Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson
‘The Whale’ at Victory Gardens: A daughter’s outsized rage, a father’s thin hope of grace
Review: ★★★★
With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart-Beethoven concert Thursday night with music director Riccardo Muti felt like one long “aha!” moment. Here was the full measure of finesse, composure and pliancy the orchestra had expected to put on display for audiences in Southeast Asia with Muti at the helm, but in his absence never entirely achieved. ★★★★★
Alison Balsom, mistress of Baroque trumpet, will flash that golden sound at Logan Center
Preview: Alison Balsom, the British classical trumpet star who brings her blazing sound to Chicago in a concert with the Scottish Ensemble, knew which instrument had her name on it the first time she heard Dizzy Gillespie on a recording. She was 8 years old.
‘Dream of the Burning Boy’ at Profiles: Loss, loneliness and anger shroud a student’s death
Review: ★★★★
Riccardo Muti honors Boston Marathon victims with dedication at Chicago Symphony concert
Asks silence before Bach Mass
Adolph Herseth dies at 91; honored trumpeter was Chicago Symphony principal five decades
Burnished glory of Chicago brass
Opera stage resounds in Bach’s Mass as Muti brings personal authenticity to CSO account
Review: The decidedly Italianate, essentially operatic treatment of Bach’s Mass in B Minor offered this weekend by conductor Riccardo Muti and forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra may have little to do with the elusive question of Baroque performance practice, but it has everything to do with spiritual authenticity, conceptual integrity and musical wisdom. ★★★★★
Riccardo Muti, fit and jovial, pitches CSO’s agenda from Verdi to Canary Islands tour
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced a bundle of developments at a press conference Wednesday morning, but the best news may have been the vigorous appearance and high spirits of music director Riccardo Muti.
Berlin Aisle: Deutsches Symphonie’s Sibelius, with Osmo Vänskä, sheds light on a treasure
Review: This is the story of a small world and a hidden gem. The jewel in question is the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, a beautifully balanced, virtuosic Berlin ensemble with a youthful look that plays in the shadow of the Berlin Philharmonic. Yet, with two such orchestras sharing the splendid Philharmonie concert hall, this city is simply twice blessed.
Role Playing: Chaon Cross turned Court stage into a romper room finding answers in ‘Proof’
Interview: The interpretive quest that led Chaon Cross to her fierce, blazing portrayal of Catherine, the brilliant but unmoored young woman in David Auburn’s “Proof” at Court Theatre, began in rehearsals with a lot of running around, getting under furniture and throwing things.
Conductor Oramo, bringing Nielsen to CSO, sees master builder’s hand in 5th Symphony
Preview: When Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo steps in front of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for concerts April 4-6, he will put the spotlight on Danish composer Carl Nielsen, a figure that has waxed and waned in the hearts of audiences and conductors alike over the last half century.
Fresh out of college, Stephen Anthony slides into ‘Catch Me If You Can’ — and it’s no con
Preview: There’s a connection you can’t miss between actor Stephen Anthony, recently graduated from Florida State University, and the con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., whom he plays in the national touring production of “Catch Me If You Can” that opens April 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. They both bounce around the country, never staying long in one place, pretending to be somebody they aren’t and oozing charm all the way.
In contrasting Mozart concertos with the CSO, pianist Mitsuko Uchida blends depth, charm
Review: While it wasn’t quite the alpha and omega of Mozart’s numerous ventures into the piano concerto, the two works pianist Mitsuko Uchida performed March 28 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra did offer a telling perspective on a composer on top of the world and one who had seen all too much of it. ★★★★
Cuban troupe’s ghostly ‘Pedro Páramo’ opens Goodman’s Latino Festival with mystic grace
Review: ★★★★
Conductor Tugan Sokhiev, in CSO debut, sets Russian stamp on Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony
Review: While the Tchaikovsky symphonies hardly belong to the exclusive province of Russian conductors, the free-wheeling, hair-raising Fourth Symphony that Tugan Sokhiev led with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on March 21 simply may not be an interpretive option within the DNA of conductors from other parts of the world. ★★★★
Role Playing: Dion Johnstone turned outsider Antony to bloody purpose in ‘Julius Caesar’
Interview: The actor who portrays Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” draws one of the greatest speeches in the Bard’s canon: the dramatically pivotal funeral oration for the slain Caesar. But that opportunity, says Dion Johnstone, whose eloquent and driven Marc Antony fires the current production at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, comes freighted with compact and perilous challenges. “From the moment Marc Antony enters the Senate and sees Caesar’s bloody corpse, with Brutus and the other assassins all still there, he’s in serious danger,” the actor says. “And despite his overwhelming grief, he has to think fast.”
