The Pirates of Penzance

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

Lincolnshire—The Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas can be an acquired taste for modern audiences. The plots are inane and the satire, so cutting in Victorian days, means little to today’s spectators. But the music is superb and the lyrics delicious, though it takes a sharp ear to follow Sir William Schwenck Gilbert’s rapid-fire words.

 

        In the past couple of generations the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have occasionally been jazzed up to connect with contemporary audiences, like “The Swing Mikado” and “The Hot Mikado” in 1939, and the Public Theatre’s hip staging of “The Pirates of Penzance” in 1980, with rock stars Rex Smith and Linda Ronstadt in the leading roles. The production had a slightly campy approach that could have outraged G&S purists. But the show delighted Broadway audiences for 772 performances, not to mention successful road companies.

       

                                                                                                                                     Photo credit: Peter Coombs and the Marriott Theatre

        It’s the spirit of the Public Theatre “Pirates” that infuses the cheery revival at the Marriott Theatre. The production, under Dominic Missimi’s deft direction, delivers on two fronts, honoring the wonderfully melodic G&S score while infusing the staging with a nudge-nudge wink-wink comic flavor viewers should find irresistible.

        The opera’s story takes place in a never-never land around Penzance, a town at the southwestern tip of England. The hero is the boyish Frederic. As a child he was supposed to be apprenticed as a seafaring pilot but his nursemaid Ruth got confused and apprenticed him as a pirate. It’s that kind of story.

        The pirate band is a kindly and unthreatening bunch, led by the swashbuckling Pirate King. They encounter a group of simpering young maidens, all sisters though they look about the same age, who are the daughters of Major-General Stanley. By the end of the show the sisters are all paired off with pirates as future spouses, with the buccaneers conveniently being revealed as English noblemen to satisfy British niceties of class.

        “The Pirates of Penzance” satirizes the music of several opera composers of the day (the opera opened in 1879) as well as Victorian stage melodramas, which can’t possibly matter to 99% of a Marriott audience. The evening’s considerable pleasures reside in the superb singing and a fine star turn by Ross Lehman as the major general. The showcase number is Stanley’s tongue-twisting “I am the very model of a modern major-general,” tossed off by Lehman at warp speed. The Marriott revival inserts references to the Chicagoland theater scene that are sure to arouse giggles of recognition in every playgoing spectator. Lehman doesn’t make his first appearance until well into the first act but he’s a joyous comic presence every moment of his stage time the rest of the evening.

   

                                                                                                                                  Photo credit: Peter Coombs and the Marriott Theatre

        Lehman is complemented in the production’s comic joys by Andrew Lupp, a sergeant in the Penzance police force, a group of singularly unaggressive law enforcement men who prefer to sit out any conflict with the criminal element. Choreographer Matt Raftery brightens the police appearances with clever and humorous dance bits, the mincing Lupp leading the way.

 

        Lehman and Lupp head the comedy end of “Pirates,” and Patricia Noonan dominates the music as Mabel, one of the major general’s daughters and Frederic’s sweetheart. Noonan gives a display of coloratura singing we seldom hear on a Chicagoland musical stage. Her voice is breathtaking in its range and expression, reaching glass-shattering high notes with perfect control. She’s also attractive and an actress of saucy charm. The Jeff Committee need look no further for its Best Actress in a Musical award.

 

        Omar Lopez-Cepero makes a winning young Frederic with a strong tenor voice, and Kevin Early is a dashing Pirate King also with excellent vocal chops. As Ruth, Alene Robertson does what Alene Robertson has done well on area stages for decades, provide a powerful singing voice and sly comic timing.

        The large supporting cast does very well as assorted nubile maidens, faux menacing pirates, and timid policemen. Their chorus singing is superb, though listeners unfamiliar with Gilbert’s often dense lyrics may have a problem absorbing all the words as they whiz by, especially the choral numbers. But overall this is as good a sung production as we may see all season.

        Nancy Missimi has outfitted the ensemble with a striking wardrobe of Victorian costumes, led by the pastel gowns (bustles provocatively protruding) worn by the major general’s daughters. Thomas Ryan’s set design has an atmospheric nautical flavor with billowing sails suspended from the rafters. Diane Ferry Williams (lighting) and Robert E, Gilmartin (sound) complete the first-rate design team. And musical director Ryan T. Nelson gets an impressive full sound from his smallish off-stage orchestra.

                  

                                                                                                                            Photo credit: Peter Coombs and the Marriott Theatre

        The show is performed in a tight two hours including an intermission. That’s plenty of time to present more than two dozen beautifully sung songs, Lehman’s comic foolery, and the frippery of the opera’s plot. As a bonus, audiences will discover that the number “With Cat-Like Tread” is actually the origin of the boisterous “Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here.”

        “The Pirates of Penzance” runs through June 10 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets range from $41 to $49. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

                   The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.     April 2012

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Legally Blonde

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire –Local musical productions will have problems hiring skilled and energetic young performers for the next couple of months. The Chicagoland talent pool of youthful men and women is being monopolized by the presentation of a deliciously silly musical comedy called “Legally Blonde” at the Marriott Theatre.

        “Legally Blonde” originated as a novel and then became a popular motion picture in 2001 before being converted into a hit Broadway musical in 2007 (which became even more popular in London). The show is undiluted froth and the laws of probability weigh very lightly on its storyline. But the musical score by Laurence O’Keefe and Neil Benjamin is an upbeat charmer, with lyrics that tickle with their droll and hip wit.

        “Legally Blonde” tells the comic saga of Elle Woods, a ditsy California girl who enrolls in the Harvard Law School, following the young man who ditched her so she can prove to her feckless beau that she isn’t just a blonde airhead. Elle is convinced she can be serious, and what’s more serious than Harvard Law School? How Elle gets accepted into Harvard is as nonsensical as the rest of the plot, but that nonsense delectably drives the musical, so who cares.

After Elle is admitted to Harvard, the rest of the musical traces her rocky path to success, meaning she triumphs at law school and still gets the right young man as a husband. I take the moral of the story to be that a girl can find true love and a great career by overcoming the handicap of being a beautiful, shallow, pampered blonde. It’s not a message to stir the hearts of determined feminists but the premise provides a superstructure for a sequence of high velocity song and dance numbers that carry the evening to considerable entertainment heights.

The show’s story is a comic soufflé, but it still finds time to make jokes at the expense of gays, lesbians, and European men. A number called “Bend and Snap” demonstrates how a young woman can entice the opposite sex by certain body manipulations in close proximity to the male of her choice. It may be sexism at its most blatant, but only a confirmed sourpuss in the audience would take any of this political incorrectness seriously. It’s too funny.

Director-choreographer Marc Robin works his usual stagecraft magic to accommodate herds of high-stepping performers on the Marriott’s limited performing space. The velocity of the evening never diminishes as the players make their entrances from the aisles, changing costumes at warp speed off stage.

Marriott found an ideal Elle in Chelsea Packard, a beautiful blonde who nails Elle’s pure Valley Girl persona. She sings, she dances, and she acts to bring Elle alive, if not as a credible three dimensional woman, at least as a character we can enjoy without embarrassment. The musical’s audience in New York City and elsewhere included a high percentage of tweeners--girls approaching their teenage years who obviously found Elle an inspiring role model. What 12 year-old girl wouldn’t want to grow up to be beautiful, a Harvard lawyer, and win the perfect mate? There are worse dreams.

The show may center on the tribulations and eventual triumphs of Elle Woods, but the production still accommodates a saucy character named Paulette, a beautician at a salon near Harvard called the Hair Affair. Paulette’s song “Ireland,” about her Irish heritage is a hoot of clever lyrics delivered with irresistible comic passion by an Amazon of a performer named Christine Sherrill.

 The cast is female-oriented but still accommodates several solid performances by males. David Larsen is perfect as Elle’s mentor at Harvard and eventually her romantic partner. Cole Burden is fine as the young man who dumps Elle to attend law school, thus precipitating the whole delightful evening. Gene Weygandt is a Harvard law professor who terrorizes first year students and shows his nasty inner self by trying to hit on Chelsea, a characterization that must have thrilled the real Harvard male faculty. And Steve Calzaretta is very funny as a hunky Fedex delivery man who becomes Paulette’s soul mate.

The production is awash in fine female performances, mostly in ensemble numbers, including a fantasy Greek chorus who gives Elle moral support in her darker moments. Stephanie Binetti is excellent as a Harvard law student who starts out as Elle’s bitchy adversary but comes over to her side in a noble display of sisterhood.

The production is a riot of pink, Elle’s chosen color and still another triumph by Marriott house costume designer Nancy Missimi. Thomas M. Ryan designed the flexible set, Diane Ferry Williams the lighting, Sally Weiss the properties, and Robert E. Gilmartin the sound. A very loud shout out to William Berloni, the dog trainer responsible for the antics of a Chihuahua named Chico and a bulldog named Nellie, who gave the two most endearing animal performances I’ve ever seen on a live stage. And as always, the Marriott off stage orchestra led by Patti Garwood is outstanding, swinging the rock-tinged score all night.

“Legally Blonde” runs through April 1 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $48 plus taxes and handling fees. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheater.com.

             The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

       Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.    January 2012

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Irving Berlin’s White Christmas

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire – “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” might succeed with audiences willing to tolerate a lame, cliché-ridden plot in exchange for large samplings of the Irving Berlin songbook.

        The musical is an adaptation of a 1954 motion picture that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The movie was simply called “White Christmas.” Producers of the stage adaptation apparently added the composer to the title in an attempt to enhance the brand name of their enterprise. The stage version originated in San Francisco in 2004 and made a brief and depressing stop in downtown Chicago last winter. The Marriott Theatre is reviving the show as an early entry in the holiday entertainment derby.

        The musical is basically a variation of the let’s-put-on-a-show storyline. But first we meet the main characters. On the male side is a popular song-and-dance team named Bob Wallace (Rod Thomas) and Phil Davis (Andrew Lupp). The men encounter a nightclub act consisting of sisters Betty (Stephanie Binetti) and Judy Haynes (Tammy Mader). That establishes the love element in the plot, complete with ludicrous misunderstandings that stretch the romantic confusions to the last scenes, when saccharine happy endings abound.

        Most of the musical takes place at a winter resort in Vermont. During World War II Wallace and Davis served under a crusty but benevolent general named Henry Waverly. The general bought the resort after returning to civilian life and now his investment is in peril because Vermont is experiencing a heat wave, driving away all the winter sports customers. So Wallace and Davis decide to put on a show that would attract lots of paying visitors and thus bail out the good general before the bank forecloses.

        The Marriott production can’t do anything to redeem the hopeless book and indeed the production sometimes aggravates the problem by turning loose heavy doses of shtick and hamming in the name of comic acting (Michael Weber’s performance as the dithering, overwrought director of the Vermont show is a chilling example). The characters include a precocious little girl turned loose to tug at the heartstrings of the audience and make my teeth ache. But credit Madison Gloria Olszewski with a powerful set of vocal pipes that bodes well for the lass should she decide to pursue a career in music theater (she alternates with Kate Wild in the role).

