11-24-06
500 Clown Christmas is Dark and Uplifting
Molly Brennan, Adrian Danzig and Paul Kalina are 500 Clown.The dark, cynical lyrics of 500 Clown Christmas fly by so fast, you’re not sure if you hear them correctly. Part of the reason is that those lyrics are ensconced in uplifting, sometimes hard-driving rock music that makes the audience want to bounce, not weep. Part of it is that you’re still savoring the delicious irony of a line like “Life is a hooker that you never can lay; It’s Christmastime again,” when another hilarious line follows, and you just can’t keep up with them all.
This is a good thing. It’s composer and musician John Fournier’s music and lyrics that make 500 Clown Christmas so much fun.
Though I still can’t figure out how “Benny and the Jets” got to be a Christmas song.
The three principals in this slightly amended holiday show from last year are Molly Brennan, Adrian Danzig and Paul Kalina, whose attempts to grab a Ukulele take up a good portion of the opening act, and provide the only truly acrobatic part of the show.
Most of the piece is about breaking down the barriers between audience and performers, and here 500 Clown succeeds quite well, even getting the audience to perform a trick on their own with champagne glasses. The audience also participates in “gift” giving, sometimes even (mostly unwittingly) donating some of their own items.
The storyline is slim, but the irony is heavy, though not so heavy that anyone can’t relate to the holiday angst. The show is definitely not for little kids, but those over 10 would probably think their parents were really cool.
But that’s what you’d expect from a clown show, especially a 500 Clown show. What’s entirely unexpected here are the quality of the voices, especially Molly Brennan’s, who can belt like it’s nobody’s business.
The bottom line is, if you’re sick of the Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers and want to impress your friends and family, there is no better show this holiday season than 500 Clown Christmas.
500 Clown Christmas – 500 Clown
Chris Jones, Tribune – “For sure, the show is strictly for those who look at the holidays slightly askance. It’s looser than any self-respecting goose. And it’s not really for kids. But I swear, if this funny, smart, and good-spirited thing were up in New York, it would be the subject of droll little articles in pretentious magazines, and the three genial and very skilled clowns – Molly Brennan (the show’s emotional core), Adrian Danzig and (new this year) the terrific Paul Kalina – would be forever doing little bits on those late-night talk shows, which are always desperate for seasonality without saccharine. In Chicago, thank God, you have to catch them at the theater. Live.”
Brian Kirst, Free Press – “Ultimately, 500 Clown Christmas is like spending an evening with a cooler, hardcore version of the B-52’s. In a favorite moment, the cast members sing about how joy holds your hands like a pair of boxing gloves. I’ll go that one better by saying that joy will definitely hold your hands very tightly – perhaps in pair of torn, glittery gloves – if you treat yourself and your loved ones to a performance of 500 Clown Christmas this season.”
The Christmas Schooner – Bailiwick Repertory
Chris Jones, Tribune – “It’s never had much of a set. Its score is merely plunked out each year on an upright piano. And, with rare exceptions, its perennially youthful, non-Equity crew has been deeper of heart than craft. But the news this year that John Reeger and Julie Shannon’s The Christmas Schooner makes its final voyage at the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre – after a dozen consecutive seasonal excursions – was enough to provoke a serious twinge of regret.”
Brian Kirst, Free Press – “The Christmas Schooner is directed with economy and a smooth forcefulness by David Zak. It is obvious that he feels a great affinity for the people that inhabit this story and this affection pours out onto the stage. The cast picks up the dramatically rich baton that Zak hands them and proceeds to give performances of almost athletic agility and determination. Most impressively, Laura Sturm as Alma Stossel, the wife of the sailor who makes the first voyage, delivers a Broadway caliber characterization. She offers passion, levity and a sterling silver singing voice that slashes with emotion.”
The Real Thing – Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Almost 10 years ago to the day, a weirdly named theater troupe called Remy Bumppo became Chicago’s newest Equity theater company with a production of Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day...Who’d have thought Remy Bumppo would still be around a decade later? Not I. And I surely didn’t think they’d be flying high with a sexy, sensual, sizzlingly articulate production of another Stoppard play, The Real Thing, a savvy and verbose confection that here functions very comfortably as adult foreplay for the over-degreed. On opening night, people in the packed house upstairs at the old Victory Gardens were overtly leaning their bodies toward the stage, clearly drawn in by the words and craving more. There’s no greater compliment for a Stoppard production.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “Stoppard’s The Real Thing, which debuted in 1982 and has been revived many times since then, is now being revisited by Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. The production, directed by James Bohnen (The Best Man), is as smart and literate as you might expect (though with an unusually drab set), and the ideally cast actors are highly skilled. But frankly, despite all the raves for this play over the years and all the talk of how it was an emotional breakthrough for the preternaturally clever Stoppard, it always has struck me as just a bit too slick and self-congratulatory.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City – “Watching Nick Sandys as Henry deliver Stoppard’s rapier dry wit is the one of the joys of director James Bohnen’s production (especially when Sandys’ Henry expounds his views on why 1960s pop is more sublime than classical music). Yet all of Henry’s typical defenses fail him when faced with Annie’s unforeseen betrayal. Linda Gillum as Annie just about matches Sandys’ performance if it wasn’t for her occasionally wayward British accent. This minor quibble is the only thing that lessens her emotionally incisive performance.”
A Wonderful Life – Porchlight Music Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “George may not have been born to sing, but we find we don’t mind if he does – such is the power of this yarn. As we go, angst-laden, to our beds each Christmas, it comforts us with the seeming revelation that we’ve made a major contribution, just when we think we’ve achieved little or nothing all year. And that’s worth any price of admission. I suspect Porchlight will do well with this affable musical these holidays; it’s a decent, reasonably affordable choice for groups looking to entertain multiple generations.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “The Harnick-Raposo score is charming, the characters are vivid, the story has real substance and Porchlight director L. Walter Stearns, musical director Eugene Dizon and choreographer Matt Raftery have assembled a spiffy cast to lead us through this all-American tale that easily can hold its own as a holiday staple alongside Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In fact, in their counterpointed themes of greed vs. generosity, and the private good vs. the public good – as well as in their use of flashbacks to make sense of a current life – the two tales are surprisingly similar.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “So why would anyone want to recreate the inimitable magic of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life as – of all things – a stage musical? We enter the theater with that question, and we leave with it. With a score that implants itself in the mind with all the permanency of an Etch-a-Sketch, what this flavorless, colorless musical gets so wrong isn’t that it messes with an iconic text. It’s that it thoroughly misses the original’s character: not cloying sentiment but genuine emotion – at times sweet, at times brutal. Stearns’s inoffensive cast goes through the motions without touching the emotions.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to create a theatrical meditation on the life and work of shy American collagist Joseph Cornell.” – Kerry Reid reviewing Court Theatre’s production of Hotel Cassiopeia in the Reader.