Raves

Past Raves

I am not a theater critic but I have been devoted to covering theater since my early 1980s report on the explosion of Chicago storefront theaters for National Public Radio. On The Mara Tapp Show in the 1990s, I was honored to host weekly conversations about and offer scenes from some of Chicago’s best shows, and delighted when those interviews filled houses for our local theaters.

In 2015, at the request of friends, I started a series of emails with recommendations for shows I thought worthy of patrons. Some years later, actors, directors and publicity people in Chicago’s theater world prevailed on me to share these raves, a request I accepted, especially in light of the increasing tensions in the theater world and need to keep Chicago theaters healthy. Read more…

Find out what the critics think at the Review Round-up on the website of TheatreInChicago.com.

Breaking News

Theater Raves has been renamed Raves to reflect the fact that I am now also raving about music performances and art exhibitions. Here’s to raves about all the arts!

I’ve stepped into the 21st Century and you can find my raves on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/tappraves/. Please follow me to shine a spotlight on the excellent performing arts organizations and artists I am honored to cover.

Theater Raves

Iceboy! Or the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh

Goodman Theatre through August 2

Recommended

The amusingly long title – Iceboy! Or the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh – is a hint of the antics that will unfold in this premiere marking the end of Goodman Theatre’s 100^th anniversary. Prepare for a fun musical with a bit of brains, which makes it sweetly reminiscent of its predecessors – cave dwellers and otherwise.

Iceboy! channels Broadway musicals of the past and some charmers of the present like Hairspray and Urinetown – no surprise on the latter since one of its co-creators co-wrote wrote Iceboy! It makesa bow to madcap Hollywood comedies and possibly even to British comedies like Noises Off.  Chicago audiences will appreciate the way Iceboy! summons Second City in its early University of Chicago days of the weirdly charismatic Severn Darden, the glowing brilliance of Barbara Harris and the comic genius of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. That was a time when intelligence that might now be considered elitist was lovingly mocked. Local audiences would have known who Eugene O’Neill was and have seen some of his plays. They would have laughed with hearty familiarity at Iceboy!’s running gag of O’Neill, a self-described “insecure narcissist” who repeatedly asks the audience to clap if they know his work. 

This musical comes well-stocked with award-winning talent, much of it with local roots. Mark Hollmann composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Jay Reiss, a co-creator of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The songs poke fun at theater and our contemporary lives. Some manage to be memorable while others, like “Working Mother,” which lampoons everything about that state, and “What Do You Say Eugene?” with its alternate inspiration scenario for O’Neill’s iconic The Iceman Cometh! are simply riotously excellent. Erin Quinn Purcell, an Illinois native, co-wrote Iceboy! Director Marc Bruni’s Chicago credits include Billie Jean at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Trevor at Writers Theatre. The two leads, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, a long-married couple offstage now known for their Broadway and television work, each spent some formative years acting in Chicago theaters. 

Offerman as American Playwright Eugene O’Neill steals the show with his sarcastic and deliberate deadpan delivery in his irresistibly gravelly voice. Many theaters succeed at being creative with their “turn-off-your-damn-phones” directives but the one Offerman as O’Neill delivers is possibly a new comic art form. Early on he stops the action for the reminder he forgot:

          Silence your wretched devices, but more
          importantly-
          If someone shushes you don’t get annoyed at
          them, it means you were talking. Unwrap your
          stupid candy. Young people, quick, learn how to
          behave in public.
          Old people, just fall asleep now, you know
          you’re going to, and be proud, naps are
          fantastic.

And we’re off into the always-dramatic 1939 world of Broadway Star Vera Vim, played by an Megan Mullally with vim and vigor. She buys and adopts a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal found frozen in the Arctic. Iceboy quickly becomes a stage sensation, attracts the attention of O’Neill, all of which leads to one comical mess after another, not to mention those many humorous songs accompanied by snappy dancing and singing. It’s a totally silly evening but that’s just fine since the script often surprises with an especially witty line. Two actors stand out. Sarah Stiles shines as Vim’s morose manager/assistant. Her delivery demands mirth. Cedric Yarbrough is just as funny as Vim’s longtime boyfriend – think Adelaide in Frank Loesser’s iconic and nearly perfect Guys and Dolls – playing his passion right up to every available hilt.

