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.
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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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Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” was one of the last and greatest original Hollywood musicals. The movie opened in 1954 and since the early 1980’s theater people have tried to convert the film into a stage musical, with highly checkered results.
The first stage attempt came in 1982. The production stopped in Chicago briefly on its way to Broadway. It was dreadful here and didn’t improve in New York City, where it attracted venomous reviews and lasted five performances. Since then there have been repeated attempts to revise the show, with some commercial success.
Now the Drury Lane Theatre is presenting its own take on “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” melding the movie with earlier versions and its own revisions. The musical is still no masterpiece, but I’ll wager it does great business at Drury Lane, where the current production should be a thorough audience pleaser.
Throughout all its incarnations, “Seven Brides” basically remains the story of how a family of seven brothers in pioneer Oregon took seven local young ladies for their wives. The glories of the movie resided in the magnificent Oregon scenery and the spectacular dances choreographed by Michael Kidd. There is no way a stage adaptation can capture the spaciousness and beauty of the unspoiled Oregon landscape, though the Drury Lane production does feature a striking mountain/forest backdrop. And Michael Kidd died in 2007, but Tammy Mader has created some splendid dances for the Drury Lane show.
“Seven Brides” opens with mountain man Adam Pontipee courting and marrying a town girl named Milly in about five minutes. Adam wants a wife and Milly wants out of her dreary existence as a restaurant waitress. But Adam neglects to mention that his farm household consists of six boisterous bachelor brothers. Milly quickly recognizes she’s been set up by her new husband as sole cook and housekeeper for the unruly family.
Undaunted, Milly sets about whipping the menfolk into shape. The humor throughout the first act is strictly from the “Hee Haw” brand of low comedy as Milly teaches the lovable buffoons some manners so they can woo town girls for wives. The opening act ends with Adam and his brothers sneaking into town after dark to kidnap six young ladies they just happened to meet previously at a town dance. The mass kidnapping is a riff on the Roman legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women, which inspired one of the show’s better songs, “Sobbin’ Women.”
The second act turns touchy-feely as the young men and the captured young ladies learn to co-exist and rapidly fall in love. Adam, in a snit over being dissed by his brothers, spends the winter in an isolated cabin, unaware that Milly is pregnant and eventually has a baby girl. At the final blackout, there is a massed wedding of the six brothers, while the returned Adam coochie-coos his baby daughter. For audiences of a sentimental and romantic nature, it doesn’t get much better than this.
I sat bleakly through the first act, grimly watching all the corny humor and silly sight gags on stage. But in the second act the show started to get to me. It’s difficult being in the presence of so many attractive male and female characters without succumbing to the lighthearted charm of it all. This is one of those rare shows that doesn’t have anything close to a villain. The spectators are invited to fall in love with every character on stage, and the opening night audience seemed to do just that.
Curiously, the stage vehicle doesn’t have as many production numbers as the film. The best dance sequence was the hoedown in town that leads to a brawl between the Pontipees and the town men. Mader intersperses some shorter dances throughout the show, including a delightful dream sequences in which the horny brothers yearn in their sleep for the womenfolk they kidnapped, now out of reach in the farmhouse while the boys sleep in the barn.
The acting honors clearly go to Abby Mueller as the spunky, resourceful, and loving Milly. Mueller’s Milly radiates warmth and understanding, garnished with pluck and she holds the narrative together. Steve Blanchard has the voice and rugged good looks to bring Adam alive, but the evening belongs to Milly/Abby whenever she’s on stage.
The Drury Lane supporting cast of young actor-dancers is outstanding. The current Marriott Theatre revival of “A Chorus Line” hasn’t soaked up all the hoofing talent in the area. The six unmarried brothers and their sweethearts, plus the townspeople, all kick up their heels with exuberance and athleticism. They are an endearing lot but I’ll nominate Katie Huff and Zach Zube to represent the outstanding ensemble. And it’s always good to see Renee Matthews and Don Forston on any stage, this time as the two older folks surrounded by 25 high stepping youngsters.
Guest director Bill Jenkins hasn’t exactly made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but he’s maximized the positives in the show, namely its high spirits, sympathetic characters, and overall feel good atmosphere. Kevin Depinet’s scenery captures the feeling of the old Northwest as much as possible, abetted by the colorful period costumes designed by Kathryn Rohe. Jesse Klug designed the lighting and Ray Nardelli the sound.
“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” runs through December 19 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 $31 to $45 with lunch and dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com .
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. October 2010
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Hot Mikado
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – David H. Bell, the choreographer of “Hot Mikado” at the Drury Lane Theatre, needs to talk to David H. Bell, the director. Bell’s choreography is a joyful display of energy, athleticism, rhythm, and precision. But all that good work is severely undermined by a production awash in shtick, mugging, and a desperate grab for laughs through low comedy excess.
“Hot Mikado” is Bell’s jazzed up adaptation of “The Mikado,” the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera of 1885. Bell updates the setting of the Japanese never-never city of Titipu to the swing era of the very American 1940’s. Sir Arthur Sullivan’s songs have been basically retained along with William Gilbert’s libretto. But now the male characters wear zoot suits and the dancers are jitterbugs.
It’s unlikely that many spectators at Drury Lane are familiar with the Gilbert and Sullivan original, but the show is still easy to follow as a stand-alone exercise in hot dancing, pop and blues singing, and extravagantly comic characters. The plot is one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s silly romantic stories about the path of true love not running smooth, until a ludicrous twist at the end makes everything right.
In “Hot Mikado,” as in the original, the lovers are Yum Yum and Nanki-Poo. They are surrounded by comic figures like Ko Ko, the Lord High Executioner of the city of Titipu, the Mikado (the traditional name for the Japanese emperor), and assorted supplementary characters with names like Pooh-Bah, Pish-Tish, Pitti-Sing, and Peep-Bo. There is also a ferocious woman named Katisha who competes with Yum Yum for Nanki-Poo as a husband.
A sensible storyline is the least of the comic opera’s concerns. Gilbert and Sullivan provide a framework for lots of singing and dancing and comic byplay. And that should be good enough to give audiences a grand time, especially with the mostly solid cast employed by Drury Lane.
The production gets off to a rousing start with some high stepping swing dancing by an ensemble of hoofers who distinguish themselves all night. And the singing is well up to the mark, mostly by the women—Summer Smart as Yum Yum, Aurelia Williams as a blues-shouting Katisha, and that veteran treasure Susan Moniz rattling the rafters as Pitti-Sing.
Where things go wrong is the production’s relentless grab for easy laughs through smirking, double takes, silly body language—seemingly anything that might pry a giggle from the audience. The chief repository of this anything-for-a-laugh nonsense is Stephen Schellhardt’s Ko Ko. The performance hits its nadir with Ko Ko’s massacre of the charming song “Tit Willow” near the end of the show. But all the principals join in the shtickfest at one time or another.
What makes all the low comedy so dispiriting is that “Hot Mikado” doesn’t need it. The show is a hoot without all the dumb embellishments. A production at the Marriott Theatre several years ago was a continuous pleasure taking the laughs as they came without forcing the issue.
But viewing the production as half full instead of half empty, the Drury Lane production has much to recommend it, starting, of course, with the singing and dancing. Summer Smart is a vivacious Yum Yum and Devin DeSantis has a good tenor voice and pleasing stage presence as Nanki-Poo when he isn’t submerged in strained comic absurdities. As typical Gilbert and Sullivan one-dimensional lovers, they do very well.
Ted Louis Levy makes his entry halfway through the last act as the Mikado and provides a first rate demonstration of tap dancing. The ever reliable Andrew Lupp delivers his typically strong song and dance performance, this time as Pish-Tish.
