Storefront Rebellion

More on the Tony nominations

With all the attention that must be paid, from our vantage point, to the numerous Tony nods for August: Osage County and other Steppenwolf ensemble members plus the regional Tony for Chicago Shakes, not to mention my entire office's frothing obsession with the pressing matter of the Chicago promoters' ordinance—and again, major props are due to Scott Smith and John Dugan for their tireless efforts to draw attention to it on TOC's blog, which included contributions from many other staffers (keep up with their coverage at this link)—I didn't have time Tuesday to really process the rest of the nominations.

Time Out New York's David Cote lays out some of the egregiously overlooked in this post on the TONY blog. The exclusions of Elizabeth Marvel and the smokin'-hot Cheyenne Jackson are unfortunate, though all of the nominees in their categories seem deserving, and the complete shutout of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof revival is odd. And I'll toss out a few thoughts of my own:

The Little Mermaid as a nominee for Best Score: I know Alan Menken and Glenn Slater wrote some new songs for the stage version, but isn't the bulk of this score the one that Menken and the late Howard Ashman wrote 20 years ago?

Was it really so important to have four nominees in Best Revival of a Musical that the reviled, reality-TV Grease had to be included? (I read somewhere in the past few days that these were the only four musical revivals on Broadway this year, and it's Grease's only nomination, so it does seem like a by-default inclusion. I'd rather have just had three nominees.)

There are two women nominated for Best Direction of a Play (including our own Anna Shapiro), which I think might be a first. (Neither the Tony Awards site or IBDB are built for that kind of search, so correct me if I'm wrong.) I'm also pretty sure that Garry Hynes (Beauty Queen of Leenane) and Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses) are the only women to have won this category.

Check out the age range in the Best Direction of a Musical category: Arthur Laurents, 89, for Gypsy, is up against Thomas Kail for In the Heights, who's something like 26. Sam Buntrock (Sunday in the Park with George) is 32, and Bart Sher (South Pacific) is…somewhere in the middle.

As for Chicago Shakespeare Theater's regional award, I think it's for the most part well-deserved. Their World's Stage series alone is worth rewarding—this season, I've seen terrific work by James Thierée, Peter Brook and the Shaw Festival thanks to the efforts of Barbara Gaines and Criss Henderson. And they produce some great stuff on their own (see my current review of The Comedy of Errors). But I happened to meet CST's casting director Bob Mason at last week's Comedy opening, and I'll take this opportunity for a plea to Bob, Barbara and Criss:

Stop doing so much casting out of New York, Toronto and elsewhere. We have plenty of great actors here who deserve work. Save the importing for the World's Stage, and cast your own productions in Chicago. Please?

Thanks,
Kris

Roundup: Tony noms, promoters ordinance, Gift

Congrats to Steppenwolf and Chicago Shakespeare on today's Tony news—two Steppenwolf castmates competing against one another in the Best Actress–Play category, three ensemble members up against each other for Featured Actress. As dilemmas go, that's a good one to have. And Chicago Shakes's regional Tony marks Chicago's fourth. Not bad. Christopher had our reaction on the TOC blog this morning.

The big news—and bad news—closer to home is the proposed Chicago promoters' ordinance. We've been covering the hell out of it on the TOC blog (props to Scott Smith and John Dugan for their tenacious work). Yesterday I spoke to Ben Thiem at the League of Chicago Theatres about whether theater could be affected by this moronically vague ordinance if passed, and he told me that Julie Burros at the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, who is also a League board member, had assured them that it wouldn't, as non-profits are exempt. But Don says he was told by someone at Alderman Schulter's office (Schulter is chair of the licensing committee) that storefront theater would fall under the ordinance. This just further proves that no one understands what this ordinance will really do, nor why the mayor's office is attempting to push it through without enough examination.

We've just heard (at 1pm) that the ordinance has been tabled for now, thanks to response from the community. Good job. We need to keep a watchful eye on this going forward.

Finally, the Gift and Victory Gardens are teaming up to transfer the Gift's production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot to the Greenhouse. I have more on that at TOC.

Another post sponsored by New York

The Tony Award nominations are announced tomorrow morning, and this year we have a few friends in the running. Perhaps you've heard of this little show called August: Osage County? And Steppenwolf ensemble members are eligible in several other high-profile shows—Laurie Metcalf in November, Martha Plimpton in both Top Girls and Cymbeline and Kevin Anderson in Come Back, Little Sheba.

Word on the street is there will be a Tony announcement in the morning that will, quote, "take Chicagoans by surprise." Since Chicagoans are pretty well prepared for all of the above possibilities, I can only imagine what might surprise us. A fourth local recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony, to join Goodman, Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens? Or, given the mighty presence noted above, some kind of special citation for Steppenwolf?