The Goodman technical team maintains its gold-star standard. Paul Tate dePoo III’s set design is equally imaginative whether in Vim’s stylish Manhattan penthouse or on Broadway stages. Linda Cho’s costumes amplify each of the characters with amusing details. Music Director Vadim Feichtner brings deft expertise to conducting and playing piano and Bruce Coughlin’s orchestrations are a fine match.

O’Neill’s directive at the end of the Act I to get “liquored-up” – “Even the children” – turns out to be spot-on for an entirely different reason than the audience might suspect. Iceboy!’s second act sags a bit after the rousing first as it swings in and out of what has become its own hybrid of sitcom and Broadway musical. 

There’s still lots to enjoy in this rollicking evening that offers multiple laugh-out-loud opportunities and funny, entertaining songs. If you’re a fan of any of the stars or simplywant to spend a couple hours celebrating Broadway’s past and hooting at O’Neill’s sardonic critiques of modern life, this is your show.     

Leopoldstadt

Writers Theatre through August 16

Highly Recommended

When the lights come up on Tom Stoppard’s last play, one can’t help but be pulled into the warm embrace of an extended family of accomplished Jews and Christians, and the tumble of their joyous life. They are happy, bursting with ideas, memories and good humor, and at peace with themselves. The children are decorating a Christmas tree in this elegant Viennese apartment while the adults gather in small groups to muse on intellectual matters, gossip and fulminate about politics before enjoying chocolate cake with whipped cream.

Leopoldstadt is Stoppard’s most personal play, inspired by autobiographical details of his life in Czechoslovakia and England, yet it is hallmark Stoppard. It brims with the ideas and issues that animated his work, from the existentialism of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to the rich mix of art, memory and politics in Travesties to the love in The Real Thing to the mathematics, philosophy and physics so essential to Arcadia to the wit and romance of Shakespeare in Love. What’s different here is the scale. Originally performed in larger theaters, Stoppard and Carey Perloff, his frequent collaborator, reworked it for Writers Theatre’s more intimate space.

Everything about Leopoldstadt is epic, from the size of the cast of 25 to the scope of the historical moments covered to the range of ideas explored. This is a play about history – the history of this family but also the way its members enjoy, endure and survive their times. Stoppard doesn’t stop with this microcosm. He forces his audience to experience world history. Some of these facts will be familiar to those who know history; others will be shocking. What makes this play work is that Stoppard, its director and cast illuminate critical events in the 20^th century through the actors’ visceral portrayals.

The play follows the 26-member family through four critical periods in Austrian and Jewish life. We meet the Merzes in 1899 in the home of Emilia, her son Hermann, who now runs the successful family business, his wife and their son. The extended family members are firmly ensconced in Vienna, replete with its art, music and rich intellectual life. Jews are very much a part of this. In fact, Jewish authors – Sigmund Freud, Playwright Arthur Schnitzler and Zionist Theodor Herzl – are being debated in the opening scene. Then it is 1924 and the Merzes have gathered for a circumcision ceremony. Their luxurious apartment retains its elegance but the scars of World War I are clear. By 1938, the family has been hurt by the rise of the Nazi party, particularly virulent in Austria. They inhabit a home without heat and with considerably fewer treasures. Leopoldstadt ends in 1955 in the much-changed Merz apartment as the surviving members gather. The devastation of World War II is unavoidable.

Leopoldstadt is also a Jewish play even though it wrestles with larger issues of identity and persecution. What nags here is the question of why Jews, even when they put nationalism in front of their religion and culture, are rarely seen by others as belonging to that country. Ever the wordsmith, Stoppard finds the perfect way to sum this up.

“My grandfather wore a caftan. My father wore a top hat to the opera and I have the singers to dinner,” Hermann tells his brother-in-law. “We literally worship culture. When we make money, that’s what the money is for, to put us at the beating heart of Viennese culture. This is the Promised Land, and not because it’s some place on a map where my ancestors came from. We’re Austrians now. Austrians of Jewish descent! … We’re the torchbearers of assimilation.”

That perceived assimilation did not save this family nor the Jews of Vienna. By 1890, Viennese Jews were close to 100,000, just over 12 percent of the population. In 1934, they had dropped to nine percent of the population but numbered over 175,000. By 1951, there were 9,000 in Vienna, barely a half percent of its population.

