Storefront Rebellion

No zest for the Wicked

UPDATE Wed Jul 2: This post originally referenced a post at another blog that expressed, for specific reasons, that blogger's opinion that downtown, sit-down productions like Wicked weren't good for Chicago's native theater. Because that opinion bumped directly up against certain things the Tribune's Chris Jones had said in his follow-up to the Tony Awards (still linked below), I chose to note the disparity.

Shortly after I linked to this blog post, it was taken down, and now, a week later, the author of that post has asked me via email to remove reference to it because of the repercussions it might have for the author's future theater career. I don't want to silence the reasoned, thoughtful discussion that's taken place in the (so far) 15 comments on my post; but I'm also willing to honor the blogger's request even at this late date, especially since their original opinion is no longer available for commenters to see.

It's not a great solution, but the compromise I've come up with is to edit this post, and its comments, in an attempt to obfuscate the original blogger's identity but keep the subsequent discussion alive. It's not ideal, but it's the best I can do to satisfy all parties. Thanks for understanding.

[redacted link to anti-Wicked opinion] Chris Jones finds this thinking dangerous and destructive. Okay, I'm kidding—Chris's post at the Theater Loop went up on Saturday and this other blogger's today, so he couldn't have been talking about them personally when he wrote: "Some see such New York exports as detrimental to Chicago’s homegrown theater. This is dangerous and destructive nonsense." And the other blogger made no bones about it: "Instead of helping the rest of the Chicago theatre community, it hurts it." Welcome to the dangerous and destructive club!

Elsewhere, John Dixon and Russ Armstrong have new competition for my favorite YouTube video about August: Osage County.

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.

Attend the tale. No, seriously.

Last Wednesday I hit up Broadway in Chicago's press opening of Sweeney Todd with Christopher and loved it. So it's with some confusion that I read the multiple comments on Chris Jones's review from people who absolutely hated it.

This was my first time seeing director John Doyle's scaled-down, actors-as-orchestra version—I failed to make it to New York for the 2005 Broadway production with Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris—so it was a bit of a revelation. Though I wasn't completely enamored with David Hess's performance as Sweeney—as one friend who saw the show the same night told me at a party this weekend, she wasn't surprised to find his Playbill bio riddled with soap operas—I thought Judy Kaye was a delightful Mrs. Lovett, and the supporting cast (most of whom are actor-musicians who also appeared in the New York staging) was terrific.

My most recent experience with Sweeney was the Tim Burton film version with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and while I enjoyed the movie, this iteration served mostly to remind me of how much I'd missed what was cut in the film. The flip side of that coin, of course, is that I found myself wondering while watching the show last week if I would get it if I weren't already so familiar with Sweeney Todd. While I may be a little surprised at the virulence of the Theater Loop commenters who wished they could leave mid-performance, they're not alone. I witnessed several patrons tossing their Playbills into the trash can at intermission and leaving, never to return.

I agree, for the most part, with both Chris Jones's review and with Christopher's. If you're a Sweeney fan already, it's worth seeing for Doyle's imaginative staging and the performances of Kaye and the actors playing Toby and the Beadle (I'm writing this from home and my press kit's at work, so I don't have their names at hand). If you don't already know the show, this might not be the right introduction.

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As for other shows I can recommend from the past week, Laura Eason's adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days at Lookingglass is really solid (read my review here), and Monday night I caught the regional premiere of Stephen Karam's Speech and Debate, which pretty much blew me away. I haven't laughed that hard and long at a new play in quite a while. Christopher's reviewing for TOC, but it won't show up for a week and this is a short run, so get your tickets now, I beg of you.

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Other new TOC reviews this week are of the Hypocrites' Our Town (see also my feature last week on director David Cromer), Strawdog's Old Town (they opened on the same night at the same time! Crazy!) and Hell in a Handbag's Die! Mommie, Die! (our first contribution from my fellow Northwest Arkansan Zac Thompson). Have at ‘em.

