Thursday, October 04, 2018

Chuck's Choices for the weekend of October 5, 2018

This week, the local premiere of a fringe festival hit, the return of a flashy magic show, and a classic indictment of greed and entitlement.

Share on Google+:


New This Week:

Image credit: St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Ben Whiteley conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in A Celebration of Muny at 100 on Sunday, October 7, at 3 pm. Vocal soloists ustin Michael Austin, Daniel Berryman, Keith Boyer, Cree Carrico, Debby Lennon, Elizabeth Stanley, and Phil Touchette join the orchestra and chorus in paying tribute to the Muny during their centennial with an afternoon of beautiful songs and music from its first quarter century. The concert takes place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

My take: Strictly speaking, this isn't theatre, but it is an evening of musical theatre classics, and that's close enough for me. The SLSO promises selections from "Annie Get Your Gun" (Irving Berlin), "Girl Crazy" (George and Ira Gershwin), "Show Boat" (Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II), and "The Pirates of Penzance" (Gilbert and Sullivan; huzzah!), "Eileen" (Victor Herbert), "The Desert Song" (Sigmund Romberg), "Of Thee I Sing" (George and Ira Gershwin; the first American musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama) "The Student Prince" (Romberg again), and "Sweet Adeline" (Kern and Hammerstein). What's not to like? I'll be there!


Linda Kennedy in Chef
Photo by Peter Wochniak, ProPhotoSTL
Upstream Theater presents Chef by Sabrina Mahfouz Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm (except for October 14, which is at 2 pm), through October 14. "Upstream Theater is excited to host renowned Swiss director Marianne de Pury who will stage the US premiere of the award-winning CHEF by UK/Egyptian playwright and poet Sabrina Mahfouz-the gripping story of how one woman went from being a haute-cuisine head chef to a convicted inmate running a prison kitchen. Leading us through her world of mouth-watering dishes and heart-breaking memories, Chef questions our attitudes to food, prisoners, violence, love and hope." Performances take place at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information, including show times: upstreamtheater.org.

My take: The thing about one-character shows is that the one character had better be interesting and the one actor had better know how to capture and hold an audience's attention. There's no question that Linda Kennedy, the one actor in question, knows how to do that; as evidence, I would offer the great solo cabaret show she did back in 2015. And the play, as Richard Green notes in his rave review for Talking Broadway, "first toured fringe festivals in Scotland and Britain in 2014, scooping up multiple awards." So you can hardly go wrong, can you?

An Ha Lim in The Illusionists
Photo by Joan Marcus
The Fox Theatre presents The Illusionists-Live From Broadway, Friday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 2 and 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 1 pm, October 5 - 7. "Full of hilarious magic tricks, death-defying stunts and acts of breathtaking wonder, The Illusionists has shattered box office records worldwide and thrilled audiences of all ages with a mind-blowing spectacular showcasing the jaw-dropping talents of seven of the most incredible illusionists on earth." The Fox in at 527 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com.

b>My take: We caught this last month when it played Chicago and while the performance we saw was one magician short (Dan Sperry, "The Anti-Conjurer," was inexplicably absent), it was still an entertaining and sometimes amazing show. As I noted in my review for KDHX, many of the effects will be familiar to fans of stage magic, but they're all done very well, and some of the close-up effects are most impressive.

The Little Foxes
Photo by Patrick Huber

St. Louis Actors' Studio presents Lillian Hellman's drama The Little Foxes Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm through October 14. "Lillian Hellman's legendary play about greed and ambition. Set in Alabama in 1900, The Little Foxes follows Regina Giddens and her ruthless clan, including her sister-in-law Birdie, as they clash in often brutal ways in an effort to strike the deal of their lives. Far from a sentimental look at a bygone era, the play has a surprisingly timely resonance with important issues facing our country today.". Performances take place at the Gaslight Theatre, 358 North Boyle. For more information call 314-458-2978 or visit stlas.org.

My take: In a New York Times article published the day before the October 31, 1949, premiere of Regina, Mark Blitzstein's operatic treatment of Hellman's play, Leonard Bernstein observed that the principal characters were "ugly people engaged in ugly dealings with one another." That is, to say the last, an understatement. Hellman's blistering indictment of crony capitalism and unenlightened self-interest is, if anything, more relevant now than when it was written in 1939, as an appalling spectacle of shameless greed, unprincipled arrogance, moral bankruptcy, and overwhelming entitlement dominates the national political stage. The tragedy of The Little Foxes isn't just American, it's also America's.


Held Over:

Oklahoma!
Photo by Peter Wochniak, ProPhotoSTL
Stages St. Louis presents the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! through October 7. "Oh, what a beautiful musical! Rodgers and Hammerstein's timeless first collaboration was, in many ways, their most innovative. And while OKLAHOMA! completely changed the face of American musical theatre over seventy years ago, it remains as fresh and vital today as it was then with its loving celebration of the American spirit. A stunning blend of drama, music, and dance, the exhilarating Rodgers and Hammerstein score contains such classics as "People Will Say We're In Love," "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top," "Kansas City," "I Cain't Say No," and the pulsating title tune, "Oklahoma!" A gold standard that set the bar for all great musicals that came after it, OKLAHOMA! is unforgettable entertainment for the entire family!" Performances take place in the Robert G. Reim Theatre at the Kirkwood Community Center, 111 South Geyer Road in Kirkwood. For more information: stagesstlouis.org.

My take: History (or at least Wikipedia) tells us that when Lorenz Hart was approached by his then-partner Richard Rodgers to work on a musical stage version of the 1931 Theatre Guild flop Green Grow the Lilacs, he declined, shrugging off the story of farmers and cowboys in turn-of-the-century Oklahoma as corny and uninteresting. He had a point there—the corn really is "as high as an elephant's eye" at times—but even so Oklahoma! was a box office smash in 1943 (a record-breaking 2,212 performances), garnered rave reviews, and has remained a favorite of audiences and critics ever since. The Stages production, which I saw last night, is broad and even borderline cartoonish in spots, but executed so flawlessly and with such precision that it's impossible not to find it vastly entertaining. Performances are top drawer and the score is, of course, irresistible.


This Random World
Photo by John Lamb
The West End Players Guild opens its 108th season with the St. Louis premiere of the comedy This Random World by Steven Dietz Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM, September 28 - October 7. "Only the audience knows that every character is connected to almost every other character is some way. Dietz's tale is one of continuous missed connections, a series of mostly funny and sometimes touching almost-interactions that would change the characters lives if they happened, which they don't." There will also be a show on Thursday, October 4, at 8 pm. Performances take place at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 North Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information, call 314-367-0025 or visit www.westendplayers.org.

My take: As I noted in my KDHX review of the world premiere of this play at the Humana Festival, one of the great pleasures of the novels of Charles Dickens is the often comical way in which he arranges for characters from very disparate walks of life to be connected, often by wildly improbable coincidences. In This Random World, veteran comic playwright Steve Dietz stands that convention on its head. In Dietz's anti-Dickensian story, characters who are already related to each other, however tangentially, repeatedly miss making connections as a result of coincidences that are as unlikely and comical as anything the great British novelist ever dreamed up. I'm on the play reading committee at West End and was a strong proponent of including this inventive farce in our season. I think you'll enjoy it.

No comments: