Items filtered by date: November 2007

Giordano Dance Chicago (GDC) has been an integral part of Chicago’s performing arts community for 60 years – more than a half century of bringing groundbreaking commissions, instruction, outreach and (most of all) performances to Chicago and audiences worldwide. This year they are celebrating that 60^th anniversary with Season 60: Catch the Light, Feel the Radiance, Celebrate Giordano, a series of four performances over 2022/2023. This second work in the series was performed March 31 and April 1 at the Harris Theatre. In October 2022 I reviewed the initial production; it was absolutely spectacular. To my amazement, this second program was as good if not better!  

The company of dancers in GDC is extensive so I won’t name them – a full directory with bios is available on the website.

The organization of this production was ingenious, filling the ‘dead time’ between performances with videos where GDC directors and choreographers discuss the preparations for Season 60: Celebrate Giordano.  The first video, “The Magic of Giordano at 60”, introduced the performance of Sing, Sing, Sing. As in the October program, this first piece was one originally choreographed by Gus Giordano (1983) and refreshed by Nan Giordano for the occasion. 

The video “The Magic of Community” preceded the world premiere of Luminescence, specially commissioned in honor of Homer Hans Bryant and choreographed by the inimitable Kia Smith. This may have been my favorite of the night: the music was by U2 and Coldplay, two of my favorite bands; the costumes were totally stunning, and the dance very illustrative of the “Magic of Community”. GDC was joined by dancers from South Chicago Dance, each company enhancing the other. Every dancer’s movement was balanced and integrated with every other dancer: it was very much a company piece, headlining every dancer by spotlighting none.

The video “The Magic of Possibility” introduced La Belleza de Cuba, (The Beauty of Cuba), choreographed in 2013 by Liz Imperio and Whitney Anne Bezzant and danced by the entire GDC Company. The Latin music and costumes provided an intriguing foil to the other numbers.

At Intermission I spoke with several children – kids’ comments are always engaging and often very perceptive.  In addition to various iterations of “I wanna do that someday!” one little girl critiqued the format, saying “The movies were OK I guess, but I liked the other stuff better” – ‘other stuff’ presumably referring to the dancing.

The next number, Prey, is reputedly a favorite of the dancers. Choreographed in 2003 by Ron de Jesus, who also designed the costumes and sound, Prey is technically difficult but gratifying in that the dancers must place a great deal of trust in one another. Much of the movement involves dancers in groups of two, three, or more performing gymnastic stunts, from simply lifting and toting each other about the stage to complex aerobatics involving the entire company – a superb combination of floor exercise and Giordano dance. The powerful Giordano Technique of Jazz Dance is particularly compelling in combination with individual and collective gymnastic maneuvers. The Technique employs rhythmic complexity and precision and the consistent use of core while moving each part of the body in isolation. Stylistically, the dancers are regal and elegant but perform with kinetic urgency and vibrancy.  

The final number portrayed “The Magic of Our Dancers” with Randy Duncan’s 1997 Can’t Take That Away, featuring the Bourné family: Lisa (Mom), Elizabeth, Christina, Katherine, Paul, Timothy, Rebekah, Ehron, and John. Personally, I don’t much cotton to gospel music, but the Bournés are not gospel singers: their delivery of what from any other throats would be gospel transcends the genre – it eclipses music itself. The soaring sopranos seemed to lift the dancers ever higher in a primordial and sublime combination of music and motion.   

This finale, incorporating several gospel numbers and concluding with the title song, was dedicated as a farewell to Ashley Downes and Katie Rafferty, GDC dancers for over a decade. The company’s affection was evident in the esprit de corps the dancers brought to this final dance. Their jubilation spilled over the footlights and into the audience, bringing us to our feet. Finally, the dancers themselves cascaded from the stage to dance in the aisles with the audience, laughing and flinging droplets of sweat as the gamboled. I must admit I’m partial to a performance where I’m spritzed with the performers’ body fluids.

And the best part is that there will be two more performances of Season 60; Celebrate Giordano! I’ll definitely be there, and highly recommend that you check it out as well.

Artistic Home has given theater goers a rare jewel of a comedy, a 1928 send-up of Soviet society that was never seen by Russian audiences because Stalin banned it. Well, his censors must have read only half way through, and clearly had no sense of humor, because this is comedy of the highest order. 