        On the positive side there are all those Irving Berlin standards—the title song, “Happy Holiday,” “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep,” “Blue Skies,” and “How Deep Is the Ocean” along with a bunch of serviceable less familiar numbers. Marc Robin’s choreography is mostly in the 1930’s style, highlighted by Fred-and-Ginger duets involving Lupp and Mader in “The Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing” and “I Love a Piano.” An attractive, energetic, and extremely skilled eight-member chorus delivers one solid tap dance number after another. When the characters stop talking and start singing and dancing the evening becomes an agreeable entertainment.

        Thomas and Lupp are fine as the male leads, Thomas the better singer and Lupp the better dancer. Mader plays the comic half of the Haynes sisters and dances beautifully. Binetti has a radiant singing voice and a stately stage presence. Her acting skills are mostly wasted in her two-dimensional role, which consists primarily of bickering with Thomas’s Bob Wallace until the inevitable clinch. I suspect Binetti would make a fine Anna in a revival of “The King and I.”

      

        As the major supporting character, Alene Robertson contributes her standard wisecracking Ethel Merman bit. David Lively does what he can with the role of the general, which descends into pure bathos by the end of the show. Michael Aaron Lindner plays the role of a stereotyped laconic New Englander, a performance that coaxed a few laughs from the opening night audience.

The entire cast is deep with actors who have been principal players in earlier Marriott productions, like Bernie Yvon, Anne Gunn, Ericka Mac, Johanna McKenzie Miller, and Matt Raftery. But the real stars of the show are those high-stepping chorus boys and girls who deserve to be named individually—Raftery, Matthew Crowle, Adam Estes, Ashton Napier, Katheryn Patton, Buddy Reeder, Sam Rogers, and Tiffany Topol.

 

     The physical production is led by Nancy Missimi’s costume designs, featuring a wardrobe full of colorful outfits for the dance numbers.  Thomas M. Ryan designed the sets, Dianne Ferry Williams the lighting, and Robert E. Gilmartin the sound. Patti Garwood conducts the excellent eight-piece orchestra.

        “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” runs through January 1 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 ands 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $41 to $49, plus tax and handling fees. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

   The show gets a rating of three stars.  October 2011

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For The Boys

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire – “For the Boys” is a musical that suffers from a severe identity crisis. The show starts out as a pleasant nostalgia trip and then radically shift gears into an attack on McCarthyism, which leads into some passionate anti-war sentiments. And there is a romantic subplot that weaves its way uneasily through the entire narrative.

     “For the Boys” is receiving its world premiere at the Marriott Theatre in an adaptation by Aaron Thielen, the theater’s lead artistic director. Thielen based his adaptation on the 1991 motion picture that starred Bette Midler and James Caan. In spite of its star power the film was a commercial failure and if Thielen’s version accurately recaptured the original, it’s easy to see why. An audience would have considerable difficulty accepting the abrupt thematic and emotional twists and turns of the story and likely would resist seeing the normally bumptious Midler in a serious vein.

   The musical follows the up and down relationship between two entertainers over a period of several decades. Eddie Sparks (Timothy Gulan) is a Bob Hope-like variety performer who hooks up with a cabaret singer named Dixie Leonard (Michele Ragusa) to form a team. Dixie may be partly inspired by the career of comedian Martha Raye, though I doubt Raye ever sang as well as Ragusa.

    In typical Hollywood fashion, Sparks and Leonard initially get off to a rocky start, normally a signal that after a certain amount of bickering, they will fall into each other’s arms. That sort of happens in “For the Boys,” though the relationship is complicated by the inconvenient fact that both characters are married.

        Most of the first act is a nostalgic journey back to the World War II years of the early 1940’s, complete with the clothing fashions of the time and a reprise of a few standard songs of the war years. But the only real conflict for most of the opening act resides in Sparks’s irritation at Dixie’s frequent lapses into R-rated humor on stage as they tour the war zone to entertain American troops.

        The time frame shifts from the 1940’s to the early 1950’s at the end of the first act and in the early scenes of the second act. McCarthyism’s Communist witch hunt is oppressing the entertainment industry and causes a major rift between Sparks and Dixie when Eddie is pressured into firing his long-time writer after the man’s Leftist sentiments cause problems with TV sponsors.

        The narrative continues through the Korean and Vietnam wars. Dixie lost her husband in World War II and her only son in the Korean War. The death of the son is particularly devastating and Dixie’s anger and guilt drives a wedge between her and Sparks that lasts 14 years.

     The show ends with an interminable lugubrious final scene in 1981 when Eddie and Dixie receive the National Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan. In the scene “For the Boys” totally stops being a musical and converts into a weepy reunion between Eddie and Dixie, who still suffers the anguish of her son’s death. The show now is a long way from the chirpy song and dance of the first act, leaving viewers to adjust as best they can to a plot that has turned somber and bitter.

        Marc Robin, who normally can do no wrong at the Marriott, is the director and choreographer. There is very little dancing in the show, and no real production numbers. The songs are mostly performed as part of the Eddie and Dixie stage shows and rarely illuminate the characterizations or narrative. So the main tools of a musical, the choreography and the score, are mostly non-contributing factors, which is unfortunate because the Marriott cast is loaded with musical talent, both imported and local.

        Michele Ragusa is terrific as Dixie. She has a superb pop singing voice in the big band tradition of the 1940’s and a sly way with a nasty wisecrack. She also delivers Dixie’s excessive emotional moments with as much dignity as the soppy material allows. Gulan is a good foil as Eddie, though I was frequently distracted by the performer’s physical resemblance to Tom Hanks. Gulan can’t help that Eddie is a wildly inconsistent character. He is often sympathetic but he’s also an egomaniac, an adulterous womanizer, and a moral coward in firing his writer friend for the man’s alleged Communist leanings. The romantic connection between Eddie and Dixie never comes into clear focus. The reconciliation at the end of the bathetic final scene comes across more as a sop to audience expectations than something that would happen in real life.

        The supporting players are skimmed from the cream of the Chicagoland acting pool, notably Anne Gunn, Michael Weber, Michael Aaron Lindner, Bernie Yvon, and Johanna McKenzie Miller. A special nod goes to the estimable Summer Smart, who plays Eddie’s wife and manages to create a distinct character without, to my knowledge, speaking a single word on stage.

        The physical production is first rate, led by Sage Marie Carter’s projection designs that capture the historical flavor of the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s. Nancy Missimi’s costumes are authentic recreations the assorted time periods. Conductor Patti Garwood brings out a strong big band sound from the 10-piece musical ensemble.     

   The opening night audience seemed enthusiastic about the show, as opening night audiences tend to be. They obviously were moved by the emotional excesses of the story, which is definitely a matter of taste. Everyone could enjoy Ragusa’s splendid vocalizing and the bits of razor sharp dialogue Thielen injected into his script. But overall “For the Boys” just didn’t work for me.

        “For the Boys” runs through October 16 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $41 to $49. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of  21/2 stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Shout!

 

At the Marriott Theatre

 

By Dan Zeff

 

Lincolnshire—The Marriott Theatre is presenting a new version of the 1960’s jukebox musical “Shout!” For sure the new production is an Olympian improvement over the show that played three years ago at the Drury Lane Water Tower Theatre (now the Broadway Playhouse) in Chicago.

        Director-choreographer Rachel Rockwell has dumped the entire book from the original “Shout!,” an automatic major enhancement, the book being a dreary and silly drag on the show, whose sole virtue is its music. The Marriott production also adds a chorus of likeable, athletic dancers to complement the five females who belt out 30 or so songs over the evening’s 90 minutes of continuous playing time.

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42^nd Street

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire--The Marriott Theatre is granting audiences one of the great pleasures of theater going, a really outstanding production of an old-fashioned song-and-dance show.

        The show is a revival of “42^nd Street,” that modern celebration of the Busby Berkeley movie musicals of the 1930’s, loaded with terrific songs by the team of Harry Warren and Al Rubin and glorious dances by choreographer Tammy Mader, doubtless with an assist from director Rachel Rockwell. For lovers of tap dancing, “42^nd Street” is heaven on earth, and there must have been hundreds of tap dancing lovers in the opening night audience. They roared their approval from the opening number straight through to the brilliant finale.

        “42^nd Street” is based on the 1933 film that elevated one of the great clichés of musical theater into legend—the chorus girl rushed into a big show during final rehearsals after the star is injured and can’t go on. The girl saves the show and becomes a star. The line “you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" is as iconic in modern musical theater as “To be or not to be” is in Shakespeare.

    The show is the saga of young and innocent Peggy Sawyer, come to New York City from Allentown, Pa., to make it on Broadway. And, by golly, she makes it, learning an entire starring role—songs, dances, and dialogue—in 36 hours and ending up the toast of Broadway in her first professional appearance.

     Is “42^nd Street” corny? You bet. Does it work? Absolutely. Who would have thought such a preposterous storyline would have so much juice in it?

        The narrative is saved from rank silliness by the wit of the original movie as preserved and enhanced by the musical’s book from Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble. The dialogue makes the audience laugh but the dancing makes them cheer. “42^nd Street” is a spectacle and the Marriott has a physically limiting in-the-round stage. But Mader and Rockwell have made a virtue of necessity. The sets and props are minimal but that’s no impediment. The big ensemble numbers “Lullaby of Broadway,” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” and especially “Forty-Second Street” are reinvented for the Marriott playing space, a joyous melding of high energy performers and exuberant choreography.

        The cast is awash in talent from top to bottom. The revival features a pair of outsiders in the lead roles, though Tom Galantich as tyrant director Julian Marsh got his start in local theater. But he’s been based in New York City for several years. Kaitlyn Davidson has made the rounds of the regional theater circuit, finally arriving at Marriott as Peggy Sawyer. Davidson may be a touch too old for the wide-eyed 21-year-old Sawyer but that’s a quibble balanced against her skills as a dancer and singer.

      For the supporting cast, Marriott has cherry-picked from the A list of area musical performers, names like Catherine Lord, Nancy Voigts. Michael Weber, Andrew Lupp, Adam Pelty, Roger Mueller, and Johanna McKenzie Miller. Even the outstanding chorus features major leaguers like Matt Raftery and Richard Strimer. Doug Peck leads the solid full-sounding pit orchestra.

        The cast is great and so are Rockwell and Mader, but the behind-the-scenes heroine of the evening is costume designer Nancy Missimi. She has designed a wardrobe of 1930’s costumes, climaxed by opulent outfits for the many sumptuous production numbers. The cost of all those colorful costumes is a testament to Marriott’s intention to dress their performers at a Broadway level, plus. The ensemble must change elaborate costumes offstage in seconds during some of the numbers, and the discipline and precision of those changes had to be at the level of a Marine Corps drill team.

        “42^nd Street” is a sophisticated show, for all the surface simplicity of its plot. It was really “A Chorus Line” for the Great Depression era, a classic backstage show that allows audiences a glimpse into the agonies and ecstasies of putting together a musical comedy, that most complex of theatrical mechanisms. Marriott has done it the right way, hiring a top-flight director and choreographer, giving an imaginative costume designer a blank check, and employing a blue ribbon cast. Given such resources, the result should be sensational, and it is!