At its best, Bell’s adaptation is audacious and hugely entertaining. And just being in the company of Summer Smart, Aurelia Williams, and Susan Moniz when they are vocalizing is a total pleasure.
The physical production is excellent, starting with the scenic design by Marcus Stephens that replicates a traditional Japanese print. Jeremy Floyd’s gaudy costume designs plunk the viewer back in the swing era (and would be just right for a revival of “Guys and Dolls”). The lighting by Jesse Klug and the sound design by Cecil Averett complement the visual staging nicely. The small accompanying band gets off some hot licks under Jeremy Kahn’s conducting and jive piano playing.
In the interest of fair reporting, it must be noted that the opening night audience ate up the show’s humor. I also admit to a very low tolerance for pratfall comedy unless accomplished by Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges. So maybe it’s a matter of taste. This is a show that urgently wants to be liked. If the performers just doesn’t work so feverishly for audience appreciation.
“Hot Mikado” runs through October 3 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 $31 to $45 with lunch and dinner packages available. Visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com or call 630 530 0111.
The show gets a rating of three stars. August 2010
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Sugar
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Oakbrook Terrace – Give director/choreographer Jim Corti credit for his brave and creative attempt to turn a mediocre musical into a genuine crowd pleasure at the Drury Lane Theatre.
The musical is “Sugar,” an adaptation of the 1959 Billy Wilder movie comedy “Some Like It Hot,” one of the most affectionately remembered films in American motion picture history. The musical opened on Broadway in 1972 to tepid reviews and worse, but managed 505 performances before closing and virtually disappearing from the musical theater landscape .
“Some Like It Hot” is a farce about Joe and Jerry, two musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago who accidentally are present during a Saint Valentine’s Day-like mass gang killing in the Windy City. To escape the pursing killers, who want to whack the witnesses, Joe and Jerry masquerade as women and join an all-girl swing orchestra traveling to Florida. In the movie the musicians were played by Jack Lemmon (Jerry/Daphne) and Tony Curtis (Joe/Josephine). The female star was Marilyn Monroe, playing the orchestra’s lushly formed vocalist, Sugar Kane.
It’s extremely difficult to render a movie farce effectively on the stage. The camera can go anywhere, a limitation the stage rarely can overcome, in spite of Corti’s creative bright ideas. A score that is scarcely memorable doesn’t help the project.
Corti makes some bold decisions to enhance the original. He scales down the playing time into a zippy 100 minutes, plus one intermission, a quickie by modern musical comedy conventions. Corti retains the basic elements of the plot, but streamlines the action, concentrating on the laughs that emerge from the gender confusions, where most of the movie humor resides.
Recognizing that the musical version is stage-bound, Corti makes a virtue of necessity by presenting the action with considerable artifice. Stagehands wearing “Sugar” coveralls move the sets on and off stage in full view of the audience. Stagehands operate the spotlights on stage and banks of lights are raised and lowered from the rafters. The staging facilitates the fluidity of the action and scene changes without distracting the audience from its involvement in the storyline.
Best of all, Corti’s production never camps up the action with silly visual or verbal drag jokes. This is a superbly acted production, a statement that can’t be made with all musicals. The acting accolades start with the pinpoint casting in the leading roles—Alan Schmuckler as Daphne/Jerry, Rod Thomas as Joe/Josephine, and Jennifer Knox as Sugar. Schmuckler and Thomas are a splendidly matched team. Their transformation into females is startling in its credibility.
Knox is superb as Sugar Kane, carving out a three-dimensional character from the stereotype of a ditzy blonde singer. Knox sings well and beautifully executes a barefoot solo dance that has nothing to do with the story but provides a fine showcase for her hoofing chops.
The storyline pairs Joe with Sugar Kane and Jerry with a lecherous old millionaire named Osgood Fielding, who courts Jerry as Daphne. In a daring bit of interpretation, Schmuckler’s Daphne goes so deeply into his female impersonation that he actually falls for the old goat, leading up to the movie’s famous final line, preserved in the musical.
The only other supporting characters of significance are the female orchestra leading, played by the swinging Tammy Mader, and the orchestra’s harried road manager, played by Stef Tovar. But this is a big budget cast of almost two dozen performers, the latest testimony to the Drury Lane policy of rfeaching deep into its pockets to present the most professional productions.
Brian Sidney Bembridge designed the multiple sets, Melissa Torchia the colorful period costumes, Jesse Klug the lighting, and Cecil Averett the sound. Credit also goes to Greg Isaac for his witty property designs and Ora Jewell Busche for her wig designs, essential elements in transforming Joe and Jerry into their female counterparts. Ben Johnson directs the typically strong Drury Lane orchestra.
Thanks to Corti’s concept, directing, and choreography, “Sugar” ascends into a lark of a show. The production demonstrates how fine singing, acting, and staging can help mask glaring deficiencies in a show. “Sugar” will never be a great musical theater experience, but in its Drury Lane incarnation as a deliciously giggling way to pass a summer afternoon or evening, it works delightfully.
“Sugar” runs through August 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 $31 to $45 with meal packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com
The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. June 2010
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Ragtime
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE--The Drury Lane revival of “Ragtime” is so exceptional on so many levels that a reviewer is tempted to just urge playgoers to see the show and let it go at that. But why deny the cast, the directors, and the designers their proper due? They have combined to create a production that virtually redefines excellence in Chicagoland theater.
“Ragtime” has a claim to be the Great American Musical of our generation. Set during the early years of the 1900’s, it follows three streams of American life—the established WASP society, native African Americans, and eastern European immigrants, and how their paths eventually intersect. The story blends fictional characters with real life personalities of the time—financier J. P. Morgan, industrialist Henry Ford, explorer Admiral Perry, entertainer Harry Houdini, and Evelyn Nesbit, perhaps the first pop culture celebrity in modern American life.
“Ragtime” combines Terrance McNally’s superb book with a wonderful score by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics). They combine to tell the individual stories while assembling a fascinating mosaic of American society from the turn of the last century to the start of World War I.
The white Anglo Saxon Protestant sector is represented by a family living the American dream in their upscale and respectable New England community. Black life is portrayed by a cultured ragtime pianist named Coalhouse Walker Jr. The immigrant element is evoked by Tateh, a widower who comes to America with his little girl to rebuild a life shattered by the prejudices of the Old World.
The original Broadway production was a high tech marvel, with the theater interior reconstituted to accommodate the spectacular staging. Drury Lane’s revival includes a massive ensemble of 33 performers, an enormous financial commitment for the theater, especially a theater charging remarkably low ticket prices. The cast is supported by an augmented pit orchestra, conducted by Ben Johnson, the best I have ever heard in an area theater.
The local presentation doesn’t wisely attempt to match the extravagant look of the Broadway show. Drury Lane makes a virtue of necessity by shrewdly reducing the scale of the physical production. The enhanced intimacy illuminates the human qualities of the several storylines while individual characters emerge with greater humanity and clarity.
Not that the Drury Lane physical production is skimpy. The designers retain the essence of the Broadway “Ragtime” production. Kevin Dupenit’s sets are endlessly resourceful in guiding the story through countless interior and exterior locales. He is aided by projections designed by Sage Marie Carter and the properties deigned by Michelle Warner. Jesse Klug’s lighting bathes the production in a mellow autumnal glow. The costumes by Santo Loquasto and Brenda Winstead perfectly capture the look of the period. The sound design by Garth Helm and Ray Nardelli further enhances the physical production.
