Starting tomorrow, I have a slew of shows I’m seeing over the next few weeks.
However, I’m planning ahead. There’s always so much to see at any given time in Chicago, and many of the shows last only a month or two. So, to see what you want, you gotta make a list and plan ahead.
Light in the Piazza at Marriot
Love the score, loved the PBS broadcast a few years ago. And Mary Ernster, whom I loved in Wings at Apple Tree, is playing Margaret. Also, Summer Naomi Smart, who won a Joseph Jefferson Award for her Charity Hope Valentine in Drury Lane’s Sweet Charity, is playing Clara. (Only in Chicago can an actress go from Gwen Verdon to Kelli O’Hara.) Marriot does quality work, so I’m sure this will be a gorgeous production.
I love Jerry Herman, and love La Cage. Even though the reviews have been tepid, I’m planning to catch this late June — maybe during pride weekend? What could be more prideful than a Jerry Herman musical about drag queens, spangles and doting male couples?
Blackbird @ Victory Gardens Theatre
TV stars onstage! CSI’s William Peterson stars in this two-person drama that promises to “stun me to silence”. Peterson got his start at Victory Gardens, so I must catch him before he crawls back into that TV box.
Buried Child @ Shattered Globe Theatre
Chicagoplays.com describes Child as such:
Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a macabre look at an American Midwestern family with a dark, terrible secret which has all but destroyed the family. Its timeless themes of human suffering–incest, murder, deceit and rebirth–resemble the destruction wreaked by heroes of Greek tragedy.
Incest, dark, murder, deceit, destruction, macabre, tragedy, secrets and rebirth? Sign me up!
