Steve Leary - Page 12

The Chicago Jazz Orchestra took on a big challenge - honoring the work of the late, great Ella Fitzgerald and they met it with imagination, class, great music and sass. The result was an almost perfect afternoon hearing some of jazz's' great songs interpreted by three of today's most gifted jazz singers - Spider Saloff, Dee Alexander and Frieda Lee.

Come enjoy a special evening featuring emerging composers and excerpts of new musicals presented by Chicago theater companies this season, including Annoyance Productions, Bare Boned Theatre, Bohemian Ensemble Theatre, Theatre Building Chicago Musical Theater Workshop, a special first look at American Theater Company's Yeast Nation, Victory Gardens' own The Snow Queen, and more.

A free staged reading of the drama 'Ordinary Miracles,' a Catholic nun's story that sets the sacred versus the profane, written by Wilmette playwright Joe Bendy and directed by Lisa Dodson. Amidst her struggle to keep the venerable college she heads viable in the face of drastic cultural change, modern-day feminist Sister Felicity must deal with the brash ideas of the school's newly hired young publicist, an overbearing and unscrupulous businessman trustee, and, most daunting, the unwelcome visit of an apostate pop-music icon alumna whose global celebrity and surprise gift proposal force her to make a faith-testing moral choice.

Jeffrey A. Katz, presents the world premiere of 'Slaphappy,' a romantic comedy of lost lovers and tormented ducks, by Chicago playwright Gary Slezak. Set in a Paris hotel, the play explores the idea of happiness through the eyes of four Americans, a loopy bellboy, an astute concierge, and a society of pâté lovers. Battling couples, exploding rockets, mistaken medications and a taste of foie gras come together in a delirious confection. This Equity show runs about two hours plus two intermissions. The poster illustration is by New Yorker cartoonist Pat Byrnes (copy below; more info at www.patbyrnes.com).

Set in the present-day DRC, Ruined is the captivating story of Mama Nadi (Ekulona), the owner of a canteen who serves up everything from a cold beer and a warm meal-to the company of a woman. Through the eyes of this savvy businesswoman who both protects and profits from the women whose bodies have become battlegrounds, Nottage captures the constantly shifting allegiances and tragic absurdity that marks the civil war in the DRC. Ruined, rendered with Nottage's trademark humanity, clarity and surprising humor, gives a glimpse of a country that has suffered immeasurable losses since the beginning of this war that has raged for more than a decade.

At Large! is a brand new one-woman show that tackles weight issues head on. Playwright and actress Keri Marcouillier interviewed many plus-size woman, as well as drawing on her own experiences, to write this show in the style of 'The Vagina Monologues'.

Broadway In Chicago and the producers of CHICAGO The Musical are delighted to announce that John O'Hurley will star as Billy Flynn in a limited engagement of the hit musical, CHICAGO, beginning February 25, 2009 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre (24 W Randolph St). CHICAGO will be extending its previously announced limited run for an additional week through March 8, 2009. Individual tickets go on-sale to the public on Friday, December 5 at 10 a.m. Group tickets are currently available by calling (312) 977-1710.

TimeLine Theatre Company announces the 2008-09 season of its TimePieces Play Reading Series, a series of one-night-only readings designed to offer Chicago audiences a chance to hear new and rarely produced plays and to extend TimeLine's mission of presenting stories inspired by history that connect to today's social and political issues.

'Rosie! A Tribute' is a loving and well-told musical adventure spanning the 40 year career of the great Girl Singer, Rosemary Clooney. Heather Moran has deftly created a musical tapestry from the colorful life of Clooney, spanning from her birth in Maysville, Kentucky, through her nervous breakdown in the late 1960's, her mid 1970's comeback, all the way to her death in 2002. Heather has assembled some of the hottest young jazz musicians in Chicago, including Damian Espinosa as musical director/pianist, Kevin Woods on bass, Jim Gifford on drums and a wonderful Chicago jazz singer and trumpet & flugelhorn player, Jeff Hedberg. Heather is also thrilled to include two fantastic Chicago vocalists, Marymonica Thomas and Daryl Nitz.

DISNEY's ALADDIN opens October 30th and runs through January 4th at The Marriott Theatre for Young Audiences, 10 Marriott Drive. Based on the smash hit 1992 Disney film Aladdin, DISNEY's ALADDIN is a magical journey for all ages, featuring an Academy Award-winning score. DISNEY's ALADDIN is directed and choreographed by Marriott Theatre for Young Audience's favorite, Rachel Rockwell (Seussical, Wizard of Oz, Princess and the Pea).

Theatergoers will receive $10 off tickets to the Halloween performance of Porchlight Music Theatre's hit musical comedy Candide at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, October 31. The witty operetta, based on the 1759 French masterpiece by Voltaire, is running through November 2 at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 West Belmont. For reservations call 773.325.9884.

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. will present the US Premiere of Our Bad Magnet at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan. It will open Monday, November 17, 2008 at 8 p.m. and run Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets are $18 on Thursday and Sunday, $20 on Friday, and $22 on Saturday. There will be previews on November 13-16 at 8 p.m. Tickets for previews are $10. Performance closes on Sunday, December 21, 2008. There is parking available in the Mobil Gas Station across from the theater at a fee determined by Mobil Gas. For more information and reservations call (773) 871-0442.

Every December, the residents of Deer Run Lane, a tiny cul de sac in Elk Woods Village, get together for their annual holiday party. The games, refreshments, and carols are all the same but this year the neighborhood party goes awry.

Broadway In Chicago encourages all Chicagoans to vote and then celebrate the election of the 44th President by offering theater patrons $44 tickets on Election Day, November 4, 2008, to the international stage hits DIRTY DANCING, Jersey Boys and WICKED. Election returns will be announced during intermission and at the close of the show.

Victory Gardens Theater will welcome playwright Sarah Ruhl back to her hometown Chicago with a special public event - Ruhl Makers - a panel of leading women theater artists in Chicago who have helped Ruhl escape 'reading hell' to become arguably the top contemporary playwright in America today.

Torben Betts' The Unconquered is a fast-moving satirical portrait of patriarchy, political indolence and over-reaction. The laughs begin when the 're-liberation' knocks on the door of your average upper-middle class family after aggressive revolutionaries have overthrown the government. Strange and unsettling, their new found freedom provokes the parents to reminisce about the comfort of life under the previous aristocracy while their spirited daughter criticizes her parent's banal and conforming attitudes with great, yet impotent, ferocity. The piece is a reflection of war's long-reaching effects on the domestic front, demonstrating the encompassing ambiguity of a public out of touch with reality. With great wit, poetics and charm, Betts sketches the self-hypocrisy that materializes during times of opaque identity and societal partition.

Kicking off the new season in the Village Players Blackbox is Betrayal, an intimate three person look at relationships by Harold Pinter, the 2005 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Court Theatre continues its 2008/09 season with SITI Company's Radio Macbeth adapted from the play by Shakespeare and co-directed by SITI Company Artistic Director Anne Bogart and Darron L. West. The production will run November 6, 2008 - December 7, 2008 at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue. The press opening will be Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 8:00 p.m.

With the election year upon us, we are looking to our newly elected leaders to fix the economy, the war, the environment, the health care system, the educational system, fill potholes, feed and shelter us, deliver us from harm and read to us when it is bedtime. It's a lot to ask, but that's why they get paid the big bucks in special interest money.