Ptorchwood Ptales & Ptimely Pthoughts

I have faced the reality that I am never going to have the time to write individual reviews for everything I seen in the last few months. So these are just a few thoughts on the music and dance related performances I've attended.

The Elixir of Love at Lyric Opera

I saw this Valentine's Day Weekend - yep February. I've seen this opera several times previously and its light and fun and romantic. Lyric used the same costumes and sets as they have previously - they're not terrible but it might be time to freshen the look up a bit. Other than that minor criticism, the opera was a lovely well-rounded performance. Both leads, Frank Lopardo and Susanna Phillips sang well and were very playful on stage.  The supporting cast was uniformly strong and the guest conductor, Bruno Campanella showed a real understanding of how to pace the music. (Bel Canto singers can be left, literally breathless if the tempo is off).  It was a very enjoyable evening.

Million Dollar Quartet at the Apollo Theater

I saw this with my BFF on her birthday.  This musical review revolves the (true) story of one day in 1956 when four musicians, true innovators of their time, played together at the Sun Records studio in Memphis. Not a formal recording session but a happy and sad coincidence of these four men coming together for the first and last time on that day. Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and and Jerry Lee Lewis all got their start at Sun Records but at this time, Elvis has already moved on to a bigger producer and Cash and Perkins were about to do the same. The owner of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, was one of the few producers that took on performers that were a little out of the mainstream and generally more innovative than the popular acts of the time. Sadly, after he nurtured and grew these talents he was often rewarded with them leaving his studio for more lucrative deals.

All the musicians were incredible but the standout for me was Lance Lipinsky on piano. Holy crap - this kid can play. He has performed extensively with a tribute band and he knows this music intimately. Sean Sullivan as Johnny Cash is a favorite actor of mine and has appeared in several productions at Timeline Theater.. David Lago (best known for his 2005 performance as Raul on The Young and the Restless) does a surprisingly good Elvis. Surprising to me anyway, as I never realized he had any musical talent. Finally, Gabe Bowling as Carl Perkins gave a credible performance, perhaps a bit understated in my opinion. A very fun evening , how can you go wrong with such great music played by stellar musicians.

Hubbard Street Dance  at the Harris Theater

I saw this performance for my birthday with my parents in March. Four very different pieces were performed which showcased the range of talent and dance styles the Hubbard is capable of presenting. First Light, danced by the HS2 members (which are their younger dancers in training ) used lighting and dance together to convey various moods and feelings. And with music by Philip Glass, well I'm a sucker for anything with Phillip Glass.

The second piece, The Kiss - was a visually stunning non-traditional pas de deux with the dancers being suspended on wires. And like a classical  dance partnering, the dancers use each other's weight and momentum to complete difficult movements. 

The third piece At 'em (Atem) Adam was my least favorite. While I admire the muscularity of the dancing as well as the originality of the choreography, the hodgepodge of musical pieces gave the piece a disjointed and unfinished feeling. Hey I like Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin, Billie Holiday, and Moondog (along with Sonata for Violins by Luciano berior - not a work I'm familiar with) but not in the same piece.

The final piece, 27'52" (the length of time it takes to perform)  was visually stunning. The themes of giving/taking, pushing/pulling, dependence/independence worked beautifully with the Mahler inspired score.

Billy Elliot at the Oriental Theater

I adored the movie, so I was a bit skeptical seeing this transformed into a musical, especially one written by Elton John. The music for the most part is typical Elton John, in both its good and bad aspects. Good - lively, fun; Bad - gee a lot of this music sounds the same. The standout song for me was Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher cause ...well if you know me at all, then you know where I stand on conservative politicians.

There are four young dancers playing the role of Billy - Cesar Corales danced in our performance and he was amazing.  I would love to see this again with another lead to see what impact if any a different dancer would have on the musical. The supporting cast were great with the exception of a few of those beautiful Welsh vowels making it a little hard to understand a times.

Ok, so now I still have 4 plays to review.  But first a nap is in order.

You have to click on the picture to biggify it so you can read the review.



WISHING YOU A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

Let's just say I wasn't exactly swept away by this one.

If you've read anythings about the topic you'll know its a fascinating piece of American history, just packed with action and suspense, daring rescues, heartbreaking stories, right?

Uh no. This play was so boring, so tedious, so poorly constructed that I left shortly after the start of the second act.  Some hearty friends informed me that the second half did not do anything to redeem the production.

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I'm still catching up from over a month ago.


Goodman Theater - 2 One-act Plays performed by Brian Dennehy

Brian Dennehy is one of my favorite stage actors.  Robert Falls is one of my least favorite stage directors. Put them together and the results are decidedly mixed.