        “42^nd Street” runs through May 29 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $41 to $49, plus tax and handling fees. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

         The show gets a rating of four stars.  April 2011

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Guys and Dolls

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire – The Marriott Theatre production of “Guys and Dolls” doesn’t match the genius of the musical, though it’s adequate enough to allow the show’s pleasures to radiate through to the audience.

        “Guys and Dolls” has been in the pantheon of American musical theater for 60 years. It’s a marvel of a great score in the service of a funny and literate story populated by the colorful, funny, exuberant characters who inhabit the gaudy world of Broadway after dark, as seen through the eyes of Damon Runyon. The characters talk in the particular argot of the Runyonesque society of chorus girls, gamblers, and endearing grifters, with exotic names like Nathan Detroit, Nicely-Nicely Johnson, and Harry the Horse.

        The Marriott revival, directed and choreographed by Matt Raftery, has difficulty keeping up with the merits of the show. Some of the problems reside in the casting. Rod Thomas is too boyish-looking to be a convincing Nathan Detroit and he lumbers his portrayal with an excessive amount of low comedy shtick. Brian Hissong lacks the sexual attraction required of Sky Masterson, though he does bear a facial resemblance to Marlon Brando, who played the role in the movie. Hissong’s romantic chemistry with Abby Mueller’s Sarah Brown is almost nonexistent.

        The choreography lacks spark (a charge that can be levied against the entire production), and this is a dancing show. The opening number setting the turbulent Broadway mood never takes off and the raucous dance scene in Havana needs much more fire. The most effective musical numbers coalesce around Jessica Mueller’s Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box Girls. Mueller does a nice “Bushel and a Peck” and “Take Back Your Mink” as brash nightclub numbers, and she delivers a funny “Adelaide’s Lament” bemoaning her endless engagement to Nathan Detroit.

     The production brings together three members of the Mueller theater clan, with Jessie’s sister Abby playing Sarah Brown. Abby was visibly moved on opening night when Roger Mueller, her father, sang Arvide Abernathy’s touchy feely ballad “More I Cannot Wish You.”

Even though the playbill lists 21 performers, the dance numbers look skimpy. Miss Adelaide has only two chorus girls backing her up in her Hot Box Revue act (the original production had eight).

        George Andrew Wolff belts out a rousing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” one of sure-fire show stoppers in musical theater, but Sky Masterson’s “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” hasn’t much sizzle. Indeed, the whole crap game in the sewer needs more energy and inspiration, vocally and choreographically.

    The production does feature quality supporting performances by Rob Rahn as Harry the Horse and especially by John Lister as gangster Big Jule, a “scoutmaster” from East Cicero, Illinois, visiting New York City in search of a high rolling crap game.

        The show is presented on a bare stage, with a few props added and removed as scenes change. Normally the Marriott makes a virtue of necessity in its creative use of the theater’s in-the-round stage, but this time the acting space too often just looked vacant, a negative for a show that gets so much of its appeal from the sense of time (roughly the early 1940’s) and place (Runyan’s Broadway fantasyland). Nancy Missimi’s costumes do what they can to locate the action back in the jitterbug era.

My disappointment was  especially heavy because my expectations were so high entering the theater. Marriott has a spectacular record for reviving, and burnishing, classic  musicals. Consider the theater’s remarkable recent production of “A Chorus Line.” And fair reporting should note that the opening night spectators were enthusiastic, giving the performers a standing ovation at the curtain call, though standing ovations are getting to be a tiresome knee-jerk ritual in area theaters. I don’t question the sincerity of the audience’s reaction, but I suspect they were applauding the joys of the show rather than its presentation.

        “Guys and Dolls” runs through March 27 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $48, plus tax and handling fees. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.   February 2011

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The Music Man

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire – “The Music Man” is a freak of the American musical theater. It should be corny, sentimental, and lowbrow. What can we expect from a show about stiff necked and cranky residents of a small Iowa town at the turn of the last century?

        What we get from “The Music Man” is hip, charming, melodic, romantic, and humorous—a wonderful blend of creative staging, melodic score, and an original anti-hero as the title character. Fans of the show will be overjoyed at the spiffy revival at the Marriott Theatre. Those rare playgoers who have never seen this musical will be in for a real treat.  Meredith Willson composed a desert island show. Nothing he did before or after in his theatrical career came close to “The Music Man,” but this show suffices to put him in the music theater Hall of Fame.

The Marriott Theatre is at the top of its game in its “Music Man” revival. It’s a gorgeous show to look at, thanks to Nancy Missimi’s colorful costume designs, including a wardrobe of gloriously opulent ladies’ hats from the early 1900’s. The ensemble consists of a full three dozen performers, many of them on the small-ish Marriott in-the-round stage at the same time. But director Gary Griffin and choreographer Matt Raftery still have concocted several sprightly dances that exuberantly match the performers to the performing space.

 “The Music Man” tells the tale of a slick con man who calls himself Professor Harold Hill. He goes from one Midwestern town to another selling the local yokels musical instruments, instruction books, and uniforms so their kids can form a civic band. Then the professor skips town with the loot. Eventually the professor is made an honest man by the love of a good woman, in this case Marian, the town librarian.

The Willson score is a savvy meld of chipper rhythm songs, love ballads, and even Barbershop Quartet harmony and a hymn to Gary, Indiana. The a cappella opening number set the opening night audience roaring right out of the gate. There is even a saucy song called “The Sadder but Wiser Girl” that sneaks out of the G rating of the rest of the score to celebrate the sexually experienced female, highlighted by one of the cleverest single lines in modern musical lyrics, “I hope and I pray for Hester to win just one more “A”. Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim couldn’t top that one.

The Marriott production casts Chicagoland theater veteran Bernie Yvon as Harold Hill. The role often goes to a non-singing actor (Robert Preston was the original Broadway star). Yvon can sing as well as act and he can even dance, giving us a rare Harold Hill the hoofer. And Yvon neatly evokes the oily and smarmy con man who will dupe the rubes of River City, Iowa. The town residents may be small minded and self righteous, but the professor isn’t any better, until Marian shows him the true path of decency in time for the last act finale.

Johanna McKenzie Miller brings her radiant operatic singing voice to the role of Marian and also shows us a spunky young woman who sees through Hill’s chicanery from the outset. I’m not sure that Hill and Marian will make a go of it as husband and wife beyond the musical’s conclusion, but they form an improbable but delectable pair of lovers while the show is on stage. Marian claims she appreciates Hill because he brought a breath of fresh air to the stuffy morality of River City, but it’s really the lady’s hormones driving the bus.

There are familiar faces, and voices, among the supporting actors. Mary Ernster adopts the ripest of Irish accents as Marian’s mother, who yearns to see her daughter settle down with a man, even if he’s a crook like Harold Hill. John Reeger and Iris Lieberman provide much of the comedy as the town’s pompous mayor and his browbeaten wife, infected with the urge to add interpretive dance to the town’s meager culture assets. Andrew Lupp is Marcellus Washburn, a local man who was once Hill’s partner in crime. The two dance a peppy duet in the normally all-vocal “Sadder but Wiser Girl” number.

I am not a fan of small children on stage, but a round of applause goes to Johnny Rabe as little Winthrop, Marian’s kid brother. The lad really belts out the tongue-twisting “Gary, Indiana” and never succumbs to a case of the adolescent cutes during his stage time (Rabe alternates with Daniel Coonley in the role). Alison Pogoric is a delight as Amarylis, a girl with a crush on Winthrop though she is twice his size.

The rest of the cast makes up the singing and dancing residents of River City. The performers are a mix of familiar names like Tammy Mader, Ericka Mac, and Holly Stauder with some faces new to me. They all join together in a crackerjack chorus dominated by youthful high spirits. Everyone in the chorus looked very happy to be in this show and I don’t blame them. What fun to high step to “Seventy-Six Trombones” and “Shipoopi.”

The production credits are completed by Thomas M. Ryan (set design), Diane Ferry Williams (lighting), and Robert Gilmartin (sound). Patti Garwood directs the first rate Marriott orchestra.

    "The Music Man" runs through January 9 at the Marriott Theater, 10 Marriott Drive. Most performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $48. Call 847 634 0200 or visit: www. Marriotttheatre.com.

The show gets a rating of four stars.November 2010

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

                Visit Dan on Facebook. 

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A Chorus Line

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire – “A Chorus Line” is now 35 years old and I’m convinced beyond question it’s the greatest musical in American theater history. My opinion was reinforced by the stunning revival at the Marriott Theatre. 

        As most theatergoers know, “A Chorus Line” is about how a choreographer/director named Zach selects eight dancers for his new show out of a group of 17 young men and women desperate for the jobs. There is no plot, but a lot of individual stories. The scenery is basic and the cast performs in dancers work clothes until the gaudy curtain call.

        Within that simple framework, the team of writers plus composer Marvin Hamlisch created the best backstage musical in American theater. The show is also a feast of dancing, intricate stagecraft, humor, poignancy, and some tension. The final moments when Zach makes his selections had the Marriott audience sucking in its breath as the selections are identified.

        “A Chorus Line” played for almost 15 years on Broadway, thanks to the iconic staging by Michael Bennett. Every revival I’ve seen stayed as close as possible to the Bennett presentation. After all, one does not tamper with perfection.  But the original production was shaped for a proscenium stage. Marriott has an in-the-round stage. Entering the theater, I pondered how such a limiting playing area could do justice to all those dancers performing athletic ensemble pieces.

        The pondering dissolved into pleasure within the first five minutes. Director Mark Lococo and choreographer Rachel Rockwell put their brilliant cast through their dancing paces like the show was conceived for the in-the-round configuration. There was never any sense of confinement or stinting on movement. Whether it was Cassie doing her “The Music and the Mirror” solo or everyone on stage dancing in unison, the choreography worked. 

    Indeed, the stage makes a virtue of necessity by enhancing the intimacy of the show. I don’t recall any production that better conveyed the passion of the individual dancers for their art, along with their ambitions, hopes, insecurities, and rivalries.

        But “A Chorus Line” remains about dancing. Spectators really get a crash course in how dances are put together and executed. We see up close and personal the grace of the dancer, as well as the physical demands (the fear of a dreaded leg injury is always there). Dancing that seems so natural on the stage is the result of countless hours of rehearsal drill. So the show is not only massively entertaining, it’s educational, at least for those spectators who care about the musical theater.

        “A Chorus Line” demands a large cast of performers who can dance, sing, and act at a high level. A few characters are particularly important but everyone on stage must be up to the mark. There isn’t a performer on stage who is less than outstanding and I was watching the secondary players closely.

        Virtually all the 17 auditioners have at least one featured number, along with melding perfectly in the ensemble pieces. Nina Fluke delivers a particularly racy version of “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three,” that hymn to enhancing female body parts as a sure career move. Pilar Millholen’s Diana sings a terrific “Nothing,” a bittersweet look back at a bad experience in acting school. And her rendition of “What I Did For Love” choked me up, my inevitable reaction to that wonderful tribute to the lure of dancing.

