Boop!

Posted on November 28, 2023 by admin

Boop! = much fun. I know that because I remember enjoying myself during the new musical of that name, despite my uncomfortable seat there in the dress circle at the theater formerly known as the Sam Shubert, now named for a bank, in downtown Chicago. We popped in for the show on Friday evening.

Even now, only four days after the performance, whatever detail I took in about the jazzy score or entertaining lyrics or the vivacious dance moves or the intensely colorful costumes – which were sometimes monochromatic yet colorful somehow – or the peppy dialogue or the remarkable sets, is all a kinetic blur.

That’s the way it should be with a musical, I figure. A little razzle, a little dazzle, something to enjoy in the moment. Still, Boop! wasn’t just a musical, it was a staged musical cartoon with a star character nearly 100 years old, singing and dancing her way through an appropriately gossamer plot.

A young woman named Jasmine Amy Rogers brought Betty to life with astonishing vitality and, often enough, a hot red dress, once Betty leaves monochrome behind. The supporting cast, up to and including a marionette dog, likewise filled the stage with song, dance and antics. The cast was first rate in every way.

Pudgy, Betty’s dog, a more-or-less life-sized marionette, did some astonishing moves himself, as guided by Phillip Huber, who once upon a time did some puppet work in the extreme oddity that was Being John Malkovich.

I am, I confess, mostly indifferent about Betty Boop. Or was, until I married a fan. Capt. Gus on KENS-TV Channel 5 didn’t show her cartoons on weekday afternoons after school; his thing was Popeye, though maybe he screened the Betty Boop short in which Popeye made his cinematic debut. In those pre-Internet, pre-You Tube days, the cartoons simply weren’t available. Betty, for me, was stuck in the amber of the 1930s, and while pop culture of the time has considerable interest, somehow she didn’t resonate.

So I grew to adulthood without giving her much thought, though I did see her brief appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

“Work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color, but I’ve still got it, Eddie!”

– Betty Boop, voiced by Mae Questel (d. 1998), who managed to live long enough to do so.

In Boop!, a monochromic-ish Betty, tired of being a cartoon celebrity, manages to transport herself to the “real world” via a machine concocted by Grampy, the inventor character from the shorts who is explicitly her grandfather in this show. She figures no one will know her in the real world, but she lands at New York Comic-Con in our time, in living color, and of course everyone knows her, especially the spunky little sister of her soon-to-be love interest, a modern jazzman. He provided the story’s shout-out to Cab Calloway, and I was glad to hear it.

Luckily, the story didn’t make too much out of Betty being a fish out of water, though that provided a little amusement. To her eventual dismay, she realizes she’s famous here, too.

Grampy, realizing that Betty needs to return to the cartoon world, comes to the real world to look for her, but also manages to spend the night with a real-world woman he had a dalliance with decades earlier. (The Hays Code doesn’t apply to this show, though it’s mostly wholesome.) There’s also a sleazeball running for mayor of real-world New York and it is he, in the fullness of time, who chases Betty around a desk, only to get clocked by her with a blunt object.

The sprinkling of serious elements – most musicals have a few – mostly involve female empowerment, though there was a dig at modern-day plutocrats. Betty is known for resisting sexual harassment and, after returning to the cartoon world, tells her director that she won’t be chased around desks by lecherous men any more in her cartoons.

I believe we saw the only the fourth performance of Boop! Not the fourth of this particular run, but the fourth ever in the history of the theater. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any big production that soon after its premiere. It was a fluke of marketing, and my experience with the character, that made that happen: a few weeks ago, a theater ticket website that sends me email once a week suggested Boop! I figured Yuriko, who has a longstanding fondness for Betty, would like it, so I got some tickets for something to do on the day after Thanksgiving. She did like it. Ann did too. We all did. Boop! is a crowd pleaser, and we were happy to be in the crowd.

Apparently the show has been in the works a long time and eventually was brought to fruition by director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who is very much a known quantity in the American theater. Its run at the Shubert serves essentially the same shakedown-cruise function as pre-Broadway runs in New England towns used to do – may still do, for all I know, but I expect Chicago offers a much larger pool of potential theatergoers.