The acting and singing are uniformly outstanding. The leading performers are all familiar to Chicagoland theatergoers and all have done fine work in the past, but they have collectively raised the bar to a new level at Drury Lane. We can start with Larry Adams and Cory Goodrich (a wonderfully rich performance) as the WASP father and mother. Quentin Earl Darrington has been imported to play Coalhouse Walker and he gives a majestic performance. Mark David Kaplan is brilliant as Tateh, the symbol of every European immigrant who struggled to make a place in the New World.
The smaller roles are no less inspired. Max Quinlan is terrific as the WASP family son with the fire of revolution burning in his belly. Valisia LeKae plays Coalhouse Walker’s star-crossed sweetheart with great eloquence, both in her acting and singing. The historical characters are vividly evoked by Don Forston (J. P., Morgan), James Earl Jones II (Booker T. Washington), Stef Tovar (Harry Houdini), Jonathan Weir (Henry Ford and Admiral Perry), Summer Smart (Evelyn Nesbit), Michael Aaron Linder (in several roles, notably a perfect cameo as the Irish bigot Willie Conklin), and Catherine Lord (exceptional as radical Emma Goldman). Let them honorably stand for all 33 members of the ensemble.
Rachel Rockwell better clear off her mantle piece for the flood of awards she will win for her directing and choreography. This immensely complex show flows with an inevitability that reflects Rockwell’s intelligence and theatrical command. She instantly promotes herself into the top rank of directors in this area and perhaps nationally. Roberta Duchak’s music direction partners Rockwell’s brilliance.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Drury Lane revival is demonstrating just how good a show “Ragtime” really is. The musical’s virtues may have been obscured a bit by the pageantry of the Broadway original. Drury Lane doesn’t deny the show its spectacle, but it places greater emphasis on the historical immediacy of those few pivotal years in American life before World War I when American life was changing forever. Society was struggling with the stress of race, culture was revolutionized by innovations like the movies, and class conflicts between the rich and the poor were on a collision course. That makes the production as informative and stimulating as it is entertaining. What more could a theatergoer ask?
“Ragtime” runs through May 23 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 $31 to $45. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. March 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
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Funny Girl
At the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—Maybe it’s time we stopped viewing “Funny Girl” as the show that made Barbra Streisand famous. It’s been more than 45 years since the musical opened on Broadway, and a large percent of today’s audiences either weren’t born then or were too young to take notice of Streisand’s emerging superstardom.
So minus the Streisand mystique, how does “Funny Girl” shape up as slice of musical theater? On the evidence of the superior revival at the Drury Lane Theatre, very well indeed.
“Funny Girl” is based on the life of vaudeville star Fanny Brice, a popular and affectionately regarded figure in American show business during the first half of the twentieth century. The story follows Brice as she rises from the lower east side of New York City to become a star in the Ziegfeld Follies. During her rise she meets dashing gambler Nick Arnstein and their troubled marriage dominates the second half of the show.
The book by Isobel Lennart is serviceable but from first to last “Funny Girl” is a star vehicle. The performer who plays Fanny Brice better be a terrific singer, a good actress, a decent dancer, and an irresistible comedienne. The score does provide a couple of Broadway standards in “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “People,” but without a star turn in the leading role the musical can be just an average night for the audience.
Which brings us to Sara Sheperd as Fanny Brice at Drury Lane. Sheperd is terrific, bringing Brice to life personally and professionally. She sings wonderfully and makes us laugh, yet when the show turns serious she still holds the stage with the credibility of her acting. Best of all, Sheperd doesn’t fall back on ethnic shtick to extract easy laughs from Brice’s lower middle class New York City Jewish background.
Sheperd is the jewel of the show, but Drury Lane has built a superb production around her. Just a couple of years ago Drury Lane was plodding along as a competent suburb theater dispensing adequate versions of light comedies and musicals. But with the ascent of William Osetek as artistic director Drury Lane is now a major force in Chicagoland theater, easily on a par with the Marriott Theatre in the quality of its musical stagings.
Co directors Osetek and Gary Griffin have mounted a resourceful physical production for “Funny Girl.” Jack Magaw’s set designs creatively take us in and out of the vaudeville theater world. Elizabeth Flauto’s costumes perfectly place us in the early part of the last century.
Magaw and Flauto manage to re-create the spectacle of a Ziegfeld Follies revue with a comparative minimum of singers and dancers. Certainly the original Follies numbers with their exotic costumes and sets must have dazzled audiences, and there is no way Drury Lane could replicate Ziegfeld’s opulent visual presentations, but the Drury Lane production numbers are good enough to make their musical and dramatic and comic points within a realistic budget. “His Love Makes Me Beautiful” and “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat” demonstrate how far imagination can take a production number without breaking the bank.
The supporting performances are well up to the mark with one exception. Paul Anthony Stewart makes a pallid Nick Arnstein. Stewart doesn’t evoke Arnstein’s swagger, vivacity, and charisma, so his conflicts with Fanny Brice are too one-sided in their emotional impact. Stewart has the looks for Arnstein and has a quality voice. He just needs to pump up the romantic alure and dramatic edge.
Otherwise the complementary performances are first rate. Catherine Smitko plays Fanny’s Jewish mother with plenty of humor but mercifully avoids the stereotypes that consign the stage Jewish mother to the depths of low comedy. It’s a very strong performance in what could be a throwaway role. Iris Lieberman is good as always, this time as the humorous busybody Mrs. Strakosh. Jameson Cooper is fine as Eddie Ryan, Fanny’s long time show business friend who carries a torch for the woman with no hope of reciprocity. Marc Grapey plays the flamboyant Ziegfeld with a delightful droll touch.
Matt Raftery’s choreography nicely recreates the look of vaudeville dancing during the early 1900’s. The chorus is excellent, led by Jarret Ditch and Anne Acker. And a hearty solute to the nine-piece Drury Lane orchestra who sound much bigger and play with Broadway level professionalism.
The Drury Lane artistic brain trust stated they had wanted to revive “Funny Girl” for a long time, but waited until they found the right performer for Fanny Brice. Their patience has paid off. Sara Sheperd is worth the price of admission alone, and the outstanding physical production and most of the supporting performances round off a thoroughly entertaining audience experience.
“Funny Girl” runs through March 7 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 $29 to $38 with meal packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. Jan. 2010
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Thoroughly Modern Millie
At the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—“Thoroughly Modern Millie” isn’t a good musical, but it does allow a theater opportunities to entertain a tolerant audience. All that’s required is plenty of enthusiasm from the performers, some high stepping choreography, a hefty budget for costumes, and a charmer in the leading role.
Fortunately the Drury Lane Theatre satisfies all these requirements in abundance. The result is 2½ hours of intermittent pleasures, which is about all any successful production can hope to provide.
“Thoroughly Modern Millie” is a 2002 Broadway musical that was based on a 1967 movie musical that had a great cast (Mary Tyler Moore, Beatrice Lillie, Carol Channing) and almost no artistic or amusement merit. The stage version preserves the Roaring Twenties background and inserts a new score by Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan, who borrowed without embarrassment from Tchaikovsky, Victor Herbert, and Gilbert and Sullivan, garnished with a touch of Offenbach and Al Jolson.
The story follows young Millie Dillmount from her arrival in New York City from Salinas, Kansas, through all kinds of relentlessly madcap adventures, many of them structured around a white slavery ring operating out of a hotel for aspiring actresses operated by the sinister faux Chinese lady Mrs. Meers. Millie comes to the Big Apple to strike it rich by marrying her rich boss, though she doesn’t have a job yet. Millie’s innocence clashes with her gold digger game plan, but depth of character is not an issue with this cartoon of a show.