I’ll admit I was tempted to bail at intermission, as the humor in the first half felt a bit forced, and was mostly inside jokes for Soviet citizens. But as a reviewer I am pledged to see it through, and the outcome of the pivotal turning point was set up right before break. So I had to come back to find out what would happen. OMG was it funny! Take my advice and see this whole play, because you need the set-up to get the jokes in Act 2.

I’ll offer no spoilers, but in the first act we meet the hapless Semyon (Daniel Shtivelberg), an unemployed and hopeless young man who lives with his wife Masha (Kayla Adams) and mother-in-law Serafima (Kathy Scambiatterra is a hoot) in a crowded flat—perhaps situated in the apartment building lobby. The public setting of their dwelling and a common bathroom shared with the other residents assures us the opportunity to meet the postman Yegor (Reid Coker is great)—a model Soviet citizen—and another gentleman, Alexander (Todd Wojcik is a delight, as always) who seems to be sex trafficking with his willing partner, Margarita (Kristin Collins).

Semyon laments his unhappy fate, jobless and living from the earnings of his wife, while his mother-in-law manages the housekeeping. The two women are supportive despite Semyon’s dire emotional state. After failing in a last ditch effort to become a busker—he gets a tuba and instruction booklet but can’t master the instrument—his inner conflicts drive him to end it all. (The original play by Nikolai Erdman was called ‘The Suicide’ and is freely adapted here by Moira Buffini.)

Kristin Collins, Kayla Adams, Todd Wojcik and Kathy Scambiatterra in The Artistic Home's production of "Dying For It" at the Den Theatre.

Ironically, his decision to off himself makes Semyon suddenly of interest to others, and we soon see the arrival of three counter-revolutionary tropes of Stalin’s day: a member of the intelligentsia, Aristarkh (John Laflamboy plays it for all he's worth), the Westernized temptress Kiki (Brookelyn Hébert) a romantic poet Viktor (Khyel Roberson in a spot-on performance), and an Orthodox priest Father Yelpidy (Patrick Thornton). All hope to leverage Semyon's suicide to their benefit, mostly by encouraging him to write about them in his suicide note.

His neighbor the hedonist sees the occasion as a good excuse for a party, and with that Semyon’s plans to off himself become bigger than him—and the laugh fest begins in earnest.
Watching the players perform for all they’re worth in the first act had me curious, their earnest performances almost over the top with energy. Now I know why: they had all seen the second act!

Comedy is all in the timing, and credit director Monica Payne for keeping everyone on cue. Scenic design by Kevin Hagen is excellent, and costumes by Rachel Lambert are noteworthy in their authentic feel.

This rare opportunity to see a hidden gem should not be missed. "Dying For It” runs at The Den Theatre through April 23.

“The Shroud Maker” is a look into the world of Hajja Souad, an 84-year-old Palestinian seamstress, plying her artisanal trade amid the rise and fall of violence in Gaza City adjacent to Israel. Her specialty: shrouds used in Islamic funerals to wrap the deceased.

Unfortunately for the world, Souad’s business is good, and demand trends offer a depressing timeline of decades of violence in what had been Palestine. Boiling down a lengthy history, in 1948 the British relinquished control in the region pursuant to a U.N. mandate that partitioned Palestine to create a place for modern-day Israel. Surrounding Arab states launched a war against the U.N. action, and in 1948 the Arab League established a state for Palestine, which along with Israel claimed Jerusalem as its capital. And the rest is more war-striven history.

A businesswoman and expert in crafting finely stitched shrouds, Souad has seen it all over the years, and is played ably by Roxane Assaf-Lynn. The 70-minute monologue by noted Palestinian author Ahmed Masoud is drawn loosely from a real individual. Souad shares the gallows humor that is a familiar companion to those whose lifework is death.

Souad is also a survivor, someone who has suffered personal loss as one by one, over the years, every member of her own family became collateral damage in someone else’s wars. Her non-stop descriptive chatter tells her own epic story—against the backdrop of that of the people of Palestine.

