Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture

Charles Dickens Begrudgingly Performs A Christmas Carol. Again. I have seen lots of theater this holiday season that ranges from the absurd that is barely a cut above the amateur to the honed professionalism of actors well-versed in their art and craft. There were two that stand out in my memory as “best of season” and both are one-man presentations. Earlier, I reviewed The Sanaland Diaries at Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture: Murder on the North Pole Express . Yesterday, as a capstone to my Christmas theater travels, I watched the last performance of Blake Montgomery’s realization of what it must have been like for Charles Dickens to repeatedly present his annual reading of what is perhaps the best-loved of all Christmas novels, A Christmas Carol. I am familiar with Montgomery’s style of theater development; it is an organic method that starts with a story and then attempts to tell that story on the stage. In the process a lot of discovery takes place, a lot o...

Murder on the North Pole Express The Santaland Diaries Explores the Dark Side of Customer Service David Sedaris first aired his essay The Santaland Diaries on NPR’s Morning Edition on December 23 rd , 1992. It has become a staple of the Christmas Season ever since. After twenty years it probably qualifies as “tired,” “trite,” “venerable,” or “shopworn.” But let’s face it: pieces like The Santaland Diaries, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the film Holiday Inn (think of the Irving Berlin song White Christmas ,) Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory all satisfy an urgent and powerful need of the human spirit; we need to be connected during the holiday season regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, the Pagan Solstice or the simple pleasures of the Atheist who treasures time spent with family and loved ones. Actor Mitchell Fain skillfully becomes Crumpet, the Elf, who works at a variety of positions at Macy’s Santaland...

It’s Not Easy To Get Laid These Days Date Me Explores the Trials of Thirty-Something Womanhood Noemi Schlosser and Michelle Slonim are best friends attending a wedding. They each have been unable to find a date and so are marooned at the bar together where they share about seventy-five minutes of some of the bawdiest adventures imaginable.   As the wedding reception drags on the two women consume substantial amounts of the free-flowing Champaign that only adds to the frank and graphic depictions of their past escapades not to mention contributing to a very unsteady Slonim toward the play’s conclusion. Don’t misunderstand these women, however. They are not ordinary sluts willing to take any man that happens along. Far from that, they have standards, preferring, for example, men who are circumcised as well as men who can boast of twenty-two centimeter equipment. (Schlosser is Belgian and they use the metric system to gauge a man’s important statistic. It turns out to be 8.66 inc...

Paul Varnell: RIP Some Reflections on the Passing of an Old Friend The Passing of Paul Varnell Paul Varnell Paul Varnell passed from this life on December 9, 2011 sometime in the afternoon. He had been experiencing a decline in health for some time and those of us who knew and cared were certainly prepared for what will be the final journey for all of us. It is inevitable when faced with the loss of a friend, no matter how much anticipated, that we stop to reflect a little on the life of the lost traveler and our own interactions over the years we knew, worked, played and enjoyed each other’s company. In Paul’s case it is a complex story; Paul was in some ways a complex man while in others he was crystal clear and transparent, never wavering from a strongly held set of values and ethics. What follows are some of the highlights of my own interactions with Paul over time along with some notes about a few of his other noteworthy activities. I’m sure that many others will have relev...

Indifferent Torture Sound of Silence by Jean Cocteau at Theater Wit Indifference is one of the most powerful instruments of torture possessed by man. Since it is a form of psychological torture it is difficult to detect, intense but subtle in its effects and despite the fact that the victim probably has complete control over the application, nearly impossible to defend. The premise of this hour-long monologue is simple: an attractive night club singer is in an unsatisfying relationship with her lover, who routinely abandons her for trysts with his ageing mistress. He also completely ignores the singer by taking refuge behind his newspaper. In this production, the lover is actually portrayed by a projection; it is physically impossible for the image to respond even if given stout blows with a club. The singer is thus trapped by a combination of her love and attraction to the lover and his torturous and complete indifference to her presence, monologue or needs. The seeming paradox ...

Riff Raff By Laurence Fishburne The Story Mike Cherry, Eric Sherman-Christ, Eduardo Martinez Riff Raff tells the story of Michael (20/20) Leon and Michael (Torch) Murphy, two New York half-brothers who attempt to steal four kilos of heroine. Instead, they end up with three kilos and a trail of murder and violence as they end up hiding in an abandoned New York apartment. Enter Tony (The Tiger), an old drug dealing partner of 20/20. The minimalist plot unfolds for 110 violence-filled minutes. In fact, there isn’t a great deal of plot to unfold. 20/20 and Torch attempt to steal four kilos of heroin from the most powerful drug lord in New York City. In the process they kill the drug lord’s nephew. They take flight and end up in an abandoned apartment. 20/20 calls his old friend Tony The Tiger to ask Tony to help them escape the wrath of the drug lord. The Real Story As the characters interact with one another we learn a great deal about their individual weaknesses and strengths. T...