Carey Perloff directs Leopoldstadt with impressive skill, bringing out the collective and individual strengths of this uniformly excellent cast, a who’s who of some of Chicago’s greatest theater stars. The actors who play children are especially strong in very difficult roles. A few of the adults must be singled out for praise. Barbara Robertson plays the matriarch with elegant grace and humor, alternately coddling and teasing her grandchildren. “Poor boy, baptised and circumcised in the same week, what can you expect?” she quips to the mother of her grandson when he confuses the Star of David with the Star of Bethlehem. Ian Barford as Hermann Merz is stronger than he’s ever been. His expressions of tenderness for his wife – like the powerful moment when he wraps her in her green shawl for a sitting for the portrait he’s commissioned from Artist Gustav Klimt to demonstrate his spousal love –his family leadership and arguments about the politics of the day show expert range and deepen his character. Kate Fry as his beloved wife is a delight, making the reason for his devotion clear with her sweet gentle nature and her absolute comfort as one of the non-Jewish members of the family. Sean Fortunato, the other non-Jew, is equally at home, and demonstrates a similar devotion to his wife plus the compassion of a doctor to his relatives. Sarah Coakley Price summons her serious side as his loving wife and an amiable representative of the less elite clan joined to the Merzes by marriage. Erik Hellman, skillful in a double role as most cast members are, brings very different but equally persuasive passion to his portrayal of a gentleman officer in an affair and, later, a British journalist prescient about what will happen to Viennese Jews under Hitler.   

The production team makes Leopoldtstadt a dream worthy of the 18^th-Century Biedermeier era in German-speaking Europe, which drew the middle classes into the worlds of art and culture. Ken MacDonald’s set, with its flourishes from wallpaper to objects d’art, envelopes the actors and audience. The glorious period costumes by Alex Jaeger, along with Tom Watson’s makeup and wigs, bring the 1890s to life. Keith Parham’s lighting design warms the Merz apartment in happy times and plunges it into grey or stark unforgiving white in times of horror.

Everything in Leopoldstadt is so intentional and enhances the viewing experience, noted the Brilliant Redhead, my companion, from the lovely waltzes to the realities of the Nazis’ rise. Stoppard’s continuing battle against fascism is unavoidable in the play’s later decades. It was nearly impossible not to recognize the connection between the sounds and signs of political terror from Kristallnacht and Nazi interrogations to January 6 and ICE actions. Yes, this play, like so many of Stoppard’s, has universal messages and yet it remains a Jewish play at heart.

“Antisemitism is a political fact,” one of the Austrian greatgrandchildren tells another in 1955. “It will never happen again,” his British cousin reassures him. The Austrian’s sarcastic response speaks simple truth – “I bow to your experience.”

At the end of this journey across generations and centuries, the Merz matriarch and one of her progeny should have the final say. When unable to identify a couple in a photo album, Emilia says, “It’s like a second death, to lose your name in a family album.” As the play closes, the momentous value of history, both personal and political, is inescapable. A greatgrandchild chastises his cousin for living “as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you.” Consider Leopoldstadt Stoppard’s shadow and do whatever you can to stand in its wisdom.

Musical Homage

Remembering Tom Lehrer

I was about 11 when Tom Lehrer jumped into my consciousness and stole my intellectual heart.

I’ll blame it on my parents who were crazy about this genius mathematician-turned-showman, the author of some of the wittiest satirical songs most of us had ever encountered. We spent many a night after family dinner wearing out the vinyl on Lehrer’s That Was the Year that Was. By the time I was12 I knew all the lyrics on that album, and a couple other well-worn records by Tom Lehrer. For true Lehrer devotees, picking a favorite song is impossible but singing as many as possible as often as possible is impossible to resist – much to the annoyance of non-Lehrer fans or other sorts of American Puritans he would most certainly eschew. Fortunately, my parents were far from that, and I had the good luck to marry a man who happily sang Lehrer along with me, though he was usually in key. So Lehrer’s late July death at 97 hit me with enough of a smack that it’s taken me a while to collect my thoughts, and to trace his impact on my life.