Eventually, probably soon, Boop! will be on Broadway. As a crowd pleaser, I’ll bet it will do well there.

Chautauqua Park, Pontiac

Posted on May 9, 2023 by admin

A total of four hours behind the wheel there and back from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Normal, Illinois, could be considered a chore, but not if you have time to stop a handful of places along the way. That isn’t always possible – weather or scheduling might prevent it – but when it is, you might happen across things to see. Maybe even things you won’t see anywhere else.

Such as in Pontiac, Illinois, pop. 11,150. It’s been a surprisingly good source of stopover sights since I started driving to Normal on a regular basis, and so it was on Sunday, when I headed down to Normal to load up the car with some of Ann’s possessions. She’ll be done with school for the semester later this week, so the goal was to not be overloaded when she finally returns.

Plunge into the small streets of Pontiac – that might not be the right verb, since its grid is pretty small – and soon you’ll be at Chautauqua Park.

Spring green and on Sunday at least, warm enough to inspire a little sweat.

A good place to walk around, but also to read, with a good many signs like this.

I read at least a half-dozen. Most of them told me about the history of the park as the setting for the Pontiac Chautauqua, as the park name suggests.

A few quotes from the various signs:

A.C. Folsom

“Under the leadership of A.C. Folsom, a group of civic-minded citizens organized to bring a Chautauqua to Pontiac. Between the years 1898 and 1929, the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembles developed into one of the Midwest’s most popular and successful summer festivals.”

“As the Pontiac Chautauqua grew, dramatic presentations became particular favorites of the crowd. Shakespeare, melodramas, domestic comedies, mysteries, and tragedies graced the stage of the pavilion. Troupes of actors from New York, Chicago and elsewhere traveled the Chautauqua circuit, playing a repertory of four or five plays.”

The Chautauqua pavilion as it appears now.

Theatrical presentations still occur there. According to a non-historic sign, the next one will be the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast, June 14-18, 2023, by the Vermillion Players.

More Chautauqua Park history-sign verbiage:

“Specialty acts from all over the world brought exotic sounds which floated over the park on warm summer evenings. Here are just a few of the individuals and groups which graced the Pontiac Chautauqua: Mme. Schumann-Heink, opera star; The Weber Male Quartette; Colangelos Band; The Honolulu Students; Mr. & Mrs. Tony Godetz, Alpine Singers & Yodelers.”

“Each year of the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembly, noted lecturers, politicians and educators came to edify the event’s patrons… some of the most notable speakers include: Booker T. Washington; William Jennings Bryan; Samuel Gompers; Rev. Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage; Carrie Nation.”

Yep, there’s Carrie Nation at the Pontiac Chautauqua.

No visible hatchet. It’s clear she didn’t wear a corset. She considered them harmful.

As fascinating as the park’s Chautauqua history is – and there’s the basis of another limited costume series on prestige streaming, namely the story of a plucky, slightly anachronistic woman entertainer on the Chautauqua circuit, ca. 1900 – that isn’t all the park has to offer.

Namely, it sports two of the town’s three swinging bridges. Dating roughly from the time of the Chautauqua. Original iron work, with wooden planks that have been replaced many times.

Naturally, I had to cross them. One of them:

And the other.

They don’t swing, exactly, at least when you walk normally, but they do wobble, and it takes a moment to get used to the motion. Nice views of the Vermilion River along with way.

Bigger than I would have thought. At this point, the waters are on their way to the Illinois River, then of course Old Man River.

One more item in the park: a plaque-on-rock memorial.

Not just any memorial, but a fairly unusual one.

But not unknown. Naturally, I had to look up Fred Bennitt. I’m cursed that way.

Noises Off ’99 & ’20

Posted on February 13, 2022 by admin

It’s been two years since I’ve been to the theater. In February 2020, just before I went to California late that month, I took Ann to see Noises Off at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights, where we go periodically. Logistically, it’s more convenient than theaters in Chicago, though of course that didn’t stop us from going into the city in ’19 a number of times.

