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Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
The musical '42 Balloons' at Chicago Shakes is a producer's bet on the unknown
The 63-year-old Broadway producer Kevin McCollum is of the age when one starts to wonder about one's legacy. Then again, producers, an optimistic crew by trade and existential necessity, always have to be looking forward. No producer wants to be tagged a nostalgist. And so, at a bar on Navy Pier, one can see McCollum's famously restless mind flit back and forth between past and present, defining his oeuvre and shying away from the task. McCollum's past includes 'Rent,' 'Avenue Q,' 'In the Heights' and 'Six,' to name the biggest titles upon which his reputation and financial well-being most fully rest. In the immediate future, there is '42 Balloons.' That's the title of McCollum's latest tryout at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the same theater that launched both 'The Notebook' (with a short Broadway run that still stings the producer) and 'Six,' a blockbuster hit despite having the most of Broadway musical budgets. '42 Balloons' is a musical about the quixotic Vietnam veteran known as 'Lawnchair Larry' Walters, who took to the air in 1982 above Southern California while seated in a lawn chair lifted by more than 40 helium-filled weather balloons. Walters reached as high as 16,000 feet, which meant he entered the sights of commercial pilots in airspace controlled by the Los Angeles International Airport. He came down by popping his balloons with a BB gun, a metaphor waiting to happen. The Federal Aviation Administration did not appreciate the stunt, eventually charging Walters with violating controlled airspace, operating a non-airworthy craft (surely debatable, given the success of the flight) and flying without a balloon license. But Walters' lawnchair, replete with its jerry-rigged frame and attached water bottles, is still on display at the National Air and Space Museum as part of an exhibit aptly titled 'We All Fly.' The core of Walters' audacious story has long interested others. In 2009, Steppenwolf Theatre Company produced Bridget Carpenter's 'Up,' a moving play that imagined the life of a man named Walter, who once had been famous for attaching balloons to his lawn chair but then spends his days fiddling in his basement trying to re-create his moment of fame. The Disney movie 'Up' from the same year also had some similarities, and Walters has been the subject of podcasts and articles aplenty. But the possibilities for a musical from the story are pretty self-evident, given the long Broadway history of flight as a metaphor for escape, a willingness to take risks and the ever-popular craving for self-actualization. All of that pretty much describes 'Defying Gravity' from 'Wicked,' one of the most popular Broadway numbers of the 21st century: 'So if you care to find me,' Elphaba sings, 'Look to the western sky.' A broomstick? 42 balloons? The pneumatic ascent to the 'Heaviside Layer' in 'Cats'? All very much a shared metaphor. Those shows, though, were the work of a highly experienced writing and composing team. That's far from the case with '42 Balloons.' To say that the show's sole writer and composer, the 32-year-old Jack Godfrey, is a newcomer to the musical theater is to understate. '42 Balloons' is not only his first musical but his first foray into the professional theater. His director and dramaturg, Ellie Coote, is a childhood friend with whose brother Godfrey played rugby. Until recently he had a day job in London teaching English as a foreign language. Born and raised in Oxford, England, the earnest, modest and likable Godfrey says he came from a family that did not have any connections to the theater, beyond attending tours of 'Les Miserables.' But his dad wrote him silly songs as a kid and he picked up that mantle. 'I wanted to write songs for Beyoncé,' he says. Godfrey studied religion at Durham University as an undergraduate, with a year abroad at Boston College, but eventually found his way to a musical theater course at the University of London and remained, having decided to pursue a career as a writer of musicals. His only other real experience prior to '42 Balloons' has been penning music for his brother's short movie and writing a musical history of the Methodist Church ('kind of an 18th century 'Book of Mormon,' he says, 'only much less funny'). But then, some eight years ago, he came across the story of Walters on the internet and he says, 'I could relate to a story about a man who had a dream.' He started meeting with Coote and putting together a score. By happenstance, Coote knew a member of the creative team behind 'Six' and Godfrey played his score for him. That led to a meeting with Andy and Wendy Barnes, a British married couple who became late-in-life developers of new British musicals and are well respected for having discovered 'Six.' That led to a few Monday night workshops in London at the Vaudeville Theatre, staged on top of the set for 'Six,' which led to a call to McCollum, which led to a first full staging of '42 Balloons' at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester, which has now led to the show's North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. 