I Do! I Do! At the Light Opera Works (Second Stage) By Dan Zeff Evanston – “I Do! I Do!” might be the first
Broadway musical with a cast of only two performers. That’s about the only original
element in the show. The material is predictable and familiar, but that doesn’t
mean it lacks entertainment power. The show opened on Broadway in 1966
and ran for more than a year. Its credentials included a book and score by
Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, the creators of the classic “The Fantasticks.” Having
Mary Martin and Robert Preston as its stars doubtless enhanced the box office receipts
in New York City. The Light Opera Works is reviving “I Do! I Do!” as its annual
production on its intimate second stage. The stars are a couple of Chicagoland
theater pros who make the musical work nicely for audiences willing to tolerate
a soft first act. “I Do! I Do!” is
based on the 1951 two-hander “The Fourposter” by Jan De Hartog. The characters
are a husband and wife named Michael and Agnes. The story covers 50 years of
married life, the setting being confined to the marital bedroom dominated by
an old-fashioned fourposter bed. The narrative
touches all the conventional bases of married life. The opening scene takes
place in 1898 on the wedding night of Agnes and Michael. We get the standard
awkwardness of two sexually inexperienced young people stumbling toward consummation.
Then come the birth of their two children, with the usual dithering about
getting to the hospital. The typical tensions of settled married life rear
their comically tense head, the first act ending with Michael admitting he’s
been having an affair with a younger woman because he doesn’t feel appreciated
at home. The opening act
belongs to Agnes, with Michael as a silly ass husband—pompous, insensitive, and
generally insufferable. The laughs are there, but they are easy laughs, the
kind of giggles common to sitcoms about family life. The second act
kicks into a much higher gear. The naïve and cartoony married couple of the
first act morphs into real adults dealing with real, if common, problems. Part
of the escalation in interest in the second act comes from the casting.
Catherine Lord plays Agnes and Larry Adams plays Michael. Both are performers
of a certain age who naturally are more credible as characters entering middle
age than the innocent lad and lassie who started the story. In the final
act, Agnes and Michael confront difficulties and situations that will connect
with spectators who have married and raised families, enduring the usual bumps
in the road that come with the domestic territory. The children grow up and
leave home. Facing her now empty nest, Agnes feels unneeded and restless, undergoing
a midlife crisis that questions the value of her previous years of domestic
devotion to a family who took her for granted. Michael has his own issues, like
trying to reach a wife drifting away from him emotionally. By the end of
the evening, the sappiness of the first act has been supplanted by the honestly
sentimental realism of act two. Accordingly, most patrons should leave the
theater with a glow of satisfaction and recognition. Catherine Lord
has been a pillar of area theater for decades and she seizes the role of Agnew
as a showcase for her singing, dancing, and comic and dramatic skills. She
rings the bell with the flamboyant “Flaming Agnes” song and dance solo, and
wrings some credible tears from Agnes’s tribulations as she grows older and
discontented with her life. Adams is
lumbered with a fatuous Michael in the first act but he portrays a more serious,
sympathetic, and troubled Michael in the final act that beautifully melds with
Lord’s Agnes. Chemistry that didn’t exist between the characters in the first
act blossoms in act two, The show’s score
is serviceable, but the only number that sticks in the spectator’s ear and mind
is Michael’s lump-in-the-throat ballad of domestic thanksgiving “My Cup Runneth
Over.” Director/choreographer
Rudy Hogenmiller gives his performers a handful of charming dances, mostly
ballroom and soft shoe pieces that Lord and Adams execute nimbly on the
smallish Second Stage playing area. The excellent musical accompaniment is
provided by twin pianos played off stage by Roger L. Bingaman and Linda Slein. The set by Adam
L. Veness appropriately centers on the fourposter bed. The costume designs by
Darcy Elore Hofer suitably take the story through five decades of fashion.
Charles Jolts designed the mood-enhancing lighting and Miles Polaski the sound. “I Do! I Do! isn’t
a great musical but it’s an agreeable 21/2
hours of entertainment for people who enjoy a show that wears its heart on its
sleeve. The two characters, for all their foibles, are excellent company for an
evening and the Light Opera Works production places a pair of fine performers
in the spotlight to do their thing. Not a stunning evening, but one that supplies
plenty of humorous and sentimental pleasures. “I Do! I Do!” runs through November
14 at the Light Opera Works Second Stage, 1420 Maple Avenue. Performances are
Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $27 to $42. Call
847 869 6300 or visit www.LightOperaWorks.com. The show gets a
rating of 31/2 stars. October 2010 Contact Dan at zeffdanial@yahoo.com. Visit Dan on Facebook.
*************************** C’est La Vie At
the Light Opera Works Second Stage By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—When
Gregg Opelka the composer/lyricist is in charge, the Light Opera Works
production of “C’est La Vie” has its pleasures. When Gregg Opelka the book
writer takes over, the show goes down the drain. “C’est La Vie” is the Light Opera Works annual Second Stage
presentation, located in a compact auditorium on Maple Street rather than the
vast Cahn Auditorium on the Northwestern University campus. It’s not a great
performing space and it’s too large for a show like “C’est La Vie,” but it’s
serviceable and the theater has a parking lot, a considerable perk for
theatergoers these days.