Last season's Desire Under the Elms at the Goodman Theater was one of the worst pieces of theater I've seen in a long time. Under acted by Dennehy, over produced by Falls, it was a an experience I will never forget. And not in a good way. The house moving up and down (because how would we otherwise know whether the characters were inside it or not) as well as the Bob Dylan song played right in the middle of the play made me want to go screaming into the night. A real WTF experience.

So when I saw that the two were teaming up again, I was less than enthusiastic., particularly with them doing another O'Neill play.. Dennehy plays the lead role in Hughie by Eugene O'Neill and Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett.  Falls directed Hughie and Jennifer Rarver directed Krapp's Last Tape.

I wouldn't have thought that these two plays would work well back to back, but amazingly they do. Credit is due to Dennehy who conceived of pairing them and first performed the two together at Stratford (Ontario). Both plays have similar themes as they  look at aging men dealing with loss.

Erie Smith is a lonely, down on his luck gambler lamenting the loss of his friend Hughie, the night clerk at Smith's residential hotel. Smith portrays himself as a big-shot, blustering about his skills at gambling but the more he talks, the more you see how small he and his life really are.  This is the type of character that I always associate with Dennehy - the big, loud, self absorbed man who time has left behind.

In Krapp's Last Tape a man who has made tapes about his life every year on his birthday, listens to them alone in his tiny apartment. This isn't a role I would normally picture Dennehy in, but he played Krapp beautifully.

The two plays work so well together not only because they deal with similar themes (aging and loss) but because they are contrasts of men at two different stages of life. You can almost imagine Erie evolving into Krapp over a twenty year period. Erie is big and loud and physical, Krapp is small, silent, and shuffling.  Erie believes that the best is ahead of him, Krapp knows its long past. 

Watching Dennehy play such different characters in one performance, made me appreciate his skill as an actor .   Erie is a big physical man, so its pretty easy to envision Dennehy playing this role. But when Dennehy came out for the second half it actually took me a minute or so to realize it was him. He had totally transformed his appearance; He was older, smaller, frailer, completely contained by the physical space and his limited ability to navigate that space. 

And to add to the pleasure of a magnificent performance, Robert Falls' directing did not get in the way. Like acting, good directing IMHO should be subtle and nuanced, not hitting the audience over the head with 'look at how clever I am' moments.  I'm sure the fact that Dennehy had already integrated the two plays into a single performance helped prevent Falls from his usual heavy-handedness in the first half.  The residential hotel looked a little too plush for my taste, but it didn't get in the way. Jennifer Carver cleverly let the second half focus on the story using only minimal props to define Krapp's world. A table, a tape player, some tapes. Nothing more was needed to understand how  Krapp's life had been distilled down to a few memories recorded on tape.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater - Noel Coward's Private Lives

The Shakespeare season consists of three plays, only two of which are Shakespeare.  The third play is often a restoration comedy (Comedy of Manners) which is not an unusual addition.to Shakespeare festivals.  Between Chicago Shakespeare, The Stratford, (Ontario), Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theater in Spring Green Wisconsin, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, I've seen a fair number of these including School for Scandal (Sheridan), Wycherley's Country Wife,  Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, and practically everything by Moliere.  These plays usually deal with the themes of marriage and love and are often bitingly satirical. Comedies they may be, and you may be laughing during them, but the message iof these plays is much darker and sadder. Marriage and extra-marital relationships are shown as manipulative, empty and often devoid of any love or affection. Good times.

Though Private Lives is a 20th century work it fits well into the Comedy of Manners tradition. A divorced couple meet again at a hotel where they are both celebrating their new marriages. It isn't long before they find themselves together again only to recreate the  problems that destroyed their marriage the first time.  The play, presented in a theater in the round format was beautifully acted, with wonderful set design and costuming. But oddly enough, Coward hasn't aged as well as some of the 17th century plays. In particular, the casual physical violence portrayed as amusing in the play was impossible for me to accept as light.-hearted fun. I did enjoy the play, but there were several moments that made me cringe with discomfort.  I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that this was not the reaction Mr. Coward was hoping for.

He's LOLOL wonderful!  The man was born to be a character actor. As always he gives his all to the part -and is quite good actually.

The move is not as terrible as expected.  The dinosaurs are cheezy but no worse than Aabadon.  And the steam-punk elements are fun. 

Gareth rock climbing, and his accompanying facial expressions are worth the price of admission. But his costuming. He looked like five pounds of sausage stuffed into a three pound casing. And not in a good way. Seriously.

The final comments from the other viewers of this movie:


Just having a little fun after the week from hell.

We saw another amazing concert at The Old Town on Saturday night.  Some blues, a little bluegrass, old timey music and new, overall some of the nicest acoustic finger-picking I've heard in a long time.

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