Review Roundup: WORKING at Broadway Playhouse

A musical exploration of 26 people from all walks of life, with songs by all-star composers Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Tony AwardTM winning Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mary Rodgers, Susan Birkenhead, Stephen Schwartz and Grammy AwardTM winning James Taylor. WORKING celebrates everyday people in a genuinely funny and touching way. Portrayed by some of Chicago's brightest stars including E. Faye Butler, Barbara Robertson and Gene Weygandt, Emjoy Gavino, Michael Mahler and Gabriel Ruiz, WORKING fills you with hope and inspiration and is the perfect musical for everyone who has ever worked a day in their lives.

Produced by Jed Bernstein, DiAnne Fraser and Sheila Simon Geltzer, WORKING is directed by Gordon Greenberg, with Scenic Design by Beowulf Boritt. Individual tickets for WORKING are $67.50 - $77.50. A select number of premium seats are also available. Tickets are available at all Broadway In Chicago Box Offices (24 W. Randolph St., 151 W. Randolph St., 18 W. Monroe St. and 175 E. Chestnut St.), the Broadway In Chicago Ticket Kiosk at Water Tower Place (845 N. Michigan Ave.), the Broadway In Chicago Ticket Line at (800) 775?2000, all Ticketmaster retail locations (including Hot Tix and select Carson Pirie Scott, Coconuts and fye stores), and online at www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times: The new conceit that binds together the show's many episodic elements has everything to do with both those things. Beowulf Boritt's two-level industrial set gives us the dressing rooms of the show's six performers, and we are reminded that actors are tremendous physical laborers as well as artists who can magically transform themselves. In addition, an opening setup puts Studs' reel-to-reel tape recorders (the essential tool of his trade) in full view. The songwriter's "job" also is beautifully spotlighted here, with each concise verse capturing a character, actual workaday duties and plenty of attitude.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: This new production fully achieves one very notable aim: it successfully updates a 24-year-old Broadway show that has remained in the production repertory ever since, but has seemed a little tired for at least the past decade. Now that the references feel timely, the audience feels freer to connect with the timeless human desires articulated, in myriad ways, in Terkel's tapes.

Steven Oxman, Variety: It's weakest when it's in motion. Efforts at choreography to represent the grace of a millworker feel awkward. And Greenberg's self-referential concept -- with a set that represents the actors' dressing rooms, and where stagehands come onstage for visible quick-changes as the actors morph, for example, from a housewife to a prostitute - doesn't bring us closer to the characters and their desires or their regrets, but makes it more about the performances themselves (actors are workers, too, you see). It's theatrical, but it isn't authentic.

Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago: Perhaps most notably, the creative team has reduced the cast to just six powerhouse Chicago actors (the original Broadway cast had 17). They get to show off their chameleonic chops, occasionally transforming onstage with the help of a team of dressers (a sly reminder that the crew and actors before us are on the job, too). The design is top-notch, even if Greenberg's direction can be a bit stand-and-sing static and some schmaltzy bits survive (see Schwartz's song "Fathers and Sons"). But they're far outnumbered by genuinely moving moments, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more dynamic ensemble. This Working really works.

 

 

 

 

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