        But there were gems scattered throughout the evening. Bryan Knowlton delivered a most affecting monologue about his start in dancing in a tawdry drag revue. Mara Davi’s “Music and the Mirror” number was superb, enhanced by the see-through screens lowered onto the stage that still provided a mirror effect. Tim Gregory’s Zach was dictatorial, but still human, unlike some of the two-dimensional whip-crackers I’ve seen in other revivals.

        The honor roll of performances extended to Anika Ellis (Sheila), Matt Raftery (Larry), Adrian Aguilar (Al), Alexander Aguilar (Mike), Jameson Cooper (Don), Jastine Dumlao (Connie), Danielle Plisz (an especially fine Maggie), Max Kumangai (Richie), Adam Estes (Gregory), Zachary Gray (Mark), Nicole Hren (Kristine), Jordan Fife Hunt (Frank), Pegah Kadkhodaian (Bebe), Brandon Koller (Roy), Ashton Napier (Vicki), Drew Nellessen (Bobby), Adrianna Parson (Tricia), and Laura E. Taylor (Judy). They may be backup dancers in Zach’s show but they are all stars at the Marriott.

        Thomas M. Ryan has designed the spare but functional set. Nancy Missimi designed the costumes, Dianne Ferry Williams the lighting, and Robert E. Gilmartin the sound. Ryan T. Nelson directs the fine small accompanying orchestra. The music was a bit thin in the electrifying opening number but after that the orchestra did full justice to Hamlisch’s rock-tinged score.

    One quibble. “A Chorus Line” traditionally is performed without an intermission. The Marriott show inserts a 20-minute break that wasn’t exactly disruptive, but did seem unnecessary. On the other hand, the management may have been protective of customers who might be taxed sitting for two uninterrupted hours, and there are always the concession stand profits to consider.

        Lococo wisely does not update the book. The references are retained to Jill St. John, Troy Donahue, and Gwen Verdon. They may mean little to younger viewers but no matter. “A Chorus Line” remains timeless, the ultimate valentine to the pain and joy of dancing and the theater. I can understand why young dancers would want to be in this show. It’s their story. If I was in this production, I’d run to the theater every day.

        “A Chorus Line” runs through October 31 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $48. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

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

                Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                         Visit Dan on Facebook.

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The Drowsy Chaperone

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—By a quirk of scheduling, the three freshest and most original American musicals of this decade were revived in Chicagoland theaters within a five-day period. First to arrive was “The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” by Noble Fool Theatricals in St. Charles. It was followed by a touring production of “Avenue Q” in the Loop. To complete the musical trifecta, “The Drowsy Chaperone” is playing at the Marriott Theatre.

        The Noble Fool and touring production were outstanding, but perhaps the biggest success of the three resides at the Marriott Theatre, where director/choreographer Marc Robin has whipped up a dazzling soufflé of singing, dancing, and pageantry.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” is the least of the three shows in terms of substance. It’s basically a one-joke storyline about a corny 1920’s Broadway musical coming to life in the living room of a man who idolizes musicals. “Spelling Bee” and “Avenue Q” blended some issues into their amusements. “Chaperone” doesn’t have a serious thought in its head, relying on a witty book, spectacular production numbers, and lots and lots of style to carry the evening.

 

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” is narrated by a character known only as the Man in the Chair (James Harms). He’s our genial host, conveying his infatuation with musicals as he narrates the airhead plot of a 1928 musical called “The Drowsy Chaperone.” The evening is thus a play-with-in-a-play, the 1928 staging coming alive through an LP recording the Man in the Chair plays for us as he introduces the cardboard characters and the nonsensical plot. The Man in the Chair loves the show and he’s not blind to its preposterous side. But he loves the vivacity and melody of the old musicals as glorious escapism and has some harsh words for the state of the art today.

        The plot of the 1928 show deals with a cluster of rich, white frivolous characters, stereotypes we’ve met before in Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies. The show is self-referential without being smug. The book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar is clever and knowing, buttressed by an exhilarating score composed by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. The superficial surface of “The Drowsy Chaperone” conceals a very droll and hip heart.

           

      Robin has amassed a superlative 17-member ensemble, with terrific performances from top to bottom. I can’t recall a production at Marriott, or in any other area theater, with such spot-on performances from everyone on stage, from the leads to the chorus. Robin turns the Marriott in-the-round configuration from a limitation into a virtue, nimbly capturing all the visual flash and sizzle originally conceived for a proscenium stage.

        Harms is a joy as the impassioned musical comedy idolater, moving around the stage wearing an old sweater like Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood, except that this neighborhood is a nostalgic return to Jazz Age Broadway.

        The Marriott cast is a who’s who of local musical theater talent. Tyler Hanes and Tari Kelly play the romantic leads, Hanes a handsome young stud and Kelly a glittering Broadway musical comedy star. Andrew Lupp plays Hanes’s best friend. Early in the first act Hanes and Lupp perform “Cold Feets,” a tap dance duet that is one of the great showstoppers in Marriott’s history. It turned out to be the first of many marvelous production numbers that carry Marc Robin’s footprints. This is a dancing show supreme.

        Gene Weygandt plays the stone-faced butler Underling, mostly opposite Paula Scrofano’s ditsy matron Mrs. Tottendale. The title character is played by Linda Balgord in a scintillating cynical performance topped off by the soaring mock aria “As We Stumble Along.”

        The nonsensical subplot involved an overbearing producer (David Lively) and his loony tune protégé Kitty (Laura T. Taylor). Adam Pelty plays an over the top Latin gigolo in a suitably over the top manner. Adrian and Alexander Aguilar impersonate a couple of comic strip gangsters sent to lay some muscle on the producer. Melody Betts makes a cameo appearance as an aviatrix who ends up as a minister marrying everyone on stage in the big finale. The chorus of Cheryl Avery, Matthew Crowle, Erik Floor, and Kate Spelman earn special commendation for enhancing all the production numbers after a vast multiplicity of costume changes.

        Thomas M. Ryan’s set designs deftly evoke the wealthy ambience of the storyline without blocking anyone’s view. Nancy Missimi has outdone herself in designing costumes that perfectly evoke the Roaring 20’s plus some wildly extravagant outfits for the production numbers. Robert E.  Gilmartin’s sound and Diane Ferry Williams’s lighting round out the impressive technical credits. And properties designer Jesse Gaffney gets a very large gold star for the on-stage 1920’s airplane assembled on stage. The small orchestra under Doug Peck’s direction delivers the rhythmic and melodic score with zeal and professionalism.

        The Broadway production was performed without an intermission. The Marriott revival inserts a break that elongates the evening a bit, but the first act till runs about 70 minutes, a pretty long sit for modern audiences. The exuberant production number “Toledo Surprise” does provide a fitting performing crescendo to send the crowd happily out of the theater to buy their chardonnay at the bar and visit the restrooms.

        As pure entertainment, “The Drowsy Chaperone” is about as good as it gets. Perhaps the only criticism that can be leveled against the show is its weird title. Everything else is merriment of the highest order.

        “The Drowsy Chaperone” runs through June 27 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $48. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.Marriott.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.     May 2010

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@Yahoo.com. 

       

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Sleeping Beauty

At the Marriott Theatre

For Young Audiences

By Dan Zeff

Lincolnshire - The huge Saturday morning audience for “Sleeping Beauty” at the Marriott Theatre consisted of about 67% children, mostly young girls, and about 33% grandparents. They gathered to watch a one-hour adaptation of the famous fairy tale and they were enthralled.

        The rapt attitude of the audience was no accident. The children, and the adults, were enjoying children’s theater at its best--accessible, colorful, charming, funny, just a touch serious, and in no way condescending to its young viewers. The theater is using Marc Robin’s adaptation of the story of the beautiful young princess who is put under a sleeping spell by an evil sorceress and can only be awakened by a kiss from a true love. The comic element comes from three fairy godmothers and a servant lad-narrator.

        The early indication this production would be a winner comes from the casting. Marriott is employing an ensemble that would grace any adult musical theater in the area. How often does an audience get to enjoy performances by Heidi Kettenring, Andrew Keltz, Tammy Mader, Johanna McKenzie Miller, Jessie Mueller, Susan Moniz, Ryan Reilly, and Bernie Yvon in the same show? At my performance, there were a few replacements, but with no diminishing of quality. Andrew Lupp replaced Bernie Yvon as the king and no production suffers from Andrew Lupp’s acting.

        Robin’s adaptation is hip and even a little edgy. The princess is no simpering maiden waiting helplessly for her Prince Charming. In Jessie Mueller’s interpretation, she’s a feisty teen-ager who takes nothing from anyone. At the same time the prince is a doofus with psychosomatic allergies brought on by a fear of almost everything. The evil Magenta (Susan Moniz as a villain of some complexity) puts the curse on the princess but is rehabilitated and joins in the happy ending at the end. No fearful death for the bad guys in the style of a Disney animated movie or a Grimm’s fairy tale.

    The physical production relies mostly on colorful costumes designed by Nancy Missimi. The fairy godmothers wear ostentatiously gaudy wardrobes that underscore the Marriott commitment to a visually upscale staging. This is not a show done on the cheap.

        The musical score is functional and even clever in the prince’s “Allergies” comic number. The centerpiece of the production is a terrific talking dragon composed of three separate actors. It’s a very impressive piece of scenery by any standards and the audience ate the critter up.

        After the show concludes, the audience can stay for a question-and-answer session between the children in the crowd and the performers. The kids had some decent questions and the actors responded by taking the queries seriously. It was a perfect top-off to a morning that demonstrates how intelligent and creative children’s theater can be in the proper hands. Marriott is building the next generation of local audiences and doing it in the right way—no condescension, no silliness for cheap laughs, and lots of talent on stage and behind the scenes, especially Matt Raftery’s direction that pitches the show to just the right level for young audience appreciation. The rest of the technical credits hold to a high standard in the lighting design by Jesse Klug, the sound design by Robert Gilmartin, and the first-rate three-piece band directed by Jeff Bell.

One small complaint. The theater should provide some kind of program, even if it’s only a single sheet identifying the actors. The people responsible for this fun show deserve to be identified to the patrons.

        “Sleeping Beauty” runs through April 25 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Most performance are at 10 a.m. and sometimes at 12:30 p.m. Days vary. Tickets are $15. Call 847 6343 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

                    The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.

                      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Fiddler on the Roof

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—Let’s call it “Fiddler on the Roof lite.” The Marriott Theatre revival plays the musical for laughs, a natural result of casting Ross Lehman as Tevye, the impoverished but philosophical Russian-Jewish dairyman.

        Lehman is one of the foremost comic actors in Chicagoland theatre and his clowning has been an ornament of countless area productions. His casting as Tevye certainly goes against type. The most familiar Tevyes have been large men with a commanding stage presence, like Zero Mostel, Topol, and Herschel Bernardi. Lehman is a slight figure physically and that works against a Tevye who is both a common man and somehow larger than life.

