The reviews are in – Barnum is “one of the finest shows mounted in Chicago in years”!

  April 12, 2013 - 4:06 pm | , ,
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BARNUM Circus Finale 2

 

The critics agree! Barnum is a “must-see” sensation!

✭✭✭✭✭
“One of this season’s best productions on any stage!”
-Al Bresloff, Around Town Chicago

“eye-popping”
“bounces with infectious life and enthusiasm”
“a big, fat, family-friendly show”
-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 

“An expertly mounted,
talent-filled revival”
“You can almost feel the large, polished cast pumping its last best breath into the material”
-Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times 

“One of the finest shows mounted in Chicago in years!”
“Barnum is a must see theatrical event.”
“An eye-popping, toe-tapping and thoroughly entertaining musical spectacle”
- Tom Williams, Chicago Critic

“whimsical, exhilarating, fresh”
“A genuine must see!”
-Chicago Now

“Ebullient and gorgeous”
“Not only will you want to “Join the Circus,” you’ll want to run away to join the stage”
-stageandcinema.com

 

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Chris Jones touts BARNUM on CBS Chicago

Link

  April 12, 2013 - 3:38 pm | ,
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Chicago Tribune and CBS News critic Chris Jones talks up the Mercury’s production of BARNUM on the CBS 2 11:00 news, saying: “This is an impressively live extravaganza, chock full of fun and action.”

Follow the link to watch the video and see some footage of the show!

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/8768901-on-stage-barnum-and-south-pacific/

 

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Announcing the Cast of BARNUM Starring Gene Weygandt

  February 12, 2013 - 7:22 pm | ,
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Gene Weygandt

Gene Weygandt (P.T. Barnum)

An all-star cast is headed to the Mercury for the circus-themed musical BARNUM, March 27th -June 16, 2013.  The award-winning cast is led by Chicago native and Broadway, TV, and film actor Gene Weygandt as legendary showman P.T. Barnum, with Cory Goodrich as his wife Charity, and Summer Naomi Smart as the “‘Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind.  The Mercury’s production is the first major Chicago revival of the show in over 20 years, led by multiple Jeff Award winners L. Walter Stearns (Director) Eugene Dizon (Musical Director), Brenda Didier and Andrew Waters (Co-Choreographers) and Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi of the Actor’s Gymnasium (Circus Director).

The “Greatest Show on Earth” is the setting for this riveting musical, which traces the life and loves of colorful impresario Phineas Taylor Barnum. The tale of the American Museum, the smallest man, the oldest woman, the largest elephant and more is told through stunning acrobatics, hilarious variety acts, whimsical magic and puppetry.  BARNUM was originally produced on Broadway in 1980 and ran for 854 performances.  The score is a pastiche of toe-tapping marches, ballads and ragtime tunes, including “There’s a Sucker Born Ev’ry Minute” and “Come Follow the Band.” It was nominated for ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Mark Bramble) and Best Original Score (Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman performances with Jim Dale taking home the Tony for the title role, followed by a West End run starring Michael Crawford. A Cameron Mackintosh-produced London revival of BARNUM is slated for later this year.

Gene Weygandt (P.T. Barnum) is best known for his role as “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in Wicked in Chicago and on Broadway. More recently, he starred as Jean Shepherd in A Christmas Story: The Musical. Weygandt originated the role of Paul in Big: The Musical on Broadway. He is a three-time Jeff Award recipient for A Day in Hollywood/A Night in The Ukraine, Me and My Girl and Little Shop of Horrors, and received an After Dark Award for his role as “Max” in the long-running hit Lend Me a Tenor at The Royal George Theatre. He has been seen in the films The Birdcage, The Babe, and The Pager, and on television on Home Improvement, Cybill, Murphy Brown, The Drew Carey Show, Ellen, and Coach.

cory_goodrich

Cory Goodrich (Charity Barnum)

SummerSmart

Summer Naomi Smart (Jenny Lind)

Actress and recording artist Cory Goodrich (Charity Barnum) is a four-time Jeff nominee who was honored with the award for her portrayal of “Mother” in Ragtime at Drury Lane Theatre. She has appeared as “Alma Stossel” in The Mercury Theater’s The Christmas Schooner for the past two seasons and was recently seen in the critically acclaimed production of A Little Night Music at Writer’s Theatre. Goodrich has recorded two award-winning children’s albums, and has performed in concert at Ravina Festival, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Auditorium Theatre.