'We love working on new musicals here,' says Edward Hall, Chicago Shakespeare's relatively new artistic director, as he watches rehearsals. His company has already put a lot of development work in the title alongside McCollum, whom Hall has known for years. Should '42 Balloons' follow a similar trajectory to those 'Six' queens, it's fair to say that everyone involved would be delighted. After the run at the Lowry, Godfrey got a call from McCollum. At Navy Pier, he showed he can do a pretty good impression of the producer's voice: 'Jack, it's Kevin McCollum. I want to take your show to America. How does that sound?' Ergo, '42 Balloons' has its official liftoff on Navy Pier on Tuesday night. 'I really love this country,' Godfrey says unprompted and rather touchingly after recounting the show's brief history alongside his own. 'I have this fascination with American culture and I picked an American story because I wanted to write sort of from an outsider's perspective, very much like Bill Bryson has written about Britain. I really want this show to be my love letter to America.' Fascinatingly, one of Godfrey's lyrics points out that although Walters had a camera attached to his chair, he never took one photograph; such was the difference between 1982 and today. '42 Balloons' appears very much in the McCollum aesthetic. Its physical scale and cast size is relatively modest (like 'Six'), a sampling of Godfrey's songs suggest a melodic, soft-core romanticism (like 'Rent's' Jonathan Larson), the show aims to have a certain insouciance (like 'Avenue Q') and the central character is a misfit like Man in Chair from 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' another McCollum title. Such comparisons are, of course, wildly premature and may prove ridiculous. Or apt. Such aspirations are why producers take risks on the unproven. '42 Balloons,' McCullom says, 'is about what musicals are so often about: 'How do you fly against all odds?''
Chicago Tribune
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Theater for summer 2025: Our top 10 from '42 Balloons' on Navy Pier to Amy Morton back at Steppenwolf
As our chilly, dusty spring turns into summer, Chicago theaters have a stellar line-up of warm-weather attractions for you and your out-of-town guests to enjoy. Here are 10 shows opening between Memorial Day and Labor Day that look especially promising. Live entertainment can be found all over town, of course, but Chicago Shakespeare Theater will be especially busy this summer with two new shows likely to attract international attention. Before I list my picks, I'll add my annual reminder that some here may disappoint, and that 10 shows hardly do the full seasonal slate justice. You can also find an Ethiopian Circus at Chicago Shakespeare this summer, not to mention magic and comedy all over town, some familiar musicals in the city and suburbs, and a new Second City e.t.c Stage. revue, to name just a few more. And we've also not included the likes of American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, just a short drive away. '42 Balloons' at Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Arguably the highest profile Chicago show this summer, '42 Balloons' is a pre-Broadway tryout from producer Kevin McCollum ('Six') in Chicago Shakespeare's Yard on Navy Pier. First produced at The Lowry in Salford, Manchester, in the United Kingdom and penned by the British writer-composer Jack Godfrey, '42 Balloons' is the real-life story of 'Lawnchair Larry' Walters, a Vietnam veteran who, in 1982, made a quixotic, solo 45-minute flight above Southern California in, of all things, a lawn chair, as lifted by more than 40 helium-filled weather balloons, reaching 16,000 feet. Expect an all-new pop score themed to the power ballads, funk and glam rock sounds of the much-maligned 1980s. 'Diana the Musical' at Theo Theatre: Although a flop on Broadway, this campy musical from Joe DiPietro was to be rethought and retooled in Chicago-style fashion by Fred Anzevino, the longtime artistic director of Theo and a man who deeply appreciated all the former Princess of Wales did during the AIDS crisis. Alas, Anzevino died while in rehearsals for a show now dedicated to his memory. For all its excesses, 'Diana' did have a better score than a lot of critics first realized, so I'll be interested to see how it works as director Brenda Didier and the other Theo artists work to honor a man who did so much for small productions of musicals in Chicago. 