The narrative lurches along, alternating Millie’s romantic problems with the white slavery scam. A sweet young thing from California named Miss Dorothy Brown becomes Millie’s instant best friend at the hotel. The character makes no sense but does allow Dara Cameron to soar out the operetta golden oldies “Sweet Mystery of Life” and “Falling in Love” with her first rate soprano voice.
This is a show eager to do anything for a laugh. Some of the shtick is funny and some just desperate. The most effective comedy comes from Mrs. Meers and her two Chinese assistants at the hotel, not perhaps politically correct in its ethnic stereotyping but broadly humorous enough to disarm any touchy sensibilities. The show shamelessly exploits a beefy battle-ax office manager named Miss Flannery (Sharon Sachs) for broad comedy, but the audience ate her up and in this kind of show that’s the ultimate goal.
Drury Lane has imported Holly Ann Butler to play Millie and
she is the real deal—cute, a good singer, a splendid dancer, and as decent an
actresses as her character will allow. With Butler cast as the lead, the
production is halfway home. The other outstanding performance of the night
comes from Paula Scrofano as the menacing Mrs. Meers. At one time in her
Chicagoland career Scrofano would have played Millie. But time’s winged chariot
races on and Scrofano has done very nicely in more mature character roles. She
has a great time with Mrs. Meers and her vaudeville Chinese accent and
altogether makes the lady an almost endearing villain.
There are only two principle male roles, Randall Dodge as Millie’s boss and Mark Fisher as Millie’s love interest. Both roles are two dimensional, with Fisher singing well and Dodge playing his character for too many easy laughs.
A character named Muzzy Van Hossmere is dropped into the plot for no reason other than to allow the performer a chance to knock off some potent blues and ballads (Muzzy is a famous cabaret singer). The role at Drury Lane is played by an African American singer/actress named Melody Betts, whose color stimulates some genially inoffensive comic moments. Betts goes into an E. Faye Butler/Felicia Fields mode to knock the audience out with her high intensity belting. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with some grimly saccharine bromides about life and love that fairly make the teeth ache.
The production profits enormously from Tammy Mader’s choreography, which goes in heavily for 1920’s “Charleston”-related hoofing and lots of tap dancing, including a couple of clever numbers involving the chorus, Millie, and rows of typewriters in an office. Mader melds the exuberance of her choreography with the athleticism of the dancers to give the evening repeated boosts of much needed energy.
Tatjana Radisic’s period and mostly pastel-colored costumes are a pleasure to look at and once again do credit to Drury Lane’s respect for a show’s production values. Kevin Depinet’s scenery leaves the stage empty except for Greg Isaac’s multiple mobile props, enclosing the action with a floor to ceiling abstract diorama of the Manhattan skyline. There are effective theatrical flourishes from Jesse Klug’s lighting and Ray Nardelli’s sound design. The small orchestra directed by Ben Johnson accompanies well and William Osetek directs with a canny awareness that ebullience and an all-out willingness to please are the keys to masking the show’s frailties and selling it to the audience as an evening of high-spirited fun.
“Thoroughly Modern Millie” runs through December 20 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 $29 to $38 with meal packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars. October 2009
Contact Dan atzeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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Cabaret
At the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—By the time I caught up with “Cabaret” at the Drury LaneTheatre, the critical word was out that this was an exceptional production. And so it is. Any fan of the show better catch this staging, not only for its brilliance but because it’s unlikely any area company will attempt its own revival, at least in the near future. The Drury Lane version sets such a high bar that it should intimidate Chicagoland theaters for seasons to come.
Director/choreographer Jim Corti has rethought “Cabaret” into a virtually new show. The master of ceremonies (called the emcee at Drury Lane) no longer minces about in a conventional campy star turn. The production recognizes the storm clouds of Germany at the dawn of the Nazi tyranny, but it doesn’t wallow in the decadence that dominates most productions. Heroine Sally Bowles is now a vulnerable human being, played in a perfect pitch low-keyed style by Zarah Mahler, not the brazen party girl established as the norm for the character by Liza Minnelli in the movie version.
The improvements roll on. For the first time, the romance between Sally and struggling American author Cliff Bradshaw (Jim Weitzer) seems real. Their breakup at the end of the show left a lump in my throat. That’s never happened before. The subplot romance between Bradshaw’s landlady Fraulein Schneider (Rebecca Finnegan) and the gentle Jewish fruit seller Herr Schultz (David Lively) is both moving and dignified. For once we see two decent people torn apart by the rising tide of Nazism, not just a couple of endearing old fogies played for condescending humor.
Corti focuses on the Kit Kat Club cabaret as the emotional as well as narrative heart of his production. The emcee weaves in and out of the action, a haunting, wistful performance by the slender Patrick Andrews instead of the grotesque white face impersonation popularized by Joel Grey. The club interior encloses the characters, with the dancing girls and the emcee silently observing events taking place elsewhere in Berlin. Bradshaw himself frequently watches from his desk in Fraulein Schneider’s rooming house.
Corti’s choreography is sprightly and professional, rejecting the sleaze look of previous renditions of the Kit Kat floorshow. The result is a musical that tells real stories about real people, not just a string of garish production numbers. Consider Sally’s delivery of the familiar title song. It’s no longer a defiant anthem belted out by a hedonistic party girl, it’s a cry from the heart, dramatically enhanced by Jesse Klug’s lighting design, a major component of the show’s success all night.
The other significant characters have been elevated from caricatures to human beings. Ernst Ludwig (Brandon Dahlquist) is Bradshaw’s friend and a genial young man until one grasps the vicious Nazi beneath the hearty cheer. The prostitute Fraulein Kost (Christine Sherrill) is a person and not just a figure of vaudeville fun.
Drury Lane opened up its pockets for the revival. The
ensemble counts 25 performers, all first rate, from the principals on down. The
ladies of the chorus dance superbly, especially in Corti’s tap dancing numbers.
Tatjana Radisic’s countless costumes provide a spot-on look for the early
1930’s period. The set design by Brian Sidney Bembridge creates a perfect
abstraction of the Kit Kat Club interior, with a balcony connected to the stage
by a curved iron staircase. The orchestra, superbly directed by Doug Peck, is
semi visible at the rear of the stage, reinforcing the cabaret environment.
The Corti production removes all the clutter of previous stagings, virtually reinventing the Kander-Ebb original. The revival has whiffs of Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim in the music, and is all the better for it. But mainly this is now a show about recognizable individuals, all trying to enjoy themselves or at least survive as their world crashes down on them with the rise of the Nazis. We don’t get the sizzle and flash of a gaudy emcee or a Sally Bowles in the strident Liza Minnelli image. But we do get the privilege of enjoying a flawless ensemble operating within a brilliant physical production. Jim Corti has converted “Cabaret” from a hit show to a masterpiece and created the most important local musical theater event of recent seasons.
“Cabaret” runs through October 11 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 $29 to $38. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. September 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com*************************
Pump Boys and Dinettes
At the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—During the 1980’s and 1990’s productions of “Pump Boys and Dinettes” were everywhere. The show seems to have fallen off the theatrical radar in the new millennium, maybe because musicals centered on a gas station aren’t as inviting today with the price of gasoline pushing three dollars a gallon.
But “Pump Boys” can still pack a lot of fun as an easy-to-take summer show, especially for audiences with a tolerance for good ole’ boy humor and country music. Drury Lane has put together a snappy production that runs about 100 minutes including an intermission, just right for a musical that doesn’t have a thought in its head except entertaining the folks out front.