The musical is a small show, just two performers backed by an
onstage pianist. The setting is supposed to be Paris in 1950 in a seedy
cabaret. Two singers named Dominique (Kelly Anne Clark) and Fatiguee (Jennifer
Chada) nightly perform the songs popularized by Edith Piaf. But the miserly
cabaret owner is spending this evening in police custody so the singers seize
the opportunity to break away from the Piaf repertoire straightjacket to sing
what they want to sing, which is the Gregg Opelka songbook. Dominique and Fatiguee sing what female French cabaret
singers have always sung about, love in general and faithless men in
particular. The 95-minute intermissionless production includes 14 Opelka tunes,
most of them rueful romantic ballad with a few numbers providing a comic twist. Clark and Chada both have large voices, especially Clark, and
both are comfortable in the French cabaret tradition. They manage the music
well enough but they sink like stones under the burden of the fey and lame
Opelka dialogue. The show staggers under relentlessly unfunny repartee and the
all-talking scene in the singers’ dressing room is interminable. The damage is
further exacerbated by both ladies assuming thick French accents that are
unintelligible at times.
“C’est La Vie” would be better off in a true cabaret setting,
an intimate dimly lit room with the listeners lubricating themselves with
beverages while the performers sing up close and personal. The show does have
potential as a 60-minute chanson revue, but it’s essential to lose the dialogue
(and the accents). A brief introduction to each song would suffice to keep the
customers happy. The musical accompaniment comes from the onstage pianist,
named Jean-Paul-Pierre, played by musical director Jeremy Ramey, who looks very
uncomfortable each time he participates in the action. The basic cabaret set was designed by Courtney O’Neill.
Charles Jolls designed the lighting and Darcy Elora Hofer the costumes. Rudy
Hogenmiller directs and choreographs. This isn’t a dancing show but the two
ladies get through their hoofing movements satisfactorily. No direct and/or
choreographer could circumvent the inadequacies of the book. “C’est La Vie” runs through November 15 at the Second Stage
Theater at 1420 Maple Street. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.
and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $24 to $39. Call 847 869 6300 or visit www.LightOperaWorks.com. The show gets a rating of 2 1/2 stars. October 2009
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Side by Side by Sondheim
By the Light Opera Works
By Dan Zeff
EVANSTON—“Side by Side by Sondheim” is still another compilation jukebox revue, at least the fifth that opened in Chicagoland within a two-week period.
It’s maybe inaccurate to call the show a jukebox musical, the sophisticated and literate Sondheim songs being several cuts above normal jukebox fare. But the principle remains the same—assemble a collection of songs identified by a single composer or performer or time period and spool them off, one by one.
“Side by Side by Sondheim” originated in England and had a healthy Broadway run starting in 1977. As originally conceived, the revue consisted of two men and two women performing numbers from the Sondheim songbook. There was no storyline and almost no dialogue. About half the numbers came from “Company” and “Follies,” two classic Sondheim musicals of the early 1970’s.
The 1977 cutoff date has been maintained in the revival by the Light Opera Works. That means the score doesn’t include music from such later Sondheim shows as “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Into the Woods,” “Assassins,” and “Sweeney Todd.” But there are still plenty of quality songs to go around, extracted not only from “Company” and “Follies” but from “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music,” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” among others.
The Light Opera Works staging under Rudy Hogenmiller’s direction has revamped the format a bit. The singers are reduced to one man (George Andrew Woolf) and two women (Jennifer Davis-Johnson and Anne Gunn). The fourth singer has been replaced by a narrator, performed by Jo-Ann Minds, who supplies background for some of the songs and information about Sondheim’s career.
The narrator device is not a success. Minds, at least on opening night, was uncomfortable reading her material from a large handheld book. She also attempted to inject some arch and very forced comedy into her appearances. Indeed virtually every attempt at humor beyond the song lyrics fell flat during the evening. Minds did belt out one song during the evening, a moving rendition of “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”
The other three performers are all pros who handle the Sondheim material well enough. Davis-Johnson contributed a highlight with “Losing My Mind” from “Follies,” reaffirming that masterpiece as one of the great pieces of musical theater created in the twentieth century. But “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” didn’t work, partly because Anne Gunn couldn’t get a sound out of her trumpet.
Sondheim wrote a lot of memorable songs but very few hits. In this revue the only really familiar song is “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music.” The majority of Sondheim’s songs lose impact when removed from the context of the narrative. But the man’s wit and verbal brilliance still can shine through in songs like “Barcelona” and “Another Hundred People,” both representative of Sondheim’s rather cynical view of human relationships.
Overall, the production, while competent, lacked the vivacity and cosmopolitan flair that makes Sondheim’s music soar. Part of the problem is the venue, a bleak auditorium that is the company’s Second Stage, a space better suited to school assemblies. The two-piano accompaniment by Jon Steinhagen and Nick Sula was fine. Dustin Efird designed the minimalist set. Joelle Beranek designed the costumes, including the ladies’s rather unflattering outfits in act two. David Lee Bradke designed the lighting.
“Side by Side by Sondheim” runs through November 9 at the Light Opera Works Second Stage, 1420 Maple Avenue. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $24 to $39. Call 847 869 6300 or visit www.LightOperaWorks.com.
The show gets a rating of three stars. Oct. 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com