Whew! It’s the last full week of June and the long fourth of July weekend will soon be upon us. Where was I during this month? Oh right, working on a couple of big deals, and shuttling between New York and Chicago (not to mention having to go out to Schaumburg for a couple of days and getting stuck in notorious, nefarious I-90 traffic). This month felt like I was on a bullet train to nowhere; which is not good for an arts and culture blogger. I can’t believe I haven’t been in a theater since June 1 when I was underwhelmed by Mary-Arrchie’s Beggars in the House of Plenty. Well, the deals have been put to bed and hopefully the next couple of weeks will be a little bit quieter, with more time and focus to savor Chicago’s thriving summer cultural life. Who wants to work like an ox plowing a muddy field during the heightened heat and humidity of July?
The long Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and many theater companies are sprinting towards the finish line of their respective seasons, so there are a lot of plays currently running on Chicago’s stages. I thought I’d be able to publish, on a semi-regular basis, the list of upcoming performances I was planning to go to, but it just hasn’t happened, since I had to first keep up with actually being able to go to the theatre with the numerous selections on view (plus my day-and-night consulting job got really busy over the past couple of weeks). For my dear blog readers clamoring for guidance on what to see next, here are some options to consider (and I’d love to hear what folks think after I post on them): Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago Opera Theatre, Collaboraction Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Hypocrites Theatre
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.
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!
No, this is not a basketball-related blog post at all. Spring is annoyingly dragging it’s feet (sort of like Renee Zellweger in Christian Loubotin heels, uggh) in coming to Chicago with its lush green, its warmer weather, and its generally genial effect on a wintered-out, beaten-down populace, but the cultural hubbub has began. March is turning out to be a great month for actively engaging in the vibrant artistic life of the city. Some of my avid blog readers continuously ask which theatre, film, visual arts, or classical music/opera events I plan to go to, so as a sort of “public service announcement”, I’ll probably give a rundown of notable arts events in the city maybe once a month (of course, with my colorful, insightful commentary accompanying each one -ha!- since plain, bulleted lists are for grocery stores, not arts and culture blogs).
Sleep deprivation, brought about by having to run 1 am conference calls with Asia and the UK every night (or early morning, to be exact), has not dampened my enthusiasm to take advantage of the very active, very exciting Chicago theater winter season. Last week, I first went to Fatboy at A Red Orchid Theatre, John Clancy’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival sensation. It’s an over-the-top, outrageously bawdy, knock-you-senseless-with-its-absurdity-and-cojones updating of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, about a tyrant who literally eats and then destroys the world, and his sex-starved wife, with staggeringly magnificent performances from Steve Pickering and Jennifer Engstrom. Later on in the week, I managed to catch Shining City at the Goodman, Robert Falls’ remounting of his Broadway version of Conor McPherson’s spare, melancholy, beautifully written play about a psychiatrist and his patient haunted by visions of his dead wife, and two people in the psychiatrist’s life, re-cast with a quartet of excellent Chicago actors. I think it is interesting that both Fatboy and Shining City demonstrate the undeniably central importance of the text in any theatrical production (something I have written about in the past), in contrasting ways. In Fatboy, the visionary direction, the mind-blowingly stunning performances, and the excellent production values fail to overcome what I feel is an obvious, annoyingly repetitive, punch-to-the-gut hectoring of a script. In Shining City, despite an ending which belonged more in a Wes Craven B-movie than in a riveting stage production, the beauty of the writing- its subtlety, its reflectiveness, its honesty, its very meticulous buildup of emotions and realizations- makes the play unforgettable.
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