Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s world premiere family drama runs through April 28, 2024

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has set the table for one hell of a family dinner in PURPOSE.

Directed by Phylicia Rashad in a world premiere for Steppenwolf, this family drama keenly focuses on the privileged Jasper family, whose patriarch is a Civil Rights icon. The first act moves at a brilliant clip with lots of darkly funny moments during a contentious family drama, then unspools into a more serious and somber contemplation of the skeletons in the family’s closet in the second. 

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It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely…it’s ANYTHING GOES at Porchlight Music Theatre. Artistic Director Michael Weber’s production captures all the joy and laughs in Cole Porter’s 1934 classic musical comedy. Thanks to the new 2022 book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, it’s also a tight ship running two hours and fifteen minutes (original book by P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard LIndsay, and Russel Crouse.)

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Marianne Elliot’s gender-swapped revival with a female Bobbie runs at the Cadillac Palace Theatre through November 12, 2023

Director Marianne Elliot’s gender-swapped COMPANY centers on Bobbie, a 35-year-old single woman living in New York City with a chorus of married friends full of opinions about her relationship status. Stephen Sondheim’s intellectually and emotionally stimulating musical originally focused on Bobby, an elusive bachelor who, for most of the show, seems reluctant to settle down. Based on a series of vignettes by book writer George Furth, COMPANY was a 1970 exploration of marriage and romantic relationships. While it’s since been sometimes accused of being dated, Elliot’s reimagining of the material makes it fresh and expands out the musical’s central theme to become a search for connection. This COMPANY is a touching portrait of one woman’s attempts to connect with her friends amid a bustling New York City, simultaneously a connecting and isolating place. 

Continue reading “Review: COMPANY National Tour Presented by Broadway In Chicago” →

Goodman Theatre has put together a mean game of pinball for this summer’s production of THE WHO’S TOMMY. This is an unadulterated musical theater spectacle with a massive cast, exquisite production design, and fantastic sound. It’s a reflection on surviving after trauma, and the dangers of blind obedience to figureheads and cultural institutions. All these themes are treated broadly in Pete Townshend’s music and lyrics and book by director Des McAnuff and Townshend, but they provide some thematic color to this immense sensory experience. 

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Heidi Schreck’s must-see play makes its local Chicago debut at TimeLine Theatre Company through July 2, 2023

Back in March 2020, WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME was one of the last plays I saw before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all live theater for almost two years. I thought Heidi Schreck’s play was a knockout at that time; it seamlessly interweaves the personal and the political, and she had a cathartic and devastating thesis about the Constitution’s shortcomings when it comes to protecting the rights of women (and especially women of color) in this country. 

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It’s hard not to wax poetic about Stephen Sondheim’s INTO THE WOODS, and the national tour of director Lear deBessonet’s City Center Encores production-turned-Broadway-revival fortunately does this master work of musical theater justice. Watching INTO THE WOODS on Friday night, I was reminded of how this show beautifully expresses the responsibilities that we have to our fellow humans. As with the Grimm’s Fairy Tales from which it draws inspiration, INTO THE WOODS is a cautionary tale: A reminder that our actions have consequences. As the ensemble sings in the show’s finale “Children Will Listen, “Wishes come true/not free.” 

Continue reading “Review: INTO THE WOODS National Tour Presented by Broadway In Chicago” →

Porchlight invites audiences into the glittering, gritty world of early 1930s Berlin with John Kander and Fred Ebb’s iconic musical CABARET. Under the direction of Porchlight Artistic Director Michael Weber and with associate direction and choreography by Brenda Didier, this production largely belongs to Erica Stephan in the role of Sally Bowles. As the seductive and desperate nightclub singer, Sally, Stephan is an absolute dream. She not only plays the character’s arc beautifully, moving from artful seduction to total desperation and panic by the show’s end, but she showcases her powerful belt and vocal control in each of Sally’s solo numbers. In this way, Porchlight’s production mirrors Sally’s character arc; as the other characters in the show are awakened to the realities of the Nazi party’s rise to power, they must contend with the fact that life is not, in fact, a cabaret.

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Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning musical RENT comes to life in a Porchlight production that captures the ethos of the original Broadway production. It also reinvigorates the fresh energy of the musical’s message about love, acceptance, and living in the moment. 

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The world premiere musical THE NOTEBOOK captures the sentimental energy of Nicholas’s Sparks all-encompassing love story about Allie and Noah, two young lovers who come from entirely different social strata, and has a distinct point of view on its source material. With music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, book by Bekah Brunstetter, and direction by Michael Greif and Schele Williams, THE NOTEBOOK takes a narrative that I frankly found overly maudlin in movie form and softens it as a musical. Michaelson’s cohesive score and lyrics, while not necessarily catchy, provides a wistfulness that befits Allie and Noah’s star-crossed lover journey. Fans of Sparks’s original 1996 novel and the 2004 film will recall that THE NOTEBOOK operates on parallel timelines—We meet the elderly Allie and Noah in the nursing home; Allie suffers from dementia, and Noah diligently reads from a notebook recounting their epic love story in the hopes of helping her recover her memory. When I saw the film, I found it cheesy. But the musical’s intimate production values and lush harmonies make it more moving.

Continue reading “Review: World Premiere of THE NOTEBOOK at Chicago Shakespeare Theater” →

The long-awaited Steppenwolf production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s CHOIR BOY was well worth the wait.

With direction by Kent Gash, Steppenwolf’s staging hits all the right notes. Steppenwolf ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play is is a heartwrenching and tuneful story about Pharus— a young gay Black man who relishes nothing more than his role as the choir lead at the prestigious Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys. Over the course of the play, Pharus navigates that classic adolescent tension between his desire to be fully himself and his wish to be accepted among his peers. McCraney’s script beautifully demonstrates this push-and-pull in a way that will universally resonate with audiences, but the story is also incredibly specific to Pharus and his classmates. 

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