University of Chicago Presents DUO TAL & GROETHUYSEN Review – Two + Two = An Orchestra
A magical evening of piano music, enjoyed with my friend Sandra Burke. We were swept away.
Nuns4Fun Entertainment presents CHRISTMAS BINGO – Laughing With Our Lady of Good Fortune - Review
Ann Boland and Vicki Quade
Tracy and I enjoyed an evening of laughs with Vicki Quade. Click here for my review from PictureThis Post.com
Chicago Opera Theater Presents Double Bill "EVEREST/ALEKO" Review – Because It’s There - Review by My Friend and Editor Amy Munice
Sunday, my modern opera friend Betsy and I went to the first production of the season from Chicago Opera Theater. Splendid is a modest description of Everest. The editor of PictureThisPost.com, Amy Munice, wrote a review that says everything and more about the performance.
Chicago Theater in October and November – Toad Kissing and Mosquitoes
Lindiwe, Produced by Steppenwolf Theater Company, Written and Co-Directed by Eric Simonson and Jonathan Berry, Music by Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Short Review
This is the same Eric Simonson who write Tony award-winning Song of Jacob Zulu, featuring the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I felt Simonson got tagged with the credit for playwright because someone had to take the blame. The program notes clearly state that amid the desire for the two groups to work together again, they were both coming through rough patches due to mourning the passing of ensemble members. A year and a half ago they conceived a workable idea and began to develop it collaboratively. (Note to self: beware the word collaboratively when used with plot development.) So it’s likely that Simonson did no more that nip, tuck and tidy the uninspired story.
The music is wonderful. Ladysmith Black Mambazo sings in tight harmony, sometimes so low that it whispers. Their dance is joyous—high kicks that would be welcome in Radio City Music Hall. Nondumiso Tembe (Lindiwe) has a rich, vibrato free voice. When she joins Ladysmith, you would swear she is a company member, as her hushed voice sits just above the men before it breaks into its own soaring melody.
Recommendation: Worth the price of the ticket for the music, but don’t go expecting a “Steppenwolf” play.
Sombras Tango Cabaret, Produced by Tango 21 Dance Theater (T21DT),created by co-founders Jorge Niedas and Liz Sung - Short Review
DBH and I love a good tango especially danced by non-professionals who feel the music and glide effortlessly on the dance floor--no daring dips, no flipping feet, just ordinary people like us, except they can dance. So, the opportunity to see a tango cabaret presented by non-professionals promised just such an experience. And there was some excellent tango, singing, and a polished pianist/composer (Bob Solone.)
Here’s the big BUT—Niedas and Sung tried to tie the performances together with a hackneyed plot of talented gay son mimicking the Cabaret Emcee (Trent Oldham with a great baritone voice) , estranged mother who reconciles, and a cast of dancer/musicians performing a corny script about a group of non-professional dancer/musicians who perform in a Tango Cabaret. And no one can act.
Recommendation: Not worth the price of admission, though some performances were lovely.
Julia Siple as Jennie
Mosquitoes, Produced by Steep Theatre, written by Lucy Kirkwood, Directed by Jaclynn Jutting – Short Review
Can one play encompass the cosmic macro and micro reality of our relationships with each other and with our world? In Mosquitoes, Lucy Kirkwood knocks it out of the park with the micro family relationship—not so much with the macro universe and our place in it.
While scientists are reveling in the validation of the existence of Higgs Boson particles in 2008, the nuclear family of Alice (Cindy Marker), one of the scientific team, is falling apart. Her sister, Jenny (Julia Siple,) embodies the inflexible will of the anti-science crowd. Informed by the internet, she refuses to have scans of her womb while pregnant, fearful it will harm the fetus. Later, when her healthy child needs to be vaccinated, she again refuses, butting against the objections of her scientist mother and sister.
Twined into this conflict is that of Alice with her teenage son, Luke (Alexander Stuart), hungry for a relationship with his estranged scientist father. Luke is sufficiently klutzy with his first girlfriend, Natalie (Upasna Barath) that he finds comfort from his needy Aunt Jenny. She and her irascible and incontinent mother, Karen (Meg Thalken in a wickedly sharp role) have moved in with Alice. Everything about the conflicted family is rich with angst and uncensored retorts. Julia Siple resounds in the role of Jennie; maddening, conniving, a prime manipulator—an award-winning performance.