'Iraq, But Funny' at Lookingglass Theatre: The list of theatrical comedies about Iraq is short, but Lookingglass Theatre, experiencing a rebirth this season after a long hiatus, is adding to the canon with this semi-autobiographical show about five generations of Assyrian women, as penned by ensemble member Atra Asdou and starring Asdou, Susaan Jamshidi, Gloria Imseih Petrelli, James Rana and Sina Pooresmaeil. Asdou describes her show as a 'raucous satire,' and the narrator is 'a British guy.' Intriguing. 'You Will Get Sick' by Steppenwolf Theatre Company: The title might not suggest summer frolics but few will care, since 'You Will Get Sick' represents the return of the much-loved Amy Morton to the Steppenwolf stage after an absence of eight years (since her appearance in 'Hir' in 2017). Since then, she's been one of the main characters on the massively popular Dick Wolf TV show 'Chicago P.D.,' which has been good for her and the franchise's global viewers but less good for Chicago theatergoers. Morton returns to the mainstage of her home theater in a much-acclaimed play by Noah Diaz about a young man and his caregiver, a role first played off-Broadway by Linda Lavin. Co-artistic director Audrey Francis directs. 'Kimberly Akimbo' at CIBC Theatre: Chicago gets its first look at the first national tour of the justly acclaimed Broadway musical from 2022 about the 16-year-old title character who has a rare genetic disorder — meaning that she ages very quickly and has the appearance of a 62-year-old woman, even as she is just trying to go to junior prom. The gorgeous score is by the incomparable Jeanine Tesori with a book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire, after his own play. This affirmative and teen-friendly piece, fundamentally, is the quirky story of a stranger in the strange land of her own body. And it's far more life-affirming than its plot might first suggest. 'Dhaba on Devon Avenue' by Writers Theatre: I'm a sucker for locally set plays and this summer attraction at Writers Theatre in Glencoe is set on Chicago's famously rich and diverse Devon Avenue, the Far North Side artery and early epicenter of the Indiana diaspora in the Midwest. Homing in on a big dilemma for family restaurants, playwright Madhuri Shekar writes about a small Indian eatery that has to contend with the economic struggles of the restaurant business at large and generational change within a hard-working family that has long served hungry diners on Devon. 'Beauty and the Beast' at Cadillac Palace Theatre: This 1994 live adaptation of the beloved animated movie was a seminal event in the launch of Disney Theatricals, a producing entity that went on to create 'The Lion King,' 'Aladdin' and many others. The first Broadway project of the mighty mouse basically set about putting the movie on stage, replete with the fabulous songs by Alan Menken, the late Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. It was masterfully done and never repeated, even by Disney, who then turned to distinctively theatrical artists like Julie Taymor. This summer, Disney is bringing back this title in a whole new touring production. I'll be fascinated to see what decisions they make for the tale as old as time. Better yet, the Chicago great Kathy Voytko is playing Mrs. Potts. 'Twisted Melodies' at Northlight Theatre: The talented and longtime Chicago actor Kelvin Rolston Jr. has written this new show for himself about the late Chicago-born musician, singer and composer Donny Hathaway, known for his soul music and R&B hits, as well as his duets with Roberta Flack. Expect to hear Hathaway classics like 'I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know,' 'The Ghetto' and 'The Closer I Get to You.' The highly experienced Ron OJ Parson directs this show about a musical giant who, alas, lived only for 33 years. 'Billie Jean' at Chicago Shakespeare Theater: In one of the biggest shows of the post-Wimbledon summer, Chicago Shakespeare Theater explores the life and times of the tennis icon and LGBTQ activist Billie Jean King, who lived for many years in Chicago. I'm told King is involved with a show likely to have a future beyond Chicago. Penned by the popular and prolific Lauren Gunderson, 'Billie Jean' will be directed by Marc Bruni and already has a commercial producer attached. How the show will handle the action on the court itself remains to be seen but you can expect a celebration of King's ground-breaking achievements in and out of the great game. 'Things With Friends' at American Blues Theater: The high-profile writer Kristoffer Diaz ('Hells Kitchen,' 'The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity') is now an ensemble member at American Blues and he has given them the coup of producing the world premiere of his latest play, 'Things With Friends.' Therein, we meet Adele and Burt throwing a dinner party for their dearest friends, even as the George Washington Bridge and Brooklyn Battery Tunnel have collapsed into their respective rivers. Things apparently go from there.