Noises Off is a British farce first staged in London in 1982. It was at the Savoy until 1987, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to see it during my ’83 visit. Rather, my friends and I went to see The Real Thing at the Strand, a Tom Stoppard play also from 1982, which I remember being amusing.

Noises Off is really amusing. I didn’t see it until ca. 1999 in Chicago, and it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen on stage. Actually, it still is. Laugh out loud funny, along with the rest of the audience.

The 2020 staging was also funny, but not quite as much as the first time around. Maybe because I was older; or the cast wasn’t quite as good (though they were good); or that I knew what to expect. Still, Ann seemed to enjoy it, and I certainly did, even if it didn’t quite have the same punch as my memory of it.

It occurs to me now that I need to start going to the theater again. Health concerns haven’t been stopping me for a while now. It’s just that I got out of the habit. So I’ll soon do my bit to support regional theater, as part of that pent-up demand.

Hickory Street Parade, Denton, Texas, 1967 (Probably)

Posted on September 20, 2020 by admin

I have a photo book holding a scattering of images made when my family lived in Denton, Texas, which was from 1965 to ’68. There are perhaps two dozen pictures. Photos were only made on special occasions, such as my birthday or when family visited from out of town.

Three of the pictures are of the Denton High School band, of which my brother Jay was a member, marching down Hickory St., which is the street our house was on, in 1967. The edge of the photos says Aug 69, but that only means we didn’t get around to developing the film for almost two years.
That is not me sitting on a car in the first image. My mother must have taken the shots with our Instamatic 104, since I don’t think she would have been interested in fiddling with the more complicated cameras that my father left behind. Provided we had our Instamatic by then, which seems likely.

She stood on the sidewalk on Hickory St., probably near its intersection with Denton St.
At least, the angle of the third picture makes me think that’s where she stood. One the houses not far west of that point is still there, though deeper blue.

I must have watched the parade, but I have no memory of it. At the time I was six, and had just started first grade at Sam Houston Elementary School in Denton. I walked to school, so it wasn’t far away. There’s a school of that name still in the Denton ISD, but it’s far from where we lived and has a late 20th century look to it.

Thinking about it now, I suspect the school I went to was already old when I went there — maybe built in the ’20s to update whatever rudimentary facilities the town had before that. I expect the building I knew is long gone.

Also: here’s the house where we lived. The house is a different color now, but the enormous tree is still in the front yard! It seemed so vast to my boyhood self. Then again, it is pretty big. An old maple that produced huge leaves. Or was it an oak that produced huge acorns? Both kinds of trees were in the neighborhood and I would collect their scatterings.

I digress. Why was there a parade on that day in Denton, Texas? One possibility is that it was part of the September 13 publicity celebration for the regional premiere of Bonnie and Clyde, which was at a movie theater near the courthouse, only a few blocks to the east of where we lived. Parts of the movie were filmed in North Texas, near Denton, in places that could easily pass for 30 years earlier. The University of North Texas published an article a few years ago about the filming and the regional premiere.

Some of the stars of the movie rode in a small motorcade down Hickory to the courthouse square, and naturally the high school band had to be part of it. If my mother took any pictures of the movie stars, they’ve been lost. But I seriously doubt she did. Taking pictures of her son’s band is one thing, but actors in a movie (I suspect) she had no interest in seeing? Naah.

Keith Jarrett, Piazza del Campidoglio

Posted on July 19, 2020 by admin

July 16, 1983, was quite a day for me. In the morning my friend Steve and I visited the Castel Sant’Angelo (the Mausoleum of Hadrian), followed by an afternoon at the Vatican. As in, the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and finally St. Peter’s itself, including a climb to the dome.

That should have been enough for any day, but at some point, Steve spotted a poster advertising an outdoor concert by Keith Jarrett that very evening at the Piazza del Campidoglio. I would have blown it off, having only a faint notion of who he was, but Steve knew more and insisted we go. It was standing room only.

Remarkably, I found a recording of that concert on YouTube.

The recording is about 25 minutes long. Not because whoever recorded it didn’t capture it all, but because right in the middle of things, the known-to-be-prickly Jarrett — maybe bothered by the persistent ambient noise of the setting — stormed off, never to return.

Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade, 2018

Posted on March 29, 2020 by admin

I fell asleep to light rain and occasional thunder on Friday night. A comforting sound. During the hours when I was dreaming odd dreams — damned odd, but it all made perfect sense at the time — the rain must have picked up its pace, since large puddles had formed in our back yard by Saturday morning, as usually happens with inches of rain. But not quite this much.

Two years ago we went into the city in mid-March and found ourselves near the Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We were going to visit the Art Institute that day, and the parade was passing next to the museum, on S. Columbus Dr.

We walked over to see it, but the crowd was so thick that we never really got a close look. Often enough, the view looked something like this.The crowd was festive, with many dressed for the occasion.

We stayed for a little while and saw what we could.

The solid-waste industry was well represented. Downtown Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade 2018

Some participants were off to the side. I suppose they were finished and watching the rest of the parade.

Crowds thronged in front of the Art Institute and elsewhere.
No social distancing in evidence. It would have been weird if there had been. No wonder the parade was cancelled this year.

Yakov

Posted on March 26, 2020 by admin

Though not particularly warm today, we took a mile or so walk beginning at about 5:30 this afternoon. Just an afternoon stroll. There’s still traffic on our suburb roads, of course, but in volume it was more like a Sunday afternoon than a weekday rush hour.

One more item from the early 2000s. I didn’t realize it until today, but everything this week has been from that period, except for Sunday. An unconscious choice, probably, signifying — like all that sound and fury — nothing.

The first time we ever passed through Branson, in 2001 as a short detour on the way to Dallas, I picked up a Yakov ad pamphlet. Probably at the restaurant we ate lunch, which was the only thing we did in town.

Why? We weren’t planning to see the show. I think I’d heard of him, maybe even seen him on television by chance, such as his beer commercial, though I didn’t watch much TV during his heyday.

I’m sure I picked up the pamphlet because of the billboards we’d seen between Springfield, Mo., and Branson, which amused me. There were a lot of them advertising his Branson show, which he did from 1993 to 2015. The billboards looked a lot like the pamphlet, if I remember right. A big Yakov face promising a wacky Soviet — that is, Russian — comedian.

For the record, Yakov Naumovich Pokhis — his stage name taken from the vodka, apparently — was actually from the Ukraine. He’s still touring, or presumably was until recently, and probably will be again sometime.

Not This Year

Posted on March 15, 2020 by admin

We’d planned to see The Pirates of Penzance this year in Hyde Park on Saturday, by the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Co. We’ve been seeing their shows most years for a while now, since Yeoman of the Guard in 2015.

As you’d expect, the show was cancelled. As recently as a week ago, I didn’t think that was going to happen, but the country is going into no-frills mode faster than expected. In an age besotted with video and other impersonal entertainment, it’s interesting how many diversions still involve numbers of human beings coming together at the same place at the same time.

A pretty minor inconvenience for us, though I expect the cast and crew were upset all their work came to nothing. Much more than diversions have been disrupted. Ann’s school is out this week, ahead of its scheduled spring break next week, so that makes two weeks off — at least. After that, “remote learning.” Maybe. Down at UIUC, no more physical classes for Lilly till further notice. I’ll bet there will be no graduation ceremony in May, which would be too bad.

For me, I’m going to work at home. Wait, I’ve been doing that for almost 15 years now. In the early days, I remember telling people on the phone, usually someone I needed to interview, that they might hear noise in the background without warning. The noise of a young child. I can’t remember the last time I warned anyone about that. These days, occasionally the dog makes noise, but even that’s a rarity, since her idea of a good time is lounging quietly on a flat surface.

So I’m amused by the current flood of articles about working from home — it’s great, it’s terrible, How To Do It, What Equipment Do I Need? Sheesh. Ours is a time of overthinking. My expert opinion? It’s OK. Mostly tolerable. Helps not to mind hours and hours by yourself, which seems to unnerve some people. Can’t say I feel isolated, since my job — and the adverb is correct — is literally to find out things from other people, which often enough means talking to them. I suppose not everyone could say that about their at-home jobs, however.