The Barnum’s marriage is tested by the affections of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, depicted by two-time Jeff Award winner Summer Naomi Smart. Smart made her Chicago debut as “Nessarose” in the first national sit-down production of Wicked, and received a Jeff Award for her portrayal of “Charity Hope Valentine” in Sweet Charity at Drury Lane Theatre. She has recently been seen in leading roles in My One and Only, Hero and Legally Blonde at Marriott Theatre where she earned a Jeff Award for her role in The Light in the Piazza.

The cast also features Kevin McKillip as “the Ringmaster and Christian Libonati as the world’s smallest man, “General Tom Thumb.”  The circus performers are Karissa Barney, Nathan Drackett, Kris Hyland, Taylor Krasne-Wilton, Jeremy Sonkin, Ryan Westwood and J. Tyler Whitmer.  Scenic Design is by Jacqueline and Richard Penrod, Costume Design is by Carol Blanchard, Lighting Design is by Jason Epperson and Sound Design is by Mike Ross. 

The Mercury Theater recently kicked off its first full season, launching the largest musical theater company in Chicago. The rest of the season includes the critically acclaimed production of A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING (running through March 10th), the regional premiere of THE COLOR PURPLE (August-November), and the perennial holiday hit THE CHRISTMAS SCHOONER (November-December).

BARNUM runs from March 27 through June 16, 2013.  The performance schedule is: Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.  Tickets range from $25-$59, and are available online, over the phone at 773-325-1700, or in person at 3745 N. Southport Avenue, Chicago. Discounts of up to 50% are available for groups of 10 or more.

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Chicago Sun-Times Review for A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING

  February 4, 2013 - 11:55 am | ,
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

http://blogs.suntimes.com/arts_entertainment/2013/01/_a_grand_night_for.html

By Hedy Weiss
Talk about racing out of the starting gate. With its stunningly sung, ingeniously staged production of “A Grand Night for Singing” — a Rodgers and Hammerstein revue that is full of familiar tunes, yet anything but predictable — The Mercury Theater, long a frequently dark rental house, has initiated an ambitious subscription series.

The intimate theater, overseen by L. Walter Stearns, will now produce its own Equity scale revivals of Broadway musicals and other shows on a year-round basis — opening up additional opportunities for Chicago’s impressive pool of musical talent and upping the competition for the big suburban musical venues, and such well-established city-based companies as Porchlight Music Theatre, Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre and others.

Now, you might be thinking: “Isn’t kicking things off with the Rodgers and Hammerstein repertoire an overly safe choice?” Think again. This show (conceived in 1993 by Broadway veteran Walter Bobbie, and premiered by New York’s Roundabout Theatre), brings winningly fresh, modern and imaginative interpretations to 30 mostly well-known (plus a few rarely heard) tunes. And though most of the songs have been removed from the context of the shows for which they were written — and in many cases zestfully re-orchestrated — their emotional spirit and essential intention remains faithful, even as they are infused with new life.

Kevin Bellie, the gifted director and demanding choreographer who worked for years on Circle Theatre’s small stage, here has a chance to work on a grander scale, and he has crafted many indelible moments. His expert cast of five — with Broadway, national tour and Chicago credits — works every emotional and physical angle for him. And the onstage orchestra — led superbly by Elizabeth Doran, the elegant, expressive conductor-pianist (with Eugene Dizon as musical director) — is perfection
.
Not surprisingly, romantic relationships in all their guises — comical, rueful, flirtatious, disappointing, passionate, enduring — serve as the essential thread that ties all these songs together.

