From the Ledge

The Tony Awards, the big Kahuna of theater awards in the US, has announced their nominations and special awardees this morning.  And all of us in the Chicago theater community - artists and audiences alike - have so many reasons to celebrate.  Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s much-raved about production of August: Osage County received 7 nominations:  Best Play for Tracy Letts and the theatre (as one of the co-producers); Best Direction of a Play for Anna Shapiro; Best Leading Actress in a Play for the legendary performances of Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton; Best Featured Actress in a Play for Rondi Reed; Best Scenic Design of a Play for Todd Rosenthal who created that masterful, memorable, three story house; and Best Lighting Design of a Play for Ann G. Wrightson.  Amazing!  Additionally, the Special Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theater, previously won by Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre, and Victory Gardens, is going this year to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, making Chicago the only city in the US to have 4 Regional Tonys! (yes! and all the Chicago theater divas are now swooning and doing the wave!).  I sometimes have mixed feelings about Chicago Shakes’ productions, as my blog readers know, but I definitely, strongly feel that this Regional Tony is well-deserved if only for their sophisticated, exceptionally-selected World’s Stage series, which this year brought James Thieree, Peter Brook, and the Shaw Festival to the windy city.  Today’s Tony Awards announcement is significant, in my mind, because it demonstrates validation from the national theater establishment (which we all have to admit, regardless of how we feel about it, is New York-based and New York-centric) what we, Chicago theater creators and supporters already proudly know and believe in:  that there’s no better city for original, creative, brave, exciting, formidable, provocative, INSERT YOUR SUPERLATIVE HERE, theater in North America than Chi-town!  Go Chicago! 

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Tags: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Tony Awards

Chicago’s top tier arts companies are continuing with their mostly successful efforts to reinvent and reinvigorate classic works in theater and opera (and maybe draw in younger, broader, non-traditional audiences, but more on that later) by framing them within distinctive, imaginative, unexpected “high-concepts”.  For me, the pinnacle of this trend so far this year has been the Court Theater’s Titus Andronicus, which I raved about here, where the Shakespearian tragedy was performed as part of the initiation rite for an elite, Skulls and Bones-type, secret society for young men.  Over the past week, I went to see productions re-conceptualized in a similar manner:  the Chicago Opera Theater’s version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, set in an, ahem, S and M club; and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s play-within-a-play production of The Comedy of Errors, in which a British film company in the 1940s is filming well, The Comedy of Errors, while London is being bombed by the Nazis.  Both productions, although still not surpassing the Titus Andronicus benchmark for how successfully a re-conceptualization of a classic piece can provide fresh, relevant, multi-layered insights, are spectacular, and particularly in the case of Don Giovanni, quite the cocktail party conversation starter.

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Tags: Chicago Opera Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) announced yesterday that it has named Riccardo Muti, one of the biggest, greatest, names in world classical music, and former music director of Milan’s famed La Scala Opera, as its 10th music director beginning with the 2010-2011 symphony season.  Muti succeeds the great Daniel Barenboim, who stepped down from the CSO music director post in 2006.  This is tremendous news, again another confident and loud signal to the world that Chicago is an essential global cultural capital, or as the Chicago Tribune says in it’s headline announcing the news:  “Luring of charismatic musician helps Chicago maintain hold in top tier of world culture.”  Yes!  I find it very amusing that the New York Times said, with a hint of barely disguised condescension (or was it envy? insecurity?), in its write-up about Muti’s new role that his coming to our fair city “(adds) a layer of luster to the city’s cultural profile.”  Well, here’s a news flash to the New York Times, and to New Yorkers who still hold up their nose at Chicago’s cultural and artistic vibrancy, and to Chicagoans or anyone else who continue to live in a delusional haze that Chicago arts is an also-ran to New York’s:  we don’t need an additional ”layer of luster”; Chicago already dazzles brilliantly and powerfully in the global cultural firmament, with spectacular and world-class theater, visual art, museums, opera, and symphony music all enriching the lives of its residents and visitors.  Oh by the way, Muti turned down the offer of being music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2000- just a little tidbit to keep those New York arts-centric fans in line.  As a warm-up to Muti’s first season, he will be conducting the CSO for the Verdi Requiem on January 15-17, 2009 and for two still-to-be-announced weeks during the 2009-2010 subscription season.  Get your tickets as soon as they are available- these concert dates will probably sell out like crazy! 

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Tags: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Muti