And then there is the cosmic world intersticed in three or four plot-fogging video segments of nebular particles and planets rushing at the camera. The performers, clad in lab coats and goggles, stand in ranks while The Boson (Richard Costes) recites lines meaningless to me. Perhaps a student of cosmology would understand/engage, but in my humble opinion, this play would be “stellar” without the cosmos.
Highly recommended; use the cosmic breaks to rest your eyes.
Chicago Human Rhythm Project presents JUBA! MASTERS OF TAP AND PERCUSSIVE DANCE Review –Too much is never enough!
Click here for the review on Picture This Post
Danny Borak, who has been Creative Director for Chicago Human Rhythm Project for three years is leaving with the end of his contract and returning to Switzerland. My heart breaks. His contributions to Chicago dance are endless. That’s him downstage in the tan shoes.
Stomping Ground
Lyric Unlimited presents AN AMERICAN DREAM Review – An Austere Story Beautifully Told
Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival 2019 Presents Compagnie La Pendue’s TRIA FATA – Review – Joy in Life and Death
Chicago International Puppet Festival and Instituto Cervantes Present Silencio Blanco’s PESCADOR Review – Fishing Can Be Tedious
Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and Chicago Shakespeare Theater present L’APRES-MIDI D’UN FOEHN VERSION 1 – Review – Ephemerality Denied
Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival 2019: Plexus Polaire presents Chambre Noire
Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival 2019: Shank's Mare
City Lit Theater Presents ARMS AND THE MAN Review- Shaw’s LOL Satire of the Folly of War
"Jesus Christ Superstar" by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice produced by The Lyric Opera Chicago
The Lyric Opera House from the stage.
The Lyric seats 3,563. Fortunately, our seats were closer than those at the Paramount in Aurora. I’d never seen Superstar. It was interesting to see so many attendees my age who were there for love and nostalgia, and the young and very young who were there because this musical is timeless. No need to cover the book. We know the story. The telling was mesmerizing.
Herod descends the ramp that also forms a crucifix.
There is no dialogue, only song and orchestration. The cast was “beige”, a few white, and the rest black and tan. Likely, this is authentic for the eastern Mediterranean setting. Costumes, except for Herod, were “beige”, most looked like old workout clothes. The set worked wonderfully for the all sorts of scenes: crowd, groups and solos. The ramp coming from stage rear at an angle was used for entrances (King Herod with gold cape 50 feet long) and exits, and as a dining table for the last supper sequence. The tableau was an homage to da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
The ramp staged like DaVinci's Last Supper
The music combines rock and roll with jazz, funk, and lyrical ballads ("I Don’t Know How to Love Him"). As usual, every performer and every instrument was miked, which gave a sameness to the sound. The lyrics are difficult enough to understand because they are sung quickly. And, when there was a crescendo of voices and orchestra, the person running the sound board did nothing to modulate the mikes – deafening. I would have benefited from reading the libretto prior to the performance. But it did not dawn on me that understanding would be so difficult.
Overall, I enjoyed the performance. Now, I’ve seen every Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Wasn’t on my bucket list, but great fun.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, produced by Midsommer Flight, Appears at Chicago Parks
"Cabaret" by Kander and Ebbs, produced by the Paramount Theater in Aurora.
Yes, we did it again – saw our favorite musical. It’s an hour drive west to Aurora, IL with little or no traffic. Therefore, Saturday or Sunday matinees are our only options. This was the Saturday matinee on St. Patrick’s Day, so a good plan to be away from Division Street bars and drunken amateurs.
The Paramount Theater opened for movies in 1931. In addition to “talkies”, it also offered vaudeville, concerts, sing-a-longs and circus performances…all inside Illinois’ first air-conditioned building outside of Chicago. Acoustics and sight lines were so well designed there was not one bad seat in the house.
Paramount Theater from center stage
The theater served the community for 40 years. Then, like many grand, old movie houses, it fell into disrepair. In 1976, restoration began, as part of the revitalization of Aurora, which had lost its cache as a good place to live on the Fox River. Today, it is a beautiful venue, and Aurora has grown to the second largest city in Illinois. Where city theaters are seeing their subscriptions decline, The Paramount had 36,000 subscribers to it 1888 seats. Well done, all!
