A Memorial Day musical marathon
Tiffany Topol. Photo by Liz Lauren.
It’s certainly a Beautiful time in Chicagoland. First, Marriott Theatre mounted their production of the Carole King bio-musical; Drury Lane will do theirs in the autumn; and right in the middle comes Paramount’s.
If this sounds like potential overload, it helps Beautiful is one of the good folks when it comes to these jukebox shows. It even makes a nifty companion piece to Jersey Boys, both taking place around that time when 1650 Broadway was pumping out hits with punch-clock regularity.
Over at Paramount, starting as one of those clock-punchers all the way through to her California migration, Tiffany Topol wears the King persona like a cozy Laurel Canyon serape. Meanwhile, everyone is to hand delivering that precise musical comedy blend of glam, laughs, and surprising bursts of heartbreak. Moreover, Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s replica Beaux-Arts Carnegie Hall looks swell without clashing with Paramount’s Art Deco.
Beautiful runs through Jun. 16 at Paramount Theatre, 23 East Galena Blvd, Aurora, IL. For tickets or more information, please call (630) 896–6666 or visit paramountaurora.com.
Karylin Veres and the Company. Photo by Kelsey Decker / Wannabe Studio.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green spent their joint careers throwing pies at showbiz types and their pretensions, their screenplay to Singin’ in the Rain being their most well-known salvo. Their musical On the Twentieth Century is a particularly rich lemon meringue—showbiz types don’t come much more grandiose than the skint and blinkered producer Oscar Jaffee and Lily Garland, his Galatea who’s not coming back to her pedestal anytime soon.
And composer Cy Coleman, best known for sophisticated jazz-pop (“The Best Is Yet to Come”, “Witchcraft”), threw a curveball for this screwball comedy by writing in a comic opera vein. The overture on any of its two major cast recordings is like a lost Looney Tunes track.
Alas, On the Twentieth Century is so rarely served. “Comic opera” doesn’t usually suggest “budget-friendly,” and looking up pictures of the 20th Century Limited, the luxury train upon which it’s set, could make a set designer blanch. However, Blank Theatre’s new production—which could fit snugly in a conductor’s vest pocket—ought to help point the way for how it can be done con brio.
Danny Kapino continues to prove his resourcefulness with this sort of small-scale venture, requiring little more than a few chairs, steamer trunks, and portable tap platforms to conjure up the barreling train. He’s also found able porters in casting Max DeTogne and Karylin Veres as Oscar and Lily—both really lean in to that old-timey mellerdramer feel that Comden and Green so ruthlessly send up, yet bring something contemporary to the playing style. Though Alicia Berneche proves an ample stowaway as the daffy evangelical Letitia Primrose. And Aaron Kaplan drives the little big engine in the pit.
Zippy, zingy, decadent—On the Twentieth Century rises again. Catch it before it jumps the rails.
On the Twentieth Century runs though Jun. 9 at the Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark St. For tickets or more information, please visit blanktheatrecompany.org.
Jennifer Simard, Megan Hilty, and Christopher Sieber. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.
Come to think of it, Madeline Ashton might give Lily and Oscar a run for their melodramatic money. Whether she and her best frenemy Helen Sharp can make that Broadway bank in the fall remains to be seen.
For a show about two women driven by insecurity, Death Becomes Her, now playing a Chicago tryout, seems to be a supremely confident enterprise. Not just because the purse holders hear what must be boisterous houses every night. That it entrusted this intensely beloved cult property to a relatively unestablished team—book by Marco Pennette, music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey—was evidence enough.
To me, the thing that most came to mind is the musical adaptation of Beetlejuice. Not just because of their shared wickedly morbid sense of humor—both are joke and spectacle-heavy productions backed by major film studios’ theatrical divisions, after all. There’s also more than a little “just go with it” energy. One could ask what exactly brought the egomaniacal Madeline and the aggressively passive-aggressive Helen together in the first place. But this is also a show that says, sure, a sorceress has been living in a gigunda cathedral smack-dab in the middle of L.A. peddling an immortality potion.
But whereas Beetlejuice is beholden to a particular visual style, Death Becomes Her is beholden to visual effects, those visual effects being a lot of the reason the film was made in the first place. We’re talking comically broken necks and shotgun blasts to the gut. Being so visually driven with a fair amount of dazzle going on at all times, the lyrics in places could’ve perhaps been less crammed, clever as they are naturally and killer in Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard’s hands. But the funkily swinging score has attitude aplenty and could very well hold up to further listening.
Beneath all the dazzle, there’s good bones. Here’s hoping those don’t break anytime soon—that immortality potion doesn’t cover injuries. Yes, now the warning.
Death Becomes Her runs through Jun. 2 at Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W Randolph St. For tickets or more information, please call (800) 775-2000 or visit either broadwayinchicago.com or deathbecomesher.com.
For more reviews on these or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.