It’s been nearly a week since Artropolis Chicago came to a close- that intimidating, overwhelming, thrilling, intriguing, and ultimately rewarding, art fair of 780 exhibitors and 16,000 artworks from close to 20 countries on three floors of the Merchandise Mart, but I’m still awestruck by the wonderful windows to creativity and artistic experimentation that the event provided to Chicagoans.   I spent three hours at Artropolis during the Preview Parties on Thursday, April 24, and another three hours on the Saturday afternoon immediately following, but I barely scratched the surface of what was on view.  Which was alright, since as Chicago Tribune art critic Alan Artner said in his preview to the festival, “(t)he impulse is to take in everything but that is immersion akin to a ducking stool.”  Since I didn’t want my experience of art to be similar to that of being strapped into a medieval torture device, I decided to wander, linger, rest, wander again, stop and reflect, and when I had had enough for the day, leave.  I thought that was a good way to take in the pleasures of Artropolis.  I did make a couple of choices beforehand:  I skipped two of the festival’s shows, the International Antiques Fair and the Intuit Show of Folk and Outside Art, since Biedermeier chairs and Art Brut weren’t really my thing, respectively; and I decided to limit my wanderings around The Artist Project, the independent artists’ show, to my friend Sarah Stec’s booth and a couple of aisles over (actually, many of the artists who exhibited here also show at the Old Town Art Fair and other fairs around the city, so there would always be an opportunity to catch them at some place sometime soon).  So I concentrated my time and attention on the works on display at Art Chicago, the main Artropolis show, and NEXT, which was the curated show of cutting-edge, next generation art.  I still didn’t get  to see many, many wonderful artists and pieces, but here’s some of the works that I thought were very memorable- either because they were provocative, challenging, infuriating, inspired, or personally affecting, or all of these, which for me, good art should always be: Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Art Chicago, Artropolis, Next Art Fair

The Jeff Awards, which is the Chicago equivalent of the Tony awards, honoring the best in Chicago theater, just came out last night with their nominations for the Non-Equity (formerly Citations) wing.  I’d like to give a big shout-out and hip, hip, hooray to my dear friend Jonathan Verge, who was part of the ensemble of the Bailiwick production of A Man of No Importance, nominated for Best Production (Musical), as well as for other major categories such as Best Director (Musical) and Best Actor (Musical).  Jonathan, way to go!  I was also very excited to see some of my favorite productions and performances get nominations: Bailiwick’s Jerry Springer, the Opera, which was one of my top cultural and artistic experiences of 2007, snagged 6 nominations, including Best Production (Musical) and Best Supporting Actor (Musical) for Jeremy Rill’s show stopping star turn as the Devil; Hans Fleischmann got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Play) for his riveting turn as the deceptive brother in Profiles’ In a Dark, Dark, House; and Bethany Thomas was cited for her magnificent performance in Bohemian Theater Ensemble’s The Life, where she blew the amazed audience out of the theater and deposited them north of Southport in her memorable rendition of the song “The Oldest Profession”.  Of course, as it is with me and the Jeffs every time the nominations come out, I am baffled by what was NOT nominated:  where was Sean Graney’s direction of the maddening, divisive, but ultimately mind-expanding Hypocrites’ production of Miss Julie, staged as a walkaround? Where were the direction and performances (especially Kevin Cox’s) of the fresh, exuberant, youthful, and very sexy version of Moliere’s The Misanthrope from GreasyJoan & Co.?  Where were Paul Meyers’ chilling, over-the-top, totally out-of-control performance and Grant Sabin’s meticulously dingy set design for the Side Project’s production of Adam Rapp’s Faster?  All of these shows were Jeff-recommended but didn’t make the cut for the nominations.  Let’s not even talk about what didn’t get Jeff-recommended and therefore were ineligible for nominations (anything from TUTA or Marisa Wergyzyn’s hilarious and very original Killing Women, anyone?).  Oh well… Congratulations to all the nominees - check them all out at www.jeffawards.org.

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So it all started with an intriguing post from Moto’s Homaru Cantu (yes, the guy who, together with Alinea’s Grant Achatz, put Chicago on the molecular gastronomy world map; who was chosen as one of the Top Innovators in any field by Time magazine; who mercilessly beat Morimoto on Iron Chef) six weeks ago on the foodie blog and forum, http://www.lthforum.com/.  I’d like to invite you to a special event at OTOM on April 30.  Respond quickly.  Hmmm…of course Chicago foodies buzzed, fluttered, and dashed, hoping to snag one of 20 or so slots for this mysterious April 30 event.  Lots of angst went around when there wasn’t an immediate peep heard from the OTOM/Moto crew.  Then, those who got slots received a very strange email from Omar Cantu containing timeslots in GMT time, a sentence written backward, more cryptic notes.  And once you’ve confirmed that you could actually make it on April 30 and how many guests you were bringing, you got another confirmation email back, this time from Darryl Nash, former number two guy at Moto, Cantu co-conspirator in all things scientific, unique, culinary boundary-pushing.  For the past year, he had been at the helm of  OTOM, Moto’s sister restaurant (these guys like to write things backwards and in anagrams, must be the trait of the genius mind!), which had always been billed as comfort cuisine, without the attention-demanding techniques of Moto’s culinary style.  The several times I had been at OTOM since they opened in the late spring of 2007, I’ve found the food to be very good (I especially liked the trio of mini-hamburgers and the mac and cheese), the service exceptional, and the ambience, with its post-modern 70’s Knoll vibe mixed with warehouse district hip, really fabulous, but I really didn’t get a strong sense of what defined the place.  I thought it was a great addition to the Fulton Market area, but last year, I didn’t think it was destination dining, which, understandably, was quite difficult to be in Chicago where great restaurants of every shape, size, price point, ambience, and twist were available at every street corner.  So I was very excited to go to this special event last night- I had a feeling that there was going to be an update, a revamp, a relaunch, but with the playful, idiosyncractic, smart, guerilla-type antics that these boys were capable of, I was sure it was going to be quite the unexpected night to remember.

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