Anything Goes
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Anything Goes” perfectly fits the profile of the hit 1930’s Broadway musical comedy—a brilliant score embedded in a story of surpassing inanity. Audiences willing to give the narrative a pass in exchange for the sensational Cole Porter songs should have a hoot of a time.
The Roundabout Theatre Company revived the show in New York City a couple of seasons ago and local audiences get a two-week taste of the production at the Cadillac Palace Theatre during its national tour.
“Anything Goes” was a personal triumph for a young Ethel Merman back in 1934. Several of Cole Porter’s songs became identified as Merman anthems—“Blow Gabriel Blow,” “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the title song. The production also interpolates two other Porter from the 1930’s, “It’s De-lovely” and “Friendship,” plus reinstating the classic “Easy to Love,” which was unaccountably deleted from the original production before it opened.
The plot, to employ a courtly synonym, takes place on an ocean liner sailing from New York City to London. The central character is a brassy nightclub hostess named Reno Sweeney who apparently moonlights as an evangelist. Reno was a triumph for Merman and the touring production features Rachel York, who gives the character the full Mae West treatment, with the Mae West saunter and the Mae West side-of-the-mouth talking style, not to mention the breezy Mae West sexuality.
Reno loves stockbroker Billy Crocker, but he loves ingénue Hope Harcourt, who is unhappily engaged to be married to a silly-ass English aristocrat named Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Adding a layer of senior citizen romance are Hope’s mother and Crocker’s boss Elisha Whitney. A saucy young thing named Erma weighs into the romantic frolics, but she is satisfied with taking on all comers. Heading the pure comedy of the evening is Moonface Martin, a harmless gangster masquerading as a clergyman, who is trying to flee the country and depressed by his lowly ranking as Public Enemy #13.
There is much comic confusion involving mistaken identities and the typical lovers’ spats before everyone gets paired off satisfactorily (except for the freelancing Erma) in time for the big finale. The book is filled with corny jokes and sight gags, many of them actually funny, plus one-dimensional characters and double entendres that make the head spin. But the storyline never makes claims of Chekhovian realism and spectators are advised to let the broad comedy just wash over them. There is always a fresh Porter hit just around the narrative corner. My favorite is “You’re the Top,” a catalogue song belted out by Reno and Billy that could have cheerfully gone on forever and provides a master class in literate and hilarious rhyming.
Kathleen Marshall, one of Broadway’s preeminent choreographers, directs the show and creates the dances. Patrons who expect a dazzling sequence of lavish production numbers may be disappointed. Indeed, the first production number doesn’t happen until the finale of the first act, excluding a couple of pale Astaire-and-Rogers style dance bits. The massed hoofing picks up in the second act, especially with the sure fire “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” number but the paucity of all-out dance scenes is perplexing.
Fred Applegate is a joy as Moonface Martin, a character often played as a dimwit but in this production a man of substantial comic presence. His Moonface is meant to be a cartoon but Applegate endows the guy with plenty of comic savvy to leaven his silliness. Alex Finke is pretty and sweet as Hope Harcourt and she sings well. Josh Franklin looks a little old to be wooing Hope and there isn’t much romantic chemistry between the two. Joyce Chittick is a scene stealer as the round-heeled Erma. I suspect Ms. Chittick would make a wondrous Miss Adelaide in a “Guys and Dolls’” revival. Edward Staudenmayer is saddled with the mega stereotype role of Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, but he throws himself into the nonsense of the part with gusto and his lordship even winds up with Reno Sweeney as a prize, a match that stretches credulity beyond the breaking point, but “Anything Goes” is that kind of show.
Dennis Kelly an actor with Chicago theater roots, and Sandra Shipley pair off nicely as the humorous golden age contribution to the flood of romances on stage.
The staging is not done on the cheap, employing a robust 32 performers. The set consists primarily of the backdrop of the ocean liner, but probably nothing more complex is feasible in a production that must travel from city to city. But the costume designs by the late Martin Pakledinaz are faithful to the 1930’s look of the show, both in the high style clothing and the more gaudy fashions. Credit the show with remaining faithful to its historical period. There is no updating in the book and if the audience doesn’t recognize references to Irene Bordoni or Lady Astor, too bad. A special shout-out goes to the terrific pit orchestra, a swinging ensemble with a nifty Benny Goodman sound.
I would like to see Rachel York do her own thing in some musical, instead of merely channeling Mae West. She has the looks and dancing chops and singing voice to make a juicy musical role her own, maybe as Lili Vanessi in that other Cole Porter classic, “Kiss Me, Kate.” Applegate would be an ornament to any musical that demands a mature performer with beautiful comic timing and a more than decent singing voice.
“Anything Goes” runs through May 5 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. (no evening performance May 5). Tickets are $27 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at ZeffDaniel@yahoo.com. April 2013
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Catch Me If You Can
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago –The touring production of “Catch Me If You Can” at the Cadillac Palace Theatre profits from an exceptional performance by a young song and dance man named Stephen Anthony. The musical is largely forgettable but Anthony’s star turn is a stunner.
Anthony plays Frank Abagnale Jr., the hero of a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story about a teenager who becomes one of the world’s most successful conmen. Abagnale flees his broken home in Schenectady, New York, and with an irresistible blend of charm, chutzpah, and creativity he travels the world, variously impersonating an airline pilot, a hospital administrator, and a lawyer, writing $2.5 million in bad checks along the way. Abagnale recounted his career in a memoir published in 2000, which Stephen Spielberg turned into a motion picture with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2002, which was adapted into the musical now on view at the Cadillac Palace.
The musical is formatted as a flashback, starting with Frank finally being captured by his FBI nemesis Carl Hanratty. The young man begs to tell his story to the audience and the show suddenly turns into a kind of vaudeville exercise like the musical “Chicago,” with the orchestra on stage and the performers speaking directly to the audience. Frank first recounts a bit of family history. His mother was a teen-age war bride who married his big talking but ineffectual father to get out of France. The marriage goes on the rocks, driving the boy out into the world to make his own way.