In my junior year of high school, my mother was offered a visiting professorship at Harvard Law School, an opportunity she happily accepted for many reasons, not least among them that she’d not been able to accept the full scholarship Radcliffe offered her because her parents couldn’t afford to send her across the country for college. Already a surly teenager, I was eager to escape the irritating pretensions of the University of Chicago, where the administration often made racist and other horrible decisions that eclipsed the good work and politics of my parents and their friends and colleagues. My parents took the view that while the Hyde Park neighborhood had some merits and lots of smart and wonderful people, it also possessed a cloyingly small-town nature that required true city folks like us to leave it often to explore the delights of Chicago, and to find decent restaurants. Given this, my adolescent spirit was prepared to dive into in the cosmopolitan charms of Cambridge and Boston. That disappeared as soon as I discovered that pretense and academic pedigrees were an art form at Harvard compared to the rumpled, multisyllabic, grumpy nature of your average U of C habitué or Hyde Parker.

The fact that I was sent to a “school for young ladies” in a Cambridge house did not improve my teenage outlook. However, one fact, and that school’s proximity to it, elated me. Tom Lehrer taught at Harvard and lived nearby. Call me naïve but, at 15, I thought the best way to meet him was to go to his house every day after school and sit on his steps in the hopes that he would emerge or come home after work whereupon I would express my admiration of his brilliant lyrics and fawn all over him. Weeks went by. This did not happen. Finally, one cold afternoon, the door opened and my heart leapt. A woman peered out and asked me why I was sitting on her porch every day. I explained that I wanted to meet Lehrer and asked if this wasn’t his house. Yes, she replied, but he had the good sense to go to Santa Cruz that winter and she was renting his house. Crestfallen, I went home and consoled myself with art. At that time, I intended to be a dancer and choreographer so I persuaded one of my two school friends, both also outliers, to join me in creating a dance to Lehrer’s “The Vatican Rag.” Her Czech mother sewed our nuns’ habits from old pillowcases, and we used Mardi Gras beads that doubled as belts we could swing around and as rosaries.

We started performing our “Vatican Rag” around Cambridge. People seemed to like it, except for one woman who found it scandalous and turned to express her view to my father, who was sitting next to her. “That’s my daughter,” he said with some pride. He was a professor of humanities and religious studies among other subjects so I like to think that it was more than mere paternal pride.

The Cambridge grapevine, it turns out, was as good as the Hyde Park one. When Lehrer returned to Cambridge in the spring, word reached him that two girls were performing a dance to his “Vatican Rag” around town. Connections were made, and Lehrer came over to our house, singing and playing the piano while I performed our dance for him. His delight was contagious but not nearly as enormous as mine. My mother, herself delighted, filmed this encounter. Alas that ancient videocassette returned with me to Chicago only to become the one piece of my luggage the airlines have lost forever so all I have is the memory of that remarkable afternoon – and, of course, Lehrer’s glorious song.   

I headed off to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in the Fall but was so smitten with Lehrer that I managed to stay in touch with him. He was campaigning for George McGovern by singing at fundraisers, and the Twin Cities were on his tour. I got to spend an intoxicating evening following Lehrer around and watching him work his magic on crowds. By then, he’d performed on Sesame Street, singing adorable little ditties about “silent e” and its alphabetical relatives. He tickled the Twin Cities audiences by sharing the “Adult X-rated” version of “Silent E.”

As I’ve revisited his repertoire since his death, I’ve been struck by the giddy joys Lehrer’s lyrics cause in songs like “New Math” and “The Elements,” and the relevance of his lyrics in so many songs from “Pollution” to “Who’s Next?” Consider these from “National Brotherhood Week:”

Oh the white folks hate the Black folks
And the Black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks is an old established rule
But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week …
It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise
As long as you don’t let them in your school
Oh the poor folks hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks…
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews
But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
National Everyone-Smile-at-One-Another-hood Week
Be nice to people who are inferior to you
It’s only for a week so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year

I was moved to discover in the many odes to and obituaries to Lehrer that he decided to release the rights to all his songs, telling his fans, “So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.” He even had a website created for people to download his songs.

No doubt that only expanded Lehrer’s following, as does his songs’ infectious singability, which has made me continue to sing Lehrer’s songs across so many decades whenever and wherever the spirit moves me, which is often. Our children grew up on Lehrer’s songs as well, and I am now introducing my grandbaby to his oeuvre. I’m sure she’ll enjoy the kiddie versions of his Sesame Street songs when she learns to read but, for now, we’re working our way through the age-appropriate highlights of his adult repertoire so she can decide what her favorite will be.

And now for something completely different…

Now this is funny! Duane Cerny is always worth reading but this month’s column is particularly relevant to any who attends any live performances. Full disclosure: Duane has edited many of my raves.