Thank you to director Jim Corti and his team at the Paramount Theater for acknowledging that the West Side Story of 1957 needed some retooling.

To give due credit, Jerome Robbins was a Broadway pioneer that brought grit to the stage with his concept for West Side Story.  It had ethnic slurs; it had teens talking back to adults; it questioned the validity of the American dream.  But… within the grit of West Side Story, Robbins mixed in a generous supply of gold flakes.  Due to choreography that Robbins created for Broadway and immortalized in the 1961 movie, gang members always looked like they would be more at home in ballet class than in an actual fight.

Continue reading “West Side Story — Paramount Theater (4/1/16)” →

The website for the touring company of If/Then boasted that it was the first Broadway show to begin its tour with the principle cast intact.  That claim is a thin sugar coating over the bitter reality that the only draw to this misguided musical is its principle cast—specifically Idina Menzel.

Continue reading “If/Then — Civic Center in San Diego (1/9/16)” →

Million Dollar Quartet has been a gift to the Chicago Theater community for eight years.  Having seen Million Dollar Quartet twice before, I needed to catch the excitement once more before it closed its doors on January 17, and indeed this ode to rock ‘n’ roll’s early years improves with each viewing.

Continue reading “Million Dollar Quartet – Apollo Theater (12/30/16)” →

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

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.

Continue reading “Beautiful — Oriental Theater (12/4/15)” →

It was the spring of 2000 in not-so-swingin’ London.

MTV UK was alternating between Madonna’s shortened version of “American Pie” and Brittney Spear’s “Oops.. I Did It Again.”  The Millennium Wheel (also called The London Eye) had just started to operate.  And… Mamma Mia was a blistering hot theater ticket.

Capitalizing on the success of the ABBA Gold album throughout the UK, producers hit the jackpot by combining energized dance numbers, a crowd-pleasing story, and songs that will rattle in a person’s head for weeks.

Continue reading “Mama Mia — Cadillac Palace (11/11/15)” →