'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for August 1, 2012
By: Paul W. Thompson Aug. 01, 2012
THE LATEST IN UNAUTHORIZED GOSSIP AND BUZZ
FROM THE HEART OF CHICAGO'S SHOWTUNE VIDEO BARS,
AND MUSICAL THEATER NEWS FROM CHICAGO TO BROADWAY
by Paul W. Thompson
Overheard last weekend under the showtune
video screens at Sidetrack and The Call:
Perhaps the biggest showtune concert of the summer is here! Well, it’s almost here, as next Monday evening, August 5, 2012, at 6:15 pm, the long-named “Broadway In Chicago: Summer Concert at Millennium Park” will mark an early start to fall with a night of previews of the upcoming season of downtown musicals. Cyndi Lauper herself will be on hand to perform with members of the cast of “Kinky Boots,” the pre-Broadway tryout with a score by Lauper and book by Harvey Fierstein that will play at the Bank Of America Theatre in October. Cathy Rigby from “Peter Pan” will be on hand, as will Joey, the amazing puppet horse from the play “War Horse.” Cast members from five other touring shows will perform, as will our own “Million Dollar Quartet,” the American Music Theatre Project’s “The Verona Project” and the upcoming “Cinderella” from Emerald City Theatre. The winners of this spring’s Illinois High School Musical Theater Award, Nathan Salstone and Meadow Nguy, will perform too, and the concert will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the Nederlander Organization, the Broadway producing company that owns Broadway In Chicago and sponsors the High School Awards nationwide. And did I mention that Monday’s concert is FREE? Get there early, peeps!
http://www.broadwayinchicago.com/summerconcert.php
Later next week, an event of even greater import to a certain segment of the Showtune Mosh Pit will take place at the Hilton Chicago on South Michigan Avenue. On Saturday, August 11, Team StarKid, the Chicago-based and internet-oriented musical theater collective, will present the sequel to “A Very Potter Musical” and “A Very Potter Sequel,” to be called “A Very Potter 3D: A Very Potter Senior Year,” in the Grand Ballroom of the gargantuan hotel! The reason? It’s LeakyCon, the annual Harry Potter fan conference (last year’s confab was in Orlando). And the chief draw? Darren Criss, of course, who will be performing with the company he helped to found (as Harry, I assume)! The show, written by Matt Lang, Nick Lang and Brian Holden, will technically be a staged reading, but will have enough theatricality to warrant being filmed for internet release. The cast will consist of more than 20 StarKid regulars, including fan favorites Jaime Lyn Beatty, Joe Walker, Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez. For younger musical theater fans, this is a VERY big deal. Team StarKid and fans, unite!
Team-StarKid-Darren-Criss-A-VERY-POTTER-3D-A-VERY-POTTER-SENIOR-YEAR
A very big deal of another sort is going on in Chicago’s southeast suburbs, that is to say, in Northwest Indiana. Theatre At The Center’s production of “Little Shop Of Horrors” has gotten the best reviews of any show at TATC in recent years, and, on top of great singing and hilarious acting, the production boasts the original 1980s off-Broadway puppets built to comprise the blood-thirsty plant, Audrey II! The photos of the show look great, and reports are quite positive about the whole shebang. If you have been pining for a top-notch local staging of this show, beloved by many for its catchy score and witty text, you may have found the one to go to (through August 19). Stacey Flaster has done it again!
http://www.theatreatthecenter.com/2012_little.asp
If you are a fan of “Legally Blonde,” the 2007 musical by Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach, then you have come to the right region of the country. We have two productions playing right now, at least! One is courtesy of SLATE (the Southland Area Theatre Ensemble), the four-year old company using the facilities of Governors State University in far south suburban University Park. The show opened last weekend, and plays this coming Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Oh, my God, you guys!
The other is even further south, in Champaign, courtesy of the Champaign Urbana Theatre Company and playing at the Parkland Theatre, on the campus of Champaign’s Parkland College. It opens tomorrow, August 2 and plays through August 12. Garth Gersten directs, with choregraphy by Whitney Havice. I have totally lost count of the number of productions this show has received in the last two years! Something sure has struck a nerve….