The first act is mostly devoted to portraying how Frank morphs into his assorted personas as a Pam American co-pilot, a hospital administrator (who gets nauseous at the sight of blood), and a lawyer, fooling the remarkably gullible people around him with his charisma, quick thinking, and faux sincerity.
The second act veers into heavier matter, with Frank falling in love with a southern belle he met during his medical phase. He decides to get out of the con business to settle down with his sweetheart but the government isn’t about to give him a free ride. As played by Anthony, Frank is so appealing that the spectator may censure the FBI as a bunch of spoil sports for harassing a nice young man who really didn’t hurt anyone, much.
The show is built on a cluster of breezy production numbers sung and danced by a zesty ensemble heavy on leggy chorus girls. Entrances and exits are effected on an angular ramp with colorful projections at the rear of the stage to further energize the numbers. The cast includes about 24 performers and they all can sing and hoof with style, though a few of the acting performances are more modest in their attainments. But Frank and Hanratty are the only two performances that matter and Anthony and Merritt David Janes as the FBI man carry the show. Anthony in particular is on stage almost the entire evening and he never wears down, whether he is belting out songs with his strong and flexible tenor voice or winning everyone’s heart on stage and in the audience with his infectious high spirits.
The touring show replicates the Broadway directing by Jack O’Brien and Jerry Mitchell’s choreography. The story is set in the 1960’s and the score by Marc Shaiman (music) and Shaiman and Scott Wittman (lyrics) has a sixties sound that will be a nostalgia trip for viewers of a certain age. The score won’t send the audience into the streets humming, but the music is serviceable and has a couple of showstoppers in the romping “Don’t Break the Rules” led by Hanratty and the soaring ballad “Fly, Fly Away” sung by Aubrey Mae Davis as Brenda, Frank’s lady love.
For most of the evening the story is content to skate along on a surface of light comedy and bouncy production numbers. At the end, “Catch Me If You Can” reaches for some dramatic gravitas by trying to delve into what really motivated Frank and also the book also establishes a camaraderie between the young man and Hanratty, previous rendered as a kind of Inspector Javert obsessed with running Frank’s Jean Valjean to ground.
The show is more fun when everyone is engaged in high stepping production numbers but the creators decided the narrative needed closure. So we learn that Frank spent 7 years of a 15-year sentence in prison and was then released to help the FBI in its fraud and forgery investigations. Today the real Abagnale still works with the FBI and operates a financial fraud consultant company in Washington, D.C. He’s a family man with a wife and three grown sons, plus all those royalties from his memoir, the movie, and the musical, and plus fees from countless speeches on the lecture circuit. Not a bad payoff for a life of crime, even if Abagnale’s law-breaking career ended by the time he was 21.
Among the supporting performances, Dominic Fortuna is solid as Frank’s father, a man who destroys himself because he couldn’t live up to his son’s expectations. Amy Burgmaier does a fine comic turn as Brenda’s salty mother and Caitlin Maloney makes the most of her brief appearances as Frank’s French-born mother.
The
production values are commendable, thanks to David Rockwell’s scenic design,
William Ivy Long’s splashy costumes, Kenneth Posner’s lighting, and Peter
McBoyle’s sound design, along with Bob Bonniol’s video and projection designs. Under
Matthew Smedal’s conducting, the on-stage orchestra smoothly handles Shaiman’s lite rock/rhythm and bluesy score. This is a show that
looks and sounds good.
In the current state of the Broadway musical, “Book of Mormon” notwithstanding, “Catch Me If You Can” is probably better than average, buoyed by the exceptional Stephen Anthony. It would be a joy to see him in a really first class vehicle like one of Neil Simon’s autobiographical comedies or “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” But for now, his Frank Abagnale will do very nicely.
“Catch Me If You Can” runs through April 14 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. (with an additional performance at 7:30 p.m. on April 7). Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. April 2013
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Jekyll and Hyde
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – In 1995, the Frank Wildhorn musical adaptation “Jekyll and Hyde” stopped in Chicago during its pre Broadway tour. “Jekyll and Hyde,” somewhat revised, is back again on another pre-Broadway tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. The show’s virtues and deficits remain substantially the same. On the yea side are some rip roaring vocal numbers and striking visual effects, but on the nay side is a tiresome book and a muddled storyline.
“Jekyll and Hyde” is suggested the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson short novel. By suggested, I mean that Wildhorn and book writer Leslie Bricusse took the basic premise of Stevenson’s book and then went their own way with it. Stevenson’s original isn’t credited anywhere in the playbill, which likely would make the author happy.
Stevenson’s novel portrays a humanitarian doctor named Henry Jekyll in Victorian London who believes his research will enable him to separate the good and evil halves of the human personality. Society could treat the isolated evil in man’s nature and thus create a golden age free of war. Jekyll’s ideas are rejected by the Establishment in London and he decides to go it alone, using himself as a guinea pig for his researches. Jekyll develops a potion that liberates his evil alter ego, who he names Edward Hyde. Gradually, the evil Hyde takes over Jekyll’s mind and spirit, with bloody and ultimately tragic ramifications.
The short novel was an exercise in psychological storytelling garnished with philosophy. But in the twentieth century, stage and motion picture versions reshaped the narrative into a blend of a horror story and a romance, and that’s what we see on the stage of the Cadillac Palace.
Wildhorn knows how to compose lush Lloyd Weber-sounding dramatic melodies and he sure knows how to write loudly. His score is a feast for big voices, especially the performers taking the roles of Jekyll/Hyde and prostitute Lucy Harris, who becomes emotionally enmeshed with both Jekyll and Hyde. The current production casts Constantine Maroulis in the title role and Deborah Cox as Lucy and they are both spectator, drawing whoops of appreciation from the opening night audience as they blasted out one high intensity number after another.
