What’s New

Formed in 2017, art-rock ensemble Je’raf arrange bits of hip-hop, jazz, funk, and postpunk into whimsical, progressive jams. All seven members (they’re split between New York and Chicago) play in similarly animated, eccentric bands outside the group too–bassist and vocalist PT Bell is in art-punk unit Blacker Face, for instance, and vocalist Brianna Tong fronts jazz-fusion group Cordoba. On Saturday, February 29, local labels Amalgam and No Index release Je’raf’s rambunctious and politically charged debut album, Throw Neck. That night they celebrate with a headlining set at Hungry Brain; Udababy opens, and tickets are $10.

Morrissey’s swerve into reprehensible political gibberish, mediocre albums, and lackluster live shows over the past 20 years has left many sweet and tender hooligans reaching for their Smiths albums far less often than they used to. Local electronic musician Nicky Flowers has a solution: a covers project called the Smynths, which recently dropped the charming EP The Smynths Return. It seems bound to offend the famously synth-averse Mozzer: Flowers turbocharges Johnny Marr’s melodies with a raft of ringing keyboards and glorious vocoder-assisted crooning. Giving offense is the point–the Smynths are “dedicated to psychically destroying Morrissey,” Flowers says. “Johnny Marr was the Smiths, 100 percent.” Shots fired! Due to prohibitive licensing costs, the Smynths aren’t on any streaming services, but the EP (and a 2018 self-titled full-length) are available via Flowers’s Bandcamp.

Justin Samuel Martin (of indie-rock group Automata) makes stylistically loose indie-pop as Otherly, with occasional help from his friends–Automata front woman Rachel Sarah Thomas, for example, adds luscious vocals to recent singles “Nadia” and “Leave.” Both those tracks appear on Otherly’s debut album, Darkling, which drops Friday, February 28. Otherly plays a free release party that night at the Whistler. v

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Normally, in a fantasy life, you obsess over your pets. Dog cloning figures largely in the mind anytime I think about how it would feel to be Barbra Streisand, personally. But there comes a point in any conversation with a decadent person–around hour two, perhaps–when you wonder if or when this fascinating individual will move on from dog talk and feed you dinner. That moment never comes in Dex & Abby, a 130-minute tepid fiasco, written by Allan Baker and directed by Daniel Washelesky.

Less a play than a live-action doggy-themed greeting card, this show imagines what it would be like if a rich gay couple, Sean and Corey, moved in together, and if their dogs, who can talk, took a while to become friends. Daniel Vaughn Manasia and Chesa Greene as the titular pooch duo can wag those behinds all they want: they’re dressed normally, their lines are inane garbage, and I just didn’t buy that they were dogs. Sure, they’re cute. But so is actual character development. So is costume design.

The overall weakness of the thing turns unsettling at times, as when Sean (Josh Pablo Szabo) tries to win an argument with Corey (Jesse Montoya) about whose experience of struggle is more valid by shouting point-blank into his partner’s face, “I’m a crack whore’s son!” Or when an inexplicable foldout bed emerges from the wall, stays in the scene for two quick and vapid cuddle scenes, then retracts once more, never to be seen again. v

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In 2017, young Latinx people entered the mind of Julia Reyes, the protagonist in Erika L. Sanchez’s New York Times bestselling novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Now through March 21, they can enter her world and serve as her confidant in the stage adaptation premiering at Steppenwolf, as part of the Steppenwolf for Young Adults series. (Sandra Marquez directs.)

The story follows teenager Julia, an aspiring writer from Chicago who is often seen as rebellious and a nuisance by her family, as she grieves the death of her older more traditional sister, Olga. She also attempts to find herself in a world that tries to keep her identity confined to specific boxes of what a Mexican American daughter should and shouldn’t be. Throughout this path of self-discovery, she faces adversity in mental health, domestic violence, and sexual trauma–topics that are widely dismissed and seen as taboo in Latinx households.

“[These topics] are what I think has brought the book so much popularity over the last few years,” says playwright Isaac Gomez. “It resonates because of all of the various intersection points, especially for people who identify as Mexican, Mexican American, or Latinx.”

Gomez, who says he has read the book around 18 or 20 times, wanted to embody the world that Sanchez created and include all of the central themes that make the protagonist’s journey so challenging. This is especially important because although not everyone’s upbringing was the same as Julia’s, a lot of the struggles she faces ring true for many. Gomez, for example, says despite being a man raised in a home with four boys “there were some things that Julia said about not being the perfect Mexican daughter that allowed me to connect with her, especially because I was an aspiring writer who struggled with mental health and because I was someone who just wanted to get out and dream.”