It's been a pretty darn good season for Chicago theater in New York, overall. Both August and Next's Adding Machine have continued to clean up in awards announced in the past week (including the Lortels, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Circle), and last fall's GoChicago! mini-fest at 59E59 featured Steppenwolf, Writers' Theatre and the Hypocrites in pretty well-received runs. Of course New York audiences and critics aren't the reason this work came into being, but we won't kick 'em out of bed for eating crackers, either.

Speaking of things from New York on the street, I spotted David Stone, producer of Wicked, walking down the street in Lakeview this evening. Do with that what you will.

This sounds familiar

When I read the NYT's latest Sunday theater essay, about cross-pollination between Off-Broadway and Off-Off, the only real thought I had was, Hey, Brantwood Isherley's actually acknowledging that Off-Off exists. Good.

Garrett Eisler had a different reading, and I can see now that to someone on the ground in New York's theater scene, this Times piece comes across the same way the Trib's "Theater 101" and other treatments of storefront theater as something to be "braved" come across to me.

It also plays right into the ongoing discussion we've been having in Chicago about Equity/non-Equity vs. "professional"/"non-professional" that prompted Christopher and I to write this TOC piece about Equity and theater economics. (Garrett wrote what is essentially the New York version of that story, about Showcase Code reform, for the Village Voice last summer.)

There's still some worthy detail in the Isherwood piece, like the detail about the actors and director of the Elevator Repair Service show having to join Equity and SSDC, though they'd apparently rather not. What's going to happen when they go to do their next show that's not at New York Theatre Workshop? Lots of interesting stuff.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bank of America Theatre

I had to see it for myself.

Honestly, though, I can't get as worked up about this as some people are. This isn't exactly the Provincetown Playhouse we're talking about. It's the theater where the Four Seasons cover band plays. When they leave, it'll still be what it has been for 102 years, which is a road house for touring companies from New York. Folks claiming a sentimental attachment to a name it hasn't had since 1932 (when the Majestic closed for 13 years, reopening in 1945 as the Shubert) kind of mystify me.

So I'm guessing no cast album, then?

Ouch.

New reviews

All I'm saying is, if I could spend the next month going back and forth between Speech and Debate and As Told by the Vivian Girls, I'd be more than happy.

More, including my reviews of Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire and Tom Horan's Curious Dangerous, at the usual place.

Non-Equity Jeff noms

In my last post, I didn't make any promises about posting my thoughts on the Non-Equity Jeff nominations, but I do have some things to add beyond what made it into TOC's traditional "They Wuz Robbed" piece (which will also appear, in slightly different form, in this week's print issue.

It's just taken me a while to get to it, as I've had an action-packed weekend that, delightfully, included seeing four very good shows—three of them are listed at left; the fourth was an appearance at Schubas by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Jeffrey Foucault.

But back to the Jeffs.

Megatron vs. Indiana Jones

For a small taste of how awesome my job can be, take five minutes to watch this ridiculously juvenile short film, for which I provided the voice of Iron Man. There are also appearances by Shia LeBeouf, the Hulk and (briefly and against his will) Batman. And also a unicorn.

I've known what the nominations are for the Non-Equity Jeff Awards for a couple of days now, but we're not allowed to announce them until after midnight tonight. I may have some thoughts about them—well, I already have some thoughts about them, the first being that several of them are undeserved, but I may choose to elaborate on those thoughts in this space. We'll see how I'm feeling.

And what a year it's been.

How do you measure a year? In (female) playwrights, in non-nude scandals, in taking issue with other reviews and long stretches without posting. That's right, Storefront Rebellion is one year old tomorrow, and if StatCounter can be trusted, I should get my 35,000th visitor right around then as well. So I decided to spruce the place up a bit.

Zac Thompson tagged me with this meme. One of the laws of blogging is that you must comply when meme-tagged. Even though I break that law all the time, I like this one. The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I'm writing this from the office, where the first book on my shelf is longtime Tribune critic Richard Christiansen's A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago. Sentences five through seven of page 123:

The key event in realizing this theater of our own was the opening of Hull House Theater in 1963, when into the vacuum of local theater came a whirlwind named Bob Sickinger. At thirty-five, Sickinger already had attracted attention for his direction of dozens of plays in several Philadelphia area theaters, presenting new works by the young playwright Edward Albee, among others, and working with aspiring actors like Peter Boyle and Robert Prosky and the lighting designer Jules Fisher, who was eighteen and still in high school when he hung lights for the director. Paul Jans, director of the Lighthouse Settlement social agency in Philadelphia and newly appointed director of Hull House in Chicago, knew Sickinger's work and asked him to come to Chicago to reinvigorate the theater program that had once been a highlight of Hull House activity.

Christiansen's book is highly recommended if you haven't read it.

You know what else is highly recommended? Speech and Debate at American Theater Company. It only runs for three weeks, so get on it. Mary Warren and Teenage Abe Lincoln would love to see you there.