Unfortunately, when the performers aren’t singing, the show is in trouble. The spectator eagerly anticipates the onstage transformation of the decent Jekyll into the villainous Hyde but they have to wait about 40 minutes into the first act before the big scene unfolds. That’s a long and dramatically empty 40 minutes which does little but introduce the major characters and get the storyline in motion.
The transformation scene is a bizarre excursion into mad scientist melodrama. Alone in his Dr. Frankenstein-style laboratory, Jekyll hooks himself up to a network of rubber tubes attached to containers of liquid that change color from moment to moment. The jolt from the potion brings Hyde to life, mostly by altering Jekyll’s neatly bound ponytail into a wild hairdo.
The plot lurches along, with Hyde methodically murdering the five pompous hypocrites who rejected Jekyll’s plea to continue his research at a London hospital. The juiciest parts of the production come at the end, first with Jekyll singing a frenzied duet with Hyde portrayed on film. The scene is embellished with manic psychedelic projections that surround the Hyde image. The uproar ends with Jekyll’s on stage suicide, the man realizing that by killing himself he is also killing the cruel Hyde, a pretty good trade-off.
Wildhorn’s score borrows from all kinds of musical roots. There is some opera, a bit of Kurt Weil, and some rhythm and blues, Broadway pop, and Lloyd Weber melodic sumptuousness. Maroulis belts out the big number “This Is the Moment” like Tom Jones on the Las Vegas Strip, and it works. Maroulis’s performance is heroic. He not only has to play two conflicting characters, he has to deliver a bundle of enormously taxing songs, and eight times a week. He can’t do much with the blah Jekyll character, but his Hyde is a model of sinister sadism with a veneer of black humor. The narrative picks up sharply in interest whenever he appears, which is much too infrequently. The dramatic temperature drops precipitously whenever Jekyll is on stage.
Deborah Cox has a strong yet velvety voice that soars, beginning with her first production number, “Bring on the Men.” She and Teel Wicks, who plays Jekyll’s fiancée, excel in a show stopping love duet called “In His Eyes” in which each lady pines in her own way for Dr. Jekyll.
The remainder of the large cast is good or better, led by David Benoit as a lecherous bishop and the sleazy owner of the brothel where Lucy sells herself. The show may not be ready for prime time, but the ensemble stands tall in its professionalism.
Tobin Ost’s set consists mainly of large illuminated panels that shift from scene to scene. Ost’s costume designs replicate the look of the 1880’s in London, from the eveningwear of the upper class to Lucy’s bustier. Jeff Croiter’s lighting goes in heavily for spotlights and shadows to underscore the darkness of the action. Steven Landau conducts the fine pit orchestra.
Since its birth in 1990 as a concept album, “Jekyll and Hyde” has been a worldwide audience success. Patrons seem to respond to its high decibel musical numbers and its violent and emotional plot, even though it meanders from over-the-top potboiling to love story to a debate on medic ethics. Maroulis and director Jeff Calhoun have solved the knotty problem of how to convincingly present Hyde without turning him a cartoon bad guy. Maroulis deserves high commendation for his stamina, his big voice, and his acting chops at conveying the evil Hyde free of camp. For the comfort of that stellar performance, the audience owes Maroulis much thanks.
“Jekyll and Hyde” runs through March 24 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickers are $33 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.
The show gets a rating of three stars. March 2013
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Warhorse
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – The first word that comes to mind while watching “War Horse” at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is “impressive.” The play is a triumph of all the theatrical arts—sets, lights, costumes, lighting, and acting. But the show also promises a tremendous emotional experience, and there viewers may differ.
“War Horse” is the blockbuster hit from Great Britain that traces a teen age boy’s love for his horse from a farm in Devon through the horrors of World War I. The most applause has been channeled to the puppetry that brings horses alive on the stage. Indeed, the horse puppets are the most human characters in the story.
Photo © Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
The horse of the title is a hunter named Joey. We meet the animal as a frisky foal purchased at a country auction by Ted Narracott, an alcoholic farmer who pays an excessive price to one-up his arrogant brother. Ted’s son, Albert, takes over the care of the animal and a strong bond develops between young man and the beast. Their country idyll is shattered by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Ted Narracott sells Joey to the British cavalry for duty in the war and the distraught Albert vows he and his horse will be reunited again.
The play then shifts to the battlefields of France and the appalling carnage of the war. World War I killed millions of people and wiped out nearly all of the one million horses drafted into the fray to pull guns and ambulance wagons, and provide mounts for officers. Although underage, Albert joins the British army so he can find Joey amid all the horrors of battle, and the story becomes down to the question of whether Albert can find Joey before one or both die in the bloodbath of the war.
Joey is a creation of the Handspring Puppet Company of Cape Town, South Africa. There are two versions of the puppet, the foal and the full grown animal, which is about 10 feet long and 8 feet high. It’s a remarkable piece of work, constructed primarily of cane and aluminum. Two men operate inside the puppet and a third works outside the creature. The puppeteers are in plain sight of the audience but the viewer easily blocks out the human factor and accepts Joey as a remarkably expressive living thing. We care more about the artificial animal than we do about the human beings in the play, which is a commentary both on the brilliance of the Joey creation and the two-dimensional quality of the human characters. It’s the best puppetry I’ve seen since “The Lion King.”
Photo © Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
“War Horse” has huge cast of 35 performers who mostly play multiple roles and give the production an epic feel. Only a handful of characters really matter, notably Albert, well played by Andrew Veenstra, Todd Cerveris and Angela Reed as his parents, and Michael Wyatt Cox as his cousin. To the credit of the entire ensemble, the thick Devon accents are never intrusive, though the French and German accents get a little wobbly.
