A not-quite alliterative round-up: ‘Children of Eden’ in concert, ‘Clue’ at Mercury, and ‘Camelot’ at Music Theater Works
Michelle Williams, David Phelps, and Randal Keith. Photo by Jennifer Heim.
A large-scale production of John Caird and Stephen Schwartz’s Genesis-based pop opera Children of Eden has been circling Chicagoland for a few years, and it finally made a one-day landing at the Cadillac Palace in concert form. Scuttlebutt says Schwartz, who’s been directly involved, is eager to give this show of his—a big earner in the stock and amateur markets, but tricky to mount commercially—a little spark. Cameramen were on hand to film the two performances, and this footage will eventually be streamed as the producers explore their options for a fuller showing.
With refinement and firm management, I’m sure this Eden could clean up as a touring production. As a sit-down commercial prospect, I’m less sure. The large cast requirement that makes it a popular piece for amateur theatre might make a pocketbook producer blanch a bit. Not to mention that the everyone-gets-to-do-something spirit that’s so appealing does occasionally threaten to tip into bloat. But there were a lot of Eden alumns in the audience who embraced this warts-and-all musical about parenthood and its attendant hurt through its belty highs and sweet lulls. No doubt the audience is out there somewhere in some number.
And, pocketbook be damned, I love the sound of a large anthemic chorus. If a crafty producer can say “Let there be Eden,” let it be for as long as possible.
For more information on this concert and to stay updated with future developments, please visit childrenofedenthemusical.com.
L to R: Kelvin Roston, Jr. ,McKinley Carter, ,Erica Stephan, Andrew Jessop, Jonah Winston, Nancy Wagner. Photo by Liz Lauren.
Meanwhile, at Mercury, Clue also enjoyed a warm reception, whether one was familiar with the classic board game or the cult 1985 film on which the script is more directly based. Through a McCarthyist milieu, that film set out to make sense of why exactly a bunch of people with truly colorful names were desperate to keep the question of whodunnit behind locked doors, only to conclude that the very notion of the murder mystery is nonsensical—if anybody coulda dunnit, it stands to reason that the mysterysmith’s ultimate choice of killer is rather arbitrary.
Clue the play, in its own way, has to make sense of that nonsense. Adapters Sandy Rustin, Hunter Foster, and Eric Price do a lot of bolt-tightening to better set up the oily Mr. Boddy’s game, and much of their screwball repartee complements screenwriter Jonathan Lynn’s. Likewise, Michael Holland expands on John Morris’s score to proper melodramatic effect. That said, as an acolyte of the Clue film cult, I’m not sure playing the script for face-front-and-gasp camp humor is quite the way to go. As Michael McKean, the film’s Mr. Green, repeatedly reminded his castmates, “Something terrible has happened here.” It’s nonsense, but it should feel like something’s at stake. It needs a nip of (poisoned) brandy, is all.
It’s still deathly good fun, and you’re probably not going to find a tighter comic ensemble anywhere else this fall. In particular, the casting of Jonah Winston as the buffoonish Colonel Mustard and McKinley Carter as the black widow ice queen Mrs. White is as inspired as it was perhaps obvious.
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard”? Mercury just about reverses that proposition.
Clue plays through January 1st, 2023 at Mercury Theater Chicago, 3745 N. Southport Ave. For tickets or more information, please visit mercurytheaterchicago.com.
Christine Mayland Perkins and Nathe Rowbotham. Photo by Brett Beiner.
One more for the retooling/remounting/revitalizing department: Music Theater Works’s take on Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot, a title with a lot of Golden Age nostalgia behind it, but also one that has never really gelled. Solid songs in service of a talky, tricky, realistic-until-it-isn’t book: a tale as old as time. Director Brianna Borger opts for a sort-of story-theatre troupe-of-players approach, one that’s free of accents and armor, but, unfortunately, not quite free of starch.
The central trio of Arthur (Michael Metcalf), Guenevere (Christine Mayland Perkins), and Lancelot (Nathe Rowbotham) are fine singers (even as their mics kept misbehaving), and are even finer actors when faced with the fervent and stumbling pauses that make up their love triangle. But Parker Guidry as Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son and the proverbial serpent in the garden, seems to be the only one having bona fide fun up there. Villain songs are just like that, and Guidry has two of them. The problem is they’re back to back and Mordred doesn’t show up until Act Two.
How hard it is for Lancelot to leave dear Genny is one thing. How easy this sounds like a night out is up to you.
Camelot runs through November 13th at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd, Skokie, IL. For tickets or more information, please visit musictheaterworks.com.
For more reviews on these or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com