Recent hits

John Hart's The Last Child, a gritty modern mystery with a compelling young boy as the central character, searching for his kidnapped sister. Excellent read.

Nine, the Rob Marshall musical with Daniel Day-Lewis and every Oscar-winning woman ever, was indeed quite bad. Marshall failed to motivate the musical numbers as Guido's imagination the way he managed to make Chicago all happen in Roxie's head; besides that, he apparently forgot that not every musical number has to have bells, whistles, a cast of thousands, and mostly-naked women.

Michelle Moran's chick-littish series set in ancient Egypt is quite good because of the use of historical events and detail, though the interpersonal plots are on the level of girl likes boy, girl puts on makeup, boy notices girl.

Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune reminded me how great an adventure story can be when someone is writing it well and creatively. It also contains the seeds of her fascination with the Zorro legend, which she reworked so well in her recent novel (shockingly entitled Zorro). I may have to go back and try her famous House of the Spirits again. I didn't like it when I first read it, but I was very young, and maybe there's even an alternative translation now.

Leonard Bernstein's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has some musical gems in it, and even some hilarious lyrics. But among other reasons the show isn't put up often, some of the interpolated scenes of African American characters are less than politically correct. "The Money-Lovin' Minstrel Show," ye gods.

Big babe singing

Have been watching Wimbledon -- that's where the post title comes from (big babe tennis being the winning style of play there).

Have found a new favorite Broadway belter, Kerry Ellis, the British Elphaba in Wicked. I don't really like the over-the-top belting, which is odd considering that I do like opera singers who give it 110%. But the overdecoration and the rip-out-the-vocal chords type of singing, it's not for me. Idina Menzel is a prime example (in Wicked, not in Rent). I love her emotion, but I'm always half expecting that she's going to do herself an injury.

I came across Kerry Ellis by YouTubing Brian May performances -- he guests with her a lot, because she sang in We Will Rock You, and I guess he liked her. Like I said, belting itself is not my favorite type of singing, but she's pretty good, and better when she shows some restraint. She does not show said restraint in this Royal Variety performance, but it is Wicked, after all, and Brian May's there, so it's all good.

Pacifist overtures

I went to see a very interesting and very rare production of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures last night, done here in Chicago by Porchlight, a small musical theater company. It's a musical about the opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, and if one more usher, director, board member, or whoever had told me that I had to read the synopsis first, and that this show is "from the Japanese point of view!" I would have walked out.

The director, in his notes, drew parallels to Iraq, and noted that Japan took the Western intrusion and used it; the show ends with a paean to Japanese global achievements and popularity. Such an earnest and well-meaning production, and even an intermittently well-meaning show, still can't take the horrific stereotyping out entirely. When you have a number about geishas preparing happily for the Western influx, it just isn't going to go over well. Nor is it going to go over too well when a cringing young official gets jeered at and bossed around by Perry's sailors when he tries to turn them back. In general, the officials could have been done with a little more dignity. They might not have been able to keep Japan closed in the face of Perry's cannons, but they didn't have to be played as helpless and ridiculous, either. On the other hand, some of the other characters were played with a real sensitivity and well-roundedness.

So it's up to you, if you can endure those uncomfortable elements. Musically, I actually liked it very much; it's slightly more melodic Sondheim. The production is excellently and minimally staged, allowing for a lot of good dance choreography (and some rather lacking fight choreography). The cast is uneven. David Rhee, the Reciter (the central, self-ironizing role played in the revival by B.D. Wong) was a little too obviously the best trained actor in the show, and rather intense -- maybe because he felt he had to make up for the others. (I'd have taken his mike off, if nothing else, to level the sound.) This was cleared up on the way home when I looked at the bios and found that he is an Equity member who has played on Broadway and at Steppenwolf. The rest are local actors of varying experience, some of whom were excellent, and some of whom were certainly good local talent, but not up to Rhee's level. Beautiful costumes -- what costume designer doesn't love to go nuts with kimonos? and a decent little 5-piece band behind a screen. If you are a big Sondheim or musical fan, by all means run, don't walk. But only if.