Hugh Jackman’s One Mistake

The skies were threatening, but the predicted rainstorm never came. Instead, we had a pleasant evening sitting with friends at Ravinia in Highland Park, enjoying dinner and the showmanship of Broadway and movie star Hugh Jackman.

Backed by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra and a quartet of backup singers, Jackman romped across the stage in a carefully timed 90-minute performance that offered glimpses of the numerous personas he has occupied during his long and varied career.

For Neil Diamond fans such as Barb, there were “Crunchy Granola Suite” and “Sweet Caroline,” from last year’s movie Song Sung Blue. Jackman even donned a stars-and-stripes vest to salute Thunder and Lightning, the Neil Diamond and Patsy Cline impersonators the film was based on. At least I think that’s what he was saluting.

Jackman made his Broadway debut in 2003 and won a Tony Award portraying his Australian counterpart Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, so it was not surprising that songs written by Allen were featured in a lengthy medley. Jackman closed with “Once Before I Go,” the 11 o’clock number from the musical.

I missed my chance to see Jackman in the Broadway revival of The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals and the show that reopened Broadway after Covid, so I was glad to see him perform a number from the show. As Harold Hill, he strutted through the newly renovated pavilion and out onto the lawn, warning us all about the trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool.

Jackman chose to portray two opposite characters from Les Misérables. After telling a story about his first audition for a musical, he sang “Stars,” the song that gives insight into the dark Inspector Javert. A few numbers later, Jackman returned to his own character in the film, singing the moving “Valjean’s Soliloquy.” I’m sure the versatile Jackman could have handled “Master of the House” and gotten a few laughs as well.

The Greatest Showman was celebrated with four songs. Jackman dazzled with “The Greatest Show,” while “A Million Dreams” gave solo opportunities to the backup singers. Their voices easily rivaled Jackman’s, who may be more of a performer than a technically outstanding singer.

Where did Jackman blunder? He closed a set of American classics with a pair of Frank Sinatra tunes, “That’s Life” and “New York, New York.” Surely in the several months since his last concert performance, someone should have told him that you can’t sing “New York, New York” in Chicago without following up with at least a few verses of “My Kind of Town.”

If he had sung that, he could have blown the roof off the new pavilion.

And that would have been fine, since it never did rain.

From Critic to Critiqued: A Long Plays Journey Out Of Sight

As a connoisseur of critical reviews, I savor media critics who dare to slice and dice a popular restaurant, give a “thumbs down” to a blockbuster movie, or advise us to tune out the latest Walking Dead sequel. More than 10 years after it was published I still relish Pete Wells’s New York Times bloody evisceration of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, Guy Fieri’s Times Square outpost.

But now the glistening kitchen knife is pointed my way. My schadenfreude has been repaid with a critique of my first, unpublished, play, White Collar. The post-mortem.

Writing a full-length theater piece has been simultaneously challenging and exhilarating. Under the tutelage of my dramaturge, the work underwent seventeen revisions. It expanded and contracted like Weird Al’s accordion, going from one act to an act-and-a-half, back down to one, and finally a full two acts with a prologue and epilogue tossed in for good measure. Characters were added, subtracted, and redefined, while scenes were melded together using (almost) seamless segues. Only the final twist remained unmanipulated.

When the manuscript reached the ideal number of 90 pages, my dramaturge scrubbed out the obvious gaffes and cliches and submitted the work to his friend, a local theater producer. The producer didn’t like the play. At all.

In a very detailed email, he explained why. He saw dramatic inconsistencies, stilted dialogue, and characters who added nothing and had no arc. If the prologue was bad, the epilogue was worse. And too many witty retorts.

I could quibble with a few of his thoughts and comments–I could quibble with more than a few. But I will take this as a positive learning experience. I normally express myself in 500-word blogs, so completing a work of this length was immensely satisfying, even if it is nowhere near professional quality.

My next step? My cognoscenti included some suggestions. He even tossed in a compliment or two. I may use that insight to tear the play down and rebuild it in a few new ways—versions 18 through 30. But on my honor, no more witty retorts.

And from now on, Guy Fieri, I stand with you!

photo by phot.ai

The Play’s The Thing. Where I’ve Been And Where I’m Going.

As my retirement roars past the half-year mark, people have two questions for me; how am I spending my time, and why am I writing fewer blogs? The answers are somewhat intertwined.

I am doing the standard “stuff” for a fairly young retiree. There’s plenty of time for sports. I’ve discovered I enjoy golf more than I thought I would, and that no matter how hard I try, playing both tennis and pickleball leads to poor results in each. At least that is my excuse!

Barb and I have done a spot of traveling and the planning for some upcoming trips to Germany and Australasia has also consumed many hours, planning that I am sure will prove worthwhile.

In addition, I’ve started to volunteer regularly at the Northern Illinois Food Bank, and I really do find that retirement has given me more time to spend with family, especially as an emergency babysitter. All four grandkids are adorable, so I enjoy every minute of that, as well as long leisurely walks with Cooper the Wonder Dog.

I’m doing a little consulting work in pathology, though it is a bit less than I had anticipated. That is the first reason the blog count has dropped–not as many pathology/medicine topics are coming to mind.

