The physical production relies mostly on colorful costumes designed by Nancy Missimi. The fairy godmothers wear ostentatiously gaudy wardrobes that underscore the Marriott commitment to a visually upscale staging. This is not a show done on the cheap.

        The musical score is functional and even clever in the prince’s “Allergies” comic number. The centerpiece of the production is a terrific talking dragon composed of three separate actors. It’s a very impressive piece of scenery by any standards and the audience ate the critter up.

        After the show concludes, the audience can stay for a question-and-answer session between the children in the crowd and the performers. The kids had some decent questions and the actors responded by taking the queries seriously. It was a perfect top-off to a morning that demonstrates how intelligent and creative children’s theater can be in the proper hands. Marriott is building the next generation of local audiences and doing it in the right way—no condescension, no silliness for cheap laughs, and lots of talent on stage and behind the scenes, especially Matt Raftery’s direction that pitches the show to just the right level for young audience appreciation. The rest of the technical credits hold to a high standard in the lighting design by Jesse Klug, the sound design by Robert Gilmartin, and the first-rate three-piece band directed by Jeff Bell.

One small complaint. The theater should provide some kind of program, even if it’s only a single sheet identifying the actors. The people responsible for this fun show deserve to be identified to the patrons.

        “Sleeping Beauty” runs through April 25 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Most performance are at 10 a.m. and sometimes at 12:30 p.m. Days vary. Tickets are $15. Call 847 6343 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.

        I’ve seen revivals of “Fiddler” with more energy, better singing, and more dramatic gravitas. But lovers of the show should find much in the Marriott revival to enjoy. The musical, after all, does have a great score and an enduring and accessible story. The theater took a gamble in assigning Ross Lehman the starring role. The results, for me, were mixed but there was no denying the raucous approval from many members of the audience on opening night.

        “Fiddler on the Roof” runs through April 25 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.    February 2010

        The musical numbers go from strength to strength. In the first 10 minutes the audience is treated to two brilliant comic songs, “Why Can’t the English,” and “With a Little Bit of Luck” and the wistful “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.” All three are not only a joy to hear but they are perfect setups for the personalities of Higgins, Eliza, and Alfred Doolittle. And that’s just the beginning. The rest of the score is a roll call of hits—“I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face,” and on and on. The instrumental “Embassy Waltz” is a composition worthy of a Strauss.

        The comedy peaks with the funniest Ascot racing scene I’ve ever seen, but there is Shavian wit and wisdom throughout the evening, thanks primarily to Gudahl’s urbane portrayal of the crusty middle-aged professor.

        Dominic Missimi directs the show with due respect for the original 1956 production. One does not tamper with perfection. But Missimi has injected small flourishes—a gesture here, a facial expression there—that enhance the characters and humor without straying into revisionism. He properly leaves the musical’s ending ambiguous. Critics have speculated for decades on the relationship between Eliza and Higgins after the play ends. Missimi implies the two will have a fine time with each other. Will it turn into anything sexual or marital? Who knows?

        Because Marriott performs on an in-the-round-stage, the opportunities for spectacle are severely limited, so audiences must forego the lush scenery of the Embassy Ball, Covent Garden, or the Ascot racetrack. But the visual production is still well up to the mark, conveying the appropriate sense of time and place thanks to elegant Edwardian costumes designed by Nancy Missimi, the minimal set by Thomas M. Ryan, and Diane Ferry Williams’s lighting. Additional praise goes to the properties design by Gregory Isaac that recreates the show’s numerous interior and exterior locations.

        The nine-piece Marriott orchestra can’t quite replicate the sumptuous sound of a full pit orchestra desirable for the melodic Frederick Loewe score, but it accompanies diligently enough.

        Matt Raftery’s choreography is agreeable but this is less of a dancing production than others I’ve seen. That’s an observation, not a criticism. The emphasis in this staging is on the acting and singing. The Shavian dialogue never sounded more adult (in the best sense of that abused term) and the Lerner and Loewe score glows with the vocals from Kettenring, Gudahl, and Forsten.

        As Eliza would properly comment, it’s a loverly show, a rare occasion in the musical theater when everything works.      

        “My Fair Lady” runs through February 14 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. with a special holiday schedule. Tickets are $45 with meal packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.   December 2009

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

        The story delves into the evils of racial intolerance and stereotyping people because of their looks or economic status. But the social satire and moral lift are just embellishments to an exuberant sequence of dance numbers buttressed by a score composed by Marc Shaiman (music) and Shaiman and Scott Wittman (lyrics), a score that both parodies and celebrates the rock’n’roll music of the early 1960’s.

        The Marriott presentation leads from strength by employing Marissa Perry as Tracy. Perry played the role on Broadway and she’s everything the part requires—potent singing, deft comic acting, exuberant dancing, and plenty of spunk. Perry’s Tracy is defiantly full-figured and should be a role model for every teen-age girl battling weight problems and endures the accompanying ridicule of her peers.

        The musical follows the film’s decision to cast a man as Tracy’s mother, Edna. At the Marriott, Ross Lehman is a very butch Edna Turnblad, bouncing all over the stage in a giant body suit and tossing off droll lines without even changing the pitch of his voice. He delivers a wry, unselfconscious, and refreshingly uncampy comic turn that the audience ate up.

        Tracy’s adversaries are Velma Van Tussle, the producer of the TV show, and her daughter Amber, both played with supreme bitchiness by Hollis Resnik (mother) and Johanna McKenzie Miller (daughter). Heidi Kettenring plays Penny Pingleton, Tracy’s nerdy best friend who blossoms under the romantic sway of black high school student Seaweed J. Stubbs. The inimitable E. Faye Butler comes into the show late in the first act as Motormouth Maybelle to stir the musical pot to even higher spirits with her soul and rhythm and blues belting.

        Other quality supporting performances abound. Bernie Yvon is a delight as Corny Collins, the droll Dick Clark-like TV host. Billy Harrigan Tighe is fine as Link Larkin, the Elvis Presley wannabe who becomes Tracy’s unlikely boyfriend. Gene Weygandt plays Tracy’s happy-go-lucky father Wilbur, an eternal optimist who dreams of operating a chain of joke shops. Josh Breckenridge has all the dance moves and plenty of acting chops as Seaweed. And special mention must go to Scott Calcagno for his series of hilarious cameo performances as Tracy’s creepy school principal, the spacey president of the hairspray company that sponsors the TV dance show, the fey owner of a fashion company catering to hefty girls and women, and a redneck jail guard.

        “Hairspray” wears its racial tolerance attitude loudly and proudly, and, of course, the it all ends happily with the Van Tussles humiliated and the good guys bopping their way into a new and better world of racial harmony. It may be a fantasy view of modern society but it sure looks and sounds great for more than two hours at the Marriott.

        The Loop touring version a few seasons ago was a nonstop dervish of a show that overwhelmed the audience with a relentless, almost exhausting, parade of production numbers. At the Marriott, Marc Robin the choreographer makes room for Marc Robin the director. Robin’s staging has more warmth and human connection, especially in the romantic duos of Tracy and Link Larkin, Penny and Seaweed, and Edna and Wilbur Turnblad.

        Michael Bottari and Ronald Case designed the multitude of period costumes and Gerard Kelly is responsible for the hilarious and outlandish wigs. Diane Ferry Williams designed the lighting, Robert Gilmartin IV the sound, and Sally Weiss the properties. Thomas M. Ryan wisely gives the dancers their space with his minimalist set designs. Patti Garwood conducts the Marriott orchestra, which does full honor to the rocking musical score.

        “Hairspray” runs through December 6 at the Marriott Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45, with meal packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

     The show gets a rating of four stars.    Oct.2009

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

        “The Light in the Piazza” is based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer. A middle aged married woman from the Deep South named Margaret Johnson is touring Italy with her 26 year old daughter Clara. The time is 1953, when Americans are the gold standard of tourists in a Europe still recovering from the ravages of World War II. While in Florence, Clara encounters a charming local 20 year-old man named Fabrizio, and it is love at first sight.

        The course of true love is impeded by a secret the audience learns late in the first act. Clara was kicked in the head by a pony at the age of 12, arresting her mental development but not her physical development. So what we see is a beautiful young woman, outwardly innocent and charming, who has the mind of a 12 year old, though that defect isn’t readily apparent to the casual onlooker. Certainly it is unknown to the adoring Fabrizio and his family.

        So what is Margaret to do, allow the romance to continue or break it up on the grounds that her daughter’s condition makes her unsuitable for the adult role of a wife and mother? If Margaret allows Clara to marry Fabrizio, mother would consign daughter to a foreign culture, a foreign language, and a new religion (she would have to convert to Catholicism)—all without the previous safety net of her mother’s supervision.

        Margaret’s difficulties are complicated by the dreary state of her own marriage. Years ago Margaret and her husband spent their honeymoon in Italy but now the marriage has gone dead, at least from the husband’s end.

        It’s a moving, if improbable, story that is largely told through a melodious, semi operatic score by Adam Guettel, abetted by Craig Lucas’s book. The songs won’t send the audience into the night humming, but they deftly explore the states of mind of both Margaret and Clara and permit the principle performers to sing brilliantly. Guettel definitely knows how to make singers sound good.

        The main problem with the story is Clara. She is too complex for a character with the mind of a 12 year-old, though Summer Smart gives the girl/woman some nice emotional shadings and she sings beautifully. And it’s asking a lot of an audience to accept that the mother would allow her daughter to enter a marriage that likely would prove catastrophic, however nobly maternal Margaret’s motives may be. The husband is an unsympathetic figure we see in only two scenes, both phone conversations with Margaret. But the man makes a lot of sense when he angrily enumerates the reasons Clara shouldn’t marry Fabrizio, or any unsuspecting young man.