The pump boys of the title are four lads who operate a garage and gas station “on Highway 57—somewhere between Frog Level and Smyrna.” While L. M., Eddie, Jackson, and Jim take care of the automobile trade, sisters Rhetta and Prudie Cupp operate the Double Cupp diner next door. The exact location of the garage and diner aren’t specified but presumably it’s somewhere in North Carolina. In any case, we are deep in Hee Haw-Dukes of Hazzard-Andy Griffith territory judging from the “you all come” southern dialect and the references to catfish and other elements of southern fried culture.
“Pump Boys” doesn’t have a plot. It’s just a string of songs separated by some banter, mostly directed at the audience. The show is more of a concert than a traditional musical with 18 original songs cooperatively written by the six original members of the show who started this cash cow back in 1981.
The music is a mix of country, light rock, pop, a dab of zydeco, and a bit of gospel. There are novelty songs, romantic ballads, and the whining self pity tunes that distinguish country music. The program says the time is the present but an aura of nostalgia hovers over the show. The diner’s special of the day costs only $4.75 and the signs and posters that decorate Christopher Ash’s marvelously detailed set suggest a time a generation back when gas stations actually pumped gas for the customers and diners had real waitresses before they were replaced by impersonal mini marts.
For all its laid back informality, “Pump Boys” is a tricky show to stage. It requires four men who can sing, act, and play proficiently on several musical instruments. The pump boys provide their own live musical accompaniment, no faking and nothing recorded. Eddie has to play both acoustic and electric bass. L. M. needs to be a professional pianist who can also do a turn on the accordion. Jim and Jackson play the guitar and also trot out a harmonica (Jackson) and a violin (Jim).
It’s not easy to assemble a cast who meet the special “Pump Boys” qualifications, but Drury Lane hits the bull’s-eye, at least in musicianship. Alan Bukowiecki (L. M.), Brian Burke (Eddie), Jesse Kazemek (Jackson), and Shaun Whitley (Jim, the unofficial master of ceremonies) can all pick and pluck and saw away. I’ve seen productions that define their on-stage personalities more clearly but none that were more musical.
The waitressing Cupp sisters are played with saucy high spirits by Liza Jaine (Prudie) and Tammy Mader (Rhetta and the show’s choreographer). They sing and sashay around the stage and provide lively rhythm accompaniment for the boys, employing whatever kitchen utensils are at hand. The ladies could have been more aggressive with the “Tips” number, going further up the aisles soliciting tip money from the audience. I had my dollar ready but the gals never got as far as my row.
The Drury Lane proscenium stage isn’t the ideal setup for “Pump Boys.” The intimacy and geniality of the vehicle profit from an in-the-round stage where the performers can interact more closely with the spectators. Still, the opening night patrons responded enthusiastically to all the pleas for audience participation and seemed totally charmed by the breezy good feeling flowing from the stage.
Director Shawn Stengel has carved out a nice career performing in and directing “Pump Boys” and he finds the right meld of sentimentality and cheeky humor for the Drury Lane production. He knows he’s directing a delightfully corny show and not Shakespeare and the songs and chitchat come across as spontaneous fun, just like they should.
The technical credits begin with Ash’s marvelous set, enhanced by his lighting and projections, including a busty giant photo of Dolly Parton. Kristin Ligeski designed the appropriately blue collar costumes and Dan Mead designed the sound.
“Pump Boys and Dinettes” runs through August 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 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $29 to $38 with dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. June 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Curtains
At the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—“Curtains” at the Drury LaneTheatre is a pretty good musical that should be better. The raw materials are there, a murder mystery to provide suspense, some appealing young people to add romance, and a backstage setting to rev up the evening with satire and snappy one-liners about show business.
“Curtains” was a modest hit after it opened on Broadway in 2007 and Drury Lane snared the first regional theater rights after the show closed in New York City. Drury Lane draws from the top of the line in area musical theater talent and the production does have its moments, but I sat there thinking that the show should be funnier and edgier.
The musical had a long gestation period marred by some tragic speed bumps. The estimable team of John Kander and Fred Ebb were commissioned to do the score and Peter Stone to write the book. But Stone died in 2003 and lyricist Ebb in 2004. Rupert Holmes was brought in to fill the void. Maybe the original artistic team would have reached greater heights. We will never know.
The show takes place in 1959 during a pre Broadway tryout of a dreadful musical about Robin Hood in the Wild West. The scene is a theater in Boston and the story is stuffed with stereotyped stage characters, like pompous director Christopher Belling and the overbearing leading lady, Jessica Cranshaw, who is the first to go, poisoned early in the show. The body count increases with two more murders before Boston police detective Frank Cioffi unravels the convoluted and improbable crimes.
On Broadway, the show was carried by David Hyde Pierce in a breakout performance as the stage-struck Cioffi. At Drury Lane, the stalwart local actor Sean Fortunato takes the role. He’s OK but he yields the show’s center of gravity to John Reeger as Christopher Belling and Nancy Voigts as Carmen Bernstein, one of the producers. Those two characters hoard most of the script’s best bitchy lines and both actors have a ball. Reeger in particular tosses off an insult or a wisecrack with impeccable droll understatement. Voigts is not only funny as the hard-boiled producer lady but she displays a blast furnace Ethel Merman-esque voice.
Christine Sherrill plays Georgia Hendricks, the show’s lyricist pressed into taking over the role of leading lady following Cranshaw’s demise. James Rank is Aaron Fox, her ex husband and still smitten composer partner. Jessie Mueller is Nikki Harris, the ingénue who turns into Cioffi’s love interest. Jeff Cummings is powerful Boston drama critic Daryl Grady, and Jim Corti is Voigts’s caustic husband and co producer, Sidney Bernstein.
The production gets a refreshing and winning performance from Nicole Hren as Bambi Bernet, a dancer in the chorus with ambitions to move up in the cast, impeded by her mother, who happens to be Carmen Bernstein. Paula Scrofano isn’t around long as the poisoned leading lady, but she makes the most of her talentless character. The rest of the 24-member ensemble is well up to the mark.
Like any backstage musical, this one is peppered with reference to other shows. Patrons who like to consider themselves among the in crowd at such self referential theatrical events should spot allusions to “Oklahoma,” “A Chorus Line,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Guys and Dolls,” and “Forty-Second Street.” Cioffi’s interrogation style is a blend of Columbo and “Shear Madness.”
The score is adequate, but only one number points to what the musical could have achieved, at least as satire. The number is called “It’s a Business,” in which Carmen Bernstein thumbs her nose at arty theater and opts for shows that bring in the money. It’s a witty, name-dropping song and we needed more like it. Rank sings the show’s best ballad, “I Miss the Music,” but the number impedes the show’s momentum as a comic suspense tale. That’s the fault of the book, not Rank’s lovely tenor voice.
The choreography by Linda Fortunato is energetic, though a duet by Cioffi and Mueller goes on far too long. Indeed, 2 hours and 40 minutes of “Curtains” is about 30 minutes too much. Razor sharp show business send-ups like “The Drowsy Chaperone” accomplish much more in much less time.
The director is William Brown, a brilliant man around a comedy of manners. It may be Brown’s penchant for tart verbal humor that allows Reeger and Voigts to dominate the show with their acidulous wit. The set by Keith Pitts is outstanding, either in creating the backstage atmosphere or in rendering the hokey Wild West show within a show. Doug Peck directs the strong seven-piece orchestra and even contributes a brief song and a few lines of dialogue from the pit. Charlie Cooper designed the lighting, Debbie Baer the costumes, and Dan Mead the sound.