Chicago Tribune
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: A Black bromance under stress in ‘Hymn' at Chicago Shakespeare
How many straight, Black men over 50 would consider texting a bro and suggesting a big night out together at Chicago Shakespeare Theater? Not that many, would be the honest truth. Women buy most theater tickets, and data consistently shows that most heterosexual men in a theater audience have been coaxed there by a female partner. Dudes, especially in friend groups, are an endangered population in a theater lobby, and that's particularly the case when it comes to Black men. Thirty-some years of theatergoing have also taught me that's especially true in Chicago, with rare exceptions. Which brings me to playwright Lolita Chakrabarti's 'Hymn,' if you get the double meaning of the title. Here's a modestly ambitious, highly enjoyable show that celebrates African American friendship and is directed by Ron OJ Parson with such exuberance that you leave thinking there actually could be few things better than finding a long-lost brother that you never thought you had. And that's the case even though 'Hymn' actually deals with such very serious topics as addiction and suicide, and works to probe the fragility of the Black middle-class in Chicago, especially during the COVID era. Chakrabarti likes to introduce themes of social justice in her work, sometimes predictably and moralistically so, but Parson invariably ensures that the great Black life force takes center stage in his shows, and that's where 'Hymn' lands in its U.S. premiere. The right partnership, then. Parson foregrounds the power of friendship, the strength of Black familial bonds (whatever troubles they may also bring), and the ability of one brother to love another with such power that all else drops away at the end. Although much of the soundtrack is part of Chakrabarti's script, Parson long been a master of old-school, intra-show playlists and this one includes such pleasures as 'Lean On Me,' 'Got to Get You Into My Life' and 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It,' not to mention 'Papa Was a Rolling Stone,' which is especially apt, given the show's themes. In this two-character show, Parson has two Chicago actors in James Vincent Meredith and Chiké Johnson who can pull off this joy. Both men have deep experiential benches and watching the pair of them Friday night, I was struck by how clearly they were loving doing this show, leaning into its positivity. Both of them are entirely convincing all night long as their characters traverse from wariness to full-on acceptance and then back to wariness, life bringing the challenges that it invariably does. They're just an unmitigated pleasure to watch for the play's entire 100 minutes. 'Hymn' actually began as a play set in the U.K. (It starred Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani and was streamed live during the pandemic). For the U.S. premiere, Chakrabarti rewrote the play so it was set on the South Side of Chicago. That carefully wrought rewrite mostly works, even if lifelong Chicagoans likely will find it something of a glancing blow, location-wise, rather than a deeply specific dive. I had trouble fully believing one central event involving Michigan Avenue in the play (which I don't want to reveal any more than that), given how there would be more checks at that level in reality. But going with that device really is not a big ask. Everything in this show feels believable, honest and raw. And there is the additional benefit of a lovely, rather cinematic setting from Rasean Davonté Johnson that wisely focuses on the emotional landscape of the two central characters, manifesting their doubts, fears and faith in each other. I hope some members of the aforementioned, hard-to-reach audience make it to this play. I've had a lifelong love of works that don't offer up heroes or villains but fundamentally good people doing their best under very difficult circumstances over which they have only limited control. Here, we watch two men trying to go forward with their lives, deal with their own mistakes and stay centered in a tough city. 'Hymn' is centered on father, brothers, and friends, on trust and guilt, on despair and hope. Whoever we are, we all deal with that stuff and not only is this a show about finally finding someone who has your back, you surely will feel like this lovable show has your back, too. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@ Review: 'Hymn' (3.5 stars) When: Through May 25 Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Originally Published: May 4, 2025 at 1:16 PM CDT
Chicago Tribune
