'Skates' won't change your life, but it's fine, 'nuff said
Admittedly, even when it was announced two years ago, Skates screamed "vanity project": Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo–American Idol finalists, partners in both music and life–in a Grease/Xanadu hybrid. They belt high Js and make kissy-faces for two hours while everyone else is left to fall on their asses—in every sense of the phrase.
Settling in at the renovated Studebaker, the nostalgia-bait preshow music had the audience singing and clapping along. So. It was indeed going to be one of those shows.
Call it the pleasantly temperate weather, or call it lowered expectations, but Skates is better than that. Granted, it is one of those shows. It has the nutritional value and structural integrity of a snack bar slushy, sure, and its working parts need a lot of TLC and WD-40 if it hopes to go anywhere. But, rough as it is, it's as scruffily agreeable as any John Hughes Rat Pack flick that you can leave running in the background.
Or, perhaps more accurately, a solid John Hughes Rat Pack imitation, one that, uncharacteristic to that director's oeuvre, favors the broad and loud.
Given that Skates concerns an early-90s pop star (DeGarmo) looking back on her late-70s youth to Get Back in Touch with Herself, "loud" makes a certain sense. (Rick Briskin's lite-FM music emphasizes both eras' mutual appreciation of Hammond organs and tenor-sax wails.) In tandem with a broadness and predictability that would stun even a sitcom, it might prove taxing.
But–and this was the surprise in an otherwise surprise-free evening–vanity never reared its head. DeGarmo shares and even to a degree cedes the stage to her character's youthful self, socked out of the park by Emma Lord. (They also blend well, too.) For his part, Ace Young doesn't play a hunk, but a rotating bunch of comically non-threatening heels and hooligans.
It's not life-changing, by any means, but neither was sharing a Tootsie Roll with the class cutie back in the day, and, back then, nothing anyone could say could convince you that wasn't life-changing.
Y'know what it was? It was fine. There is room in the world for "fine". (Or, rising prices notwithstanding, there should be room for "fine".) I've personally spent the last month or so helping run a show that was fine, and I'm the better for it. Fine shows are what will keep proscenium spaces like the Studebaker running for another century, and we're all the better for it.
Skates runs through June 26th at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. For tickets or more information, please call (312) 753-3210 or visit fineartsbuilding.com. For more on Skates, please visit skatesthemusical.com.
Photo by Liz Lauren.