Set in Gaza City, the opening scene finds Souad mid-way through an animated phone conversation, where she is warned yet again that she is in danger and should evacuate her home. This time it’s because of a limited Israeli incursion into Gaza, intended to destroy border tunnels through which contraband flows, some of it the very cotton she uses for shroud making.

“I’m not going anywhere….Besides your bloody tanks are everywhere,” Souad yells into the phone. “Your freaking army will have to kill me first.” Is she just a cranky, unreasonable old woman?

We learn she is much more than this in the course of the play, and Souad voices other characters in her life: her younger self, her father, an adopted son, and his wife, and Ghassan, their child. Two more characters from her past also appear, all of them voiced by Souad, who at 11, was removed from her farm (along with her parents) to make way for a kibbutz.

During the period before Israel was formed, her father Mahmoud was hired by the British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham, as a gardener for his estate—the same Sir Cunningham whose British Army forcibly removed Mahmoud from their farm. Lady Cunningham takes a liking to Little Souad, and enculturates her as a British girl with piano lessons and training in posh British English. Essentially she is wantonly stealing Souad from her parents to replace her own child, now lost. But Lady Cunningham also teaches Souad to sew, and in her later life, Souad applies these skills to producing traditional Palestinian garments, including shrouds.

The production by the International Voices Project is nicely directed by Marina Johnson with set by Jonathan Berg-Einhorn. Ahmed Mousad’s script leans a little more toward literary—something to be read—than to stage delivery, though he generally weaves exposition in effectively. The story comes across, though the emotional side is not fully expressed. Even the best actor would be challenged, especially the demand to voice numerous characters. But the story is so authentic and compelling, coming as it does from those living in Gaza, that is is one the must be heard

“The Shroud Maker” runs through April 8 at Chicago Dramatists, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.

“It should be a crime to not acknowledge another person’s humanity.”

Didi – “How Blood Go”

I’m not a fan of hospitals, television dramas taking place in hospitals or anything involving healthcare. From a very young age I’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with the healthcare industry. My grandmother, God rest her soul, was a diabetic double amputee.  From a young age I would accompany my grandmother to her doctor visits. I would visit her when she had extended hospital stays. I learned how you can be treated if you have no one to advocate for you. The last thing I wanted to see was a play about healthcare. When I saw Lisa Langford was the playwright of “How Blood Go”, my interest was piqued, and I had to be in the audience. I didn’t realize how much healing I needed…

I remember Lisa Langford from her sci-fi play “Rastus and Hattie”. It was written for the stage and beautifully reworked during the pandemic as an audio play produced by Ann Filmer’s 16^th Street Theatre Company. The play was inspired by the Black presenting robot manufactured by Westinghouse in the 1930’s and exhibited at the National Electric Light Association Convention in San Francisco. It is a powerful play. I was disappointed it didn’t receive the staged production it so rightfully deserved. I knew I would hear from Lisa Langford again; her writing was refreshingly daring and brilliant.

Courtney O’Neil’s set has the effect of making the audience feel like medical students watching a delicate medical procedure in an operating theatre.  We walk into an immaculately sanitized operating room. There is an industrial door one would find in a hospital separating two curtained areas. Instead of finding patients in the literal sense, behind those curtains, we find two very different worlds. One side takes us to a fully realized room in Macon County, Alabama circa 1930’s. Behind the other curtain is a contemporary apartment complete with a full array of junk food. The set along with Levi Wilkins lighting design and Mike Tutaj’s projections make for a most ingenious visual.

We meet Quinntasia (an energetic Jyreika Guest), a woman once 300 pounds but now fit and healthy. As she sits having coffee with her best friend Didi (a special performance by Yolanda Ross) we learn of the issues facing older Black women dating older Black men as well as issues of substandard healthcare in the Black community. Quinntasia is an exception. She is a success story. Her doctor has attached a device to her neck supposedly tracking her steps. Quinntasia is so confident in her progress, she decides to ask her doctor, Ann (Caron Buinis) for funding to start a wellness clinic, Quinnessentials.

