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Latino Theatre Fest: Culture Clash

Last night Monica Lopez celebrated her 29th birthday on the Goodman Theatre's main stage. The terrific performer, one of the eight we spotlighted in Time Out Chicago's actors issue a few months ago, is appearing with the Bay Area performance trio Culture Clash in their show Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, part of the Goodman's biannual Latino Theatre Festival.

Lopez makes her bow in the evening's second half, "Chavez Ravine," a "radio play" history of how a poor, Latino area of Los Angeles became the site of Dodgers Stadium. It's edifying, if unpolished, but it's the first act that's the more compelling. Culture Clash's Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza convincingly and sympathetically portray everyone from a Tijuana gringo to a San Francisco transwoman. The Chicagoland references they've inserted don't always hit their marks, but still: Though ethnically conscious and socially liberal, it's not nearly as cloyingly politically correct as a lot of things I've seen at the Goodman. Maybe Culture Clash is preaching to the choir, but that is, as they say, how you get them to sing. And at the end of the evening Friday, Montoya, Salinas and Siguenza led the audience in singing "Happy Birthday" to Lopez.

AmeriCCa continues through Sunday; the Latino Theatre Fest concludes August 24th.

[title of review]

The reviews that came out Friday for the Broadway opening of [title of show], taken in aggregate (see Broadway Stars for a roundup), are kind of fascinating.

For those who aren't familiar, [title of show] is an ouroboros-like meta-musical about its own creation. Authors Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen wrote a musical about their attempt at writing a musical for entry in the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which subsequently debuted at the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival with Bell and Bowen and their friends Susan Blackwell (once upon a time half of NYC's downtown mainstays the New Wondertwins, with now-Chicagoan Rebecca Finnegan) and Heidi Blickenstaff, playing characters named Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff. It went on to a successful Off-Broadway run in 2006, before an unlikely opening on Broadway this week, cast (and character names) intact. The show's progress has been documented in an Internet series called The [title of show] show. Does your brain hurt yet? (Full disclosure #1: I haven't seen [title of show] in any of its incarnations, so I'm going on what I've read and heard.)

Friday's Broadway reviews are split nearly evenly among love-its and hate-its—as amNewYork (amNewYork? Really?) predicted. The New York Times, the Sun, the AP and TheaterMania are among the love-its; the New York Post, Bloomberg, Newsday and the Wall Street Journal are among the hate-its.

As a New York friend pointed out to me Friday, many of [tos]'s pans called it narcissistic or too small for Broadway, and/or pointed unfavorably to the Broadway-level ticket price as something unseemly for a small-cast, small-set, piano-only show. Some seemed downright offended that such an inconsequential show was playing in a Broadway house. Such quibbles never came up in reviews of the show's Off-Broadway run, according to my friend. (Did the critics complain about this stuff when Elaine Stritch's one-woman-and-a-pianist solo show played the Great White Way six years ago, I tried to remember?)

I couldn't help but wonder about the similarities between [tos]'s Broadway reception and that of the recent Chicago premiere of Gutenberg! The Musical!, which shares with [tos] a goofy, less-than-reverential take on musical theater. (Full disclosure #2: The New Yorker who's producing Gutenberg's Chicago debut is a friend of mine.) I loved Gutenberg, as did my twentysomething guest at the opening, and my colleague Christopher Piatt dug it as well; meanwhile, some self-styled Chicago critics suggested outright that it was a show for younger audiences. (Check out Gutenberg's Theatre in Chicago entry for a roundup of its reviews.)

Is the love of the [tos] and Gutenberg style—call it the "process satire," maybe—a generational thing? [title of show] has amassed a definite cult following among younger theatergoers, and, as noted by at least one New York theater blogger, [tos] can count among its haters some of the oldest guard of critics. (Full disclosure #3: The one-time Off-Broadway show The Big Bang has a superficial similarity to Gutenberg, in that they're both framed as backers' auditions, and I fucking despised Big Bang when it premiered here in a Philadelphia transfer two years ago, but Big Bang's "humor" was more dated Catskills than backstage insider.)

