November 2011
1 post
2 tags
Sunday with Sondheim
After enough time with the books and articles and interviews and biographical revues, listening to Stephen Sondheim talk takes on the familiar aura of a liturgical reading. I think I joked to my friend after last year’s Harris theatre talk about The Book of Sondheim, First Merman, chapter two. Gathering early on a Sunday morning for today’s Chicago Humanities Festival Q&A with Sondheim and...
August 2011
2 posts
3 tags
“The music is primarily introduced extra-diegetically, functioning as outside...”
– “Satyr is what closes on Saturday night”
This piece I wrote went up today.
8 tags
July 2011
22 posts
4 tags
On The Book of Mormon
(June 13, 2011)
The Tonys weren’t bad. More significantly, they weren’t worse than last year. Seemed for a while there that we were stuck in a big downward spiral. But the Beacon didn’t dwarf everything, the show didn’t drag too much, Harris and Jackman’s number was fun, and even that Memphis performance was better than 2009’s touring Mamma Mia cast.
And yet I still wanted to punch a bunch of...
4 tags
More on Follies
(May 6, 2011)
fuckyeahstephensondheim:
stephenrettger:
“The Story of Lucy and Jessie.” Donna McKechnie. 1996 BBC radio concert broadcast.
Donna McKechnie is the only actress I can think of to play all three major female roles in Follies. She played Phyllis here, 1996. 1998, she played Sally at New Jersey’s Papermill Playhouse. 2002, she first played Carlotta at LA Reprise.
I’m not sure...
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On a Seder
(April 20, 2011)
My friend’s Seder last night. Always, as in years past, sharing tradition with close friends is a moving experience and the question-and-explanation structure works well in gentile-majority groups like this one (speaking as one of the goyim). But the very adapted Haggadah he had us using this year struck me in the profound immediacy it lent the ceremony. Some came from a...
7 tags
Lohengrin, Lyric Opera, half-formed thoughts
(March 27, 2011)
A question of values impacts our understanding of the action. Gracie thought Lohengrin’s demands upon Elsa ridiculous: “Do everything I ask and I shall esteem you above all women.” But it’s not really that. His condition that she never ask his name or home, the concerns surrounding his condition, it’s all about honor. He arrives to defend Elsa’s honor, no questions asked. In...
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Fanciulla Del West, Lyric Opera
(Feb. 5, 2011)
Fanciulla del West last night.
I didn’t really know the piece at all going in and that always adds to the experience. It’s easier to give in to the music when I don’t know where it’s headed and I can buy into the tension when I don’t know exactly when Minnie will come riding to the rescue.
It was Hal Prince’s 1978 production. His designers were Eugene and Franne Lee, who would go...
6 tags
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Steppenworlf
(Dec. 13, 2010)
It’s exciting to have your expectations thrown out the window.
I got a little worried as we started into the Steppenwolf’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Saturday night. It’s a piece I’ve spent enough time with—the text and productions and recordings—that I’ve developed a mental ur-production against which I can’t help but compare any other. Do we agree who these people are,...
3 tags
Cover Stories, Printworks
(Dec. 12, 2010)
A recommendation for all the Chicagoans: go check out Cover Stories: The Art of the Book Jacket at Printworks in River North. 68 artists’ jackets designs for favorite books. (Through February. And it’s free!)
A few personal highlights:
Heather Accurso, Animal Farm
Jeanine Coupe-Ryding, To Kill a Mockingbird
Melissa Jay Craig, Leaves of Grass
Louise Lebrougeois, Memories,...
4 tags
Black Swan
(Dec. 4, 2010)
Still too overwhelmed from Black Swan to have real thoughts. Only can say that Natalie Portman really is as amazing as everyone is saying (and totally revived my sixth grade crush on her) and even though the movie veered into some Brian de Palma territory there for a minute, it made it through.
Also, [spoilers, etc., but nothing you hadn’t guessed] it makes me consider this...
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"Duet for One"
(Nov. 7, 2010)
You lucky New Yorkers. This weekend, City Opera produced a Leonard Bernstein tribute concert, coinciding with their New York premier of his late-career opera A Quiet Place. In addition to Christine Ebersole’s “Come Up To My Place” and Donna Murphy’s always-dependable “One Hundred Easy Ways,” the reports I’ve read also point out Victoria Clark’s “Duet For One” as a highlight.
...
10 tags
Un Ballo In Maschera, Lyric Opera
(Nov. 19, 2010)
Got myself back to Lyric tonight for their Ballo in Maschera. I’d read a synopsis, but was essentially unfamiliar with the music, having only really listening to the overture before getting distracted (by the new Kanye – I like it?) during my preparatory listening. But it’s often fun to go see something with completely fresh eyes/ears. Nights like tonight, you can be very...
3 tags
Thanksgivings
(Nov. 21, 2010)
Last night was the fourth annual Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. I’m a sucker for traditions, especially the symbolic ones, and this has become something of a moment to take our collective pulse as we progress through this liminality before real adulthood.