We are drawn behind the first curtain. Ace (the excellent Ronald Connor) and Bean (David Dowd, who should be awarded immediate and permanent tenure on the role) are two impoverished sharecroppers. Bean isn’t well. He visits a government doctor and he’s told he suffers from “bad blood,” a local term used to refer to a range of ills. What he is not told is that he has syphilis or that the disease is passed on through sex. As Langford conveys thru the character Big Gal (Kristin Ellis) “they just send you out like a bomb” and “your kisses taste like mercury”, a treatment initially used for syphilis. Ace, on the other hand, gets an education and becomes a doctor. Both roles are written as archetypes, possibly because of how these men are seen by white society. BRILLIANT!

Behind curtain two we are invited to the apartment of Tron (Marcus Moore) and Quinntasia. There are issues with this relationship that could possibly be a play within itself. Qunntasia decides on something she cannot undo. It will affect her forever.

Tiffany Fulson has directed this play with a steady sympathetic hand. The scenes are surgically precise thanks to Fulson’s ability to merge distinct energies and voices together, forming a finely calibrated ensemble.

Lisa Langford is proving herself be the playwright of the future. “How Blood Goes” is a poignant reminder of how far America must go to reach equity. In my opinion, it is one of the most important plays written in the last 5 years. It will stay with you long after you leave the theatre. Langford writes bold and takes chances. She’s in Pulitzer Prize territory.  

Congo Square Theatre Company shows why they are one of the most respected African American theatre companies. Creating and producing new works isn’t easy and they do an excellent job of it.

“How Blood Go” is among their best work. It will probably be in NYC before long. (I’m calling it!)

When:  Thru April 23 - Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.

Where: Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre – 1700 N. Halsted, Chicago, Illinois

Tickets:  $35 ($20 for seniors and students)

Info: www.congosquaretheatre.org.

In 2023, “iconic” is a word often used hyperbolically. It is flippantly used to describe and categorize an incredible movie, a famous influencer clap back, a beautiful piece of fashion, or even used to describe a viral TikTok video. When we overuse or misuse a word enough it loses its meaning. In 2023 I submit we reclaim the word and apply it to those in life that truly exemplify to word, where all generations can come together and for a fleeting moment bask in the glow and apt use of the word. Because there is only one word that can describe the biopic of the often revered Queen of Rock and Roll, only one word that can encapsulate her lifetime, her career, and her legacy that will live in the new musical medium of her life. Tina Turner. Iconic.

Much like the artist’s life, TINA-The Tina Turner Musical is a hard-hitting, fast-paced, exhilarating rollercoaster chronically Tina Turner’s extraordinary life and career. Spanning from her childhood days in Nutbush, Tennessee, her early career as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, her turbulent marriage to Ike Turner, and her incredible comeback as a solo performer which has often been hailed as the greatest comeback in music history. 

TINA- The Tina Turner Musical follows a similar style to some other blockbuster bio picks and plays such as Rocket Man (Elton John) and Mamma Mia (Abba), though it blows all other musical biopics out of the water. Tina’s catalog is sequenced into a timeline to tell her life’s story; “Nutbush City Limits”, released in 1973, opens up Act One of the musical where we meet Tina, born Anne Mae Bullock, who sings too loud for her 1940’s choir, “River Deep Mountain High,” released in 1966, is performed in lockstep to her storyline as she records the track with Phil Spector at the height of her career with Ike Turner, and “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” released in 1993, closes Act One as Tina is making up her mind to leave Ike after 16 years of marital abuse. Tina Turner’s catalog is filled with soulful, emotional, and powerful songs that provide the soundtrack to her life.

The audience is guided through the decades of Tina’s life through seamless stage transitions and beautiful costume design. A shuttered wooden door and simple cloth dresses for the 1940s, the big hair and glittering sequence against a tinsled 1970s Vegas stage backdrop, a microphone and desk in Phil Spector’s studio, bigger hair, a synthesizer, and a denim jacket for the 1980s. 

Zurin Villanueva and Garrett Turner, and cast, in the Broadway tour of "Tina - The Tina Turner Musical" at Nederlander Theatre. Photo by MurphyMade / Handout.

