12-8-06
’Tis the Season to Trot out the Cash Cow
Soliloquy, the theatre bookstore, has closed without warning. PerformInk received reports around Thanksgiving that telephone calls to Soliloquy were answered by a phone company recording saying the number was disconnected, and that no further information was available. So on Nov. 28 we stopped by the store at 1726 W. Belmont and found it dark and completely empty, neither book nor fixture left inside. Save for the name on the door, you wouldn’t know it had been Soliloquy. We’d love to know what happened, and whether or not Soliloquy might reopen elsewhere.
Over the last 20 years we’ve witnessed the proliferation of Holiday Season shows to the point where December nearly is a lost month. I call it Sugarplum and Treacle Time. Theatres trotting out serious fare in December – such as Frank’s Home at the Goodman or The Hypocrites’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – are few and far between. By my count, there are no fewer than 38 holiday theatricals this year, and more if you count dance.
Frankly, I consider it a month of respite free from any obligation to attend theatre at all. I, too, can enjoy the holidays which, in the United States, actually run from Halloween through the Super Bowl. Since so many seasonal shows repeat themselves, I need not see them more than once every three or four years. What I do choose to see, if anything, is likely to be a brand-new holiday show, such as this year’s Christmas as We Grow Older at City Lit.
Holiday productions are intended to be cash cows for their producers and have proven so almost universally, which is why they’ve proliferated. Traditionally suffering from The Doldrums in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, theatre has made lemonade out of lemons (or eggnog out of old eggs) by creating programming to suit the season. It’s brilliant marketing even if it’s tooth-rotting and mind-rotting theatre.
It’s mind-rotting, in part, because everyone wants to do the same small handful of traditional shows (or variations thereof), unless they are doing holiday-alternative stuff such as GayCo’s Do You Fear What I Fear? Despite a rare brilliant original, such as The Christmas Schooner, the result is multiple Xmas Carols and Nutcrackers and Nativities. This year, there’s not even one good Chanukah show to provide balance. In seasons past, various adaptations of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe occasionally gave Dickens a run for audiences’ money, but not for the last few seasons. (Has the heavy paw print of Disney’s The Narnia Chronicles suppressed other adaptations of C. S. Lewis’ still-under-copyright work?)
Perhaps the closest thing to a new holiday season favorite has been The Santaland Diaries, the sardonic chronicles by David Sedaris about his experiences as a department store Christmas elf. And why shouldn’t it be a favorite? One actor, no set, an elf suit or just a jingle bell hat, and plenty of anti-holiday fervor. Since first adapted for the stage by director Joe Mantello, The Santaland Diaries has been produced just about everywhere, often with multiple productions in the same city. Last year Chicago had three different productions of the show.
But this year there is only one. If you want to see The Santaland Diaries, your only choice is the Theatre Wit production at Theatre Building Chicago (through Dec. 30), featuring Lance Stuart Baker as David the Elf. This is Baker’s fourth time in the role since 1998. Last year, in addition to Theatre Wit’s version, there were productions at the Athenaeum and at the Beverly Center. On the far southwest side, the Beverly Center had produced the Sedaris work several times before but was turned down when it applied for rights again this year. They were told that rights had been granted exclusively to Theatre Wit.
“Every year has been exclusive with regard to the Equity rights,” Theatre Wit founder Jeremy Wechsler told PerformInk. He explained that non-Equity and non-exclusive production rights had been granted in previous years when Theatre Wit was late in applying (due to Theatre Wit’s itinerant status, Wechsler said). “Dramatists [Play Service, the licensor] asked us if we wanted to challenge [the other rights] and we said no,” Wechsler added. This year, however, Theatre Wit was the early bird that got the worm, so no non-Equity rights were granted in the Chicago area. Dramatists Play Service always will give priority to an Equity production over a non-Equity staging, so Theatre Wit is likely to have the edge for future renewals.
That being said, Wechsler acknowledged that there is little-to-no overlap between his audience at Theatre Building Chicago and that at the Beverly Center, and he would have no problem with a production of The Santaland Diaries there, or at other widely-spaced area venues. The real concern, he said, was that last year the Theatre Wit production and the one at the Athenaeum competed for the same audience, and both were offered via Ticketmaster, causing confusion.
In other Holiday Season theatre news, actor William J. Norris, who created Scrooge in A Christmas Carol for the Goodman Theatre and played it for 11 years, has taken quill in hand to pen his own stage adaptation of the Dickens novella. The Norris version of Carol was presented Nov. 24-26 by the College of DuPage Student Theater at the McAninch Arts Center. If we know Norris, his version probably features an unrepentant Scrooge triumphing over every free-spending fool.
The show went on even though cabaret chanteuse Helen Donovan found her pipes missing in action before her Nov. 19 gig at the Orland Park Library. So singer Claudia Hommel and pianist supreme Bob Moreen, her colleagues in Chicago Cabaret Professionals, hastily put together a substitute program of standards by Gershwin, Porter, Ellington and Rodgers. Hommel is a specialist in the French popular repertoire, so for her to sing the Great American Songbook was a rare warble, although she did sing some of them in French. We wonder if Porter’s C’est Magnifique and Hammerstein/Rodgers The Last Time I Saw Paris were among her choices. FYI: Hommel’s new CD, The Jazz Faure Project: au bord de l’eau, features swing, bossa nova and ballad treatments of songs by 19th Century composer Gabriel Faure.