There is a lot of “war is hell” brutality in “War Horse,” portrayed by a combination of symphonic music, dramatic lighting effects, film projections, and haunting images of broken soldiers dragging themselves across the stage. The play must have struck particularly potent recollections in England, a country that suffered horrifying casualties during the war. The death and destruction of World War I colored English history for much of the rest of the twentieth century. British audiences must have been moved by the agonies their fathers and grandfathers endured during the Great War.
The immediacy of the war understandably might make a lesser impression on American audiences. The importance of horses to the war effort could strike audiences at the Cadillac Palace like something out of a distant medieval military pageant.
“War Horse” is a long play that could be trimmed by 20 minutes with profit, especially in the second act that portrays the destruction of the war as seen from both the British and German sides. And for all its wondrous special effects, “War Horse” still milks sentimentality and predictability to sustain its plot. The ending relies on a coincidence that stretches the viewer’s credulity to the breaking point, and there is even a melodramatic wheeze involving a gun that jams at a crucial moment. Two performers called Song Men (a vocalist and an instrumentalist) take the stage from time to time, announcing that we shall all pass from this earth and its toiling and be only remembered for what we have done. This attempt to inject a folkish cosmic quality to the story is filler that could be eliminated in its entirety as the first gesture toward reducing the length of the evening.
“War Horse” won the Tony Award as Best Play of the Year in New York City in 2011, which does the script by Nick Stafford too much honor (he adapted the narrative from a children’s book by Michael Morpurgo). “War Horse” basically remains a simplified children’s story, for all its stirring visual elements.
The physical production, however, deserves every award that came its way. The recreation of battle is a convincing visual and aural experience for the viewer that manages to avoid sensory overload from all those blinding lights and the Wagnerian musical accompaniment. The most disturbing scenes involve the suffering of horses, not the killing and maiming of soldiers. One scene portrays the heartbreaking spectacle of a horse entangled in barbed wire. Another shows the death on stage of a horse that’s a key character in the story. Those scenes stirred more reaction from patrons sitting around me than the final scene that reportedly had grown men and women snuffling in London and New York City. But I saw no tissues or handkerchiefs furtively being used to wipe away tears.
Indeed, I never got deeply involved in the story on an emotional level, however much I admired the visual concepts. The roll call of designers includes Rae Smith (sets, costumes, and drawings), Paule Constable (original lighting), 59 Productions (animation and projection design), and Toby Sedgwick (movement and horse choreography). Heading the backstage brain trust are puppet designers Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of the Handspring Puppet Company. Bijan Sheibani is credited as the director for the American tour and presumably he faithfully followed the original superb direction by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris.
“War Horse” is billed as a family show but its intensity isn’t appropriate for younger children, though teenagers should enjoy it, especially youngsters interested in the theater arts. Attend for its full audio and visual pallet but as for providing an overwhelming emotional experience, I don’t think so.
“War Horse” runs through January 5 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Tickets are $30 to $97. For performance schedules, call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com December 2012
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Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is now in its fourth format, starting out as the classic Dr. Seuss storybook in 1957, then moving to a 25-minute animated television special in 1966, followed by a bloated full-length motion picture in 2000, and now a stage musical.
It’s the musical, with the over-stuffed title of “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” that is competing with the Goodman Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” and the Robert Joffrey Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” for the high end holiday discretionary entertainment dollar. The show is posting a top ticket price of $95 (though some seats are as low as $18) for what is an 80-minute children’s show.
The Grinch has entered Christmas pop culture as a meanie on the level of Ebenezer Scrooge. He’s a critter who lives a solitary life in a bleak cave above the town of Whoville. The Grinch freely proclaims that he hates Christmas, and he despises the wholesome and happy citizens of Whoville.
In the touring production currently at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, the Grinch is costumed in a green leafy body suit that makes him look like a vegetable Caliban. As the title proclaims, the Grinch decides to steal Christmas from the Whos of Whoville, which means visiting all Whos in their homes late on Christmas Eve while they are sleeping and stealing the Christmas presents set out for the children. He accomplishes this dastardly deed with the reluctant assistance of his dog Max. But ultimately the Grinch is converted to the true meaning of Christmas by little Cindy-Lou Who, a tyke whose songs sound like out-takes from “Annie.”
The show’s physical production replicates, with modest success, the original Dr. Seuss illustrations. The costumes are all colorful without being distinctive. The sets are numerous and follow the Dr. Seuss drawings will some verisimilitude. The adult citizens of Whoville have pear-shaped bodies and comport themselves with relentless high spirits. They sing a lot, and their milling around the stage in large groups passes for exuberant choreography.
On opening night at the Cadillac Palace, the large audience understandably was well represented by youngsters. The kiddies sitting near me were exceptionally attentive, either because they were enthralled by the show or because they were intimidated by being in such a large adult theater and well after their bedtime. Still, if the children in the audience were satisfied with “Dr. Seuss’…,” it matters little what the adult judgment might be.
“Dr. Seuss’…” is too long. The TV special was
just right at a bit under a half hour. At more than twice that length, the
stage adaptation is much too extended for the thin storyline. The musical score
is serviceable, with one familiar number, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”
(music by Albert Hague, lyrics by Dr. Seuss himself). Most of the other songs
sort of wash over the ear, their perkiness pretty much interchangeable, one
notable exception being the Grinch’s solo hymn to his misanthropy, “One of a
Kind.”
The musical is presented as a memory show, with the Grinch’s pet dog Max in old age recalling for the audience that fateful Christmas Eve when the Grinch descended on Whoville. There is no reason why the story should be told as a flashback but it does no harm. Indeed, the entire 80 minutes can be excused as fluff, with its reliance on broad comedy and minimal character development (the Whoville people are virtually interchangeable). The Grinch engages the audience in some comic chitchat that briefly elevates the level of the entertainment. The Cadillac Palace is not an intimate venue and a smaller theater, which would allow for more exchanges between the Grinch and the spectators, might have given the show a boost.