TINA arrives to Chicago and the theater circuit at a pivotal moment. Recent years have been tumultuous for women from the Me Too movement and recent infringement on bodily autonomy. The iconic Turner herself lived through horrid abuse at the hands of a man, and that abuse is still pervasive today. Skinny trends are threatening to plague women and further rollback the body positivity movement. Millennial women are equally too young to have a voice and not old enough to sit at the table despite having children of our own.As we look for hope or simple escapism in 2023, we can draw inspiration from Tina Turner’s remarkable career. She overcame segregation and performed in the Jim Crow south, facing rampant and often unchecked racism, sexism, and physical abuse. Women in Tina’s life loved and supported her as best they could at a time when women had little to no power or belief in their stories. Tina Turner still battled racism during a European resurgence during her work with her Australian manager, Roger Davies, and battled ageism at 45 being told she’s over the hill.As the bevy of female Oscar winners this year will show, the narrative that women’s lives are over at a certain age is patriarchal  nonsense. Without the fighting supportive and uplifting strength of women, Tina Turner would not have prevailed in her career and the world would be all the more dim without her light.

TINA- The Tina Turner Musical is the broadway musical we need to get us out of our seats and singing as Proud as Mary. The musical runs through April 2nd at the James M Nederlander Theater (24 W Randolph St), tickets are available at Broadway In Chicago, get your tickets today before this show rolls on down the river.

“Describe the Night” at Steppenwolf is serious theater that is seriously entertaining. Intellectually challenging yet side-splittingly funny, it has sat with me for days after as I’ve puzzled over what it is telling us.

Written by celebrated playwright Rajiv Joseph, whose sly wit enthralled audiences in Steppenwolf’s “Guards at the Taj,” the somewhat enigmatic script is also a captivating mystery story. It follows the emergence of famed Russian Jewish author Isaac Babel’s wartime journal, an uncensored record of his war time impressions.

Depicting real and fictional characters, Joseph spins a possible recount of how Babel’s journal survived while much of his writing was banned and destroyed. The title of the play was taken from that journal kept while Babel served as a war correspondent and propagandist for the Soviets in their 1920 war against Poland. Babel was a rising fiction writer when he signed into the military, and soon after the war wrote Red Cavalry, drawn from his personal impressions of the war, quite at odds with the positive spin he delivered in the news.

Eventually, under increasingly oppressive censorship, much of Babel’s fiction writing was banned by Russian authorities, the author imprisoned in 1939, and executed in 1940, with his working manuscripts, notes, and the journal offered in evidence at his trial. In the play's portrayal of the search for the surviving journal, we see two fictional connections to Babel—the grandmotherly babushka Yevgenia (Sally Murphy) and her granddaughter Urzula (Charence Higgins)—tailed by KGB operative Vova (Glenn Davis is pitch perfect).

The KGB wanted not just the writer dead, and his manuscripts and books destroyed, but his source material too. Hence the ongoing search for Babel’s journal. Vova's menacing presence is palpable, but his efforts are thwarted by the ditzy Yevgenia who charms him and all of us with an earnest insistence that he join them for soup. Vova acquiesces, and the playwright gives as a surreal dinner scene—foreshadowed deftly in Act 1—that is one for the ages, the laugh until you cry type.

It also encapsulates one powerful truth in “Describe the Night,” that a great antidote to disinformation and oppression is to laugh at it, buttressed with “alternative facts” as "truth" in our own age of disinformation and “the big lie” is in danger of becoming. In other words, we live in a time when truth and lies are harder to distinguish. And this evolving dynamic of confusion within society is at the core of "Describe the Night."

Written in 2014 and produced in 2017, “Describe the Night” predates our own unfortunate circumstances, with libraries censored, school curricula bowderlized, and news content cued to television ratings rather than impartiality. Reviews of other stagings have recognized the importance of this play, but it seems in Steppenwolf's production under the direction of Austin Pendleton, the actors have nailed the comic timing that makes the show so effective.

Kudos too, for scenic design by Collette Pollard, whose representation of the extensive KGB files on parties of interest is another high point of the show, played also to great comic effect. On Steppenwolf’s newest in-the-round theater space is a blank tablet with minimalist sets introduced only when required. Sound design by Pornchanak Kanchanabanca is noteworthy, from light touches of evocative music to dramatic sound effects such the roaring inferno where many of Babel’s writings are destroyed.

