1-16-09
2009 Starting Off Well
Happy New Year and welcome to the Economic Hangover edition of “Behind the Curtain.” Nine long-running shows are closing up shop on the Great White Way, including Hairspray, Boeing-Boeing, and Spamalot. Nonprofit theatre (see the article on the NEA report in this issue) also struggles, particularly midsize houses. San Francisco’s venerable 42-year-old Magic Theatre, which specializes in new plays, sent out an SOS to supporters a few weeks ago warning that they may have to shut their doors permanently if they can’t erase a standing six-figure debt.
But it’s not all bad news. Wicked, that bulletproof behemoth on Randolph Street, announced that it took in a record-breaking $1,764,428 in just eight performances in the week ending Jan. 4—the most ever hauled in by a musical in Chicago, and thus breaking the show’s own holiday-week record from last year. The show closes at the Oriental Jan. 25, and it may be a good long while in this economy before another production hauls in those kinds of ducats. Meantime, Steppenwolf’s production of The Seafarer has extended its run for another two weeks, through Feb. 22. And The Screwtape Letters at the Mercury is feeling flush enough to offer free Thursday night dinners at Cullen’s Bar & Grill to patrons who order a quartet of tickets. The show, presented by Fellowship for the Performing Arts, will also add Friday night talkbacks with co-creators Max McLean and Jeffrey Fiske (who are also the star and director of the show, respectively) about how they managed to turn non-Narnia C.S. Lewis into box office gold. The show runs through Feb. 15.
Broadway and Hollywood are paying attention to two of our local favorites. Director David Cromer, whose production of Our Town with the Hypocrites made nearly everyone’s best-of list for 2008 (setting the bar very high for the Lookingglass production, which opens Feb. 11), will be re-staging the show at the Barrow Street Theatre in the West Village in the next few months, and then moves on to direct Broadway revivals of Neil Simon’s autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound in the fall. Cromer replaces veteran director Daniel Sullivan on the Simon duo, who departed the project without giving a public reason. Meantime, Michael Shannon’s performance in the Sam Mendes film Revolutionary Road continues to generate buzz—Entertainment Weekly ran a spotlight piece on him in the Jan. 9 issue, in which Shannon attributed part of his much-noted intensity to the fact that “even when I’m sitting there, staring into space, I look like I’m upset about something.”
Neither Shannon nor his fellow vet from A Red Orchid Theatre, Guy Van Swearingen, have much to be upset about these days. According to Red Orchid artistic director Kirsten Fitzgerald, Van Swearingen will be in Michael Keaton’s The Merry Gentlemen, which should hit movie theatres around the end of next month, and also will be in the pilot episode of Patrick Swayze’s new TNT shot-in-Chicago drama, “The Beast.”
Congratulations are also in order for longtime freelance critic Catey Sullivan, who is now responsible for the theatre section in Chicago Magazine’s Guide. This is in addition to Sullivan’s standing gigs with Windy City Times, Pioneer Press, Midwest Living, and Chicago Examiner.com (nice to see that some arts journalists can still get work!) Send story tips and listings to cateysullivan@ameritech.net.
Youth-oriented theatre companies aren’t afraid to face contemporary demons. Adventure Stage Chicago won a $10,000 2009 Access to Artistic Excellence Grant from the NEA for its upcoming world premiere of Katrina: The Girl Who Wanted Her Name Back. Jason Tremblay’s play, opening April 5, follows a young New Orleans girl who shares a name with the horrific storm that leveled her city. Free Street Theatre also tackles a current crisis in their latest show, Sub-Prime Youth, opening Jan. 24. Written and performed as always by the teen members of the company, the show follows the travails of a first-generation Mexican-American family caught up in the collapse of the housing market, and kicks off Free Street’s 40th anniversary season.
Kudos to the recipients of the Midwest Film Festival’s “Best of the Midwest” Awards, which were handed out on Dec. 2. Native son John C. Reilly took home the award for best actor for his performance in The Promotion (which also garnered the best feature and best director award for Steve Conrad). Reilly wasn’t there in person, but Conrad read his acceptance letter, which said in part, “I am from Chicago. It will always be my hometown, so to get this award from you means more to me than it would in, say, New York, Not that I’ve ever been given anything from New York. But still—it ain’t Chicago.” Virginia Madsen, another hometown sweetheart, won best actress for Diminished Capacity.
Victory Gardens and Chicago Public Radio fight the post-inaugural blahs with a Winter Block Party on Jan. 25, featuring graffiti art, DJs, and an “Open Mic Academy” with hip hop playwright Idris Goodwin and poet Kevin Coval, plus a discussion with author/artist/activist William “Upski” Wimsatt and Rick Kogan. The “block party” portion runs from noon to 6 p.m. and is free—Wimsatt and Kogan’s discussion is at 7 p.m. and runs $10-$15. All events are at the Victory Gardens Biograph. For information, call CPR at 312/948-4644 or visit www.chicagopublicradio.org/events.
Of course, many of us fight seasonal affective disorder with a little help from fermented substances. (We neither condone nor condemn such practices here at “Behind the Curtain.”) But even if you’ve sworn off hooch as a New Year’s resolution, the n.u.f.a.n ensemble gives you a way to unload your old bottles. On Jan. 31, the company has an old-fashioned rent party, in support of their February show, artistic director Paul Barile’s Cold Weather Comfort. Five clams gets you in the door and access to food, booze, and various entertainments, but if you bring your gently-used liquor from home, you’ll get a raffle ticket for each bottle. It all takes place at Megan Brown’s pad at 3236 N. Lakewood Ave., #1. For more n.u.f.a.n. info, go to www.nufanensemble.com.
Kate Harris wants everybody to know she still lives here. Seems like one of PerformInk’s Year In Review writers referred to her as a “former Chicagoan.” Her show, an adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, did very well in New York. But Kate still lives and works in Chicago.
Finally, belated happy birthday wishes to Mike Nussbaum, 85 years young, whose castmates in Chicago Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Nussbaum is one of the witches) serenaded him during a tech rehearsal break on Dec. 29, and shared good wishes from friends throughout the theatre world.
Send suggestions for stimulus packages to kerryreid@comcast.net.