'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for March 28th, 2012
By: Paul W. Thompson Mar. 28, 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:
“Fela!” is finally here! The 2009 Broadway musical about the Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti, a show which was the well-deserved winner of three Tony Awards, arrives this week at the Oriental Theatre for a three week run (through April 15, extended from the originally announced two weeks). With its original star leading the way (the Sierra Leonean actor Sahr Ngaujah, Tony-nominated and charismatic beyond words), this show should do extremely well in Chicago, and really should have come here sooner. But we’ve got it now, and I can tell you from having seen it in New York that it is really something. The final sequence of the show is as stunning a coup de theatre as one could possibly imagine (trust me), and even though it has a lot of concert elements, the show is definitely a creature of the theater when all is said and done, sung and danced. Certainly anyone with an interest in world music or dance should see it, and Chicago’s large African community should embrace it to the highest degree. “Spring Awakening” choreographer Bill T. Jones really outdid himself with this one, and the music is pretty amazing (duh!). We’ve been waiting for two years for this day, and it has arrived. Welcome, “Fela!”
Broadway In Chicago is bringing back a proven Chicago favorite, “Jersey Boys,” for nine weeks, starting next week, April 5 (though June 3). It will be back at the BOAT, the Bank Of America Theatre, where it ran for over two years. For those who love their Boys (and who doesn’t?), this is a chance to savor the magic once again, or introduce your latest squeeze to a special jukebox musical they may have missed the first time around.
BIC recently announced another return engagement (albeit a brief one), the Beatles tribute musical, “Rain,” coming for one week to the Oriental Theatre, June 26-July 1, 2012. Perhaps it’s not quite as theatrical a show as “Jersey Boys” or “Fela!,” but it IS about the Beatles…and it’s been here twice before….
And a new show, also just announced by Broadway In Chicago, will be playing for two months this fall at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place (September 12-November 11). It’s the weirdly named “I Love Lucy ® Live On Stage,” which has a “circle R thing” in the middle there, everywhere I’ve looked, but doesn’t seem to have an comma or colon there, or an internal set of quotation marks surrounding the name of the legendary 1950s TV show from which its material derives. But I digress. I am proud to say that this show won eight 2011 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards, and wouldn’t it be thinking that it could pick up some BroadwayWorld Chicago Awards for 2012? We’ll have to see about that! However, it seems to be quite popular in LaLaLand, and where else but Chicago would a west coast show go before trying the boards of New York? And the Los Angeles production counted several Chicago connections from among its personnel, too. I’m sure it’s just delightful.
Well, ask and it shall be answered! Last week I wondered aloud in the Mosh Pit (the column, not the video bar locale) who will be playing Guenevere in Light Opera Works’s early June production of “Camelot.” The company announced two days later that appearing alongside Nick Sandys’s Arthur will indeed be the actress I was hoping for, Jennie Sophia, who appeared at LOW last year as Fiona in “Brigadoon,” and went on to star as Nellie in the tour of “South Pacific” that Broadway In Chicago recently presented here. Good for her, and good for Light Opera Works. That IS the correct answer!
http://www.light-opera-works.org/Camelot.html
Speaking of north suburban musical theater companies, the Music Theatre Company of Highland Park is readying its production of “Pippin” for its press opening this weekend (previews began March 22, and the run extends through May 6). The company’s founder and artistic director, Jessica Redish, directs and choreographs an impressive local cast, and Ian Weinberger music directs. This may be one of the last chances folks will have to see a professional “Pippin” before a planned Broadway revival occurs (the show’s first). So, get ‘em while they’re hot, people!
http://www.themusictheatrecompany.org/
In Chicago proper, new shows of slightly different sort are in preparation. Hell In A Handbag Productions is now rehearsing for its world premiere presentation of a “docu-musical” entitled, “Sexy Baby,” an exploration of child beauty pageants from a gender-bent, satire-based perspective. I can’t imagine what’s going to be going on, and yet I can. And I think (I say, I THINK) that adults play all the children’s roles. The book is by David Cerda, with songs by him and Scott Lamberty. Derek Czaplewski directs. The run is April 26-June 16 at Mary’s Attic in the Andersonville neighborhood.
http://www.handbagproductions.org/
On the other end of the serious spectrum, we will see the Chicago premiere of “Hostage Song” before too long, with book by Clay McLeod Chapman and music and lyrics by Kyle Jarrow, courtesy of Signal Ensemble Theater, 1802 West Berenice Avenue. The show begins previews May 3, and runs through June 9, directed by Ronan Marra and musical directed by Jon Steinhagen. It’s a 90-minute, intermissionless “indie-rock” musical with a cast of five, Brigitte Ditmars, Steve O’Connell, Simone Roos, Dave Skvarla and Joseph Stearns. Kyle Jarrow is the writer of “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.” I’m sure it’s not like that, not…really.
Signal-Ensemble-Theatre-Presents-HOSTAGE-SONG
Not really theater (or IS it?), the show “Re-Spiced: A Silk Road Cabaret” is almost upon us, beginning April 4 and running through May 6. Created by Jamil Khoury and directed by Steve Scott, with musical direction by Ryan Brewster, this show “is a musical pastiche of Asian and Middle Eastern images in American and British song and verse,” building on the 2009 show by the same artists, “Broadway Sings The Silk Road.” Shows take place in Pierce Hall, in the Chicago Temple Building on Washington Street, with one performance (April 28) at Governor’s State University in the far south suburbs. And there is a cast of eight: Jaii Beckley, Danny Bernardo, Joel Kim Booster, Christine Bunuan, Dipika Cherala, Joyee Lin, Evan Tyrone Martin, and Amira Sabbagh. It sounds intriguing.
Silk-Road-Rising-to-Present-World-Premiere
The musical “Annie” seems to be everywhere these days (and has it ever really been away, since its 1977 Broadway debut?). The 1982 feature film was screened in Naperville and Woodridge movie theaters over the weekend (in honor of its thirtieth anniversary); titular star Aileen Quinn was in town to host the screenings. There is a Broadway revival being planned for this fall (and rumored to possibly star the departing Chicago resident, Rosie O’Donnell); that production was here in town two weeks ago, holding an open casting call for young actresses to play the orphans. And there will be a major local production here as well this fall, at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora (November 21-December 30, 2012). Didn’t I just review a touring production at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University? (Well, it was January of 2010, but still….) Some shows never really slip off the radar screen, do they?
http://www.paramountaurora.com/broadway2012-13.php
And speaking of musicals in media, word came last week that the NBC-TV series “Smash” would be renewed for a second season. The show, starring Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty and co-starring a plethora of recognizable Broadway names and faces, has lost its novelty among the Mosh Pit peeps, but some are sticking with it for those names and faces, and the music and the milieu of Broadway. Of course, its Monday night timeslot puts it 24 hours behind Kristin Chenoweth’s new Sunday night show on ABC-TV, “GCB.” Both shows are currently airing new episodes, and “Smash” will release its soundtrack album soon. But of course, FOX-TV’s “Glee” will return on Tuesday nights before too long, starring Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele, Darren Criss and a bunch of (we can only assume) other future Broadway stars and current Broadway guest stars. Can we stand and absorb three nights in a row of Broadway-related television? Only time, and our various viewing devices, will tell. But what a golden time for us!
Stay cool, you guys and gals of Broadway! This crazy spring is indeed a great time to be Mosh Pit peep, and I hope to see you in a theater lobby soon. And I’m sure I'll see you afterwards, tan from your afternoon jogging, under the video screens.....—PWT
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