Farragut North Stage Left Theatre And You Thought Politics Was About…   I’m not sure what I thought politics was about when I went to see this remarkable play by thirty-something playwright Beau Willimon. Certainly I didn’t think it was about what I saw. I almost never read reviews about plays I’m about to see and confine my “research” to the hype posted by the theater company. I’m almost never disappointed by this tactic since it permits me to form my own reactions and opinions as the production unfolds before my eyes.  Farragut North Cast What first strikes you is the incredibly crisp set presented by Scenic Designer Roger Wykes. The formal, grey-blue tongue-and-groove paneling atop the clean, dark blue with white picture-frame wainscot speaks nothing of the perfidy you’re about to witness as Farragut North unfolds. Playwright Willimon tells us in the Dramaturg’s Notes that “…the atmosphere of it, the paranoia, the bald ambition, the gluttony for power and the ways ...

The Double Babes With Blades Theatre Company Fun With Swashbuckling I wasn’t going to bother seeing this despite getting numerous offers from the various coupon/deal companies that seem to fill my in-box with offers for mostly massages and pedicures. Then I realized that in only a few minutes I could walk to the theatre from my apartment so I said what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I wasn’t disappointed. Don’t look for a profound message in The Double. Right up front the director tells us that it’s “screwball comedy.” But what great fun it is, none-the-less. The Double is a play about a play—always a winning concept in my book. Set in the 1940s The Double concerns a troupe of actors trying to mount a play about Cyrano de Bergerac and naturally are struggling to find funding. There are numbers of romantic involvements in the script, one that turns out to be a reunion of a married couple, another that makes a discovery about women who love women and yet another case of mistaken int...

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music A Teaching Company Course Taught by Robert Greenberg The Great Master Robert M. Greenberg It is no secret that I admire Robert Greenberg greatly as a lecturer and teacher. His complete mastery of his subject I view as a prerequisite to being a great lecturer and unquestionably Greenberg has mastered whatever he teaches and then some. What sets him apart as a teacher is his ability to communicate that material, complex though it may be, in ways that are understandable by any student willing to engage his brain (and in the case of music courses his ears) in the pursuit of the knowledge Greenberg freely passes on. I have even been known to purchase a ticket to Ravinia, for a concert I had no interest in hearing, just to be able to attend a Greenberg lecture following in the Murray Theatre. In person he is just as impressive as he is on an edited and produced DVD with the added bonus that during the following Q&A he was patient and persev...

Deconstructing Putting It Together Notes From a Sondheim Ambivalent In The First Place… I wanted to write a great deal about my impressions of Stephen Sondheim and his art. That’s going to take up most of this blog entry. I know that lots of people will want to hear about the current Porchlight production of Putting It Together and won’t care a bit about what I think about Stephen Sondheim’s art. So up front, here’s the skinny, the low-down, the scoop, the cat’s meow and the cream from the milk: This is a terrific production even if you’re not completely enamored of Sondheim’s output. Porchlight is superb; the venue is great, the staging is nothing short of miraculous, the music direction is flawless; the singers are just what you’d expect from Sondheim vocalists and then some. Rush over to your PC and buy tickets, NOW! Purchase Tickets - Porchlight Music Theatre . Now I can write about what really interests me. By the way, there are a lot of good reviews of this production alr...

Underground With Madness Christopher Hampton’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Mad Hatters and March Hares City Lit Theater has spent nearly one-third of a century (a very long time indeed) “dedicated to the vitality and accessibility of the literary imagination.” In keeping with that part of its mission statement, City Lit is currently treating us to the Chicago premier of Alice’s Adventures Underground, a romp through the unlikely slapstick world created by Lewis Carroll for his favorite muse, Alice Liddell. Audience looking for a stage adaptation of Carroll’s best-known works for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, will be disappointed. The play most certainly does not attempt to recreate the contents of the books. Rather, it is a play about the relationship between Carroll and Liddell and attempts to imagine the creative process that gave us these timeless and charming children’s stories. The play opens innoce...