Grand Gallery of the Paramount Theater
The secret to their success is producing Broadway caliber musicals way out in the suburbs. They tapped a financially secure market that does not want the trouble of getting to the city, surviving traffic, and searching for parking space. But they want good theater. We enjoyed Cabaret; not so much the trip to the suburbs and not so much our seats in the middle of the balcony. We are spoiled by our smaller venues in the city where you can see the performers, not just hear them.
Manual Cinema Presents THE END OF TV Review – A New World for Shadow Puppets
Shows how the puppeteer create a shadow image of on old woman with a profile mask held by a mouth piece.
It's been a while since I've reviewed for Picture This Post. This production was a serendipitous choice recommended by my friend, Jay Kelly, who handles the PR for Manual Cinema.
"Theodora" by Handel, produced by the Northwestern University Opera Theater as part of the Evelyn Dunbar Memorial Early Music Festival
Theodora is told that she must give up her faith or become a prostitute.
My friend, Betsy, and I enjoy edgy classical music – and this qualified. We put it in our calendars without much discussion and arrived at the theater each thinking the other had purchased tickets. Neither did, but we did squeak in when a few no-shows materialized. Northwestern is likely the best know school for performing arts in the U.S. Now, they have built a monument to their success and the generosity of their alums – the Ryan Center for the Musical Arts.
Original of Handel's score - note that almost all notes are on the top line or above the staff.
Handel’s oratorios are beautiful, but repetitive. The style is bel canto, with lots of embellishment to the scored music. Experienced performers usually create their own interpretations, but this production was students – and fine they were, with no additional embellishment. The only questionable casting was the role of Theodora’s lover, Didymus. This is trouser role for a mezzo. Her voice was fine, but her slight build conveyed no gravitas to her grim role.
Theodora was written for three acts. This production had two, and was over in less than two hours, including intermission. Just the right length before the repetition drove us crazy. A beautiful production with outstanding young performers.
"Three Tall Women", a play by Edward Albee, produced by The Rogue Theatre, Tucson, AZ
From left: Cynthia Meier, Patty Gallagher, Holly Griffith
How fortunate we are to have Cynthia Meier in Tucson. There isn’t a role she touches that does not benefit from her nuanced performance. She was the essence of “A” in Three Tall Women—mean spirited, dotty, afraid and funny.
Edward Albee leaves us no doubt about his parental relationships. He was adopted by a wealthy family at age two, expelled from most schools he attended, and out of the home at 18. His first play, The Zoo Story was produced in 1958, at age 30. He was openly gay and that created conflict with his family. His most famous work, Whose Afraid of Virginal Woolf, illuminates Albee’s talent for fierce dialogue and unhappy marriages, as does this play.
Three Tall Women is a faithless homage to Albee’s mother. In an interview with The Economist, he said, “(the play) was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started." She is petty, vain, weak, penurious, scornful of her husband, and contemptuous of her son. What’s not to love? But in the audience, we become entwined in A’s self-love.
The first act is all A; ill, distracted, on the one hand disdainful of her caregiver, played skillfully by Patty Gallagher; then coyly seductive as she acknowledges her total dependence on this person. With her is the lawyer’s assistant, played by Holly Griffith, who needs signatures on papers that A chose to ignore. The assistant’s snotty recriminations that cut into “A’s” monologues were delivered in an officious manner. Perhaps this was director Christopher Johnson’s intent, but they seemed flat, almost an afterthought to the give A time to pause.
In the second act, Meier, Gallagher and Griffith play A at three ages: Griffith in her late 20’s, Gallagher in her 50’s and Meier in a healthier old age. As the two older women reminisce, the young A contends that she will never become them. All’s well that ends well, if you, like Albee, feel that death is the ultimate freedom. Likely he never felt free of his guilt until A’s death.
In a play written as a “tour de force” for a mature actress, Meier shone.
Highly recommended
Playing at The Rogue Theater in Tucson AZ through March 25, 2018
www.theroguetheatre.com