The opening night audience seemed to enjoy “Curtains” and it should be a crowd pleaser throughout its run. For one thing, it’s a new show, a rare commodity among the welter of familiar and over familiar revivals that flood the area musical scene. And the show is in extremely capable comic hands whenever Reeger and Voigts are allowed to speak. Beyond that, it’s hit or miss.
“Curtains” runs through May 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 $29 to $35 with dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. March 2009
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Miss Saigon
At the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—In
the past couple of seasons the DruryLaneTheatre
has elevated itself from an adequate regional theater to a major player on the
Chicagoland music theater scene. Revivals of “The Buddy Holly Story,” “Sweet
Charity,” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” set new standards for professionalism for
this western suburban house.
Still, Drury Lane hadn’t attempted one of the serious musical blockbusters that had made the Marriott Theatre so preeminent in the northern suburbs. Now Drury Lane is staging “Miss Saigon,” one of the great international pieces of musical theater of the 1990’s, a show that presents daunting technical and performing challenges, The result is triumphant and earns Drury Lane a seat at the table of the major theater companies in the area.
“Miss Saigon” is loosely based on the 1904 Puccini opera “Madama Butterfly,” the story of a tragic love affair between an American naval officer and a Japanese geisha. French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg and his colleagues Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby updated the story to the Vietnam War in 1978 and its aftermath, with an American soldier named Chris and a Vietnamese prostitute named Kim as the lovers.
The creators wrote the musical version of “Les Miserables” and “Les Miz” musical motifs flow through the score of “Miss Saigon.” Like the earlier show, most of the dialogue is sung.
The original and road productions of “Miss Saigon” were rich in spectacle, which director Rachel Rockwell and her design staff couldn’t hope to reproduce in the same scale on the smallish Drury Lane stage. Epic numbers like “The Morning of the Dragon” had to be reduced in size and the famous helicopter scene is conveyed through light and sound effects. But the Drury Lane show makes a virtue of necessity. The big production numbers still look plenty rich, thanks to the colorful costumes, dramatic lighting, and the turbulent energy created by a vast cast of 30.
Indeed, the production compensates for the pageantry limitations with the persuasive intimacy of its exploration of show’s emotions. The passion between Chris and Kim really comes alive, and we are exposed up close and personal to the emotional and psychological conflicts the men brought home from the war.
Schonberg and colleagues save the story from descending into a morass of operatic emotionalism by introducing the character of the Engineer, an Asian wheeler-dealer of uncertain ethnic background who finds a way to batten on a war like an indestructible parasite. The Engineer represents one of the eternal verities of war—the profiteers and manipulators who always seem to land on their feet. Drury Lane employs Joseph Anthony Foronda as the Engineer, a role Foronda played with distinction on Broadway, on the road, and at the Marriott Theatre. Foronda captures the humor, cynicism and live-by-his-wits genius of a sleazy pimp and con artist. But the Engineer is a survivor, and in his shadowy and dangerous world, that’s the bottom line.
The Vietnam War may have receded a bit in the national consciousness, but “Miss Saigon” still cuts close to the bone, probably because too many later wars have picked up the thread of the Vietnam disaster. The “Bui Doi” number that calls attention to the plight of unwanted children born of Vietnamese women and American soldiers is even more disturbing now. These haunting children from 1978 are now entering early middle age and one wonders what’s happened to them, those that made it out of childhood.
The Drury Lane revival casts Melinda Chua Smith as Kim. She has considerable experience in the role internationally and brings out the girl’s steely resolve beneath her innocence and unrelenting love for Chris. Smith also sings very well, overcoming some opening night sound glitches early in the show. Kevin Vortmann makes an ideal Chris, an honorable young man trying to do the right thing in the moral corruption that stained both Saigon and Bangkok after the war.
Evan D’Angeles gives a dominating performance as Thuy, Kim’s cousin. The two had been promised in marriage while children before Kim ran from her burning village to the fleshpots of Saigon. D’Angeles is a kind of villain but he is eloquent in his proprietary love for his cousin and almost sympathetic in his hostility towards the cultural rape inflicted on his country by the Western military operation.
The exemplary casting of secondary roles continues with fine performances by John Sanders as Chris’s friend John and by Melissa Dye, too long absent from the local theater scene, as the American woman Chris marries after he returns, mentally scarred, from the war.
The chorus of B-girls and American soldiers and Vietnamese
citizens makes an essential contribution to the evening’s success. They all
sing and act well and their dance numbers, choreographed with dramatic and
theatrical flair by Stacy Flaster, meld into the narrative fluidly. Rachel
Rockwell presides over the complex production with an unerring eye and ear.
I had no idea the Drury Lane contained so many high level technical facilities. Maybe this was the first musical to fully test them. In any case, the sets by Kevin Depinet, the costumes by Tatjana Radisic, the lighting by Jesse Klug, the sound by Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath, and the projections by Mike Tutaj combine to make this the most creative and resourceful production I’ve ever seen at this theater. And musical director Roberta Duchak gets a true Broadway sound from her skilled pit orchestra.
“Miss Saigon” will stretch a Drury Lane audience accustomed to lighter and less demanding fare. And the theater budget certainly is being stretched by the huge cast and impressive production values. But the results are there for everyone to appreciate and admire.
“Miss Saigon” runs through March 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 $29 to $35 with dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111 or visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. Jan.2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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The Boys from Syracuse
at the DruryLaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—A huge chasm divides Broadway musicals of the 1920’s and 1930’s from the musicals of the modern era that tradition says began with “Oklahoma” in 1943. That chasm has nothing to do with the music of the earlier shows, which gloried in scores by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and other composer all-stars.
The gap between the two eras was created by the books of the earlier shows. Even the biggest hit shows from the pre-”Oklahoma” era are virtually unplayable today because the plots and dialogue are too sappy and lame for contemporary audience consumption.
A case in point is the Rodgers and Hart 1938 musical comedy “The Boys from Syracuse.” The score is loaded with standards like “This Can’t Be Love,” “Falling in Love with Love,” and “Sing for Your Supper.” The show was the first American musical adapted from a play by Shakespeare, the Bard’s early comedy “The Comedy of Errors.” But the 1938 book to today’s sensibilities is inane vaudeville that makes the Three Stooges look like Chekhov.
David Bell recognizes that there is much theatrical gold to be mined from “The Boys from Syracuse” if only the book could be made palatable for today’s audience tastes. So he has supervised a major adaptation of the musical for the Drury Lane Theatre, including adding Rodgers and Hart hits from later sources. Unfortunately, Bell didn’t go far enough in refurbishing the show’s low humor. There is still too much shtick and too many “Please laugh at this” knockabout antics.
It must be conceded that “The Comedy of Errors” does not inspire subtlety in its staging. Shakespeare’s original deals with the farcical adventures of two sets of twins separated as infants by a shipwreck and thrust back together as young adults in the Sicilian city of Ephesus. Two of the twins are named Antipholus and each is served by a twin named Dromio. One Antipholus has been living with his Dromio in Syracuse. He is on a seven-year quest to locate his separated brother.
As soon as the Syracuse-based twins arrive in Ephesus, slapstick confusion reigns as mistaken identities take over the show. Everyone is reunited at the end and the visiting Antipholus even wins a wife, the sister of his brother’s wife in Ephesus.
The Drury Lane production is strongest and surest in its singing and high-energy dance numbers. Bell, serving as both director and choreographer, updates the setting from the classical world to the swing era of the 1930’s. A large cast of 28 performs within a sun baked town square in Ephesus, where the citizens start jitterbugging at the drop of the orchestra conductor’s baton.