Real musicals

Martin Samuel of the Times of London reiterates my own objections to Jersey Boys, newly opened in the mother country.

My initial estimation of Jersey Boys upon its Chicago opening and my further thoughts on the announcement of its permanent residency a couple of weeks ago can be found here and here, respectively.

Jersey, oy.

Surprise, surprise: the Jersey Boys are staying in Chicago permanently. Excerpts from the press release:

CHICAGO (February 27, 2008) – JERSEY BOYS is borrowing a question from their own infamous lyric, “Oh, won’t you stay just a little bit longer?” and answering for Chicago with a resounding YES. Broadway In Chicago and the producers of JERSEY BOYS are thrilled to announce that in response to overwhelming demand and critical acclaim, the record-breaking JERSEY BOYS will be staying for a lot longer by taking up residence in the Downtown Theatre District and calling Chicago home. JERSEY BOYS will continue performances for as long as the public demands at the LaSalle Bank Theatre (18 W. Monroe).

“Chicago is one of those towns that make you want to go apartment hunting. Yea! It’s cold but the people are hot. Who loves you, Chicago? We do!” declares Bob Gaudio, principal songwriter and original member of The Four Seasons and composer of JERSEY BOYS.

Further thoughts from me on the Time Out Chicago blog.

Broadwayworld.com moves in

This may or may not end up being a big thing, but I received a press release today indicating that Broadwayworld.com is appointing a dedicated sales rep for Chicago.

Judging from the current posters on the Chicago message boards, the locals paying attention to Broadwayworld.com are almost solely concerned with Broadway tours, but that could change if local theaters start advertising with the site.

Aside from that, full press release posted after the jump:

Weekend wrapup

Some quick notes on the theater weekend, here and elsewhere, after staying up late to write reviews of both the shows I saw today: The House's Nutcracker and Rubicon's Chicago premiere of Dog Sees God; look for reviews at TOC online late Monday and in print on Wednesday.

• First, speaking of the House, they got another bit of national exposure with a feature on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. The text is online, but put on your headphones and click Listen Now for the full effect.
• Friday night I visited the new home of the infant fringe group La Costa Theatre for the first time. I still don't know how the two-year-old company can afford a permanent space of its own, but the venue, an expansive if out-of-the-way former karate studio on North Elston at Irving Park Road, is rife with possibilities assuming they can work out the acoustic issues (concrete-block walls without sound dampeners make for a lot of echo). My review of the show, Brotherly Love, will follow in TOC's post-Thanksgiving issue.
• Speaking of acoustics, on Saturday I caught up with New Leaf Theatre's production of The Dining Room. I'm still dubious of the script—A.R. Gurney will have to try harder to get me to feel sorry for the plight of rich, uptight, country-club-going WASPs with maids—but the production was impeccably acted, and all the cast aside from New Leaf's Marsha Harman and the Hypocrites' Steve Wilson were entirely new to me. And to get around to the sound, New Leaf's resident sound designer Nick Keenan did amazing things. There were no props in the show—all mimed—but Keenan wired speakers to the underside of the tabletop to center the sounds of plates and silverware being set down and ice cubes clinking in cocktail glasses, all timed to the expert movements of the actors. Nick has recently started a must-read blog dealing with issues of collaboration and technology in storefront theater; you can find it here.
• In elsewhere news of import to Chicago theater, the weekend talks between Broadway's stagehands and producers broke off tonight without resolution, and the producers canceled all affected shows through Nov. 25, meaning August: Osage County's scheduled Tuesday opening is, at the very least, postponed. This time, at least according to Local One's statement, it was the producers who left the table. For more Chicago context, check out my conversation with August's Fran Guinan last week, and my post about the New York media speculation that the longer the strike goes on, the more it could affect road productions like those of Broadway in Chicago.
• Speaking of Broadway in Chicago, Chris Jones had a lengthy piece in Sunday's Tribune on the road group's new, largely single-handed control by the Nederlanders.
• Also of note in the Sunday Trib, an interesting commentary by Carina Chocano of the LA Times on the changing gender roles in film comedies.