The second reason for the falloff in blog volume is more adventuresome–I have started to write a play!

An idea that was in the back of my head has germinated, and my writing time has mostly been spent on getting inside the heads of some characters I have created. For writing instruction, I dived into reading some great American plays, finding the buried humanity in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, the total lack of humanity in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and the overwhelming out-datedness of Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam.

You ask what I am writing about? You will get no answer from me on that question, for as Barb can tell you, I do not share my works-in-progress willingly. All I can tell you is I have taken the “write what you know” philosophy and thrown it out of the window.

I am taking what is for me the unusual step of working with a collaborator. Doctor Joel Cornfield, who I have known for many years, is an established playwright who is very active in the Chicago theater scene. He has agreed to take me under his wing to see if I can learn to fly. I’ll be sending him my first draft in a week or two.

So retirement rocks! Or as the greatest playwright who ever lived put it “Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age.”

It never hurts to end a blog with a bit of Shakespeare!

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Our Seven Worst Theater Experiences-One for Every Day of the Week!

The play’s the thing

Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

William Shakespeare~1603

Plop down in front of the TV? That’s a near daily occurrence. Visit the local Cineplex? We may do that a couple of times a month. But for most of us, live theater is a rarer, more delectable experience. It no longer requires donning a sport coat and tie, but whether it is plotting a route to the Loop, planning a theater weekend in New York City, or just a suburban drive to Lincolnshire or Oakbrook, there is a specialness about the experience. I have written about some wonderful theater we have seen. But what goes around comes around, and it’s time to let loose on some of the stinkers. So, in no particular order, here are seven shows we have seen, and wished we hadn’t.

Biggest Disappointment: Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubil, composers of Les Misérables, will always be our heroes. But their miserable concoction The Pirate Queen, which played Chicago in 2006 before debuting in New York in 2007, managed to avoid any of the tunefulness or dramatic story lines of its predecessor. No surprise that the show quickly walked the plank on Broadway.
Easiest Show for Us to Make an Early Exit: We have seen some wonderful shows with our intermittent subscription at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theater. Cabaret, from the 2014-2015 season, comes to mind. But that same season also had a production of Godspell that was absolutely dreadful. Half the audience, including Barb and I, filed out during intermission with no intention of returning. Maybe everyone was inspired to head to their favorite church, synagogue or mosque to seek divine forgiveness for buying tickets to this snoozer. Did people really like the original production in 1971?
Best Show to Leave When Your Son Gets a Fever: While we are dissing the Marriott, here’s one more low blow. A production of Chess, the Tim (Evita) Rice/Benny Anderson-Bjorn Ulvaeus (both from ABBA) collaboration was so dreadful we almost cheered when we learned at intermission that Michael had a temperature of 102°. Good thing we left. The reviews said the second act was even worse than the first.
Lacking Star Power: Back in 2009 you had to know someone to get a ticket to see James Gandolfini and the rest of a great cast in God of Carnage. It wasn’t quite Hamilton but it was big. By the time we caught the show a few months after the openning, the cast had turned over, and we were more interested in whether or not we would make our post-matinee flight back home than in the on-stage shenanigans.
Overheated: This should have been a winner. F. Murray Abraham starring as The Merchant of Venice at the Private Bank Theater downtown. We might have enjoyed the show if someone had mentioned to the theater manager that it can get hot in Chicago, even in March. Without air-conditioning the theater was absolutely stifling; our view of the stage was blocked by everyone fanning themselves with their Playbills.
Sob Story: Barb cried and cried at the movie theater during the Bette Midler tearjerker Beaches. I cried and cried being forced to sit through the interminable stage version at the Drury Lane Theater in Oak Brook. As far as I know, this Pre-Broadway tryout has still not found a path to the Great White Way.
A Hot Mess from Start to Finish: Who remembers the theatrical version of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I didn’t think so. A good cast featuring Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, Sheri Rene Scott, and Brian Stokes Mitchell trapped in musical nightmare. I hear the London version lasted a little longer than the New York City version. That’s reason enough to kick Britain out of the EU.

What’s your worst theater experience? Leave a Comment below. Just remember the Comment section on the ChicagoNow website is after that row of ads. I hate that set-up but that’s the way it is.

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Rap on the Tony’s

Watched some Tony’s last night
Found it real satisfyin’
Lots of winners in New York
High flyin’, laughing, cryin’.

Yeah James Corden was the man
Who this year was doing the hosting
Back in Twenty-Oh-Twelve
His own Tony he was toasting.

Broadway sound is really changing
I guess “Hamilton‘s” behind it
Catch the beat, sing it out
Catch the story, unwind it.

Color Purple got some love
It’s not a new story
Just get Oprah on the stage
And relive some old glory.

I liked a cool new bit
Broadway casts on the veranda
Singing other people’s shows
Got Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Then got to hear our fave
“One Day More” – Les Misérables
It got sung in Corden’s car
Heads were rockin’ like some bobbles.

Barbra Streisand closed the show
Many years since she’s on Broadway
Funny Girl in sixty four
To great things it was her hallway.

We’ll Shuffle Along
Say good-bye to all of thou now
Cause the show went overtime
But for me it’s ciao ciao now.

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