In some ways “Describe the Night” is an absurdist style play, the characters not naturalistic. But Joseph, who also won a Tony for his "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," leavens this with his signature style of natural contemporary speech. We see this particularly as two real life characters, Isaac Babel (James Vincent Merredith) and his military minder and friend Nikolai (Yasen Peyankov) who joust about the nature of truth. Likewise with two fictional characters from scenes in post-Soviet times, airport car rental agent Feliks (Jack Cain) and reporter Marikya (Caroline Neff, who I never can get enough of on stage). Mariyka also comes under questioning Vova in the search for the missing journal, making a connection to contemporary times.

This show flies by in two hours and forty-five minutes, and the first act is engaging and promising, on which the second act delivers in spades. I had no idea how much time had passed when the lights came up. “Describe the Night” runs through April 9, 2023 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. It’s a great production of what is proving to be a seminal play.

On a rather ordinary winter day, I settled in to binge-watch Big Little Lies on HBO. In the show, the community of upper-class suburbia signs a petition to ban a musical from performing in the local theater. The play was against the community values, they argued, handling issues of racism, porn, and most dreadfully sex. The bit of the whole thing was that the play had puppets and those puppets simulated sex (gasp!). Watching the outrage of the characters in the show and the eye-rolling of the show’s protagonist of her narrow minded community members, I promised myself if the show ever came to Chicago I would be front row center. Luckily this fool’s spring, that show has officially come to Chicagoland; that show was Avenue Q.

Avenue Q can best be summed up as a satirical parody of PBS’s Sesame Street. The musical comedy features puppets and human actors with upbeat, clever, and catchy music and lyrics exploring adult themes. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards.

We arrive on Avenue Q with Princeton, a bright-eyed recent puppet college grad questioning the very thing I did after graduation with the song “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?”. Princeton, like most of us, wonders what happens now in his life, how can he afford rent? What will he do for a living? What is his purpose? Princeton and his neighbors, both puppets and humans, are all young adults facing problems after school ends and the real world begins. They navigate and explore these issues often through song, problems dealing with money troubles, job issues, sex ("You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)", homosexuality ("If You Were Gay"), unrequited love, racism ("Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"), and wondering when and how you can chase your dreams. There are incredibly relatable numbers that explore why we’re here and what the hell we’re supposed to be doing (“Purpose”), and longing for a more simplistic life (“I Wish I Could Go Back to College”). The musical also boasted profanity, fucking puppets, and I feared I would be asked to leave the theater when I couldn’t stop laughing when the puppet Kate-Monster and her puppet neighbor Trekkie Monster sing about the beauty and awe that is the internet “The Internet Is for Porn.” The Northlight production added some hilarious digital elements to the play during stage prep and scene changes, such as funny NYC facts and signs (free wi-fi ON don’t use for porn/free wi-fi OFF they used it for porn) and play-on-word counting videos like Sesame Street (5-4-3-2-1, 1 Night Stand) to prep for a sex scene in the musical.

Avenue Q is a simultaneously well-known and obscure musical. Many audience members had seen the show while I had only heard of it in recent pop culture. It came out the same year I graduated high school and has aged incredibly well. What once might have seemed outrageous to audiences and critics at the time are rather tame by today’s standards. Some older and more current reviews point not to the content but to the mocking or disparaging parody of the groundbreaking show Sesame Street. To me, Avenue Q is merely the grown-up version of Sesame Street or the big brother who returned home jaded from college and moved in next door because they can’t afford rent. It’s the show that Sesame Street could have become if acquired by HBO from PBS. Said another way, Avenue Q is the Cards Against Humanity to Sesame Street’s Apples to Apples. The show’s humor grounds itself in the realness of stepping out as an adult in the world and it is why it is still relevant and relatable today. I can see it quickly becoming a cult classic amongst younger generations who embrace parody, satire, and humor in an otherwise brutal world.

Avenue Q plays at the Northlight Theater (9501 Skokie Blvd) in Skokie. Northlight Theater continues to deliver incredible productions, and its 2023 lineup is filled with incredible shows. The theater is easily accessible for Chicagoans and suburbanites with a sense of humor. Tickets are available at Northlightcenter.org.

