ALPHABET SOUP (6) - FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

ALPHABET SOUP (6) -

FEATURING A RANDOM LETTER OF THE ALPHABET AND SOME SHOWS THAT BEGIN WITH THAT LETTER

It's been a very long time since I've drawn a letter from my blue London coffee mug and picked the first few shows from that letter's pile of programs. Far too long. Time to remedy that. 

Today's letter is ….

J

Here's some of what "J" has to offer…an Irish classic, a rarely-done play by an American original, a revue celebrating a favorite theatre composer, and, a, well, you-just-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it, uh, play.

JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK – The Artistic Home at Theatre on the Lake, Chicago

 

July, 2009. I first saw what is considered to be playwright Sean O'Casey's masterpiece in 1981 in a Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Judi Dench. I didn't especially care for it then, finding it a long, dense haul, and I didn't especially care for it in 2009. Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of Irish theatre. I often find it too melancholy, too oh-woe-is-me for my tastes. But a former colleague of Bob's was in the cast, so off we went for a melancholy, oh-woe-is-me evening with the dysfunctional Boyle family. This production, in its initial run, received good reviews from the Chicago critics. Resurrecting it for a week's run at the Theatre on the Lake was a bold choice for the Chicago Park District since O'Casey is not anyone's first choice for a summer evening's entertainment on the Lake. To The Artistic Home's great credit, they managed to do a creditable job in the less-than-ideal space they had to work in. Production values were solid and the direction did the job. The acting, for the most part, was able and competent, but at times, it veered towards broad comedy that teetered towards caricature. Pacing, volume and diction were also sometimes a challenge for the cast in this ¾ round space. It was still a long, dense haul, but this production was earnest and I didn't hate it. Didn't convert me to an O'Casey fan, however.

JUST SAY NO – Bailiwick Repertory Theater, Chicago

David Zaks must not have seen the same production that we saw.

'The Pride '99 lineup. 

May, 1999. With author Larry Kramer in the audience, Just Say No lumbered through its performance with scattered bits of humor, some decent production values, and committed, though not always successful, performances by its cast. And, yes, "lumbered" is the correct word. The play aspired to be a hysterical, yet politically astute farce that would skewer the early Reagan years in general and the Reagans themselves and their cronies, especially then-NYC-mayor Ed Koch, in particular, something that I would normally really get into. Sadly, however, the whole endeavor lacked the wit and zaniness of a farce. Even sadder, however, was a lack of political astuteness and biting satire. Oh, there were moments, but it often just sat there, spewing dialogue that reflected Mr. Kramer's obvious distaste for everything Reagan while not really making a point. (I have a definite distaste for everything Reagan and even I found the most of the proceedings pointless.) The plot had something to do with a sex tape cover-up that supposedly really did happen during the Reagan years. I know, sex tape and Reagan? Ewww. With a stereotypical gay confidant and an equally stereotypical sassy black maid, an often shirtless and equally often wooden, though likeable, Greg Louganis (yes, the Olympic champion swimmer Greg Louganis) as the play's version of Ron Reagan, and a darkly comic Alexandra Billings, looking stunning in a red dress, as the thinly-disguised Nancy Reagan, this revised version of Kramer's 1988 off-Broadway original missed far more often than it hit its satiric mark. Panned as vastly inferior to Kramer's landmark The Normal Heart, Just Say No has only had three professional productions to date. There's a reason for that.

JERRY'S GIRLS – Shubert Theatre, Chicago

The La Cage segment was, curiously, with the exception of Leslie Uggams' "I Am What I Am," the weakest part of the show. It seemed forced somehow. And really, we're ending with "The Best of Times"? No. Stop it.

November, 1984. Capitalizing on the previous season's smash hit success of Jerry Herman's Tony-winning La Cage aux Folles, and the overwhelmingly positive reviews Jerry's Girls had received a few years earlier in a cabaret format, lead producer Zev Bufman and his cohorts thought the time was right for a Jerry Herman revue, celebrating the beloved tunesmith in an evening of some of his best songs and  performed by a trio of leading ladies and a chorus of five female singer/dancers. Conceived by Jerry Herman himself and director Larry Alford, whose billing, to be precise, was "Staged and Directed by Larry Alford," though I don't quite get the difference, and touted as "A Broadway Entertainment," Jerry's Girls was amiable enough in a summer stock-tent theatre sort of way with great tunes and modest production values. Pleasant, professional, but not quite enough for "A Broadway Entertainment." What propelled this overgrown cabaret show into the big leagues was its powerhouse trio of leading ladies: Carol Channing, Leslie Uggams, and Andrea McArdle. Playing it safe and playing to audience expectations, this trio did exactly what was expected of each of them. Carol Channing, the quintessential larger-than-life performer, reprised Dolly (duh!), in full Dolly drag for the title tune, and handled most of the evening's comic chores, with her highlight being a beyond funny take on a striptease called "Take It All Off." Leslie Uggams, singer extraordinaire, delivered the goods on the show's more ballad-y, mature lady songs and especially shone with a haunting "If He Walked Into My Life" in Act One and a powerful "I Am What I Am" in Act Two. Twenty-one-year-old Andrea McArdle, all grown-up and no longer the red-headed urchin that catapulted to fame in one of Broadway's most auspicious debuts, sank her considerable vocal chops into the more, for lack of a better word, "youthful" material, and sent soaring versions of "Wherever He Ain't" and "Time Heals Everything" to the last row of the Shubert's second balcony. For me, one of the evening's highlights was an unexpected "The Tea Party" from the underrated Dear World, nicely executed by the three leading ladies. It didn't all work and, frankly, a few things just tanked, but the Chicago critics were kind and the audience absolutely ate it up.