        Lehman is the most effective in the first act, where most of the comedy resides. He is less successful in the darker second act, when an anguished Tevye faces the loss of his daughter when she marries a non-Jew and finally when he must take his family out of their village to the uncertain fate of the New World. There are scenes in the second act when the audience must take Tevye seriously, but at least on opening night the spectators didn’t seem to accept Tevye as a dramatic figure. There were laughs where there should have been respectful silences.

        The Marriott production as a whole looks and plays in the “Fiddler” tradition. Thomas M. Ryan’s set is a rough wooden set of platforms that evokes the village poverty of Anatevka in the Russian provinces. Nancy Missimi’s costumes accurately reflect the dowdy look of provincial Russia in 1905, though Tzeitel’s wedding dress would never pass the modesty test for an orthodox Jewish wedding. Jesse Klug designed the lighting.

        The cast is populated by some of the major performers in area theater, several, like Heidi Kettenring, Craig Spidle, and James Harms, in small roles. The only first rate singing of the night comes from the three actresses who play Tevye’s older daughters—Dara Cameron (Hodel), Jessie Mueller (Tzeitel), and Laura Scheinbaum (Chava).

           

        As Tevye’s wife Golde, Paula Scrofano can’t break out of the kvetching, oy-veying stereotype of stage Jewish mothers, though her tearful reaction to Chava’s marriage to a gentile was stirring in its grief. For some reason Rebecca Finnegan plays the matchmaker Yente with a thick New York brogue.

        Among the three suitors for Tevye’s elder daughters, Justin Berkobien comes off best as the young political activist Perchick. David Girolmo is excellent as the blustery Lazar Wolf, the village butcher. Girolmo is the understudy for Tevye and it could be interesting to see the burly actor in the role. I suspect his performance would have a positive impact on the production.

     David H. Bell’s directing gives proper emphasis to the musical’s major virtues, the importance of family bonds and the necessity for faith, along with the inexorable passage of time that permits children to grow up and away from their parents. The wedding song “Sunrise, Sunset” is still one of the great choke-up numbers in modern musical theater. Bell’s choreography is heavy on folk and religious influences in the usual “Fiddler” manner.

        I’ve seen revivals of “Fiddler” with more energy, better singing, and more dramatic gravitas. But lovers of the show should find much in the Marriott revival to enjoy. The musical, after all, does have a great score and an enduring and accessible story. The theater took a gamble in assigning Ross Lehman the starring role. The results, for me, were mixed but there was no denying the raucous approval from many members of the audience on opening night.

        “Fiddler on the Roof” runs through April 25 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.    February 2010

                   Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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My Fair Lady

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—“My Fair Lady” is the greatest musical in American theater history. No other show combines such a marvelous score with such a literate book. If that claim seems extravagant, check out the superior “My Fair Lady” revival at the Marriott Theatre. Case closed!

        Given a decent production, “My Fair Lady” will always be a splendid entertainment. The Marriott staging far more than decent. It is wonderfully well acted, illuminating the scintillating wit and bite of the book adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s classic comedy “Pygmalion.” The singing is exceptionally strong, starting with the radiant voice of Heidi Kettenring as Eliza Doolittle, London guttersnipe converted into a well-spoken lady by Professor Henry Higgins.

        In a bit of inspired casting, Kevin Gudahl appears as Henry Higgins. Gudahl ranks among the area’s best dramatic actors but as the professor he displays a sturdy singing voice. Most actors talk their way through Higgins’s songs in the Rex Harrison manner. Gudahl delivers a finished musical performance, an unexpected and welcome bonus for the audience.

        With two outstanding leading performers on board, the rest of the production falls neatly into place. David Lively is a fine slightly fuddy duddy Colonel Pickering. Catherine Lord displays a delicious Scottish brogue as Higgins’s housekeeper Mrs. Pearce.  Don Forsten fills the stage, physically and comically, as the irresistible Alfred Doolittle. Ann Whitney is delightfully droll as Higgins’s patrician mother. Even that twit Freddy Eysford-Hill has a certain innocent charm in Max Quinlan’s performance.

    The musical numbers go from strength to strength. In the first 10 minutes the audience is treated to two brilliant comic songs, “Why Can’t the English,” and “With a Little Bit of Luck” and the wistful “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.” All three are not only a joy to hear but they are perfect setups for the personalities of Higgins, Eliza, and Alfred Doolittle. And that’s just the beginning. The rest of the score is a roll call of hits—“I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face,” and on and on. The instrumental “Embassy Waltz” is a composition worthy of a Strauss.

        The comedy peaks with the funniest Ascot racing scene I’ve ever seen, but there is Shavian wit and wisdom throughout the evening, thanks primarily to Gudahl’s urbane portrayal of the crusty middle-aged professor.

        Dominic Missimi directs the show with due respect for the original 1956 production. One does not tamper with perfection. But Missimi has injected small flourishes—a gesture here, a facial expression there—that enhance the characters and humor without straying into revisionism. He properly leaves the musical’s ending ambiguous. Critics have speculated for decades on the relationship between Eliza and Higgins after the play ends. Missimi implies the two will have a fine time with each other. Will it turn into anything sexual or marital? Who knows?

  

        Because Marriott performs on an in-the-round-stage, the opportunities for spectacle are severely limited, so audiences must forego the lush scenery of the Embassy Ball, Covent Garden, or the Ascot racetrack. But the visual production is still well up to the mark, conveying the appropriate sense of time and place thanks to elegant Edwardian costumes designed by Nancy Missimi, the minimal set by Thomas M. Ryan, and Diane Ferry Williams’s lighting. Additional praise goes to the properties design by Gregory Isaac that recreates the show’s numerous interior and exterior locations.

        The nine-piece Marriott orchestra can’t quite replicate the sumptuous sound of a full pit orchestra desirable for the melodic Frederick Loewe score, but it accompanies diligently enough.

        Matt Raftery’s choreography is agreeable but this is less of a dancing production than others I’ve seen. That’s an observation, not a criticism. The emphasis in this staging is on the acting and singing. The Shavian dialogue never sounded more adult (in the best sense of that abused term) and the Lerner and Loewe score glows with the vocals from Kettenring, Gudahl, and Forsten.

        As Eliza would properly comment, it’s a loverly show, a rare occasion in the musical theater when everything works.      

        “My Fair Lady” runs through February 14 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. with a special holiday schedule. Tickets are $45 with meal packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.   December 2009

                      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

       

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Hairspray

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—What’s the formula for staging an exhilarating production of “Hairspray?” Hire 29 high-energy performers, including about 10 of the best musical comedy stars in Chicagoland. Then put them in the service of director-choreographer Marc Robin. The result: the best singing and dancing show we’ve seen in this area in a long time.

        “Hairspray” is happening at the Marriott Theatre, where it should be a very tough ticket its entire run and a difficult show to dislodge to make way for the next subscription musical.

        “Hairspray” opened on Broadway in 2002 and became one of the biggest hits of the decade, just closing earlier this year. The musical is based on John Waters’s cult 1988 motion picture about Baltimore teen-agers in 1962 trying to get on a local TV dance show. The heroine is a chubby high school girl named Tracy Turnblad who just wants to dance, dance, dance.

     The story delves into the evils of racial intolerance and stereotyping people because of their looks or economic status. But the social satire and moral lift are just embellishments to an exuberant sequence of dance numbers buttressed by a score composed by Marc Shaiman (music) and Shaiman and Scott Wittman (lyrics), a score that both parodies and celebrates the rock’n’roll music of the early 1960’s.

        The Marriott presentation leads from strength by employing Marissa Perry as Tracy. Perry played the role on Broadway and she’s everything the part requires—potent singing, deft comic acting, exuberant dancing, and plenty of spunk. Perry’s Tracy is defiantly full-figured and should be a role model for every teen-age girl battling weight problems and endures the accompanying ridicule of her peers.

        The musical follows the film’s decision to cast a man as Tracy’s mother, Edna. At the Marriott, Ross Lehman is a very butch Edna Turnblad, bouncing all over the stage in a giant body suit and tossing off droll lines without even changing the pitch of his voice. He delivers a wry, unselfconscious, and refreshingly uncampy comic turn that the audience ate up.

        Tracy’s adversaries are Velma Van Tussle, the producer of the TV show, and her daughter Amber, both played with supreme bitchiness by Hollis Resnik (mother) and Johanna McKenzie Miller (daughter). Heidi Kettenring plays Penny Pingleton, Tracy’s nerdy best friend who blossoms under the romantic sway of black high school student Seaweed J. Stubbs. The inimitable E. Faye Butler comes into the show late in the first act as Motormouth Maybelle to stir the musical pot to even higher spirits with her soul and rhythm and blues belting.

        Other quality supporting performances abound. Bernie Yvon is a delight as Corny Collins, the droll Dick Clark-like TV host. Billy Harrigan Tighe is fine as Link Larkin, the Elvis Presley wannabe who becomes Tracy’s unlikely boyfriend. Gene Weygandt plays Tracy’s happy-go-lucky father Wilbur, an eternal optimist who dreams of operating a chain of joke shops. Josh Breckenridge has all the dance moves and plenty of acting chops as Seaweed. And special mention must go to Scott Calcagno for his series of hilarious cameo performances as Tracy’s creepy school principal, the spacey president of the hairspray company that sponsors the TV dance show, the fey owner of a fashion company catering to hefty girls and women, and a redneck jail guard.

        “Hairspray” wears its racial tolerance attitude loudly and proudly, and, of course, the it all ends happily with the Van Tussles humiliated and the good guys bopping their way into a new and better world of racial harmony. It may be a fantasy view of modern society but it sure looks and sounds great for more than two hours at the Marriott.

    The Loop touring version a few seasons ago was a nonstop dervish of a show that overwhelmed the audience with a relentless, almost exhausting, parade of production numbers. At the Marriott, Marc Robin the choreographer makes room for Marc Robin the director. Robin’s staging has more warmth and human connection, especially in the romantic duos of Tracy and Link Larkin, Penny and Seaweed, and Edna and Wilbur Turnblad.

        Michael Bottari and Ronald Case designed the multitude of period costumes and Gerard Kelly is responsible for the hilarious and outlandish wigs. Diane Ferry Williams designed the lighting, Robert Gilmartin IV the sound, and Sally Weiss the properties. Thomas M. Ryan wisely gives the dancers their space with his minimalist set designs. Patti Garwood conducts the Marriott orchestra, which does full honor to the rocking musical score.

        “Hairspray” runs through December 6 at the Marriott Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45, with meal packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

     The show gets a rating of four stars.    Oct.2009

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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The Light in the Piazza

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—When “The Light in the Piazza” opened at LincolnCenter in New York City in 2005, reviewers praised its ambition at the same time they criticized problems they saw in both the book and score. But there was a consensus that the show was a considerable upgrade over the blight of jukebox musicals and Disney knockoffs that dominated the musical theater of the day.

        Local audiences first saw “The Light in the Piazza” at the Goodman Theatre before it moved to New York City. A touring production played in Chicago in 2007 and the Marriott Theatre is currently presenting the show. The merits of the musical are still evident and so are the problems.

    “The Light in the Piazza” is based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer. A middle aged married woman from the Deep South named Margaret Johnson is touring Italy with her 26 year old daughter Clara. The time is 1953, when Americans are the gold standard of tourists in a Europe still recovering from the ravages of World War II. While in Florence, Clara encounters a charming local 20 year-old man named Fabrizio, and it is love at first sight.

        The course of true love is impeded by a secret the audience learns late in the first act. Clara was kicked in the head by a pony at the age of 12, arresting her mental development but not her physical development. So what we see is a beautiful young woman, outwardly innocent and charming, who has the mind of a 12 year old, though that defect isn’t readily apparent to the casual onlooker. Certainly it is unknown to the adoring Fabrizio and his family.

        So what is Margaret to do, allow the romance to continue or break it up on the grounds that her daughter’s condition makes her unsuitable for the adult role of a wife and mother? If Margaret allows Clara to marry Fabrizio, mother would consign daughter to a foreign culture, a foreign language, and a new religion (she would have to convert to Catholicism)—all without the previous safety net of her mother’s supervision.

        Margaret’s difficulties are complicated by the dreary state of her own marriage. Years ago Margaret and her husband spent their honeymoon in Italy but now the marriage has gone dead, at least from the husband’s end.

        It’s a moving, if improbable, story that is largely told through a melodious, semi operatic score by Adam Guettel, abetted by Craig Lucas’s book. The songs won’t send the audience into the night humming, but they deftly explore the states of mind of both Margaret and Clara and permit the principle performers to sing brilliantly. Guettel definitely knows how to make singers sound good.

        The main problem with the story is Clara. She is too complex for a character with the mind of a 12 year-old, though Summer Smart gives the girl/woman some nice emotional shadings and she sings beautifully. And it’s asking a lot of an audience to accept that the mother would allow her daughter to enter a marriage that likely would prove catastrophic, however nobly maternal Margaret’s motives may be. The husband is an unsympathetic figure we see in only two scenes, both phone conversations with Margaret. But the man makes a lot of sense when he angrily enumerates the reasons Clara shouldn’t marry Fabrizio, or any unsuspecting young man.

        Marriott director Joe Leonardo chooses to play up the comic elements in the show, especially in the long first act. Many laughs emerge from the pigeon English and Italian exchanges between Margaret and Clara and Fabrizio and his family. Fabrizio’s family tends dangerously toward the stereotype of the comic wildly gesticulating Italian. Several scenes are played entirely in Italian, a stumbling block for spectators.  At times characters speak directly to the audience, which can be a mood breaker.

        Mary Ernster, who sings superbly, assumes a flippant air for much of the show as Margaret, blunting the dramatic underpinnings of a woman struggling with the fate of her daughter and the dead embers of her own marriage. The broad comic sensibility of the production undercuts a scene in which Fabrizio’s previously cartoonish father (as played by Gene Weygandt) kisses Margaret, a tender and unexpected romantic moment that looks false in the context of what we have seen from both characters.

        The in-the-round Marriott stage enhances the intimacy of the story but robs it of the sense of place—romantic and historic Florence and Rome—that detailed sets would have conveyed. Designer Thomas Ryan has to make do with a few stone benches and fragments of classical and Renaissance sculpture suspended from the rafters. But Dianne Ferry Williams’s warm autumnal lighting and Nancy Missimi’s 1950’s costumes are a help, and so is the strong small orchestra led by Ryan Nelson.

        The show ends up belonging to Max Quinlan’s endearing Fabrizio. Quinlan looks the role and his brave struggles with the English language are delightful. Yet he convinces us Fabrizio’s love for Clara is firm and credible and he has a show stopping voice of operatic caliber. There is also fine supporting work from Alexander Aguilar as Fabrizio’s philandering brother, Jennifer Grubb as his barren and long suffering wife, and Paula Scrofano as Fabrizio’s mother. Michael Accardo makes a maximum impression in his two short telephone scenes as Clara’s father.

        “The Light in the Piazza” runs through September 20 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 with dinner packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.               July 2009

        The show gets a rating of three stars.

                  Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—“The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is the only musical in American theater featuring a character named Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre. It’s also the only musical that makes spelling the word “crepuscule” a serious matter.

      Welcome to the offbeat, funny, politically incorrect, all American world of one of the freshest musicals of the new millennium. “Spelling Bee” startled New York City playgoers in 2005 as the most unexpected hit of the season. It had a decent run at the Drury Lane Theatre in Chicago and now it’s spreading its quirky pleasures at the Marriott Theatre.

       The show is built on that slice of Americana in which precocious boys and girls stand in front of a microphone before an audience loaded with nervous parents and try to spell absurdly arcane words. The televised finals every year exude more tension than the Super Bowl.

      “Spelling Bee” brings together a half dozen oddball young people to the gymnasium of a middle school in Putnam County (state unidentified but definitely in America’s heartland). Each finalist has a back story, and so do the two adult characters in the show, Rosa Lisa Peretti, the event’s mistress of ceremonies, and Douglas Panch, a vice principal, who reads the contestants the words, language of origin, and uses each word in a sentence (that’s where the politically incorrect humor comes joyfully in).

      In song and dialogue, the show works its way through the contestants to produce the final winner. Along the way we learn as much about each boy and girl as audiences learn about all those auditioning dancers in “A Chorus Line.”

    The epically named Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre is being raised by two gay men. Olive Ostrovsky fantasizes about belonging to a loving family, trying to disconnect from the reality of her dysfunctional home life. Marcy Park attempts to liberate herself from an adolescent lifetime of overachievement. William Barfee (pronounced bay FAY if you please!) puts a brave face on his loser’s self image. Chip Barrington, the defending champion, can’t face losing, and the dim bulb Leaf Coneybear is in the competition only because the winner and runner-up from his qualifying tournament both had to attend a bat mitzvah.

        To embellish the evening’s fun, the show brings four pre-selected audience members on stage to participate in the spelling bee. They are mere cannon fodder for the comic proceedings but occasionally one turns out to be a terrific speller. Before an interloper can run away with the show, Douglas Panch produces an preposterous word so convoluted that it’s impossible even to remember, much less spell.

        The first act is played for laughs, introducing the characters and providing most of that politically incorrect humor. Without abandoning its comic roots, the second act takes the youths on stage more seriously and probes such ongoing issues as winning at all cost and the pressure of such competitions on the vulnerable egos of youngsters.

    The production is a perfect fit for the Marriott’s intimate in-the-round stage under the guidance of director/choreographer Rachel Rockwell. The ensemble may be too old for their student characters but where are you going to find teen-age performers who can sing, dance, and act as well as the mature cast at the Marriott?

        The two adults in the show are played with great relish by Roberta Duchak and Michael Weber (especially funny in his deadpan word renderings). The contestants are played by such familiar locals as Heidi Kettenring (Olive), Michael Mahler (Chip), Brandy McClendon (Logainne), and Derrick Trumbly (Leaf Coneybear). The cast is rounded out by Eric Roediger, who seems born to play the chubby William Barfee, and Katie Boren, a tiny performer with a gymnast’s athleticism and a very large voice as Marcy Park. Kevin Smith Kirkwood plays multiple roles, starting with a gang banger working out his community service dispensing tough love and fruit juice boxes as he escorts the losers off the stage.

        Thomas Ryan designed the basic set decorated with school banners hanging from the rafters. Nancy Missimi designed the colorful and bizarre costumes for the youngsters. Jesse Klug designed the lighting, and Robert Gilmartin IV the sound. Patti Garwood directs the small and effective orchestra.

        “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” runs through July 19 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.       May 2009

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—Is “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” a foolproof musical? All I know is that I’ve seen the show at least 10 times and after every performance I’ve left the theater totally entertained.

        Three of those enjoyable performances have been provided by the Marriott Theatre, once a decade starting in 1985. The current staging may be the best of all—a joyous display of wit, color, energy, and exceptional choreography and dancing.

        “Joseph” began as a 15-minute musical exercise in a London school in 1968, a hip modern take by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice on the story of Joseph and his brothers from the Book of Genesis. The musical got longer and better and became an institution in the mid 1990’s in Chicago with Donny Osmond starring as the title character in an irresistible production at the Chicago Theatre.

        Director-choreographer Marc Robin obviously has a strong affection for the show. He’s assembled a superb cast of high-energy performers, created a cluster of funny, droll, and colorful dances, and delivers about 100 minutes of pure fun to audiences who doubtless will whoop and holler in approval every show like the capacity opening night crowd.

        “Joseph” is told entirely in song, much of it belted out by the Narrator, the veteran Susan Moniz in the Marriott revival. I’ve seen actors in other productions who created more of an interactive character out of the Narrator, but Moniz has a big voice and even joins in the dancing with much exuberance.

        Max Quinlan plays Joseph with proper boyish charm and adds another strong voice to the production. Bernie Yvon eats up the role of the Elvis-channeling Pharaoh, making his entrance on a two-wheeled electric scooter that represents the ancient Egyptian throne. Yvon then proceeds to do a hammy Elvis impersonation that includes chatting up a young woman in the audience. The audience loved it.

        The music, as always, is the last word in eclecticism—country, pop, Broadway, French cabaret, rock, and calypso. Lloyd Webber went on to compose far more commercial hits, but “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” “Cats,” and “Phantom of the Opera,” whatever their merits, don’t radiate the joy and exhilaration of “Joseph.”

        Moniz, Quinlan, and Yvon are all well up to the mark, but it’s the rest of the ensemble that blows us away. Their motor never stops running as they sing and dance and make countless costume changes. Robin has given them plenty to do, highlights including a rip roaring country music version of “One More Angel in Heaven,” complete with themes from “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” and a snatch from Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo.” The first act finale is an all-hands-on-board production number that resembles an aerobics class danced to the max.

        Everyone in the ensemble makes the honor roll—Roger Anderson, Kevin Barthel, Lyndsey Cole, Don Denton, Andrew Keltz, Brandon Koller, Christian Libonati, Erika Mac, Ryan Reilly, Summer Rich, Arbender Robinson, Jason Shuffler, Laura E. Taylor, Joe Tokarz, J Tyler Whitmer, and George Andrew Wolff. The males mostly play Joseph’s brothers and the females are the sexy chorus. As a stamina-drenched collection of skilled young singers, dancers, and actors, they are as good a group as has ever bounced off the Marriott stage.

    Because of the theater’s in-the-round configuration, the production can’t provide some of the wry visual effects available in a proscenium production. But Marriott has been defeating the limitations of its in-the-round setup for years and the stage presents no problems for the imaginative and resourceful Robin. He just floods the theater with delectable dances ands lets Nancy Missimi’s endlessly various and comical costumes carry the visual end of the show, complimented by Diane Ferry Williams’s lighting and Thomas M. Ryan’s minimalist set design. The orchestra under Patti Garwood’s direction gives the performers unfailing solid musical support.

        The musical is a hoot from first to last, but at the end, when Joseph is reunited with his elderly father Jacob, I choked up, as usual.

        “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” runs through May 10 at the Marriott Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 with dinner packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.