The first movie I remember seeing in a movie theater was John Huston’s 80s film version of Annie — the one with Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks and Carole Burnett as Miss Hanigan. Burnett’s drunken spinster entertained little me nearly as much as the film’s climax high atop the steel girders of a New York City bridge terrified me. The story revolves an orphan (Annie), an eternal optimist who tries to make the best of every situation while living in a poorly run orphanage (thanks to the loathsome Miss Hannigan) hoping that someday a nice family will take her in. Tough, clever and ever-persistent, Annie soon becomes an inspiration and a sign of hope to the other orphans. When millionaire Daddy Warbucks enters the picture, life for everyone quickly turns in a new direction.  

Annie first entered our hearts from Day One of its opening on Broadway in 1977. And all these decades and movie versions and various stage productions later, it’s the songs of this show that have still stuck with me. My youngest was a toddler when the latest film version was released a few years back, and she quickly became enamored of Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin’s songs, too—some of her first words were stammered while she danced to “It’s the Hard Knock Life.” So, we were both excited for the new production of the Tony Award-winning musical Annie at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. And, like so many Broadway in Chicago productions, this one does a stellar job of putting on a beloved show full of song after song after song that are, as the kids would say, real bangers. Skillfully directed by Jenn Thompson and wonderfully choreographed by Patricia Wilcox this production checks all the boxes and then some. And Director Jenn Thompson knows a thing or two about Annie having played the role of "Pepper" in the original Broadway prodution at age ten.

(L to R) Krista Curry, Nick Bernardi and Stefanie Londino in the National Tour of ANNIE. Photo Credit_ Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

And, like so many productions of Annie, it’s the kids who make this one special. Emulating the lead character to near perfection, Ellie Pulsifer as Annie looks the part, and charms with the show’s opener, “Maybe” (a song I’ve lullabied my kids with for two decades), but like a pro she holds back until her first time through “Tomorrow”—did I mention this show is full of great songs? —when she lets loose, the applause matches her effort.

The other orphans had set the bar for Pulsifer already, their orphanage dormitory stomp “It’s the Hard Knock Life” and its reprise getting the audience excited from the beginning. My daughter and my beloved Molly shine here, played by Bronte Harrison, but the rest of the children are wonderful, too. They’re only matched when Addison, the rescue dog playing Sandy, arrives onstage. Sandy is trained by Tony Award Honoree William Berloni whose skillset was also utilized in A Christmas Story and Legally Blonde.

The adults in the show ain’t half bad, either. Like most national tour companies, they’re really, really good, and the large ensemble nicely populates Depression-era New York. Stefanie Londino as Miss Hannigan fills the Cadillac Palace Theatre with her voice during “Little Girls,” and shows great chemistry with Nick Bernardi’s Rooster, her ex-con brother, on my favorite, “Easy Street,” along with his squeaky moll, Lily, played by Krista Curry.

And Christopher Swan’s Daddy Warbucks is all heart — both for Annie and for his hometown, especially on “NYC,” a song that hasn’t made it into every production, but should, as it’s as good as the others I’ve already listed.

So, if you’re a fan of this beloved show, of its beloved characters, and of these beloved songs that have become Broadway standards, make your way to the Cadillac Palace Theatre for Annie, now through March 19th. For tickets and/or more show information, click here.

There is a lot of bad content out there, particularly regarding family programming. Any parent forced to endure an hour of Cocomelon will tell you, not every show is a banger or cult classic in the making. When modern programming fails, it is nice to know we can reach into the past and find good, reliable programming in the classics. For us, those classics are Rugrats, The Simpsons, Powerpuff Girls, Fraggle Rock, and of course School House Rock. When we learned that another classic, even more vintage, had a musical, we knew we had to check it out. With 2023 being the year of 'what was old is new again,' we ventured to the Northern burbs to see You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Based on the beloved Charles Schulz comic strip, the 1967 musical features Charlie Brown and the Peanuts bunch as they explore life's great questions: playing baseball, struggling with homework, singing songs, swooning over their crushes, and celebrating the joy of friendship.

We were so hopeful for this play and curious about the comic strip in musical form. There were most certainly a few standout moments such as the song "Suppertime" performed by Snoopy and "Beethoven Day" performed by Schroeder, but overall, the songs and music were quite forgettable; no one would be caught singing a song from this musical at an audition.