Heading back downtown (well, sort of), we find the Riverfront Theater, the new summertime tent venue located in the Chicago Tribune parking lot along the north branch of the Chicago River (at Chicago Avenue). While it seems like the theater has had its share of producing troubles this year (unlike last year’s hit show, “Peter Pan”) they do have the award-winning, touring production called “La Soiree” right now, which opened two weeks ago and has this week to go, closing August 5th. It’s not a musical, exactly. It’s one of those newfangled circus shows that we seem to get a lot of, but it has elements of vaudeville, cabaret, burlesque, music hall and the like, among its sensual and, reportedly, nudist elements. I figured I would go ahead and mention it! Musical theater encompasses a lot, you know. You just might enjoy it!
La Soiree description and reviews
Head a little west of the Riverfront Theater on Chicago Avenue, and turn right on Milwaukee Avenue. Eventually, you’ll run right past Davenport’s, one of Chicago’s premiere cabaret and piano bar venues. On the next two Monday nights (August 6 and 13), one of our youngest musical theater power couples will present “Amanda And Justin Sing The Movies” there, and I’ll bet they sing the roof off the joint. She is Amanda Horvath, one of the winners of the Chicago preliminary of the National Music Theater Competition sponsored by the National Association Of Teachers Of Singing earlier this summer. He is Justin Adair, who won the Best Featured Actor – Musical Jeff Award this year for his portrayal of Fabrizio in “The Light In The Piazza” at Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre. Yes, they are dating (sorry, folks) and yes, we will all hear much more from them in the future. But why not hear it from them now? (Roosevelt University professor Dana Brown will be at the piano.)
http://www.davenportspianobar.com/
Further north, in the southeastern corner of Lake County, is arts-rich Highland Park. The Music Theatre Company, the intrepid company that filled a void, and filled it but good, has a pair of cabaret nights and a musical theater free-for-all coming up. On Friday night, August 3, the theater will present Emily Shoolin in concert, and a week later, on the 10th, it’s Will and Anthony Nunziata. In between, on August 6 and 7, the company will present “The 48 Hour Musicals,” four new, very short musicals that will have written and rehearsed in the 48 hours leading up to the performances. I don’t know what they are, because, of course, they haven’t been written yet! But this year’s theme is “Forget me (not),” and the shows will be directed and choreographed by Katie Spelman. Featured writers include Nikko Benson, Matt Boresi, Will Buck, Sam Carner, Derek Gregor, Peter Hilliard and Diana Lawrence. Awesome!
http://www.themusictheatrecompany.org/
A little further north again, and somewhat west, the Marriott Theatre is holding forth with the new musical “Hero” for three more weeks, through August 19. However, star Erich Bergen has left the production, due to an unspecified “medical emergency.” He tweeted the sad news on July 27 (last Friday) and apparently headed back to New York a few days later. Reports are that understudy Jameson Cooper has been playing the role of Hero Batowski in Aaron Thielen and Michael Mahler’s musical about a young man learning to cope, excel and thrive. There’s no official word from the Marriott, but we all wish Bergen (and Cooper) well, and, with the film and television projects that ex-Jersey Boy Bergen lists on his website, we hope to see him in many media in the months to come.
Lastly, we’re happy to report that Chicago actor Kevin Theis is adding another job to his resume--author. He’s penned a new book (with Ron Fox) called “Confessions Of A Transylvanian,” subtitled “A Story Of Sex, Drugs And Rocky Horror.” As in “Picture Show.” It’s a story-based memoir of life among the denizens of a 1980s movie theater in Florida, where full-on “Rocky Horror” mania reigned, in all its toast-throwing, fishnet-wearing, camp goth glory. And the book is getting great online reviews! If you are old enough to remember all the late-night hoopla surrounding this singular movie musical (adapted from a stage musical, of course), or if you are young enough to be perplexed and intrigued about a unique chapter in show business history, this is the book for you. Theis is appearing onstage now as Shakespeare’s “Richard III” at the Oak Park Festival Theatre (through August 25), and I’m sure this is yet one more version of the larger than life characters he has been called upon to play in his still-thriving performing career. Check it out!
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Transylvanian
And so, August has arrived! There is a lot of summer still to come, and yet, we are learning some things about some fall musical productions that are making our mouths water! I’ll start talking about them next week. In the meantime party on, and I'll see you under the video screens.....—PWT
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