The only performance that matters comes from Stefan Karl, who hails from Iceland, as the Grinch. Karl starts off slowly and early on his Grinch lacks a bit of the lip smacking malevolence that would energize the story. But Karl picks up in gleeful nastiness as the narrative moves along and the Grinch’s redemption at the end is actually persuasive. Karl is a skilled physical actor with an expressive singing voice and it would be interesting to see him in a comic role that didn’t require a shaggy green costume and thick facial makeup.
“Dr. Seuss’…” mostly disarms criticism. Nobody could argue with a moral that attacks commercialism at Christmastime and gently preaches that the spirit of the season is what really matters. The adaptation could be stronger in its plotting and more regard could be given to characterization. The choreography definitely needs to be more diverse, and the entire enterprise could be condensed by 20 minutes. It would be interesting to see what edgy film director Tim Burton would do with the material. But perhaps the current version is as good as it needs to be to satisfy its core audience of young people.
“Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” runs through December 16 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday at 11 a.m., and 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $18 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars. Dec. 2012
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Bring It On
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
by Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Bring It On” at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is cut from the “Legally Blonde” cloth of contemporary musical theater. Both shows are inspired by motion pictures (“Bring It On” spun off into five movies from 2000 to 2009). Both shows feature a lithe young blonde heroine, a ditsy plot, and a talented youthful ensemble with unlimited enthusiasm and energy romping through some terrific dance routines.
“Legally Blonde” is an established Broadway hit now enjoying a first class revival at the Marriott Theatre. “Bring It On” is in a state of development as it works its way to New York City. Both shows are a hoot, and “Bring It On” can only get better as some rough spots in the book get smoothed out.
“Bring It On” is about the culture of cheerleading at American high schools. If the show is a reflection of prep reality, cheerleading is a semi religion among its mostly female practitioners, much like sports is among the guys. The top cheerleader at Truman High School is Campbell Davis (Taylor Louderman). She’s all set to lead her squad to national glory when she learns that through a sudden and dubious redistricting decision, she’s been excised out of the Truman high district and into the Johnson High School district. Truman is an upscale suburban-type school. Johnson is inner city. How two such different types of schools could exist virtually side-by-side is just one of the narrative puzzlements the viewer must accept.
At first, Campbell struggles to fit into the Johnson High mostly African American social stream. The student body even includes an unapologetically transvestite student named La Cienega and a lad who expresses himself in hip-hop. Eventually Campbell convinces the students to organize into a cheerleading squad to challenge the supremacy of the smug Truman High bunch, leading to a dance shootout that ends the show.
The narrative shifts gears from the cult of cheerleading that opens the show through the exploration of class conflict between the two high schools, touching on teenage problems of fitting in, racial prejudice, and friendship. But nobody should attend the show for its social uplift. “Bring It On” is a singing and dancing extravaganza that will be especially exhilarating for young female viewers (there were numerous school cheerleading jackets among the spectators on opening night). This isn’t exactly the stage equivalent of chic lit. The talent and exuberance that flows from the stage transcends gender, but no question the young ladies in the audience were reacting with particular squeals of pleasure.
The artistic brain trust for “Bring It On” has major street cred when it comes to this kind of youth oriented, rock music dominated, high motor entertainment. Tom Kitt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Amanda Green, and Jeff Whitty cumulatively have figured in such recent Broadway successes as “Avenue Q,” “In the Heights,” “High Fidelity,” and “Next to Normal.” They have assembled a cast that looks and acts like high school students, but students who can sing and dance and toss off daring gymnastics stunts like Olympians.
Louderman is a wonder as Campbell. She’s on stage nearly the entire show, acting and belting out one song after another while throwing herself into a glorious series of high velocity dances. Her stamina level is off the charts and she seemed to be having the time of her life, like the rest of the ensemble. The unforced high spirits of the ensemble is not the least of the evening’s joys.
The production still needs to work out some kinks. The first act moves too slowly between musical numbers. Campbell’s difficulties in making friends at her new school occupy endless nonmusical minutes in the first act, a scene that urgently needs to be compressed, enlivened, or both. The production also is overproduced in spots, with video sequences that distract as much as they inform. And what’s with the blinding spotlights? Every rock-tinged show these days feels it has to scald the audience’s eyeballs with searing lighting flashes. Overall, the show could reduce its electronic special effects by half and lose nothing in visual impact. The cast doesn’t need the help. Their energy lights up the stage enough.
As Danielle, Campbell’s black counterpart at Johnson High, Adrienne Warren displays great singing chops and plenty of attitude. I even caught a whiff of the “Crispin’s Day” speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” as Danielle rouses the Johnson students to meet the challenge from Truman. Elle McLemore plays Eva, the show’s villain, but McLemore is so petite and so cute she has trouble selling herself as the story’s nasty. But she can sing and dance with the best of them. Ryann Redmond plays Campbell’s chubby sidekick, a standard low comedy role until Redmond pounds out some impressive vocal ballads in the second act.
The pit band is mostly electronic keyboards and percussion and the musicians romp and stomp through the Kitt-Miranda score with an appropriately potent decibel count. Highest props to Alex Lacamoire for his dance arrangements, abetted by Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography (he also directs). David Korins designed the set, Andrea Lauer the gaudy costumes, Jason Lyons the lighting, and Brian Ronan the sound.
As it stands now, “Bring It On” is a certified crowd pleaser, especially for the teen-age clientele. The book will never be the show’s strong point, but it can be improved, maybe with a little less commitment to touchy feely explorations of racial and class conflicts. Definitely the first act needs brightening. But the cast deserves a hit and it’s just a matter of time before Louderman gets a star on her dressing room door.
