2015 in Review (the top 10)

December 31, 2015January 14, 2017 theaterinchicagoreviewsLeave a comment

This spectacular year in Chicago theater featured many shows with social conscience along with the usual crop of musical revivals. Here are my picks for the top 10 Chicago shows in 2015:

#1. Shining Lives: the Musical – Northlight Theater

Joanna McKenzie Miller was perfectly cast as the lead of this production about Catherine Reed, a young mother who bonds with her fellow workers at Chicago’s Radium Dial Company. The four women’s friendship emphasizes the tragedy as each falls sick and dies after decades of licking brushes lined with radium. The minimalist set and costuming were a perfect match for the subdued but haunting score.

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Broadway Shows (Part 2) — 12/20/15

December 29, 2015June 29, 2016 theaterinchicagoreviews1 Comment

Being a fan of puppetry, particularly the use of puppetry to push boundaries, I was excited for my third show—the comedy Hand to God. In fact, Hand to God provided some immediacy for this vacation as it is closing on January 3.

hand-to-god1 — Tyrone in his opening monologue.

Tyrone—a loud-mouthed, violent, and possibly demonic hand puppet—begins and ends the play with hilarious monologues about the nature of evil (spoiler alert: it’s humans who created evil… not the other way around). Steven Boyer keeps his hands moving at light speed as Tyrone rants, raves, and attacks both his ventriloquist Jason and the four other characters in this outstanding ensemble cast.

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Broadway Shows (Part 1) — 12/19/15

December 28, 2015June 29, 2016 theaterinchicagoreviews1 Comment

I continued my tradition of visiting Manhattan for the weekend prior to Christmas. None of this year’s shows inspired the same I-need-to-fly-back-to-New-York-to-see-this-show-again reaction that I had after viewing Michael C. Hall in Hedwig and the Angry Itch, but all four were strong Broadway offerings.

I started with Fun Home, the well-deserved winner of the 2015 Best Musical Tony (considering that the runner up was Something Rotten, all theater-goers owe Fun Home a debt of gratitude). I did my homework by reading Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel prior to the show, and I was surprised Michael Cerveris’s portrayal of Bruce Bechdel involved much greater vulnerability than I had interpreted from the book.

Fun Home2 — Gabriella Pizzolo stars as Small Alison. The adult Alison (Beth Malone) watches and remembers as she tries to create visuals to capture her difficult relationship with her father.

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Beautiful — Oriental Theater (12/4/15)

December 25, 2015December 29, 2015 theaterinchicagoreviewsLeave a comment

The earth doesn’t quite move during Beautiful despite every attempt to turn Carol King’s life into the next great biopic musical.

Beautiful1 — Abby Mueller is based in New York, but she has starred in enough Marriott and Drury Lane productions that can be considered a Chicago actress.

Like other works of the genre, King’s music is presented in an order than best represents a world in transition. Book writer Douglas McGrath does his best to add drama to the story of a hard-working songwriter who was accepted into the world of rock and roll with relative ease. King jumped on the runaway train that was the rock music industry at just the right time, and much of the action relates to the frantic pace with which King needed to produce hits while knowing that hot new songwriters were less than a step behind.

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Spill — Timeline Theater (12/12/15)

December 15, 2015December 26, 2015 theaterinchicagoreviews1 Comment

At a certain age during childhood, we start to devote a small amount of attention to the media. This awareness of newspaper headlines and TV soundbites begins before we realize that history is not just Egyptian pyramids or the Civil War or Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years.

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