        Marriott director Joe Leonardo chooses to play up the comic elements in the show, especially in the long first act. Many laughs emerge from the pigeon English and Italian exchanges between Margaret and Clara and Fabrizio and his family. Fabrizio’s family tends dangerously toward the stereotype of the comic wildly gesticulating Italian. Several scenes are played entirely in Italian, a stumbling block for spectators.  At times characters speak directly to the audience, which can be a mood breaker.

        Mary Ernster, who sings superbly, assumes a flippant air for much of the show as Margaret, blunting the dramatic underpinnings of a woman struggling with the fate of her daughter and the dead embers of her own marriage. The broad comic sensibility of the production undercuts a scene in which Fabrizio’s previously cartoonish father (as played by Gene Weygandt) kisses Margaret, a tender and unexpected romantic moment that looks false in the context of what we have seen from both characters.

        The in-the-round Marriott stage enhances the intimacy of the story but robs it of the sense of place—romantic and historic Florence and Rome—that detailed sets would have conveyed. Designer Thomas Ryan has to make do with a few stone benches and fragments of classical and Renaissance sculpture suspended from the rafters. But Dianne Ferry Williams’s warm autumnal lighting and Nancy Missimi’s 1950’s costumes are a help, and so is the strong small orchestra led by Ryan Nelson.

        The show ends up belonging to Max Quinlan’s endearing Fabrizio. Quinlan looks the role and his brave struggles with the English language are delightful. Yet he convinces us Fabrizio’s love for Clara is firm and credible and he has a show stopping voice of operatic caliber. There is also fine supporting work from Alexander Aguilar as Fabrizio’s philandering brother, Jennifer Grubb as his barren and long suffering wife, and Paula Scrofano as Fabrizio’s mother. Michael Accardo makes a maximum impression in his two short telephone scenes as Clara’s father.

        “The Light in the Piazza” runs through September 20 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 with dinner packages available. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.               July 2009

        The show gets a rating of three stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

        “Spelling Bee” brings together a half dozen oddball young people to the gymnasium of a middle school in Putnam County (state unidentified but definitely in America’s heartland). Each finalist has a back story, and so do the two adult characters in the show, Rosa Lisa Peretti, the event’s mistress of ceremonies, and Douglas Panch, a vice principal, who reads the contestants the words, language of origin, and uses each word in a sentence (that’s where the politically incorrect humor comes joyfully in).

        In song and dialogue, the show works its way through the contestants to produce the final winner. Along the way we learn as much about each boy and girl as audiences learn about all those auditioning dancers in “A Chorus Line.”

    The epically named Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre is being raised by two gay men. Olive Ostrovsky fantasizes about belonging to a loving family, trying to disconnect from the reality of her dysfunctional home life. Marcy Park attempts to liberate herself from an adolescent lifetime of overachievement. William Barfee (pronounced bay FAY if you please!) puts a brave face on his loser’s self image. Chip Barrington, the defending champion, can’t face losing, and the dim bulb Leaf Coneybear is in the competition only because the winner and runner-up from his qualifying tournament both had to attend a bat mitzvah.

        To embellish the evening’s fun, the show brings four pre-selected audience members on stage to participate in the spelling bee. They are mere cannon fodder for the comic proceedings but occasionally one turns out to be a terrific speller. Before an interloper can run away with the show, Douglas Panch produces an preposterous word so convoluted that it’s impossible even to remember, much less spell.

        The first act is played for laughs, introducing the characters and providing most of that politically incorrect humor. Without abandoning its comic roots, the second act takes the youths on stage more seriously and probes such ongoing issues as winning at all cost and the pressure of such competitions on the vulnerable egos of youngsters.

        The production is a perfect fit for the Marriott’s intimate in-the-round stage under the guidance of director/choreographer Rachel Rockwell. The ensemble may be too old for their student characters but where are you going to find teen-age performers who can sing, dance, and act as well as the mature cast at the Marriott?

        The two adults in the show are played with great relish by Roberta Duchak and Michael Weber (especially funny in his deadpan word renderings). The contestants are played by such familiar locals as Heidi Kettenring (Olive), Michael Mahler (Chip), Brandy McClendon (Logainne), and Derrick Trumbly (Leaf Coneybear). The cast is rounded out by Eric Roediger, who seems born to play the chubby William Barfee, and Katie Boren, a tiny performer with a gymnast’s athleticism and a very large voice as Marcy Park. Kevin Smith Kirkwood plays multiple roles, starting with a gang banger working out his community service dispensing tough love and fruit juice boxes as he escorts the losers off the stage.

        Thomas Ryan designed the basic set decorated with school banners hanging from the rafters. Nancy Missimi designed the colorful and bizarre costumes for the youngsters. Jesse Klug designed the lighting, and Robert Gilmartin IV the sound. Patti Garwood directs the small and effective orchestra.

        “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” runs through July 19 at the Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive. Performances are Wednesday at 1 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4:30 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $45. Call 847 634 0200 or visit www.MarriottTheatre.com.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.       May 2009