It all begins with a playful take on “Surrey With the Fringe On Top” from “Oklahoma,” and then moves on to an edgy, contemporary version of “Stepsisters’ Lament” (from “Cinderella”); an unusually winning rendering of “Maria” from “The Sound of Music” sung not by nuns, but by a man in love with a girl; and that sassy admission by Ado Annie, “I Cain’t Say No,” also from “Oklahoma,” belted out by Marya Grandy, who possesses a voice of formidable range and power. Deftly cynical takes on love come with “Don’t Marry Me” (from “Flower Drum Song”) and “The Gentleman Is a Dope,” from “Allegro” (sung by the hugely charismatic Leah Morrow, a superb dancer with a terrific voice and easy comic flair).

The classic ‘Shall We Dance?” from ‘The King and I” is now interpreted as a very funny scene about a short man (Stephen Schellhardt, often the guy left behind) who pairs up with a considerably taller woman (Heather Townsend, a fine soprano not quite at ease with her height). In the show’s second act, Robert Hunt brings his formidable baritone to “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” And there is much, much more in this show that once again reminds you that Rodgers and Hammerstein were truly “Something Wonderful.”

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Chicago Tribune Review of A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING

  February 4, 2013 - 9:52 am |
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Chris Jones Theater critic

A new era began at the Mercury Theater Sunday afternoon, when the former rental venue in the heart of the Southport Avenue retail strip launched a year-round series of its own home-made productions.

Much of the inaugural season — “Barnum” is next and “The Color Purple” is just down the road — will doubtless challenge the spatial and other logical constraints of this intimate theater, which comes with neither space to fly scenery nor a pit to house an orchestra. Success with big musicals will demand great creativity. But those sorts of judgments will have to wait. The Mercury’s management is starting cautiously, and one cannot fault them for that. The first production, “A Grand Night for Singing,” a familiar but easy-on-the-ears revue of the great music of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II that originated in New York in the early 1990s, is the kind of intimate show that the Mercury has housed many times before, albeit produced by others.

In this instance, you get precisely what you would expect, maybe a little more. The designer Jason Epperson has decked out the Mercury stage with a certain retro elegance; it’s filled with a six-piece orchestra under the direction of Eugene Dizon. The top-drawer cast, made up of Marya Grandy, Robert Hunt, Leah Morrow, Stephen Schellhardt and Heather Townsend, has an easy-going charm and just enough insouciance that we don’t feel like we’re on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Not that such a toasty evocation would be entirely a bad thing in frigid Chicago.

“Grand Night,” first staged by Walter Bobbie, is no feast of innovation and it won’t suddenly pull back any curtains or make you comprehend Rodgers and Hammerstein in a whole new way. But it does make an attempt to avoid silky sentiment (perhaps to a fault, given that Rodgers and Hammerstein were uniquely capable when it came to the guileless musical imparting of truths and life-lessons) and to shine a light on the lesser known shows and numbers in that formidable catalog, including material from “Allegro,” “Flower Drum Song,” “Me and Juliet” and “Cinderella,” which is about to revived on Broadway later this year. Many of the arrangements (which often make beautiful use of solo cello) are mildly counter-intuitive, including a zippy “Some Enchanted Evening” and a merrily sultry “Kansas City,” sung by women. This very experienced cast can handle of all that under the direction of Kevin Bellie, who keeps everything classy and avoids too much of that forced bonhomie that pockmarks so many of these revues. That said, there’s room here for more dramatics, especially in Act 2, when the material allows for longer numbers.

When it comes to personality and humanity, Morrow is the standout, although Grandy has the kind of honesty that nicely anchors this show, as does Schellhardt, who is charming. “Grand Night” is a nice fit for this space; buses should soon by pulling up on Southport.

cjones5@tribune.com

Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib

When: Through March 10

Where: Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Ave.

Running time: 2 hours

Tickets: $25-$59 at 773-325-1700 or mercurytheaterchicago.com

Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC

FREUD’S LAST SESSION celebrates its 200th performance!

  September 18, 2012 - 1:22 pm | , ,
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Freud’s Last Session will celebrate its 200th performance on Thursday, Sept. 20 at 7:30pm at the Mercury. Following the performance, audience members will have an opportunity to meet with Mike Nussbaum and Coburn Goss and celebrate the 200th performance with complimentary cake and coffee from Bad Ass Coffee.