The show gets a rating of four stars.   February 2009

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

           

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The Bowery Boys

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—Horatio Alger, Jr., was a popular author of novels for boys in the later nineteenth century. Alger may have written as many as 120 of these novels, all of them unreadable today. Alger was a dreadful writer, but his name has become part of the American pop culture lexicon because of his “rags to riches” plots. According to Alger, any lad could rise from poverty to success through hard work, perseverance, and self-reliance (and a little luck).

        The Alger ideal is the springboard for a new musical called “The Bowery Boys,” now receiving its world premiere at the Marriott Theatre. Actually, the show doesn’t focus much on the rags to riches ideal, which is probably a good thing. Instead, “The Bowery Boys” is more “Oliver Twist” (with a dash of “Les Miserables”) than a typical simplistic Horatio Alger saga. The Marriott show is a highly entertaining adventure tale set against the squalor and political corruption of the lower depths of New York City following the Civil War. 

        The central figure, like many of Alger’s boy heroes, is a poor shoeshine boy named Dick (based on Alger’s “Ragged Dick” series that inaugurated his writing success in 1867). Dick lives with his fellow young bootblacks in a Dickensian dormitory presided over by the tyrannical Dean Fiske, the Mr. Bumble of this narrative.

        Dick becomes enmeshed in a plot involving Tammany Hall thugs and a scheme to obtain an inheritance through deception and murder. The plot is improbable and a little difficult to follow, but it does succeed in injecting a feeling of menace and danger that threatens Dick and the ingénue, a young English girl named Mary. There are a couple of murders, one on stage and one off, and the threat of two more before the villains are uncovered and Dick and Mary are free to express their affection for each other.

        Director David H. Bell is responsible for the musical’s book, which keeps the audience’s attention engaged throughout its improbabilities. Much of the book’s strength comes from its realistic depiction of the plight of street urchins in New York City, who apparently numbered in the thousands during the later nineteenth century and died by the hundreds without so much as a shrug from society. Bell also vividly portrays the evils of Tammany Hall whose power extended from the gutters of the New York slums to the top of the police pyramid. There is also a realistic recognition of ethnic prejudice against Irish immigrants.

        Bell and composer Jeremy Cohen created a serviceable score highlighted by some clever interpolations of George M. Cohan classics altered to accommodate the story’s action and characters. Thus, we hear revised versions of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “”Mary,” and “Give My Regards to Broadway” in fresh contexts. The first act finale offers a whiff of “Les Miz” in its intensity. None of the original songs will send spectators into the night humming, but they all serve the story well and provide the underpinnings for some exuberant ensemble choreography by Matt Raftery.

        The production is held together by a superb performance by Brian Sears as Dick, the head ragamuffin. Sears is a triple threat singer, dancer, and actor who really gets inside the skin of the downtrodden but resourceful and optimistic Dick. His romantic co-lead is petite Morgan Weed as Mary, the young English girl who goes into hiding with Dick, disguised as a shoeshine boy to elude the nasty conspiracy that threatens her life.

        Among the supporting players, pride of place goes to a truly vile set of villains, led by Lesley Bevan as Mary’s phony nanny, who slips from Scottish brogue to streetwise New York lingo as the leader of a vicious gang that includes Bernie Yvon as Mary’s smarmy stepfather and Jeff Dumas and John McFarland as a sleazy pair of Tammany Hall gangsters.  Sean Fortunato also makes a splendidly bullying Dean Fiske. The casting is so deep that the Marriott management employs such local musical theater luminaries as Susan Moniz, Catherine Lord, and Jessie Mueller in small supporting roles.

        The large ensemble also includes a persuasive collection of plucky but impoverished shoeshine boys who distinguish themselves in the show’s high energy dances. They run the gamut from real boys to performers well into their adult years. Let the naming of Andrew Keltz, Wilson Bridges, and Christian Libonati represent the entire excellent chorus.

    Everyone looks historically authentic in Nancy Missimi’s costumes. The production also profits from Thomas M. Ryan’s evocative set, Diane Ferry Williams’s lighting, and Cecil Averett’s sound design. Patti Garwood conducts the Marriott orchestra with her customary professionalism.

    Frankly, “The Bowery Boys” exceeded my expectations. I anticipated a sappy hymn celebrating the rewards of clean living in overcoming obstacles that would be insurmountable in real life. But Bell and Cohen and their fine cast don’t patronize their excessively sentimental raw material. They strike out on their own to entertain with an edgy, exciting, romantic story told with exuberance and commitment.

        “The Bowery Boys” runs through February 15 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive.  Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 and $55. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.     December 2008

             Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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All Shook Up

At the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

 LINCOLNSHIRE—One comes away from the Marriott Theatre production of “All Shook Up” with even more respect for “Mamma Mia!”

        Both musicals are based on the songbook of a single source, ABBA for “Mamma Mia!” and Elvis Presley for “All Shook Up.” Both insert the songs into a storyline specially created to absorb tunes composed separately over a period of years. But the ABBA show is exhilarating entertainment. “All Shook Up” is just silly, not ha-ha silly but stupid silly. It’s no accident that “Mamma Mia!” is entering its eighth year on Broadway while “All Shook Up” limped through a six-month run in New York City in 2005.

        Let the record show that the Marriott staging is a considerable improvement over the pre-Broadway production that played in downtown Chicago during the winter of 2004-2005. And the opening night crowd at Marriott mostly seemed to be having a great time, responding to the high-energy performances on the stage and those great Elvis numbers of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Good for them. I just wish I were seeing the show they found so enjoyable.

        “All Shook Up” is a variation on the idea of the mysterious and charismatic stranger who comes to a pokey and repressed town and turns things upside down. The stranger is a James Dean type named Chad, a young man full of bravado and bottomless self-confidence and chutzpah who roars into town on his motorcycle and immediately takes over. 

Chad instantly turns the head of a young female garage mechanic named Natalie. A local geek named Dennis, in turn, loves Natalie. The town’s sexpot museum curator, Miss Sandra, also falls for Chad. Then there is Matilda, the straight-laced mayor of the town who keeps a puritan vigilance against all forms of pleasure.

        Natalie’s widower father goes into a testosterone-fueled passion for Miss Sandra while he bickers with Sylvia, the African American proprietor of a local bar. And Matilda’s repressed son Dean falls head over heels for Sylvia’s daughter Lorraine. The interracial romances do not give “All Shook Up” a social conscience. The relationships are used primarily for comic relief.

  Book author Joe DiPietro taps into Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” for some of his plot twists, with Chad as Duke Orsino and Natalie as Viola. But not even the Bard can save the cartoon characters and ditzy plot.

  As director, Marc Robin pretty much gives the performers their head, like Ross Lehman dithering his way through the role of Natalie’s father, eventually turning into a square middle-aged greaser. Only Lehman’s immense skills as a clown make this role even remotely watchable. Christine Sherrill certainly is hot as Miss Sandra, possibly the most bizarre character I have seen in musical comedy in recent years.

   Marc Robin the choreographer is on much firmer ground, putting his large cast through some exuberant rock and roll dancing. When the characters stop talking and start singing and hoofing, the evening is in pretty good shape. None of the vocalizing is an improvement on the Elvis originals, but the songs are still great to hear, and there are legitimate laughs in listening to the main characters burst into “Don’t be Cruel” or “Teddy Bear” or “Hound Dog” at the drop of the orchestra conductor’s baton.

 “All Shook Up” apparently was in a state of flux up to opening night, judging by the considerable variations between the song list in the playbill and what we heard and saw on the stage.  But revision can take this show just so far.

 The performances are all well up to the mark. Tyler Hanes has been imported to play Chad and delivers a good Fonzie impersonation. Chicagoland leading lady Jessie Mueller is a perky Natalie. Along with Sherrill and Lehman, they do what they can to provide the show with some bounce and humor. Sherrill’s character actually has one or two lines of genuine wit. The featured performers are ably supported by Melody A. Betts as a big voiced Sylvia and Chasten Harmon and Matt Raftery as the young interracial lovers.  Dennis Moench is Natalie’s doofus idolater who winds up with sex bomb Miss Sandra. That’s the kind of show this is. Those old pros Paula Scrofano and Don Forston do what they can with the cardboard roles of the prim mayor and her police chief.

Thomas M. Ryan designed a minimalist set enclosed by curved narrow pillars covered with light bulbs. Nancy Missimi’s costumes capture the look of the show’s 1955 ambience. Diane Ferry Williams designed the lighting and Cecil Averett the sound. Ryan T. Nelson conducts the zesty seven-piece band.

“All Shook Up” runs through December 7 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 with meal packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.

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

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The Full Monty

at the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        LINCOLNSHIRE—By now Marriott Theatre patrons should be accustomed to musical revivals that are as good as downtown Chicago productions and in some cases better. Consider the Marriott accomplishments with “Cats” and “Miss Saigon” and “Shenandoah” and most recently “Les Miserables.”

        The latest feather in the Marriott artistic cap is now on display, a production of the 2000 Broadway hit “The Full Monty.” Indeed this staging earns special commendation because, unlike the shows named above, “The Full Monty” is only a middling musical. But profiting from Marc Robin’s directing and especially his choreography, the show over achieves, providing an evening that is often funny, occasionally poignant and dramatic, and almost always entertaining. 

        “The Full Monty” is based on a popular 1996 British movie about a group of men laid off from their industrial jobs in the Yorkshire mills in northern England. To raise some urgently needed money, the men decide to put together a striptease act on the order of the Chippendales. But while the Chippendales are buff hunks, the unemployed mill workers are variously chubby, shy, depressed, insecure, and aging, and none of them have much stage talent to begin with.

        David Yazbeck (the score) and Terrence McNally (the book) transferred the story to the American rust belt, specifically, Buffalo, New York, where a group of American steel workers are suffering the economic and psychological stresses of being out of work. Six of them, under the leadership of Jerry Lukowski, band together to a perform a one-show striptease in front of an audience of horny Buffalo women that is supposed to produce a box office take of $50,000 and grant the men fiscal solvency. The hook for the show is the promise of the six going “full monty,” the show business term for buck naked.

        There have been two major stagings of “The Full Monty” in Chicago, the road company version in the Loop and a local version at the Drury Lane Water Tower Theatre. Both versions were considerably more realistic and darker than the Marc Robin production at Marriott.  The story has a grim underpinning, portraying the psychic toll that unemployment takes on a man’s self esteem and his family life. Robin, perhaps recognizing that the score and book aren’t strong enough to sustain a gritty documentary approach, has gone all out for comedy.

There are a few serious moments, mostly concentrated on Lukowski’s troubled relationship with his soon to be ex wife and his young son. And a gay relationship emerges among two of the six would-be strippers. But mostly comedy rules, with no end of gags extracted from comments about male genitalia.

If the show does make a social statement, it’s not about economic hardships endured by the unemployed but about our society’s fixation on physical beauty.  Normally it’s the female gender who must measure up to the lascivious standards of male gawking. In “The Full Monty,” the roles are reversed. The men find their physical appearance under scrutiny, both from themselves and from females, and they feel vulnerable and embarrassed.