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Drink the Past Dry' by Ghostlight Ensemble is a time travel story set in a Chicago bar
Six years ago, the in-house pub at Chicago Shakespeare Theater moonlighted as a performance space for a touring production of Roddy Doyle's 'Two Pints' by Ireland's Abbey Theatre. Audience members — who sat at the pub's tables with drinks in hand — spent a couple of hours eavesdropping on two longtime friends at the bar, their conversations meandering between the mundane and the profound. This spring, the upstairs bar at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro in Chicago's North Center neighborhood will similarly transform into a theater venue for 'Drink the Past Dry' by Ghostlight Ensemble, a local company with a penchant for site-specific productions. Written and directed by Maria Burnham, this world premiere puts a science fiction twist on the otherwise familiar setting of a Chicago bar: at this watering hole, if you sit on the right stool and order a particular drink, you can travel in time. In an interview with the Tribune before a rehearsal at Mrs. Murphy's, Burnham explained that the play is structured as a series of vignettes, with the stories of three individual time travelers loosely tied together by the appearances of recurring characters and the overarching theme of familial relationships. 'I've always enjoyed science fiction and time-traveling (stories),' Burnham said. 'I particularly like when writers who aren't science fiction writers take the trappings of science fiction to tell very basic human stories.' Burnham mentioned several authors who have inspired her, such as Emma Straub, a contemporary fiction writer who ventures into sci-fi territory with 'This Time Tomorrow,' a 2022 novel about a woman who travels back to her 16th birthday and meets her younger, healthier father decades before his cancer diagnosis. Horror powerhouse Stephen King explores the possibilities of time travel changing history in his book '11/22/63,' named for the date of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. On the genre's more whimsical side, Burnham enjoys Japanese stories such as 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold,' Toshikazu Kawaguchi's international bestseller about a time portal in a Tokyo café. In 'Drink the Past Dry,' Burnham hopes audience members will connect with the characters' humanity and the universal elements of their stories, even if they don't relate to the exact circumstances. The play's time travelers have a variety of motivations, such as searching for a lost family recipe or hoping to reunite with a childhood pet, and they all make surprising discoveries along the way. 'I feel like the draw for time travel, especially in this piece, is deeply personal, and it is that desire to learn something new about the past or about the present and to learn something new about ourselves, too,' said Katharine Jordan, a cast member who plays Mica, a young adult acting as the caretaker for her elderly father. Why stage these family-centric stories in a bar? According to Burnham, the decision was part dramaturgical, part practical. Ghostlight Ensemble, founded in 2016 by a group of Chicago storefront theater veterans, often chooses immersive or site-specific settings for its productions. Currently in its first full season since the pandemic, the company staged a play about book banning in 1950s Alabama at two Chicago booksellers last fall, followed by a holiday production of Victorian ghost stories at the Driehaus Museum's 19th-century mansion. Before returning to fully staged productions, Ghostlight produced smaller events such as readings of movie scripts at a different bar in North Center, a partnership that sparked the idea for a play set in a bar. That venue has since closed, so the show has been transferred to Mrs. Murphy's, which previously hosted Ghostlight's holiday cabarets. For 'Drink the Past Dry,' audience members will be welcome to bring food and drinks from Mrs. Murphy's main bar into the upstairs performance space. Khnemu Menu-Ra, who plays the bartender in the show, feels that a neighborhood bar is a rich setting for the stories this play tells. By evoking a sense of nostalgia and familiarity, such places offer a way 'to perhaps stay frozen in time,' if not to literally time travel. 'Life is constantly changing, so memories provide a sort of comfort and a sort of safety when life becomes very difficult,' said Menu-Ra. 'I think this is a really interesting and unique piece,' Menu-Ra added. 'It seems such a simple concept, but I'm surprised that no one's ever come up with it before — the idea of time traveling inside of a pub like that. It has a lot of really moving and touching moments, and a lot of simple truths that'll really resonate with people, so I really hope that people are able to come out and make time to see it.' 'Drink the Past Dry' plays on Fridays and Sundays and select Thursdays and Saturdays from May 2 to June 1 at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro, 3905 N. Lincoln Ave.; tickets are pay-what-you-will, with an average donation of $25, at
