'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for June 26th, 2013
By: Paul W. Thompson Jun. 26, 2013
THE LATEST IN UNAUTHORIZED GOSSIP AND BUZZ
FROM THE HEART OF CHICAGO'S SHOWTUNE VIDEO BARS,
AND MUSICAL THEATER NEWS FROM CHICAGO TO BROADWAY
Overheard last weekend under the showtune
video screens at Sidetrack and The Call:
And welcome to the 204th edition of "The Showtune Mosh Pit!" Yes, it's true. We hit 200 weekly editions back on May 29, 2013, going strong ever since our very first column on August 5, 2009. And we're stronger than ever! Thousands of lovers of Chicago's musical theater scene check in every week about what's going on, what's anticipate and what's just knocked our socks off. Thanks for reading, Peeps!
And this edition is also special, in that it covers our Top Ten Hot Topix for the first half of 2013. This bi-annual rundown helps us figure out where we've been, and what YOU've been talking about. We're covered 156 topix in all. So, let's get right down to the top ten!
10. The Tony Awards. Yes, it's true. Chicago was a little bit obsessed with New York's annual theater award celebration this year. But how could we not be? "Kinky Boots," which had its world premiere here last fall at the Bank Of America Theatre, emerged as the big winner of the New York theater season when the Tonys were handed out at Radio City Music Hall on June 9th. Taking six trophies in all, including Best Musical, the show that won Best Touring Production at the BroadwayWorld Chicago Awards in January was named Best Musical, and Billy Porter (our BWCA winner for Best Actor in a Touring Production), was named Best Actor. Add to that the three Tonys collected by the Steppenwolf Theater Company's revival of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?" and our first ever Tony Award Viewing Party at The Call nightclub in the Andersonville neighborhood (hosted by yours truly), and you have a night of theater love that we couldn't get enough of. Everybody, say "Yeah!!!!"
http://www.tonyawards.com/index.html
9. "Million Dollar Quartet." Since its opening in September of 2008, this musical based on a 1956 real-life, one-night recording/jam session in Memphis has been going like gangbusters in Chicago, where audiences can watch Sam Phillips bring together Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins eight times a week. Now at the Apollo Theater on Lincoln Avenue, this production transferred most of its original cast to Broadway. That production transferred briefly off-Broadway and then closed, though a tour is still out on the road. Chicago's MDQ continues, now billing itself as Chicago's longest-running Broadway musical (i.e. longer than "Wicked"). It's selling tickets through January of 2014, so that's five and a half years. At least!
http://www.milliondollarquartetlive.com/
8. "Othello: The Remix." This show is another that keeps extending and extending its original run. It opened in March of this year in the Upstairs space at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, and is announced through July 27th. Great reviews and the ability to attract a whole new set of theatergoers have kept this hip-hop retelling of Shakespeare's great tragedy front and center. CST commissioned the work, which after workshops and European appearances made its presence known hereabouts. It's fresh, fast and funny. Is this the future of musical theater?
http://www.chicagoshakes.com/OthellotheRemix
7. "Barnum" And The New Mercury Theater. After a shakedown cruise with the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue "A Grand Night For Singing," L. Walter Stearns and company hit the ground running from March through June with an inventive mounting of the rarely staged Cy Coleman circus musical "Barnum," helped out by the aesthetic and techniques of The Actors Gymnasium. If not ideally cast, at least Gene Weygandt brought the requisite star power. Next up for "Chicago's largest musical theater?" The local premiere of "The Color Purple" in August. Can't wait!
http://mercurytheaterchicago.com/2013-season/
6. "Smash." Now, you'd think that this one would be higher on the list. Well, I'm sure that NBC hoped so, too. The second season of this hour-long television drama about the world of the contemporary Broadway musical gave us some songs we love to sing and hear, gave us Liza Minnelli singing the word "terrific" and Megan Hilty working her tail off. But reports of too many cooks in the kitchen, too many chiefs at the helm and the inability to move forward unless everybody agreed to everything ultimately doomed the show many just couldn't watch, even though they wished they could. We'll remember you fondly, "Smash," for your thrilling premiere 18 months ago, and for what might have been. Jeremy Jordan. Bernadette Peters. Jennifer Hudson. Sigh.