Much like the comic strip and small vignettes on DVD, the play did not really have a plot or a story arc. What motivates the characters? What is the climax or problem of the story? If this Charlie Brown person claims he has no talent and nothing to offer, and throughout the play we see him live up to that expectation, what is the point of watching him or the people in his life? One could reach for a plot in that Charlie Brown is a good man simply because he is so ordinary that it makes those around him stand out even more, even though they aren't particularly fascinating. We could even venture that he's a good man because he truly does no evil, only sort of floats around innocently, keeping to his own. he does good by doing nothing and allowing his friends to be themselves (even at his own detriment). 

The musical was short and sweet, just under an hour run time with over 20 songs. It's a small cast and simple design, and the Lincolnshire Marriot 360 Theatre ensured you saw every minute of the play from any angle. The only real redeeming quality of the show is that children loved it. In its simplicity and sweetness, it found its niche with the children in the audience whose faces lit up when Snoopy started to talk and when Linus sang a ballad to his blanket. Maybe our brains crave more action and drama than Charlie Brown would deliver (he is rather unextraordinary after all), or maybe Charlie Brown doesn't resonate like it did in the 60s and 70s, but nevertheless, it does have some lasting power, reaching out across generations to bring Boomers and Gen Alpha together for a brief moment out of lives. And maybe, just maybe, that was the real purpose of this musical.

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is playing at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire and runs through April 1st. Grab the kids and grands and secure your tickets today. 

It’s hard to imagine a musical about the inception of the Declaration of Independence being interesting. It’s even harder to imagine that it can still be interesting in the shadow of arguably the most beloved American history musical, ‘Hamilton’, but the new production of ‘1776’ is more than just interesting, it’s a whole lot of fun. ‘1776’ begins its North American tour in Chicago at the CIBC Theatre.

Coming to Chicago hot off its Broadway run, this version of ‘1776’ doesn’t quite look or sound like the popular 1960s production or its subsequent film adaptation. It would be crazy to say that this production wasn’t in some way influenced by Lin Manuel Miranda’s conceptual masterpiece ‘Hamilton’. However, that may be, Roundabout Theatre in collaboration with The American Repertory Theatre have created a ‘1776’ for a 2023 audience and the result is exactly what this show needed to stay relevant.

Instead of a white male ensemble playing our forefathers, directors Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus have cast all the roles with actors who identify as female, transgender and non-binary. This casting is exciting and gives this music a new aesthetic that’s more pleasing to the ears. Each character’s costumes are tastefully styled in a way that leaves little ambiguity about who they are. Benjamin Franklin or simply, Pennsylvania, played by Liz Mikel is immediately recognizable in a green duster, small glasses and long braids.

 “The Egg” - (From L) Gisela Adisa as ‘John Adams,’ Nancy Anderson as ‘Thomas Jefferson’and Liz Mikel as ‘Benjamin Franklin’ in the National Tour of '1776'.

The tour has brought most of the original Broadway cast along, and because of that there’s a real sense of originality to the performances. While not part of the original cast, Joanna Glushak brings a Mary Martin energy to her role as British loyalist John Dickinson. Between her and Nancy Anderson in the role of Thomas Jefferson, there’s a lot to enjoy. The show is centered around John Adams who was a staunch advocate of American independence. Gisela Adisa as John Adams makes not only a compelling case for democracy, but also brings the roof down with her powerful vocals.

This production feels fresher than most Broadway tours. There’s some grit left on this show that doesn’t make you feel like you’re at a downtown Chicago playhouse, but rather one of our intimate storefront style theaters. There’s a refreshing lack of Broadway polish and almost none of the cloying tweeness that has become standard practice in big budget musicals. This production has a sense of urgency to it and a bespoke aesthetic. It’s exciting to see an old standard reimagined in a way that’s easier to connect to.

If you’ve never seen this show, forget what you think you know about it. The two acts breeze by and the book by Peter Stone is surprisingly informative without getting into the weeds of the colonial legislative process. Page and Paulus’ version is fresh and unique and never overdoes it the way some reinterpretations have a habit of doing. It’s just what it needs to be and it’s a lovely surprise for those who love the classics.

Through March 12 at Broadway in Chicago at the CIBC Theater. 18 W Monroe. www.broadwayinchicago.com