Jerseybeat

Last night I caught Across the Universe, the Julie Taymor movie musical scored entirely with Beatles songs.

The night before, I attended the Chicago premiere of Jersey Boys.

Suffice it to say that if I've got to see another piece of Baby Boomer nostalgia porn fetishizing the imagined past, better it be Taymor than Des McAnuff.

Fine, don't suffice it. Consider this the dissenting opinion to my buddy Mr. Piatt, who quite enjoyed Jersey Boys. I didn't hate it. I agree with him that these four Seasons are particularly well cast, and the music is terrifically polished. But that polish that makes the soundtrack sparkle is exactly what's wrong with the rest of the show—it's polished to a high-gloss–over.

Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice's book contains some of the laziest, most clichéd storytelling I've seen; this is a show in which the music business is referred to as both a "rollercoaster" and a "merry-go-round" no more than twenty minutes apart. Transitions and elisions in the ever-present narration were as artificial as, "Look, there's a woman. And speaking of women, Frankie got married." Furthermore, for a story that relies heavily on the implication of mob ties, the boys seem suspiciously removed from any actual danger. And age-old Italian stereotypes are leaned on with only slightly more pressure than age-old gay ones (in the form of famed Four Seasons producer Bob Crewe, reduced here to the classic mincing homo joke).

But the story is mostly beside the point for Jersey Boys' target audience, which is there more for the faithful recreation of the iconic pop moments of its youth. The money moments for Sunday night's audience were those in which the four leads, close approximations of the Four Seasons as they appeared forty years ago, reconstructed the American Bandstand and Ed Sullivan performances of yore.

The generation gap yawned wide as a reasonable facsimile of "Walk Like a Man" prompted, in the middle of the first act, the first of the evening's three standing ovations. There was some discussion later among those of us who remained seated and mystified about what might, ten or twenty years from now, provoke the same response from our age group. The Madonna musical? Bon Jovi? Recreations of the Nirvana concerts that few of us made it to in time?

In the end, Jersey Boys isn't much more or less dramatic than the backstories of any of those artists or any other episode of Behind the Music. Seeing legends Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio join their young doppelgangers onstage for the opening-night curtain call was neat, but they won't be there for the average performance. Jersey Boys isn't the worst thing that's ever happened, but I'd point out that some VH1 and a Four Seasons greatest hits disc won't run you $30–$95.

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Read Christopher's full Jersey Boys review, as well as reviews of 13 other shows this week (including my 4-star reviews of Northlight's Miser, BoHo's Songs for a New World and BackStage's Waiting for Lefty) at the TOC website.

You sho is ugly.

The Color Purple had its press opening last night, so it's fair game now for me to share some thoughts about the show (I saw it in previews last weekend).

I enjoyed the show—I defy you to listen to Jeanette Bayardelle as Celie and not be moved—but, as has probably been documented endlessly by those who've seen the show in New York, there's no cohesion to it. Marsha Norman's book speeds through so quickly in an attempt to hit all of the important scenes from the novel (and all of the iconic lines that fans of the movie will be expecting) that it feels more than anything like we're on a moving train, rushing past as one scene after another plays out outside our windows. It's The Color Purple as one of the gentler DisneyWorld attractions: "Miss Celie's Wild Ride."

As for the music, it's rousing and often lovely, but it's not really a musical theatre score. The songs (or songlets, as more of them are musical transitions than full-out numbers) are far more often story-advancing than character-advancing.

The casting of this production is terrific on the women's side—Bayardelle is a vulnerable powerhouse, the only possible complaint about Felicia Fields is that she doesn't have more to do, and Michelle Williams as Shug Avery turns out to be a pleasantly surprising actress. The choices on the men's side are less successful: Rufus Bonds, Jr.'s Mister never seems like enough of a threat, and Stu James as Harpo is the only one of the principals who doesn't convincingly age.