Bell has assembled a talented and exuberant ensemble and they are in good shape as long as they sing and dance. But there is too much pratfall comedy, climaxed by an interminable chase scene in the second act. Physical comedy is always tricky, and the sight of one man jumping into the arms of another man in fright is a tiresome way to dredge laughs from the spectators, though the audience at my performance seemed to enjoy the rough and tumble well enough.
The two Antipholuses are played by Rod Thomas (Ephesus) and Ryan Reilly
(Syracuse).
served by the Dromios of Devin DeSantis (Ephesus) and
Andrew Keltz (Syracuse). The physical
resemblance between the actors playing the two pair of twins is as convincing
as any I’ve seen in the Shakespeare original. The audience really can share the
confusion and perplexity of the Ephesus characters who are unaware that an
extra Antipholus and Dromio have unexpectedly dropped into their midst.
Vocal honors go to Susan Moniz as the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus and Tiffany Topol as her sister. Moniz has been active in Chicagoland theater for many years and she remains charming, youthful, and attractive and the possessor of considerable singing skills. Topol not only sings and dances well but she actually milks some real emotion out of her role as a woman who suddenly falls in love with a man she fears is her sister’s husband.
The broadest of the show’s comedy gushes from Melody Betts as the zaftig and horny wife of the Ephesus Dromio. Joey Stone also has some nice comic moments as the town’s hip ruling duke, inspired by Little Richard.
The visual production is dominated by the functional and detailed outdoor set by Sally Weiss. Tatjana Radisic designed the colorful 1930’s costumes and Jesse Klug the lighting. Keith Dworkin adapted the score and serves as music director.
“The Boys from Syracuse” runs through September 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 $28 to $33. Meal packages are available. For tickets, call 630 530 0111. For more information, visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars. August 2008
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Buddy:
The Buddy Holly Story
at the Drury LaneTheatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—“Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” has played the Chicago area several times in recent years, so playgoers may be entitled to presume that the Drury Lane revival is just the same old same old. Not a bit of it. The Drury Lane staging redefines the show, elevating it from a nostalgia piece to high level musical theater with production values audiences rarely enjoy an a local stage.
Oddly, Buddy Holly is the only rock and roller to inspire a successful musical. There have been compilation jukebox shows celebrating other rockers, from Elvis Presley to Billy Joel and ABBA, but Buddy Holly is the only one honored with a book musical, covering less than two years of musical life before Holly died in that Iowa plane crash at the age of 22, “the day the music died.”
Holly was part of the pioneering first generation of rock and roll, with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Holly recorded a handful of hits before his death, but his musical legacy strongly influenced decades of future rock musicians. The Beatles named themselves as a spin-off of Holly’s backup group the Crickets. “Buddy” actually achieved its greatest box office success in London.
“Buddy” is part biography and part concert. The storytelling part begins in Lubbock, Texas, where Holly is a teen-ager making a name for himself as a country singer. But Holly despises country music, an understandable attitude, and wants to play that new rock and roll music. The narrative has a familiar arc, starting with the hero clawing his way to success in the face of fierce resistance. Once he gets to the top his ego takes over and he turns his back on the people who helped him on his rise.
And that’s where the story ends because that’s where the real Buddy Holly ended, in the wreckage of an airplane near Clear Lake, Iowa. We will never know if Holly’s best years were ahead of him or if he would have been just another Golden Oldie by the age of 25. But one leaves the theater will a sense of loss.
The triumph of the Drury lane production starts with Justin Berkobien as the title character. Berkobien makes a decent stab at physically resembling the real Buddy Holly, with his rumbled curly hair and horned rimmed glasses. He also captures Holly’s vocal style exceedingly well. Best of all, he plays Holly like a teenager and young man, eager and impatient and impulsive and driven and, later in the show, insensitive and ungrateful. It’s a physically demanding role that calls for some strong electric guitar playing by the star and Berkobien brings it all off.
Drury Lane employs an astoundingly large cast of 21 performers who give the production a full Broadway-like presence. This is especially true in the final concert scene in Iowa when Holly is backed up by a large on-stage orchestra and two large choruses of male and female backup singers.
The score covers all the Holly hits—“That’ll Be the Day,” “Everyday,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Oh Boy” among others. The show also tosses in additional early rock hits, like “Chantilly Lace” by the Bip Bopper, “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens, “Who Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. This was rock and roll meant for the masses—irresistibly rhythmic and musical.
The storytelling portion of “Buddy” is artless to say the least. Most of the book by Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson is delivered off stage by disc jockeys of the time. There are a few dramatic moments, like Holly’s whirlwind wooing of future wife Maria Elena and his conflicts with the music industry establishment. There is also a funny scene at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where Holly and the Crickets are mistakenly booked as a black group but win over the suspicious black audience with a combination of their music and their innocence.
But it’s the infectious music that carries the evening, and the performers don’t hesitate to urge the spectators to join in, a form of audience participation I normally abominate, but it works in the ebullient atmosphere of “Buddy.” The customers fairly leaped to their feet to give the show a standing ovation after the finale. The curtain call revved up the crowd with the performers taken their bows to the beat of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Oh Boy.”
Berkobien carries the show but there are significant supporting contributions from Derek Hasenstab as a Lubbock disc jockey and an early Holly supporter; Michael Gerhart as Norman Petty, the producer who guided Holly on his first hit recordings; Jennifer Loftus as Petty’s feisty wife; Tempe Thomas as Maria Elena; Casey Campbell as the Big Bopper; Tony Sancho as Ritchie Valens; Dieterich Gray as the master of ceremonies at the Apollo; Bernie Yvon as the comical MC at the Clear Lake concert; and Joe B. Mauldin and Jerry Allison as the original Crickets.
Director/choreographer Tammy Mader keeps the show moving fluidly. This isn’t a dancing musical, but she drilled her choruses in those unison choreographed movements associated with Motown that bring the songs alive visually. The pace of the production is enhanced by Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set designs, which mostly consist of chunks of scenery propelled on and off stage to represent a recording studio, an apartment interior, and the like. Tatjana Radisc’s costumes charmingly evoke the look of the late 1950’s. Rich Norwood designed the lighting and Garth Helm the sound.
Drury Lane is bragging about its new sound system, installed
for this show, and rightfully so. The music and dialogue come through with
crystal clear fidelity, just another ingredient in a wonderfully professional
and entertaining evening.
“Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” runs through July 27 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 $28 to $33 with dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111.
The
show gets a rating of four stars
May 2008
For more information visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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Sweet Charity
at the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—The big buzz these days in Chicagoland theater is coming from the DruryLaneTheatre, which has elevated itself from a competent local home for musicals and light plays to a major player on the metropolitan scene.
Indications that Drury Lane had upgraded its work to Loop level quality came with its recent fine revival of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” Now the theater has validated its position as a top tier organization with its current revival of “Sweet Charity,” one of the best song-and-dance shows we have enjoyed in this area in recent seasons.
The components of the Drury Lane hit are easily identified. The company has found a terrific leading lady with the delectable name of Summer Smart. The theater has hired the best dancing chorus I’ve seen in Chicagoland in a long time and put them to good use with superior choreography by Mitzi Hamilton. Director Jim Corti rewards audiences with a production that is high energy but also delivers plenty of heart.
“Sweet Charity” is basically a riff on that most traditional of heroines, the hooker with a heart of gold. Neil Simon adapted the book from Federico Fellini’s movie “Nights of Cabiria,” a considerably harder edged story about a naïve and vulnerable prostitute who has terrible luck with men.
In “Sweet Charity,” Charity Hope Valentine has been softened to a dance hall hostess, though there are intimations that she’s lapsed into prostitution in the past. But Charity remains an upbeat and optimistic lady who has an unfailing facility for picking losers in her love life.