5. "Oklahoma!" At Lyric Opera Of Chicago. In the first half of May, Chicago was R&H Central for the world, as our esteemed and venerated opera company began its five-year, non-subscription survey of the five biggest hits by Broadway's most famous composer-lyricist team of the Golden Age. The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire had an impressive production of "South Pacific" going at the same time, but Lyric's marketing department stole most of the thunder. Reports are that Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" did turn a profit, though there were plenty of seats in the massive Ardis Krainik Theater that sat empty. Gary Griffin directed John Cudia, Ashley Brown and a cast of blended theater-opera folk, but it was Gemze de Lappe's recreation of Agnes De Mille's original 1943 choreography that got most of the press. That's not a bad thing. Next spring? "The Sound Of Music."
http://www.lyricopera.org/Oklahoma
4. "The Book Of Mormon." The second national tour of the nine-time Tony winner from 2011 opened up here last December, extended itself for a month beyond its original closing date this September, and announced it was indeed touring. That's the quick and dirty version. After it picks itself up from its sit-down October 6th, we are promised a return visit during the 2014-15 season (a la "Wicked"), but the days of a yearlong Broadway tour here may be over. "Jersey Boys" pulled it off, during questionable economic times, too, but not since the heady days of the early 1990s have shows been able to last that long here otherwise. Still, everybody I know has seen it, and the cast visited the Mosh Pit at Sidetrack on more than one occasion. TV's Ben Platt also showed that there is more than one way to play the role of Elder Cunningham. That may be this production's most lasting achievement.
http://www.broadwayinchicago.com/TBOM
3. Theo Ubique's Spring Double-Header. The much-heralded Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, the non-Equity company holed up in the tiny No Exit Café in Rogers Park's Glenwood Avenue Arts District, showed local baseball teams how to win a double-header in March. First off, the company's production of "Smokey Joe's Café," originally mounted last September through December, remounted and transferred to a commercial run at the Royal George Cabaret Theatre in Lincoln Park, playing March 7-August 4 of 2013. (The show also picked up three Jeff Awards earlier this month!) And from March 11-May 19, the rarely produced Andrew Lloyd Webber chamber musical "Aspects Of Love" turned heads at the No Exit, ultimately winning a second Theo-generated Jeff Award in a row for actress Kelli Harrington. As if that weren't enough, Theo just turned that double header into a triple play with the announcement that their current production, the original revue "A Cole Porter Songbook," will extend to September 1, after a June 6 opening. That's all summer, folks! Good things just keep coming out.
2. "The Jungle Book" At The Goodman Theatre. It hasn't even held its official opening yet, and only began preview performances last Friday night, but the world premiere of Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of "The Jungle Book," from the stories by Rudyard Kipling and the beloved animated film by Walt Disney, has attracted attention here, in New York and around the world. Before it went live before curious and excited audiences, the show announced two extensions (through August 11), even though it will remount in Boston in the fall. Will Broadway be in the future? Is it a children's show, an art piece or a big budget spectacle? Nobody knows, but everybody is interested. There is money, and pressure, and a whole lot more going on. This could very well be the big, big time.
http://www.goodmantheatre.org/
1. "Big Fish" Tries Out At The Oriental Theatre. Our biggest showtune story of these six months, hands down, was the pre-Broadway tryout of "Big Fish" from April 2-May 5 at the Oriental Theatre on Randolph Street. As the pre-Broadway tryout to follow "Kinky Boots" to Chicago, "Big Fish" had big boots to fill, but with two-time Tony Award-winner Norbert Leo Butz starring, it sounded quite promising. Most promising of all was the direction and choreography of Susan Stroman, whose pre-Broadway tryout here with "The Producers" is still legendary, over 13 years later. Composer-lyricist Andrew Lippa has had prior pre-B experience here too ("The Addams Family"), and co-star Kate Baldwin went to college here. So, Chicago was the logical place for them to come. The show was widely thought to have "first act trouble," and I've heard that Stroman has set her team to work on that very issue. "Big Fish" will begin performances at New York's Neil Simon Theatre on September 5, with opening night set for October 6, 2013. Will the father-son relationship be deepened, and the son's motivations justified? Will the role of the stories and the fantasy elements be clarified? Stay tuned to BroadwayWorld.com, folks! We've taken it this far! New York, you're welcome.
So those were our Top Ten Hot Topix for January through June of 2013! What will the big stories be for the next six months? Well, you will have to keep checking back here, of course. And you will have to keep telling me what's important to you, and what I should cover in each week's column! I can't do it without you. So, thanks for reading once again, and have a great week and weekend! During that time, I'll see you under the video screens.....-PWT
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