I don’t know if I can really call it my fourth. My first was actually just a Thanksgiving. I was in Paris, away from my...
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On Kanye
(Nov. 23, 2010)
I spent a surprising amount of my commute last week listening to the new Kanye. Surprising, as I’ve been familiar with the occasional song, but never really made a point of listening to him before. Shamefully far into the week, between Chicago and Grand, something clicked and I realized that somehow what I’d been listening to was actually the “clean” version of the album. Little...
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A Note of Hope In A Depressing Week
(Sept. 30, 2010)
The recent avalanche of gay teen suicides and the ensuing conversation it’s sparked reminded me of an incident from freshman year of high school, which I had completely forgotten.
Football practice after school. Early September, still very hot. We’re warming up. The soccer team is doing the same the next field over. While running past them, one kid on our team calls the soccer...
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A Little Night Music, round two
(Sept. 20, 2010)
Sometimes you want to let thoughts percolate. Sometimes you forget the pot on the stove. Two months ago, I caught A Little Night Music again, the first Friday after it reopened with new stars Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. In the spirit of the first time, an assortment of thoughts that haven’t yet burned away:
It’s funny! Back in December, there were funny moments, but...
3 tags
Patti LuPone: A Memoir
(Sept. 29, 2010)
And then there was the time Jessye Norman taught Patti about her period.
A full day, last Saturday, of running errands, making blintzes, and listening to the audiobook of Patti LuPone’s memoir, Patti LuPone: a memoir. Yup. These creative types. Despite the titular self-classification, we can’t approach this as we would Joan Didion. The rules are different; this is a Diva...
9 tags
A Follies Problem: The Aging of Carlotta Campion
(Aug. 20, 2010)
Last week’s big casting news was the confirmation that Bernadette Peters would be headlining the Kennedy Center’s spring 2011 Follies. The production, to be directed by Eric Shaeffer, was announced several months ago, but this casting guarantees its place as a Major Theatrical Event. Kim Cattrall is all but confirmed for Phyllis, and Danny Burstein, late of South Pacific, is...
7 tags
Ravinia 2010 Sondheim Celebration, transcribed...
(Aug. 1, 2010)
7:08 The Women’s Gala, of course. These pants are going to be so grass-stained, but that’s what I get for abandoning my blanket so I could see the jumbotron. And, being a bad brother.
7:09 Paul Gemignani! Oh yeah, he’s conducting this.
7:10 Overture: Forum fanfare, Free, Merrily drum rolls, Now You Know, Rich and Happy, Old Friend, Poor Baby,...
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Annie Get Your Gun at Ravinia
(Aug. 18, 2010)
I’ve never been the biggest fan of Annie Get Your Gun. It’s engrained in my mind to some degree, as classics are: Merman being irrepressibly Mermanesque (I imagine grace notes in every phrase), the Betty Hutton-Howard Keel movie (faintly, lost somewhere in the childhood room), bits of the Mary Martin television version (no clearer than the kinoscope), Bernadette Peters affecting...
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On Replacements
(July 13, 2010)
Everyone’s been making a big fuss about Bernadette Peters going into A Little Night Music because it’s the first time she’s replaced another actress during the run of a show. [Pre-run-of-a-show, see Mack & Mabel.] And while steadily working pros like Marin Mazzie often appear as mid-run replacements, it isn’t standard for Broadway A-listers.
But it’s not entirely unheard...
7 tags
Replacements: Sweeney Todd
(July 13, 2010)
A year after Angela Lansbury stepped into The King & I as a vacation replacement, she returned sensationally to the Uris Theatre in Sweeney Todd. When she and leading man Len Cariou finished up their run, the producers brought in a pair of replacements good enough to give them a run for their money: George Hearn and Dorothy Loudon.
Loudon had been trucking away for years —...
5 tags
The Addams Family
(Nov. 19, 2009)
So instead of the fifteen other things I ought to be writing, I’m instead thinking back on the open dress of The Addams Family I saw a week ago. For a first public performance, the show was in fairly solid shape.
While not a large jump from the recent spate of screen-to-stage transfers, it does deserve some credit for taking familiar characters and sticking them in a new...
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Thoughts on Night Music, incoherently assembled
(Jan. 1, 2010)
Catherine Zeta Jones. Charisma to spare. The acting is on the surface-y side, but there are valid and interesting choices behind it. One of the key characteristics of her Desiree is her instinct to placate, to put on a good face always. Makes sense in light of her response to Henrik in the dinner scene, that “Send in the Clowns” is delivered here not with anger by somewhat...
January 2010
1 post
4 tags
Gershwin Alone
(Jan. 1, 2010)
“…you know as well as I do that the Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It’s a string of separate paragraphs stuck together—with a thin paste of flour and water. Composing is a very different thing from writing tunes, after all. I find that the themes, or tunes, or whatever you want to call them, in the Rhapsody are terrific—inspired, God-given. At least four of them, which is...