‘Body of Water’ at Redtwist: Life as a circular swim with no clue of current, bottom or bank
Review: ★★★
Role Playing: Noir films gave Justine Turner model for shadowy dame in ‘Dreadful Night’
Interview: Funny thing about film noir, says Justine C. Turner, who plays a sultry, sexy 1940s type in Don Nigro’s play “City of Dreadful Night” at The Den Theatre: It brought women out of the shadows, and made them multi-dimensional. “That’s the really great thing about my character. Anna is complicated. She’s both Madonna and whore, not just one or the other but good and bad at the same time,” says Turner, who tuned up for the defining noir style of “Dreadful Night” by watching Ida Lupino films from the 1940s.
Teal Wicks, who’s done a green witch, happy to show other colors in musical ‘Jekyll & Hyde’
Preview: Teal Wicks made a name for herself as the misunderstood but resilient green girl Elphaba in “Wicked.” Shed of the body paint, she’s again playing a young woman who marches to her own drum as Emma, the fiancée (against all prudent counsel) of the mysterious Dr. Jekyll in the musical “Jekyll & Hyde.” Where Wicks is marching with it is right back to Broadway.
Subbing for Boulez again, Cristian Macelaru looks like conducting star on rise with CSO
Review: Twice in the last two seasons the young Romanian-born conductor Cristian Macelaru has stepped into the same big shoes, replacing an indisposed Pierre Boulez on the podium of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After the second look, on March 7, one can only join the applauding CSO musicians in saluting Macelaru as a star in the making. ★★★★
Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will celebrate Lutosławski at heart of diverse duo recital
Preview: For German violin virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter, the observance of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s birth centennial this year is a personal celebration of music she calls “elevating, too poetic for me to put into words.” Mutter’s far-ranging recital with pianist Lambert Orkis, in the Symphony Center Presents series March 10 at Orchestra Hall, will include Lutosławski’s Partita, a five-movement work composed in 1984 for violinist Pinchas Zukerman but which also has a personal history for Mutter.
Role Playing: Anish Jethmalani plumbs agony of good man battling demons in ‘Bengal Tiger’
Interview: The play is called “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” and while there is indeed a tiger in it – dead for most of the story, wafting in and out of view as an existential ghost – our sympathies are not with the spectral creature but with a real man, an Iraqi gardener brought to heartbreaking life by Anish Jethmalani at Lookingglass Theatre.
‘The City & The City’: Politics, murder occupy the same space in a surreal thriller at Lifeline
Review: ★★★
Lyric Opera’s throwback ‘Rigoletto’ is rescued by stellar debuts of Dobber, Shagimuratova
Review: Verdi’s “Rigoletto” is about a man’s tormented soul, and about his sheltered daughter, a young woman utterly innocent of the world – and the inexorable calamity that befalls them both. In all that, in the voices of baritone Andrzej Dobber and soprano Albina Shagimuratova and their moving rapport as protective father and enraptured daughter, the Lyric Opera of Chicago offers a “Rigoletto” deeply rewarding at its heart. Draw the circle larger, however, and the problems with this production become evident. ★★★
‘A Soldier’s Play’ at Raven: Sifting through racial prejudice and rage to find a murderer
Review: In an obvious sense, Charles Fuller’s 1982 drama “A Soldier’s Play,” recently opened in a sharply detailed production at Raven Theatre, is about the virulent ugliness of racism as it persisted in the mid-20th century deep South. But more than that, Fuller’s story grapples with the despair and self-loathing that can infect the soul of an oppressed people. ★★★
Role Playing: Gary Perez channels his Harlem youth as quiet, unflinching Julio in ‘The Hat’
Interview: One of the most appealing, indeed endearing, performances to be seen on Chicago theater stages this season is Gary Perez’s quietly philosophical, yet vaguely dangerous turn as Julio, the gay cousin and one true friend in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play “The ______ With the Hat” at Steppenwolf. Perez credits director Anna D. Shapiro with framing Julio as worldly-wise and possessed of a Zen-like calm, the one really centered character in a collection of loose cannons.