In my interview with Gutenberg's creators a few weeks back, I touched on the current generation's acceptance of cult audiences and insiderisms, from Waiting for Guffman to 30 Rock. Are [title of show] and Gutenberg part of that tradition? And if so, how large are they allowed to get? What would Charles Isherwood, Clive Barnes and John Simon make of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind—where all the playwrights are purportedly playing themselves—if they saw it at the Neo-Futurariam? Would it be different if TMLMTBGB were on Broadway? And if so, why?

Dang-Blasted premieres

According to this brief item in Monday's New York Times, Sarah Kane's Blasted "will make its American debut at SoHo Rep as the first show in that theater’s 2008-9 season, the artistic director Sarah Benson has announced."

It immediately occurred to me that such a statement might come as a surprise to Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre, which mounted Blasted in January 2007 (with Helen Sadler and Guy Van Swearingen, right).

And in fact, the most cursory research (i.e. the first page of results from a Google search for "Sarah Kane Blasted") returns evidence of a production by this California theater in 2004.

What gives, SoHo Rep? Or is this a Times blunder?

UPDATE: So it appears that Blasted has been produced in Chicago in 2007 and in both Dallas and LA in 2004, but the actual American premiere was likely by Seattle's A Theater Under the Influence in February, 2004 (this Seattle Times review refers to it as such). Blasted also just made its San Francisco debut last month (albeit in a British production).

Matt Freeman and the commenters at his blog (thanks for the link!) suggest variously that SoHo might have the "professional" (which to most licensing agents is a synonym for Equity) debut, that a production must be reviewed to be considered the premiere, and that terminology like "premiere" is simply contractual.

I can't speak for the productions in other cities, but A Red Orchid is an Equity company and their production last year was definitely reviewed (you'll notice I linked to one above). Isaac's theory, that it's a contractual thing, seems highly illogical and kind of shady—and therefore thoroughly plausible. If that's the case, Blasted has been seen in at least five cities around the country before making its "American debut." Still hoping to get this figured out for good.

UPDATE 2: Just spoke to someone at SoHo Rep's press agent's office, who said their release only calls it the New York premiere, and suggested it's a Times mistake. The press release regurgitators at Playbill make no mention of debut status. As much fun as I'm having being indignant, I suspect it's a combination of a mistake on the part of whatever intern created this page on SoHo's site, and poor fact-checking at the Times.

UPDATE 3: I'm not sure commenters here are allowed to use HTML tags (TypePad recently revamped things in ways I have yet to understand), so I should provide a link to Marisa's post that Bilal references below. Oh! Wait! As of 11pm central time Monday night, the NYT has amended a correction. SoHo Rep's production will be the New York premiere, not the American premiere. Guess that settles that.

Tony Awards

Congrats to Steppenwolf, Tracy, Anna, Deanna, Rondi and Todd for their wins for August: Osage County, and to Chicago Shakespeare Theater (not to mention Ravinia for getting a shoutout from Patti LuPone).

We're currently having technical difficulties on the TOC blog, but expect a full roundup of the Tony Awards there sometime Monday.

Drink your way through the Tony Awards

If you're like me, this Sunday is all about the Chicago Tonys—if you were only reading our city's media, TOC included, you'd think they'd been officially renamed. (As a reminder, Sunday is also Father's Day. [Note to self: remember to call Dad before the show.])

As if I need to tell you, Steppenwolf-born August: Osage County has several Chicagoans in pole position to pick up awards (quick, read this very entertaining Backstage.com roundtable with August's cast that I've been meaning to link to all week), and two other Steppenwolf ensemble members are nominated for separate shows. And then there's the pre-announced regional theater Tony going to Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Riffing on something Kerry Reid said to me tonight, I'm proposing a contest in the comments. Chris Jones will be live-blogging the Tonys from backstage in New York, and Kerry will be covering Steppenwolf's private viewing party for the Reader's new performing arts blog, but I'll be watching the show from my usual vantage point: In front of the TV at my buddy Jeremy's house party, drink in hand, just like the rest of you.