“Bring It On” runs through March 25 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 a.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on Wednesday, plus Saturday performances at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $18 to $85. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars. March 2012
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Memphis
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Memphis” comes to town trying to sell itself as a romping, stomping celebration of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll during its turbulent early years in the 1950’s. There is plenty of energy on the stage at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, especially from the dancers, but the show has a synthetic feeling to it. The book is predictable and the 19 songs emulate the music of the 1950’s, but they sound more like cover versions of the great anthems of the period.
“Memphis” centers on a young white male named Huey Calhoun, an illiterate doofus who falls in love with black music. Battling the racism of Memphis during the early 1950’s, Calhoun rises from local disc jockey to concert promoter, a blend of Alan Freed and Dick Clark. Calhoun falls for a young black singer named Felicia Farrell, an interracial relationship that could be hazardous to their health back in the segregated postwar era in Memphis.
Huey
and Felicia ascend in their musical careers as their love interest
gets tighter and tighter. Then, inevitably and predictably, they have
a falling out. Huey wants to stay in Memphis, rejecting the
possibility of a big career jump as a TV dance party host. Felicia
wants to move to New York City, where recording offers await and she
is free of the racial divide of the Deep South. So finally Huey goes
his way and Felicia goes hers, but they have an on stage
reconciliation at a Felicia concert to end the story on a warm and
fuzzy, if rueful, note. 
The familiar trajectory of the Huey-Felicia relationship isn’t the only cliché in the show. Huey’s mother starts off as a low class racist (“She ain’t nothin’ but a colored girl.”) But by the second act Mama has seen the light of racial harmony, belting out a hip-swiveling gospel solo, “Change Don’t Come Easy,” as blatant an audience pandering number as I have ever heard.
Then there is Gator, a bartender at a small African American club in Memphis. Gator has been a mute since the age of five, when he was traumatized by watching his father being lynched. But Gator breaks out of his silence in time to lead the first act finale in “Say a Prayer,” clearly intended to send the spectators into the lobby at intermission with a large lump in their collective throats.
The
character of Huey Calhoun may have been inspired by Dewey Philips, a
white Memphis disc jockey who was a pioneer in playing black music
for white listeners on radio in Memphis. Huey is saved from a
lifetime as a loser by his devotion to black music. He rides his
brashness, and a bit of good luck, into Memphis stardom as the city’s
leading radio personality (goodbye Perry Como, hello Elvis Presley).
Anyone in Chicago old enough to remember Dick Biondi knows the DJ
type. The love affair between Huey and Felicia is difficult to
accept, especially from Felicia’s side, but that’s how Joe
DiPietro wrote the book so that’s what the audience is stuck with. 
Bryan Fenkart, with a cornpone accent, acts well and sings and dances passably in a demanding role that puts him on stage almost the entire show. Fenkart is locked into a cartoonish role but the opening night audience loved his aw shucks personality. Felicia Boswell displays a big voice as Felicia Farrell, and shows some welcome fire in ripping Huey for not going to New York City with her, away from the racist miasma of Memphis. Her verbal blast about life on the black side of the color line is the most honest moment in DiPietro’s book.
There are only a few supporting roles of consequence. As Mama, Julie Johnson is as persuasive as the writing allows, and she does milk her gospel number to considerable effect. Quentin Earl Darrington plays Felicia’s brother Delray and Will Mann plays Bobby, a black janitor at Huey’s radio station who turns out, surprise surprise, to have great rhythm and blues singing chops. William Parry does a fine job as the white radio station owner who attaches himself to Huey and Felicia as they rise in the music world. Parry doesn’t sing or dance, but he provides a welcome injection of realism into the wobbly narrative.
David Bryan’s music and lyrics superficially recreate the sounds of R&B and first generation rock but there is nothing original in the score and nothing the audience can take with it out of the theater, with the possible exception of the rousing “Everyone Wants to Be Black on Saturday Night.”
The biggest upside in “Memphis” resides in the chorus, full of exuberance and stamina as they jive through Serge Trujillo’s animated if not particularly original choreography. Director Christopher Ashley recreates his Broadway staging. David Gallo designed the skimpy sets and shares the projection design credit with Shawn Sagady. The television simulcasts of the on-stage dancing are the best technical effects in the show. Paul Tazewell designed the costumes, Howell Hinkley the lighting, and Ken Travis the sound. Alvin Hough, Jr., conducts the swinging offstage band.
“Memphis” puts the spectator in mind of “Hairspray,” another musical that dealt with the early years of rock ‘n’ roll and racial conflict, this time in Baltimore during the early 1960’s. But the “Hairspray” dance numbers soared far above anything in “Memphis” and the story was both funnier and more dramatic. The opening night audience at the Cadillac Palace did give the cast a standing ovation, knee-jerk tradition now in Chicagoland theater on first nights. Still, the audience applause sounded sincere. But anyone seeking authentic old-time rock ‘n’ roll in Chicago is advised to check out “Million Dollar Quartet” a couple of miles north of the Loop.
“Memphis” runs through December 4 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 8:30 p.m. (no evening performance on December 4). Tickets are $37 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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November 2011
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Mary Poppins
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Mary Poppins” is solid family entertainment. In the pantheon of Walt Disney stage musicals it ranks several steps above “Beauty and the Beast,” though below “The Lion King,” the gold standard for family musicals in our time.
“Mary Poppins” has quietly become one of the megahits of the new millennium. It’s wrapping up its fifth year on Broadway with no signs of slowing down at the box office. The show has thrived on the road, playing in Chicago for 18 profitable weeks in 2009. “Mary Poppins” has returned to the Loop, this time for only four weeks at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. The current production displays the show’s abundant virtues along with a few lesser qualities.
The musical is largely an adaptation of the hit 1964 motion picture that starred Julie Andrews in a fantasy about the nanny for all seasons back in late Victorian London. All the familiar songs from the film have been retained along with a handful of additions for the live version. Mary’s main complementary characters are all in place. Bert, the jaunty chimney sweep, still serves as a master of ceremonies. George and Winifred Banks and their children Jane and Michael still live at that famous address on Cherry Tree Lane, served by the irascible cook Mrs. Brill and butler Robertson Ay.