Chicago Tribune
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago Shakes 2025-26 season: Billie Jean King play and ‘Brokeback Mountain' musical
Chicago Shakespeare Theater will stage the world premiere of a new Lauren Gunderson play about the tennis icon Billie Jean King, the theater company announced Wednesday. Also among the highlights of the 2025-26 season on Navy Pier: A refashioned version of the Fats Waller musical 'Ain't Misbehavin,'' an Ethiopian circus, a return visit to Chicago by the Royal Shakespeare Company, new CST productions of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' and 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and the North American premiere of 'Brokeback Mountain,' a musical version of the Annie Proulx novel that also inspired the Oscar-winning film. With Broadway in mind, 'Billie Jean' (July 18-Aug. 10) will be directed in The Yard theater by Marc Bruni and has commercial producers already attached. Chicago Shakespeare artistic director Edward Hall said that the piece had been developed in collaboration with the tennis icon herself and has 'her imprimatur'; King lived in Chicago for many years. Also in The Yard, 'Ain't Misbehavin': The Fats Waller Musical Show' (Sept. 3-28) will be co-directed by the revue's creator, Richard Maltby, Jr., and André de Shields, a veteran Broadway star. That show, a retooling of a much-produced but dated title, might well move beyond Chicago as well. 'Much Ado About Nothing' (Nov. 19-Dec. 21) is expected to feature a Chicago cast and will be directed by Selina Cadell, who previously helmed Eddie Izzard's solo 'Hamlet.' 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' (April 2-May 3, 2026), will be helmed by Phillip Breen, directing in Chicago for the first time. 'I wanted to bring the most experienced Shakespearean directors I could to Chicago,' Hall said. Hall himself will direct a short version of 'Hamlet' (Jan. 27-Feb. 28, 2026), aimed at school groups as well as his own short adaptation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (July 19-Aug. 17) which will tour Chicago neighborhoods over the course of this summer. Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company will return to Chicago with 'Hamnet' (Feb. 10-March 8, 2026) playing in The Yard next winter. 'Hamnet' is a piece based on the book by Maggie O'Farrell about Shakespeare's own offspring, who died as an 11-year-old child, an experience likely formative for a writer who wrote often about familial loss. The Chicago production will be the beginning of a short U.S. tour of the piece. Also in the Shakespeare-adjacent category: The Q Brothers, now known as the Q Brothers Collective, will stage a new 'add-rap-tation' of 'Julius Caesar.' 'Rome Sweet Rome' will play in the Courtyard Theatre from Sept. 23 through Oct. 19. Like 'Hamnet,' 'Brokeback Mountain' (May 28-June 28, 2026) had a previous run in London's West End. The stage version, headed to Courtyard mainstage, is adapted by Ashley Robinson and features a country and Western-style score by Dan Gillespie Sells. Jonathan Butterell directs. This coming summer on Navy Pier features 'Circus Abyssinia' (July 10-Aug. 3) in the Courtyard, known for telling the story of its creators, Mehari 'Bibi' Tesfamariam and Binyam 'Bichu' Shimellis. In the Halloween season, the Chicago writer and A Red Orchid Theatre ensemble member Levi Holloway ('Grey House') will see the North American premiere in The Yard of his 'Paranormal Activity' (Oct. 15-Nov. 2), a thriller based on the movie franchise that also has been produced in the U.K. The show will be directed by Felix Barrett, the founder of the company Punchdrunk, best known for the long-running interactive hit 'Sleep No More,' which has yet to be seen in Chicago. Finally, a lively immersive piece from New Zealand called 'Mrs Krishnan's Party' is set for CST's Upstairs Studio from April 7-26, 2026. 'People will get to eat during the show,' Hall said. CST has packed this extensive slate of shows into various flexible subscriber options rather than separate seasons. 'We're looking at all the shows holistically,' said executive director Kimberly Motes. Hall said the theater was 'delighted to able to produce this volume of work for Chicago.'