The best part of working at home is the commute. The office as a work environment was invented by smug morning people. A one-or-so-minute commute (there’s always a bathroom stop first) is a way to ameliorate the tyranny of office hours. Working times are roughly the same, but there’s no back and forth.

In lieu of The Pirates of Penzance on stage, here are some YouTube clips of everyone’s favorite scene. Mine anyway. Impersonal entertainment will have to do for a while.

Recorded at the Stratford Festival in 1985. Many of its shows were cancelled just Friday.

From the 1983 movie version.

At the English National Opera more recently, in 2015.

The tune with other words. Couldn’t very well leave this out.

Tom Lehrer is still with us, last I heard. Next month he will be what I hope is a hale 92 years old.

Falun Dafa by USPS

Posted on January 16, 2020 by admin

Winter hasn’t been very bitter so far. Yet. All of last week’s light snow has melted. But the polar vortex hammer could still drop. Hard.

Back to posting on January 21. I take holidays where I can get ’em, even in the stony bleak mid-winter.

The following is an example of a small item, a throw-away item — literally, though I’m going to put it in the blue recycle bin — with a long story trailing behind it. Today in the mail I received a high-quality pamphlet, 16 glossy pages, rich bright colors, advertising the Shen Yun dance show in the Chicago area this spring. It’s merely the latest example of advertising created by what must be a deep marketing budget for that show.

Mostly I’ve been ignoring the marketing. Maybe it’s the oversell. “A Life-Changing Experience,” the cover proclaims. Gee, I hope not. Inside: “A Gift from the Heavens,” “Watch 5,000 years unfold before your eyes,” “the Divine Origin of a Glorious Civilization.” Sure, whatever you say.

It’s probably a corker of a show, if you like that kind of spectacle, though I doubt — as the pamphlet implies visually — that any of the dancers can actually fly. Then again, I suppose a fantasy counterpart culture of imperial China has some appeal. Just not for me. Well, I might go if I didn’t have to pay.

More interesting to me is text box on the last page. It says, in bold letters: CANNOT BE SEEN IN COMMUNIST CHINA.

“Traditional Chinese culture — with its deep spiritual roots and profound worldview — was displaced by communism in China. While Shen Yun cannot perform in mainland China today, we are reviving this precious heritage and sharing it with the world.”

Hm. I looked a little further. The return address for the pamphlet, for it did come in the mail, cites the Mid-USA Falun Dafa Association as the sender.

Ah. Falun Dafa (Gong), whom the Chinese government hates so much. Seems like the show, then, is a way for the religion, persecuted as it is in China, to poke the Chinese government in the eye. That’s a sentiment we can all get behind, but I’m still not paying to see the show.

Richard III

Posted on January 15, 2020 by admin

In our lifetime, only five years ago, Richard III got a spiffy tomb at Leicester Cathedral, after centuries in an anonymous grave not far away. That came to mind when Ann and I went into the city on Saturday to see a reading of Richard III at the Newberry Library.

It was the same setup as last year, when we saw Titus Andronicus: actors reading their parts, holding scripts, while moving around one of the library’s large rooms, in front of and to the side of the audience. Outside wind blew and rain fell, just above freezing, so that might account for the slightly smaller crowd than last year, but even so a lot of people came out for the tale of murder, intrigue, more murder, double-dealing and a violent denouement. Everything you need in an Elizabethan history play.

Very talented actors, so the lack of any set or costumes didn’t matter. Christopher Prentice, who played Richard, did the demented villain to just the right pitch, and moved himself in ways that didn’t exactly suggest a hunchback, but weren’t quite normal either, and strangely menacing.

One more thing. Here’s the mission statement of the Richard III Society, which was instrumental in finding the king’s bones in our time: “In the belief that many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable, the Society aims to promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III, and to secure a reassessment of the material relating to this period, and of the role of this monarch in English history.”

I’m all for historical inquiry, but even so — Richard III gets to be a villain. The literary Richard III is more robust than any historic portrait of him is ever likely to be.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Live Entertainment