The touring edition features a wonderful performance by Rachel Wallace as an exceptionally young and attractive Mary Poppins. Wallace sings beautifully, dances up a storm when called upon, and has a wry dignity that embellishes the show’s humor and injects a welcome balance to the show’s sentimentality.
“Mary Poppins” has a sketchy book that basically provides the connecting tissue between the production numbers and songs. The lack of a sturdy book is perhaps the musical’s chief weakness. There are only a couple of plot points, neither of which occupies much stage time. One involves George Banks’s difficulties at his office. In the other, a fearsome nanny named Miss Andrew replaces the departed Mary Poppins, but Mary returns to the Banks household and dispatches the nasty lady in a duel out of a Harry Potter film. Otherwise it’s an all singing, all dancing show that delivers a string of outstanding production numbers.
The backstage hero of the show is
British ballet choreographer Matthew Bourne. Perhaps the best of his dance
pieces is the extraordinary “Step in Time” that features Mary, Bert, the two
Banks children and a chorus of chimney sweeps. The number’s sheer invention and
energy blow away the audience. And yet some viewers might prefer Bourne’s choreography
for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” a tongue twister in which the
ensemble dances out the song’s title at warp speed in syncopated semaphore
signs.
While the show is rightly billed as a family attraction, it’s not for the entire family. This is a long show, at least 21/2 hours, and will stretch the attention span of small children, especially at evening performances. At the Saturday night opening numerous seats were unoccupied for the second act. The production will have more appeal for viewers at the pre-teen and early teen level, many of whom attended the opening night and all seemed armed with picture phones. A reduction of 15 minutes in playing time would be a boom to both youngsters and adults in the audience.
In spite of the relatively short run in Chicago, the show doesn’t stint on production values. Bob Crowley’s sets and costumes remain colorful and creative and Howard Harrison’s lighting delivers some really wow effects. The audience even gets to watch Mary Poppins soar over their heads at the end of the show.
It’s Rachel Wallace’s show, but she gets plenty of help. Laird Mackintosh is every bit the stiff upper lip Englishman as George Banks and Blythe Wilson is his stalwart wife. Both sing and act (and sometimes dance) superbly. The two Banks children are called upon to perform demanding roles as actors and singers. Camden Angelis and Reese Sebastian Diaz are both outstanding troupers (they alternate with Annie Baltic and Dakota Ruiz) and from their first appearance they allayed my normal nervousness about children performing on the live stage.
Nicolas Dromard isn’t exactly a disappointment as Bert the chimney sweep but his personality doesn’t have much impact on the action during his many moments on the stage, mostly singing snatches of “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” But Rachel Izen is just right as Mrs. Brill and Janet MacEwen is affecting in her one song, “Feed the Birds.”
Leaving the theater, I reflected that this show is better than it needs to be. The creators could have coasted on the brand names of Walt Disney and the Mary Poppins children’s stories by P. L.Travers and the 1964 movie and done just fine at the box office with the family trade. Flooding the stage with so many rousing and imaginative production numbers is a gift to the audience. And so is the integrity of sending Chicagoland such an accomplished and professional group of performers.
“Mary Poppins” runs through November
6 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.,
Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30. Tickets are $25 to $90.
Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com. October 2011
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.
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Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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West Side Story
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “West Side Story” has always been about the singing and dancing. Leonard Bernstein’s score, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, and Jerome Robbins’ choreography elevated the show into the top tier of musical theater classics. But the book was always a problem.
The touring production at the Cadillac Palace Theatre pays triumphant homage to the dancing and the songs and tries to address the potholes in Arthur Laurents’ original book. The remedial efforts are only partially successful. The dialogue still clunks with its “buddy boys” and “womb to tomb” faux gang argot. But this version has gone to a lot of trouble to rethink the show’s strengths and address its weaknesses, and their efforts result in a big payoff by refurbishing the vehicle for the new millennium. Indeed, this revival, which opened on Broadway in 2009, actually ran longer in New York City than the 1957 original.
“West Side Story” attempts a modern update of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” with the action transferred from medieval Verona, Italy, to the gang infested streets of modern New York City. The feuding Montague and Capulet families are replaced by the rival street gangs, the Jets (recent American immigrant background) and the Sharks (new Hispanic arrivals from Puerto Rico). Maria (Juliet) and Tony (Romeo) still fall in love at first sight, their youthful passion snuffed out in a tragic ending.
The narrative is carried by Robbins’ iconic choreography, reproduced with great vigor and style at the Cadillac Palace. Joey McKneely is credited with reproducing the 1957 dances and he’s captured the spirit of the original, thanks to an athletic and committed cluster of dancers representing the two gangs and their lady friends. McKneely adds a few new touched (the “Cool” number turns coed) but he nobly honors the Robbins vision.
The Bernstein score, of course, is one of the most ravishing ever to see a musical stage. All the songs remain as melodic and expressive as ever, the honor roll including the romantic “Maria,” “Tonight,” and “Somewhere” as well as the comical and satirical “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” But every musical note in the show pays its way. It’s impossible to underestimate the value of Sondheim’s brilliant lyrics—marvels of word play and rhyme.
“West Side Story” has always been Maria’s show, just as “Romeo and Juliet” belonged to Juliet. Ali Ewoldt starts out as a youthful and fetching teenager and grows into the character dramatically and vocally. Her duet with Michelle Aravena (as Anita) was a thrilling operatic climax to the evening’s singing. Aravena is very strong, delivering a spicy and fiery Rita Moreno-ish performance as the Puerto Rican lover of Bernardo, the Sharks leader.