Sidebar: When Jerry's Girls opened on Broadway a year later with only Leslie Uggams still in the show and 2/3 of the design staff replaced, it received negative reviews and never played to a capacity higher than 67% and at one point played to an abysmal 28% capacity. It closed after a run of only four months. It's somewhat staggering to realize that the last original Jerry Herman musical, La Cage aux Folles, opened over thirty-two years ago.  

JEFF STRYKER DOES HARD TIME – Bailiwick Repertory Theater, Chicago

No understudies were listed. Guess it didn't much matter.

April, 2001. The star attraction of Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time didn't make its appearance until the last five minutes of Act Two. Suffice it to say that when the star attraction finally did appear, it was, well, impressive. For in Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time, Jeff Stryker himself playing himself was not the main attraction of the evening; rather, it was his, uh, star quality that took the honors. Yeah, that's it. Oh, wait. I'm assuming everyone knows who Jeff Stryker is. Well, for those of you who don't, Jeff Stryker was a major, even iconic, adult film star in both straight and gay porn in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, a man whose main "acting" attribute was, and still is, a rather sizeable endowment. So it was this attribute that Mr. Stryker brought with him when Stryker Productions brought Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time for an engagement at Bailiwick. (Actually it says "Stryker Productions is proud to bring to Chicago…") Without a credited author, it's hard to know who actually wrote the damn thing, although some internet research says that Stryker and John Travis were responsible for the deed. With the quality of the dialogue that was spoken on the Bailiwick stage, I think I'd remain uncredited, too. There was a plot of sorts. It all took place supposedly in Cook County Jail, though the set looked more like a dormitory at a less-than-classy university. I'm not sure what prompted Mr. Stryker's stay there. I'm not sure anyone cared. The best performance by far of the evening was that of Cory Krebsbach's Queenie, a stereotypical portrait right out of the early 70s (can you say The Boys in the Band?), but, sadly, that's not saying much. The rest of the cast, well, all I can say is they knew their lines. It was a mess, with almost every scene not making any sense or connecting with any other scene. But, bewilderingly, it was rather fun, in a so-bad-it's-good way. I don't think anyone onstage took it seriously, least of all Jeff Stryker, who genuinely seemed to be enjoying making fun of his image, while at the same time not being terribly concerned about his chances of nailing a Jeff nomination. Now back to the star attraction. Near the end of the show, and for absolutely no reason that made any dramatic sense, Stryker stripped down, oiled up, and stroked the aforementioned sizeable endowment, aka the Star Attraction, to being thisclose to a full erection, thus avoiding any nasty public obscenity and/or public pornography charges. He then took himself and Star Attraction up the theatre aisle to give the audience a good view. Bob, seated on the aisle, got an especially up close and personal look. I was expecting nudity, but I wasn't expecting that. (That bit of nudity, if memory serves, was the only actual full monty nudity of the evening.) To end the evening, Jeff Stryker, discreetly robed with Star Attraction nowhere in sight, greeted each patron as they exited the theatre. I don't want to say it was classy, exactly, but given everything else that had gone on that night, it was an unexpected, nice touch. The run sold out and Jeff Stryker went on to other cities. As far as his supporting cast goes, if any of them are still in the business, I suspect this credit has mysteriously dropped off of their resume.

Sidebar: Bailiwick Repertory Theater was the center of LGBT theatre in Chicago until it closed in 2009. The quality ranged from excellent to okay to bad, but the one thing you could always pretty much count on was that there would be nudity of some sort during the performance, at the very least very cute shirtless men if not full frontal stuff. I once quipped that if Bailiwick did a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Nick would be showing us the goods before the evening was over. Kidding aside, though, they were an important, even vital, part of the Chicago theatre scene and they are missed. Pride Films and Plays now fills that void, to an extent, and continues Bailiwick's proud tradition at presenting bare skin whenever possible.

That's all for today. See you soon!

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes