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

Raves is on summer break. Look for more raves in the Fall!

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.