The male casting is uneven. Kyle Harris is more the well-scrubbed middle class college boy than the streetwise co-founder of the Jets and he has a very un-macho Irish tenor voice, but he has good chemistry with Ewoldt’s Maria and their sexual attraction is palpable in all their scenes. But the actor playing Riff is bland and the Bernardo doesn’t convince me his character is a feared gang leader.
Whatever the weaknesses in the acting, they don’t inhibit the production numbers, notably a violent and convincing rumble at the end of the first act and the dream ballet “Somewhere” with stunning lighting highlights by designer Howell Binkley. The final moments have been revised to enhance the power of the story, though the final image may be confusing to some viewers. The revival also acknowledges the ethnic underpinnings of the story by injecting some dialogue and song lyrics in Spanish. The device does bringing the Puerto Rican side of the story into greater prominence but I thought the lapses into Spanish were arbitrary and occasionally sacrificed intelligibility for non-Spanish speakers in the cause of ethnic balance.
The current staging brings out the social conflicts built into the story—ethnic rivalries, conflicts with the police, the striving for assimilation balanced against respect for one’s roots, the facile theories to explain complex social ills. “West Side Story” doesn’t attempt to be a documentary on urban problems but it touches on enough issues relevant today (are they ever!) to enrich the basic love story.
The physical production was a bit minimalist, a necessary evil for productions that travel from city to city. The intimate scenes involving two characters were sometimes swallowed up in the vastness of the Cadillac Palace stage area.
Whatever the blemishes, this production is likely to be the best performed revival of “West Side Story” we will see in a long time. The musical demands a large and skilled multi-talented ensemble and a full pit orchestra, requirements beyond the capabilities of local theaters. Lovers of this show, and of American musical theater in general, should seizes the moment.
“West Side Story” runs through August 14 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $95. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com July 2011
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Cirque Eloize iD
At the Cadillac Palace Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – There is a third stream in circus presentation today. We have the traditional sawdust and tinsel productions typified by the Ringling Brothers extravaganzas. Then there is the Cirque du Soleil empire, with its New Age exoticism (and pretensions).
The third stream has emerged in the last 20 years—productions that eliminate the customary trappings of the circus—animals, clowns, ringmaster, live band—in favor of a gritty, hip contemporary style clearly aimed at the under-30 audience. Locally, “Traces” and “Circus Dreams Illuminations” have carried the banner of the style in recent seasons, and now we are favored with another example, and perhaps the best of them all—Cirque Eloize, like Cirque du Soleil, from Montreal.
Cirque Eloize (pronounced something like “SIRK ehl oh AZZ) has been touring since 1993. It’s staged six previous shows, and is finally breaking into the Chicago market with its seventh, called “iD” (pronounced eye DEE), in a too-short eight-performance run at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Like “Traces” and “Cirque Dreams,” “iD” strives for an urban edge, drawing energy from, the vitality, and dangers, of the big city. “iD” is drenched in hip hop, rap, and break dancing. The recorded sound track is a high decibel concert of rock and electronic music and the multi-media light show is technologically right up to the minute. Aurally and visually the production is a feast for the eye and ear (or an assault, depending on one’s tolerance for sensory overload).
But the music and special effects are really just the gift wrapping for the performances, which are terrific. The quality and imagination of the acts are often breathtaking. Take away the light show and the music and you would still have a world class circus.
The company consists of 16 performers, all of whom look about 25 or less. There are familiar acts, like hand balancing, juggling, and aerial derring-do. There are also some superb novelty acts, climaxed by a trampoline demonstration by about half the company that is a dazzler in its precision, creativity, and risk. Not all of the ensemble performs individually, but everyone dances, triumphantly.
The show
pushes a big city ambience, with visual images of skyscrapers, tenements,
graffiti, and high rise construction, complemented by the sounds of the
city—the automobile horns, the sirens, the noise of street construction. Gangs
appear, lightly menacing before the members burst into their acts. A marvelous
jump rope number resembles the dance at the gym number from “West Side Story.”
The show grabs the viewer in its first moments with a fine hand balancing demonstration. My favorite of the evening was juggler Nicolas Fortin, who kept in play an endless circuitry of tennis balls bounced off the stage and off clear plastic sheets in a blizzard of motion. The occasional missed ball only emphasized the difficulty and creativity of the act. Then there was Thibaut Philippe, who operated a bicycle like it was a trained animal, even bouncing his way up levels of the set with no safety net and no safety cable and no margin for error.
Every circus has a contortionist and Cirque Eloize has a doozy in Emi Vauthey, a lithe young lady who can virtually turn herself inside out. Contortionists tend to make me queasy but I couldn’t take my eyes off Vauthey in her representation of a boneless human being.
The first half of the show has most of the energy. In the second act, the production chooses to turn moody and poetic, running against the grain of the intensity and exuberance that carries us along so mightily in the first hour. But the trampoline finale restores the high energy level to an Olympian level. It’s one of the greatest and most inventive acts I’ve ever seen at the circus and deservedly had the opening night roaring.
The Cirque Eloize troupe is an international lot, coming from Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. They are all marvelous at what they do, and masters at conveying their joy in performing. Along with the artists mentioned above, the company consists of Dmytro Bogodist, Alona Burlachenko, Melissa Flerangile, Christian Garmatter, Xuan Le, Josianne Levasseur, Richard Maguire, Baptiste Montassier, Forty Nguyen, Hugo Quellet-Cote, Manda Rydman, and Ryan Shinji Muray. Applause to them all.
The artistic brain trust consists of director Jeannot Painchaud, designers Robert Massicotte, Krzysztof Soroczynski, Linda Brunelle, Nicolas Descoteaux, Alexis Laurence, and Suzanne Trepanier, and composers Jean-Phi Goncalves and Alex McMahon. They are a talented lot. Hurry back!
Cirque Eloize runs through May 8 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph Street. Performances are Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call 800 775 2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. April 2011
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