But not too much should be made of any serious social observations in the show. Indeed, once the six men embark on their quest to stage the striptease fundraiser, audience interest is concentrated on whether they will actually see the actors go all the way at the strip exhibition. I won’t describe how the Marriott production resolves the matter, except to compliment Robin on a wonderful coup de theater that ends the evening.

The casting for “The Full Monty” couldn’t be better. K. C. Lupp is a first rate actor and dancer as Lukowski, though his singing sounded strained at my performance. The singing throughout the ensemble was uneven, but this isn’t really a singing show, Yazbeck shifting between humorous and sentimental numbers, the comic ones being more effective but none of them memorable.

Joe Coots, looking like a young John Goodman, is splendid as Lukowski’s overweight buddy. The showstopper of the evening comes from Milton Craig Nealy as a middle aged African American nicknamed Horse. He is featured in “Big Black Man,” a funny send-up of the myths about the sexual endowments and prowess of black men. The other strippers in training are Michael Gerhart, Stephen Schellhardt, and Jason Shuffler, all very good.

There are plenty of females in the show, most of them young women interwoven with the lives of the six unemployed steelworkers.  Alene Robertson has the juiciest of the female roles. Looking like a frowsy red headed fireplug, Robertson plays Jeannette Burmeister, a wisecracking and cynical woman who becomes the pianist and den mother for the striptease project. The young ladies in the show are Summer Naomi Smart, Abby Mueller, Kymberly Mellen, Robin Long, Holly Stauder, and Tempe Thomas. Matthew Levy gives a solid professional performance as Lukowski’s young son.

Some viewers may feel that the Marriott revival is too lighthearted for its essentially dramatic premise and there were times when I thought the staging reached for low comedy laughs. But the audience reacted very positively to the broad humor, especially the many groups of women who attended my performance, possibly in anticipation of seeing something not normally displayed on a local stage.

“The Full Monty” design staff is well up to the mark, as usual. Thomas M. Ryan designed the set, Nancy Missimi the costumes, Cecil Averett the sound, and Diane Ferry Williams the all-important lighting. Bill Busch directed the proficient pit orchestra.

 “The Full Monty” runs through September 21 at the Marriott Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 with $55 dinner packages available on Wednesday and Thursday. Call 847 634 0200.

For more information, visit www.marriotttheatre.com.

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

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Les Miserables

at the Marriott Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        LINCOLNSHIRE—How do you adapt a spectacle like “Les Miserables” to an intimate in the round stage? First, you hand over the production to a creative director like Dominic Missimi at the Marriott Theatre. Then you hire a superb cast of singers and actors, provide them with countless period costumes, and let the power and sweep of the story take over. The result is the stunning revival that Chicagoland audiences will be able to enjoy for the next three months.

        The stripped down physical production allows the story to move at a much faster pace. The Marriott presentation is a solid half hour shorter than the productions that visited downtown Chicago in recent years, yet there is no sense of skimping on the narrative. The reduction in sets frees up the action to concentrate on the characters and the story, and that’s what makes “Les Miz” so memorable. The spectators are caught up in the lives of fascinating characters in the grasp of turbulent personal and historical events, beginning with a prison chain gang in provincial France in 1815 and ending with a failed student rebellion on the barricades of Paris in 1832.

     The miracle of “Les Miz” is its ability to tell so many individual stories over such a broad expanse of time with such clarity and emotional impact. For that, of course, we must thank the source, Victor Hugo’s monumental novel with its innumerable episodes and characters. How Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Shoenberg were able to condense such a sprawling canvas into a coherent, exciting, and moving show is one of the wonders of modern musical theater.

     The Marriott version necessarily has to develop solutions to staging challenges built into the original large-scale version. For example, on Broadway Jean Valjean betrays his convict origins when he displays his strength in lifting a cart that had collapsed on a man in a town street. Rather than bring a cart onto the Marriott stage, Missimi has Valjean revealing his physical power by simply snapping the chains that bound the tragic Fantine as she was being led off to jail.

      Solutions to staging problems never descend into compromises in this production. The in-the-round stage couldn’t replicate the massive and detailed barricade of the Broadway version, but there was enough rough-hewn wooden latticework to adequately suggest the barricade on which so many brave and idealistic young men and women died.

        The story is told almost entirely through music. Composer Schoenberg milks a continuously vibrant score out of a handful of reworked melodies that cover the emotional spectrum from pain to longing to love to humor to romance to anger. The intimacy of the stage allows the performances to reinforce the sense of social injustice that motivated Hugo’s original work back in 1862. And it all leads up to that three-handkerchief death scene at the end of the evening when the weary Valjean finally goes to his reward in heaven.

     The huge Marriott cast is a mix of locals and imports. John Cudia is masterful as the ex convict Jean Valjean, both as a singer and actor. He even brings off that nearly unsingable falsetto aria “Bring Him Home” with unforced feeling. Cudia is matched by Richard Todd Adams as Valjean’s implacable adversary through the years, the law-obsessed Inspector Javert.

     Among the supporting roles, the most galvanizing performance comes from Michael Accardo as the villainous Thenardier, the kind of low-life survivor who thrives on the misery and vulnerability of others. Accardo doesn’t stint on the man’s vicious amorality, but he also makes the character very funny in a malignant way. He is easily the most entertaining, and chilling, Thenardier I have ever seen.

     Chicagoland diva Kathy Voytko sings beautifully and eloquently as the star-crossed Fantine. It’s too bad that the character disappears from the storyline so early.  The other two major female roles are taken from New York City based actresses, Leah Horowitz as Cosette and Anne Letscher as Eponine, both very fetching. Chris Peluso is a satisfactorily romantic hero as Cosette’s lover Marius. Ten year-old Jonah Rawitz delivers a delightful performance as the plucky Gavroche and 11 year-old Elianna Kate Schnittman sings “Castle on a Cloud” with poignancy and charm.

      High on the honor role of this revival is the superior accompaniment by an augmented orchestra conducted by Patti Garwood. Schoenberg’s lush score needs the full-bodied instrumental treatment it receives at Marriott.

     Nancy Missimi’s costume budget must rival the gross national product of some third world countries, but it’s money well spent, evoking early nineteenth century France in all its classes of society.

     The total ensemble numbers 32 performers, perhaps a Marriott record. If I were one of those 32, I would run to the theater for every performance. They are all part of something that special.

     “Les Miserables” runs through May 11 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200.

                The show gets a rating of four stars.          Feb. 2008 

For more information check out:www.MarriottTheatre.com

                                   Contact us:  ZeffDaniel@yahoo.com

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Little Women

 at the Lincolnshire Marriott Theater

 by Dan Zeff

LINCOLNSHIRE - In 2005, a musical adaptation of 'Little Women' limped through a five month run in New York City, finally closing as a critical and commercial flop. The Broadway production must have been very wrong-headed, because a touring version proved intelligent and affecting. Now the Marriott Theatre is staging the show and it¹s even better.           

'Little Women' is a popular novel for young people published by Louisa May Alcott in 1868 and 1869. It's a sentimental partly autobiographical story about four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War period of the 1860's.           

 The young heroines have made the story a favorite with girl readers and doubtless accounted for the unusually large number of pre teen and early teen girls in the Marriott opening night audience. But the story isn't tailored for children and youngsters looking for a wired Hannah Montana entertainment experience will have to make do with a show that moves at a leisurely pace as it covers the emerging lives of the four very different March sisters.           

Adapters Allan Knee (book) Jason Howland (music) and Mindi Dickstein (lyrics) follow the Alcott original fairly closely. The setting remains Concord, Massachusetts, and New York City during and just after the Civil War. The emotional core is the headstrong Jo March, a tomboy with ambitions to becoming a great writer. Her older sister Meg is the prettiest of the four. Jo¹s younger sisters are the gentle and quiet Beth and the artistic and fiercely ambitious Amy who resents with Jo's emotional preeminence within the family. Presiding over the brood is Marmee, the stalwart mother, trying to hold her family together in genteel poverty while her husband serves as a chaplain in the war.           

During the story one of the sisters dies and the other three marry. That¹s about the sum of the narrative. The show holds the stage with its vivid and sympathetic characters, its charm, its humor, and its warmth. The show, like the book, isn't afraid to slather on the sentimentality, but never to excess. Other than the death of one of the March sisters, everyone of the show¹s characters ends up reasonably happy. Audiences seeking a flamboyant story about a dysfunctional family must look elsewhere.         

  A workable staging of 'Little Women' requires a delicate balance. Any coarseness or lapse into gushy sentiment would tear the gently realistic fabric of the story. The Marriott revival, under Joe Leonardo's unobtrusive but marvelously sensitive directing, strikes all the right notes of both comedy and drama. To make Leonardo's job easier, the Marriott has skimmed off the cream of two generations of Chicagoland acting talent in assembling a flawless cast.           

 First among equals is Heidi Kettenring as Jo, a role of daunting singing and acting requirements. Jo March participates in almost a dozen musical numbers, several of them clearly intended as belting showstoppers. There is almost an overkill to the vocal demands placed on the character and I can¹t think of a performer on the local scene other than Kettenring who could bring off the job with such unforced distinction.          

With the brilliant Kettenring as the production¹s centerpiece, the other members of the ensemble joyously fall into place. The actresses playing the other March sisters each carve out credible and distinctive characters, namely Abby Mueller as Meg, Dara Cameron as Beth, and Morgan Weed as Amy. The revelation is Weed, who charts Amy's course from petulant and skittish teen-ager to mature young woman with a marvelous mix of the comic and the serious. Weed is recently out of college and if the local musical scene does right by her, she will soon be a very large star.           

This is not to slight Mueller, already established as a leading lady, or Cameron, who is just right as the tragic Beth, delivering a fresh and warm character who avoids going over the top into Little Nell hyper sentimentality.           

The remainder of the ensemble consists mostly of the men in the lives of the sisters. Stephen Schellhardt is a delight as the high-spirited Laurie, who wants Jo but cheerfully settles for Amy. Michael Gerhart is splendid as the droll Professor Bhaer, who gets Jo at the end, and Jarrod Zimmerman is excellent as John Brooke, the tutor who captures Meg. Two old pros of Chicagoland theater, Ann Whitney and John Reeger, play a couple of benign but crusty senior citizens who impact on the March family. And presiding over it all is the indomitable Paula Scrofano as the plucky and understanding Marmee.

Thomas M. Ryan's minimalist set design makes a virtue of necessity by creating an atmosphere of intimacy that¹s a perfect fit for this family story. A few props created by Gregory Isaac are unobtrusively moved on and off stage to suggest the various locations. Nancy Missimi designed the 1860's costumes. Diane Ferry Williams designed the lighting, and Cecil Averett the sound. The augmented Marriott orchestra led by Patti Garwood provides impeccable accompaniment.          

It's not fashionable to use 'good taste' as a term of praise in the theater, but 'Little Women' is tasteful in the best sense of that much-abused word. I suspect the girls at the Marriott enjoyed the show just as much as the adults, and for the same reasons -- a good story well told and well sung and acted to perfection.           

'Little Women' runs through February 3 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200.              

The show gets a rating of four stars      Dec.     2007

For more information check out:www.MarriottTheatre.com

Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com