Author: Colin Douglas
Polish Your Glass Slippers
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Well, I have to confess from the get-go that gifted and talented, Jeff Award-nominated director Amber Mak has made me fall in love with this musical, all over again. After seeing it on Broadway I wasn’t a fan. I was so disappointed at how respected playwright Douglas Carter Beane’s changed his new book for this charming Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. He totally reversed the tone of this beloved fairy tale. Beane’s revisions took a sweet, romantic story about a young girl finding her prince and injected it with a soapbox of causes. Cinderella and her friends spent much of the musical conversing about the need for social reform, environmental changes, equality and personal choice and freedom for women. Certainly, all of these themes should be explored, but not in a favorite fairy tale. There’s a time and place for everything. This once much-adored musical turned into a platform for changes in American society. To put it bluntly: the musical had lost its magic.
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Every Family Has Its Ups and Downs
The Lion in Winter
James Goldman’s twelfth century historic comic-drama depicts a life-and-death struggle between King Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their three resentful sons. But fear not: this isn’t Shakespeare. Goldman’s play is purposely anachronistic, making it feel completely contemporary. The playwright penned his play to seem like a dark, contemporary-sounding drawing room comedy about, you know, a typical family struggling for absolute power. After one of the many knockdown drag out fights, Queen Eleanor quips, “Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?” You might imagine a production that’s similar to Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” but with a few more characters and performed in Medieval drag.
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A Can of Worms
The Lifespan of a Fact
Buddha said that three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth. And so it goes in TimeLine Theatre’s exciting new production. Loosely based upon a book by the same title, written by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, the play deals with the accuracy or truthfulness of a certain magazine article, also loosely based upon real events. D’Agata and Fingal also happen to be the two main characters in this comic three-hander. The third character is Emily Penrose, the Senior Editor of a fictional, New York-based periodical. As the play opens she’s interviewing Jim, one of her topnotch interns, looking for a fact-checker for D’Agata’s article—correction, “essay,” as John would continually correct Jim Fingal. Little did Ms. Penrose know the can of worms she was opening.
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You’ve Got a Friend
Beautiful – The Carole King Musical
In the first of three Chicagoland productions this season, the Marriott Theatre’s ebullient biopic musical, which is pure theatrical joy, draws the audience into its catchy music and captivating story. The production grabs you and never lets go until after the final bows. Relating the artist’s formative years, “Beautiful” celebrates the brilliant career of singer/songwriting legend, Carole King. Douglas McGrath’s libretto depicts the many ups and downs experienced by this modest, gifted artist. From a precocious 16-year-old, who skipped two grades in high school to study music education at local Queens College, to her first published and recorded hit song, “It Might as Well Rain Until September,” we watch a talented young lady grow from a sharp kid into a wise and gifted woman.
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The Whole Being Dead Thing
Beetlejuice
Back in 1988, a new movie hit the silver screen. One of the earliest films directed by the inimitable Tim Burton, “Beetlejuice” was a huge popular success. Much like his many other gothic horror/fantasy films that would follow, including “Edward Scissorhands,” a creepy remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Batman” and “Batman Returns,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Sweeney Todd” and the animated classics “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Corpse Bride,” Tim Burton’s work is recognizable by its artistic style. Dark, eerie, often filled with supernatural situations and characters, and peppered with his recognizable black-and-white stripes, the stories are usually tangled and tortuous. “Beetlejuice” was Tim Burton’s first foray into the world of the occult.
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The Gun Song
Assassins
Sacrificing oneself for the greater good, fighting against political injustice, seeking a brighter world, feelings of desperation and disillusionment and simply the desire for attention are all motivations for the assassin’s bullet. Imagined by playwright John Weidman and composer & lyricist Stephen Sondheim, this edgy, controversial 1990 musical probably won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But as one of its melodies proclaims, this is “The Gun Song,” and indeed it is. A lovely score, a fresh look at American history plus the sheer artistry of this production are reasons enough to see Theo Ubique’s latest offering.
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Where Is the Money?
The Night of the Hunter
The canon of mysteries and thrillers, scripts written expressly for the theater, has increased in recent years. Sometimes original works, or those adapted from novels and loosely based upon popular films, are typically box office hits. Recent productions of plays like “Deathtrap,” “Sleuth,” “The Pillowman,” “London Road,” “Wait Until Dark,” “Night Watch” and Agatha Christie classics, like “Witness for the Prosecution” and “The Mousetrap,” have become increasingly popular. Even musical thrillers, such as the recent hit Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd,” the long-running “The Phantom of the Opera,” cult hits like “Little Shop of Horrors” or the dark and bloody “American Psycho” play to sell-out audiences.
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Selling Your Soul to the Devil
Witch
Loosely adapted by Jen Silverman from the Jacobean play, “The Witch of Edmonton,” this prolific and talented playwright also gave us “The Roommate,” the tense two-hander presented by Steppenwolf Theatre, and “The Moors,” seen a while back at A Red Orchid Theatre. In Silverman’s 95-minute supernatural tale they offer a captivating, freshly told and mesmerizing story of six individuals who are all hoping to sell their souls to achieve something. Even the Devil, as cocky and confident as he appears to be, has his own aspirations. Employing contemporary dialogue, complete with 21st century expletives and expressions, audiences can’t help but associate this need to achieve with our current political and social climate. In spite of Rachel Lambert’s authentic 17th century costumes, each character still feels startlingly familiar and au courant.
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If Music Be the Food of Love…
Twelfth Night
The Summer has come and gone, Halloween has passed on and now the cold, wintry winds are blowing. It’s the perfect season for a holiday in the warm Caribbean isles. Guest director Tyrone Phillips, a first-generation Jamaican American and Chicago artist of many talents, has reimagined William Shakespeare’s perfect comedy set on a tropical island. And, taking his cue from the play’s opening line, “If music be the food of love, play on,” Mr. Phillips has filled his spectacularly colorful, comic production with a generous amount of song and dance. And love, don’t forget love, which seems to be everywhere for every single character.
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Being Alive
Company
Happy 35th birthday, Bobbie! The festive celebration will soon be shared by Bobbie’s married friends, all crammed into her tiny Manhattan apartment to throw a surprise party for their single friend. Throughout this wonderfully re-imagined, mellifluous musical, filled with new surprises and laugh-out-loud hilarity, and some heartbreaking sentiment and truths, Bobbie decides that maybe it’s time to make a big change in her life, which she sing in her plaintive, “Marry Me a Little.”
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