The challenge is this: The 2008 Tonys Drinking Game. Post your proposed rule in the comments (which must be timestamped before the show's 7pm Central start time). Example: "If the roof of the Red Lion Pub is mentioned, everyone downs a Boddington's."

Once my hangover subsides sometime Monday or possibly Tuesday, I might pick winners. There may even be prizes. I'm posting this late on Friday night, and traffic around here tends to plummet over the weekend (you day-jobbers, you), so we'll see how many entries we get. Hit it.

Three quick things of note

One: The comments section on my post last week about the Hypocrites and Lookingglass renditions of Our Town has become, with no prompting or involvement on my part, a sort of referendum on the House Theatre of Chicago (and a welcome revisitation of the female playwrights problem). I'm staying out of it, but there are interesting points being made on all sides.

Two: Via Leonard Jacobs, Boston theater blogger Thomas Garvey charts his city's theater critics on a Cartesian plane. His axes: "Poorly Written" to "Well Written" and "Unperceptive" to "Perceptive." Will any hardy soul take this on for Chicago? Or, perhaps more constructively, are there suggestions for better axes?

Three: Also via Leonard Jacobs, further via the Sun-Times (hey look, they're still around!), performing arts majors now comprise the second most-populous field of study in Illinois colleges and universities. Fear not, Republicans: they're still outnumbered 2-to-1 by business majors.

Some less than fully formed thoughts on the Jeffs and the Tonys

On Friday night, I caught up with Brett Neveu's Gas for Less, which opened on the Goodman's second stage (the Owen) last weekend.

I spent much of the rest of this weekend talking with some New York theater folks about, inevitably, next week's Tony Awards (one of my weekend pals is a Tony voter).

I'm struck, all of a sudden, by the slight parallels between Gas for Less and In the Heights, the Broadway show that racked up the most Tony nominations this year.

Good Boys and false blurbs.

I still haven't had a truly irritating contextomy, though Steppenwolf's post-reviews ad campaign for Dead Man's Cell Phone, at right, is pretty amusing—instead of stringing together any two consecutive words from the show's reviews, the marketing team cherry-picked adjectives. From my review for Time Out: "Quirky." I probably don't have to tell you that, in context, "quirky" was not a compliment.

I bring it up because of Chris Jones's amusing new blog post at the Theater Loop. Chris cites a conversation at the Broadway rumor mill All That Chat about, as he puts it, "the most egregious misquotes of reviews in service of a show's promotion," in which his review of The Pirate Queen is cited—and as egregious misquotes go, it's a doozy.

Unfortunately Chris doesn't link directly to the chat thread, and my eyes glazed over before I could find it myself. But I did find something of interest that links back to Steppenwolf again. We've all heard by now that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa trimmed about 45 minutes and an intermission out of Good Boys and True between its world premiere at the ’wolf, which opened just before Christmas and played through February and which I quite liked, and its second production at Manhattan's Second Stage, which just closed. But despite the spies I sent to the New York production last weekend (Meg! Gigi! Where's my report?!) and some deductions from Isherwood's dismissive review, I hadn't figured out how the cuts affected the plot. But if this thread can be trusted (as much as any anonymous-ish chat thread can be, I suppose), Roberto's tweaks have changed quite a bit, and not, it sounds, for the better.

Philadelphia style

I'm off to Philadelphia this morning for Memorial Day weekend. It's a vacation, but naturally I'm fitting in some Philly theater. I'll be seeing Flashpoint Theatre Company's production of The Dead Guy by Eric Coble, directed by my good friend, the once-and-future-Chicagoan Michael Osinski. Thanks to fortuitous timing, Mike and I also get to hit up Bill Irwin's new show The Happiness Lecture at Philadelphia Theatre Company.

Enjoy the long weekend, folks. Barbecue well.

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