The musical is really a collection of incidents rather than a coherent narrative. We meet Charity in her seedy dance hall surroundings, along with the hard-boiled ladies who sell their time for dances and conversation with lonely men. Then Charity goes out into the world of modern New York City, encountering a famous Italian movie star for a night and meeting a shy and neurotic accountant in a stalled elevator. The elevator incident blossoms into an improbable relationship that promises to escalate into the true love Charity has been seeking all her adult life.
The merits of “Sweet Charity” reside in its big production numbers, originally staged by Bob Fosse, and its score by Cy Coleman (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics). The score was undervalued when the show opened in 1966 but several of the tunes stick happily in the audience’s mind, like “Big Spender,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” and “I’m a Brass Band.”
The biggest production numbers are “Rich Man’s Fugue” and “The Rhythm of Life.” Both are really just cadenzas dropped into the show to allow Fosse and the chorus to strut their stuff. Neither advances the story or the characters but they are great to watch, even though “The Rhythm of Life” spoof of hippie churches of the 1960’s is a little dated.
Guest choreographer Hamilton injects plenty of Fosse quotes into her dances, but delivers a startlingly original take on the first major number, “Big Spender.” This song introduces the hostesses of the Fan-Dango Ballroom and is generally performed tongue in cheek. Hamilton turns “Big Spender” into a harsh expressionistic group portrait of a collection of cynical, illusion-free women who earn their living in a most degrading manner. “Big Spender” instantly establishes the bleak, loveless world that encloses Charity. There are light scenes to follow but the “Big Spender” piece is always the reference point that underscores the big-hearted but unlucky Charity’s desperate search for a better life.
The fetching Summer Smart is on stage virtually the entire show. Her Charity is winsome, charming, ebullient, and yearning—somehow keeping her hopes up despite life’s hard knocks. Smart conveys all of Charity’s hopes and dreams and sings and dances up a storm. We may not see a more complete performance on a musical stage this season.
The ensemble falls in behind Smart’s bravura star turn. The production employs almost two dozen performers, including that remarkable chorus of dancers. Smart gets solid supporting assistance from Nicholas Foster as the Italian movie star who morphs into the nerdy accountant Oscar Lindquist, the latest of many men who let Charity down. Ericka Mac and Vanessa Panerosa play Charity’s best friends at the dance hall.
This is the best physical production I’ve seen at Drury Lane. Tatjana Radisic has designed a wonderfully colorful wardrobe of gaudy costumes. The scenery by Brian Sidney Bembridge and especially the lighting by Jesse Krug reveal technical capabilities at Drury Lane I didn’t think the theater possessed. The nine-piece band under Tom Sivak’s direction manages to sound much larger.
“Sweet Charity” runs through May 18 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 $24 to $54, with meal packages available. Call 630 530 0111.
The show gets a rating of four stars. April 2008
For more information contact: www.drurylaneoakbrook.com
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The Goodbye Girl
at the Drury Lane Theatre
By Dan Zeff
OAKBROOK TERRACE—“The Goodbye Girl” opened on Broadway in 1993 with a can’t-miss pedigree that virtually guaranteed a hit musical comedy. The show was based on a charming motion picture of the same name written by Neil Simon that earned Richard Dreyfuss a Best Actor Academy Award in 1977. Simon wrote the book for the musical adaptation and Marvin Hamlisch composed the score. The stars were Bernadette Peters and Martin Short. No wonder anticipation was high.
But somehow the show didn’t quite work. It limped through a decent run but was one of the disappointments of the season. The Drury Lane Theatre is reviving “The Goodbye Girl” and the show still doesn’t quite work, but director Gary Griffin has done everything he can to elevate the material into an evening that at least is decently entertaining.
The show is a very New York City show business romance. Paula is a 35-year old dancer coming to the end of her performing career. She’s a single mom raising a 12-year-old daughter named Lucy. Paula has had terrible luck with men. Her latest boyfriend walks out on her at the beginning of the story, secretly subletting her apartment to a Chicago actor named Elliott. The actor shows up one evening to claim his apartment and the two take an immediate dislike to each other. But out of mutual financial convenience Elliott moves in.
The storyline has provided the setup for countless movies and plays. Two eligible young people start off antagonizing each other but we all know that they will wind up in a clinch at the final scene. No plot in literature offers less suspense about the outcome. The challenge for the writers and performers is keeping the audience interested in a narrative that is totally predictable.
For Neil Simon, sustaining that interest means stocking Paula and Elliott with a vast repertoire of insults they fling at each other. Some of the wisecracks are funny and some are brittle and artificial, but they can’t fill up a plot that runs almost 2 ½ hours with an intermission.
Simon makes Paula insecure beneath her one-liners, a woman afraid of commitment and love after taking so many hits from faithless men. Elliott falls in love with her and it’s his job, abetted by the precocious daughter, to break through Paula’s emotional blockade. “The Goodbye Girl” starts off as Paula’s story but Elliott soon takes over, partly because he’s funnier and partly because he’s more sympathetic. Paula is kind of a whiner and the viewer grows impatient with the woman’s reluctance to grab onto Elliott as the best thing that ever happened to her, romance-wise.
The musical tries to enhance the evening with supplementary material to distract the audience from the thinness of the main narrative. Griffin and choreographer Tammy Mader create a delightful number called “Beat Behind” that spins off “A Chorus Line” in a dance rehearsal that demonstrates to Paula she’s definitely over the hill as a professional dancer.
The main set piece of the evening is a joked-up performance of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” The play’s director is an east European pseudo-intellectual who wants Elliott to play King Richard as a woman playing a man playing a woman. In the movie, the director demanded that Elliott play King Richard as gay, a much more humorous concept. But in 1993, political correctness must have reared its ugly head and the gay attitude was jettisoned for the more laborious and silly woman-man-woman take.
The Drury Lane production features Susan Moniz as Paula and Bernie Yvon as Elliott. Yvon steals the show, partly because his role has more comic possibilities and partly because Moniz, one of Chicagoland theater’s finest divas, can’t quite make Paula as appealing as she needs to be to share the stage equally with Elliott. In addition, there isn’t much romantic chemistry between the two characters and that hurts.
Yvon is a master at tossing off Simon’s barbed witticisms, but he gives Elliott some depth and the man’s look of despair after the disastrous opening night of “Richard III” is the dramatic highlight of the evening. Yvon can’t sing nearly as well as Moniz (who endures some unnecessary over amplification) but he still can sell a song.
The only other characters who matter are Paula’s daughter, well played by young Theresa Moen, and Paula’s sarcastic landlady, acted in true Felicia Fields-E. Faye Butler style by Cherisse Scott. Richard Strimer has a fine scene as the choreographer in the “Beat Behind” number and Neil Friedman delivers a pair of comically broad character performances as the pompous “Richard III” director and the silly star of a Richard Simmons type television food show.
The dance chorus consists of Gary Carlson, Kelly Clark, Parrish Collier, Dina DiCostanzo, Ariane Dolan, Matt Raftery, Ryan Reilly, and Amanda Tanguay. They are all first rate executors of Tammy Mader’s sprightly dance numbers.
Brian Sidney Bembridge’s sets make good use of the Drury Lane revolving stage, the subject of some throw-away comic comments by Elliott that are among the funniest lines of the show. Jesse Klug designed the lighting, Janice Pytel the costumes, and Ben Johnson directed the excellent small band perched above and at the right of the stage.
“The Goodbye Girl” runs through March 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 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $22 to $41.50, with lunch and dinner packages available. Call 630 530 0111.
For more information contact: www.drurylaneoakbrook.com
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Jan. 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com