend to be in Chicagoland theater.
“Aida” runs through May 29 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $46. Call 630 530 01111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of 21/2 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. March 2011
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Spamalot
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – The owners of “Spamalot” granted the Drury Lane Theatre exclusive Midwestern rights to present the musical. Their confidence has not been misplaced. Drury Lane has concocted a superior production, a glorious blend of performance, directing, choreography, costumes, sets, and sound that reaches the heights of last year’s Drury Lane magnificent revival of “Ragtime,” and praise doesn’t get any higher than that.
“Spamalot” is the 2005 stage adaptation of the 1975 movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” a satire on King Arthur and the Middle Ages drenched in the quirky comic sensibility of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus British comedy troupe. The Monty Python company has been off the entertainment scene for several decades now and it’s hard to know how many patrons at the Drury Lane opening night of “Spamalot” were aficionados of the Pythons or getting their first exposure. It didn’t seem to matter. The audience laughter was loud and continuous, punctuated by much applause and occasional cheers.
The show has a tenuous thread of plot about King Arthur and
his knights of the round table on a quest to find the Holy Grail. But the
musical really has a dazzling “what will
they do next” quality that leaves a coherent plot in the dust, and so much the
better.
The musical is drenched in anachronisms and visual and verbal puns. Camelot is turned into a Las Vegas show room in one delicious production number. There is a song-and-dance bit that delightfully sends up of Broadway musicals. The show is endlessly self referential, with nods to “Fiddler on the Roof,” “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line,” and Las Vegas style singers from Barbra Streisand to Cher, along with comic mentions of “Wicked,” Andrew Lloyd \Weber, among many others.
“Spamalot” allows for moments of improvisation, so the Drury Lane revival injects its own local touches, like mentions of Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel. And I don’t recall texting being part of the previous productions I’ve seen.
The comic surprises just keep on coming. The Holy Grail is discovered under the seat of an audience member, who is brought on stage to have her picture taken with the various Arthurians. There is cartoon violence and genial vulgarity and some risky production numbers that turn into show highlights, like the Broadway satire number built around the premise that to have a successful Broadway musical, one must have Jews. There is much gay humor, loaded with stereotypes and caricatures and funny from first line to last. Some of the show’s material may be R rated on the surface, but in the rollicking Drury Lane production it’s all just good high-spirited fun at a PG level, though it would take a pretty hip youngster to absorb all the droll humor.
The cast is spot-on in every role, a savvy mixture of local and imported talent. David Kortemeier sets the droll comic tone with his dead pan King Arthur. Gina Milo is a beautiful and full voiced Lady of the Lake. Matthew Crowle is terrific as Arthur’s beleaguered valet, a character I barely noticed in previous viewings but a comic gem at Drury Lane. Jackson Evans is a joy as the swishy Prince Herbert and Adam Pelty is a splendid Sir Robin, he of the loose bowels and bladder in stressful situations. There is also outstanding work by Sean Allen Krill, Bradley Mott, John Sanders, and Richard Strimer, with most of the actors playing multiple roles.
The ensemble includes almost two dozen performers, with a high stepping dancing chorus doing Tammy Mader’s lively and inventive choreography proud. The costumes are colorful, sexy, humorous, and bountiful (Maggie Foss is billed as costume coordinator and she has a massive wardrobe to coordinate). Christopher Ash designed the mock medieval sets and the comical projections. Jesse Klug designed the lighting and Ray Nardelli and Dan Mead the sound. Roberta Duchak is the musical director and the theater’s pit band never sounded fuller (and even occasionally participated in the action).
Presiding over the entire enterprise is director William Ostetek, who weaves all the musical and visual components into a seamless comic whole. This is a complicated production, with all its abrupt scene changes, massed production numbers, and edgy comedy that could often tumble into bad taste in less sure hands. But everything works on the Drury Lane stage, and if I were ordered to cut even five minutes from the production I would be stumped.
“Spamalot” would be a wonderful show even in a merely adequate production, but the Drury Lane staging maximizes the show’s strengths to the Broadway level. A total triumph for a theater that now occupies a major niche on the regional playgoing scene.
“Spamalot” runs through March 6 at the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane. Performances are Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday and 1:30 and 8 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $31 to $45 with lunch and dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. January 2011
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