Similar to Julia, many first-generation Americans face this pressure to adhere to specific standards of both their culture and the American culture while simultaneously having to provide for their families and put their dreams aside. First-generation daughters, specifically, have a harder time shedding these limitations and remain tied down by old-fashioned roles.

This is what makes Julia so inspiring to many Latinx individuals. “We have this Mexican girl who is 15 and grappling with ribbons of grief,” says Karen Rodriguez, longtime collaborator of Gomez’s and the actress playing Julia in the play. “Part of her grief and part of her struggle is that she is so unabashedly herself and won’t let others put her in a box, even if it comes at great pain and great disconnect for her family and friends.”

Gomez sent her the novel when he had first decided to adapt it into a play. “I read it and I just felt like Julia, Erika, and I were like kindred spirits,” Rodriguez says. “There’s something about Julia and the way that she talks and the way that her mind works that felt like projects Isaac and I had worked on before.”

Gomez says Rodriguez was a crucial part of his adaptation process because of their shared backgrounds. The two are from border cities between Texas and Mexico (Gomez grew up in El Paso, Rodriguez in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville) and know what it’s like to feel like they’re from two places and everywhere all at once. “Every play I’ve written, except one, has featured Karen in some capacity because she brings so much energy into everything she does,” he says. “She brings a piece of home in everything she does.”

But another aspect of the adaptation process was getting the rights from Sanchez herself. Luckily, the author and current Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz chair at DePaul University trusted in Gomez immediately. “As soon as I met Isaac, I felt like I could trust him with the story, and he put so much care in transforming it in a way that was respectful and very true to the original vision,” Sanchez says.

Though the material remains the same, some changes were made to fit the medium. This includes adding asides, since the novel is told from the first-person point of view. But according to Gomez and Rodriguez, this allows the audience to actively serve as Julia’s confidant as she finds her voice.

More than anything, what Gomez, Sanchez, and Rodriguez hope audiences gain from the play is a chance to feel seen in a new medium. “I think it’s really great that so many young people of color are going to see the play. I find that really moving for me because when I was growing up, I didn’t really have that,” says Sanchez. “I never saw any plays that were related to my communities or who I was, and so the fact that so many young people are going to have access to it is something that makes me feel really proud.” v

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Museums can often feel like a cold, overly formal place. On one hand, that setting promotes an aura of respect around the artwork; on the other, it can lengthen the distance between the art and its viewer. “Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago” is an antidote to that.

“You’re going to see color, and patterns, and texture–not just in the art but in the way things are presented on the pedestals and on the walls,” says Naomi Beckwith, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which organized the exhibition, one of the largest show ever put on at the MCA. Beckwith didn’t curate it, though; that role was undertaken by Duro Olowu, a Nigerian-born, London-based fashion designer. His namesake boutique in London was a harbinger of things to come–a mishmash of his own designs and a collection of pieces that appeal to his taste. The shop displays traditional and cutting-edge artworks alongside vinyl albums, books, tapestries, and decor objects. Anything goes, as long as he likes them. “He’s interested in flattening these distinctions that we may put up around art,” Beckwith says. “Like, what is fine art, and what is found art, what is inspired versus what is academic.”

“It’s like walking into the coolest museum shop with handpicked items that have been curated so perfectly by the master of all masters,” says Ikram Goldman, owner of the Ikram boutique in the Gold Coast and the person who first brought Olowu’s designs to Chicago. She met Olowu through a mutual friend in the early 2000s before he launched his label in 2004. Olowu presented his collection to Goldman in a hotel she was staying at in New York. “I remember thinking, ‘OK, I know he’s showing me these, but I know there’s a lot more magic where this came from.’ And it’s been that way ever since. He has a taste level beyond anyone I’ve ever known.”

Olowu grew up going back and forth between Lagos, Nigeria, and London. His father was Nigerian and his mother was Jamaican. The fourth of six siblings, he was raised in a large family that encouraged his artistic endeavors. Fashion has been a lifelong interest; his parents always valued the art of dressing well. His mother taught him early on how to compose a look, mixing high fashion and local West African fabrics. Once it was time to go to college, Olowu followed his father’s footsteps and studied to be a lawyer at the University of Canterbury in England in the 80s. He practiced law but began designing his own clothing and then launched his eponymous brand. He hit the jackpot when Vogue editor Sally Singer loved a dress he designed. Dubbed “The Duro dress,” it is fashioned in Olowu’s signature mix of vibrant prints and features a V-neck, empire waist, and wide sleeves, slightly evocative of a kimono. That dress led to him being named the Best New Designer at the British Fashion Awards in 2005. Since then he’s put together two critically acclaimed pop- up shops/art shows at Salon 94 gallery in New York and a blockbuster exhibit at the London Camden Arts Center in 2016 entitled “Making & Unmaking.”

Famous for creating unexpected yet harmonious combinations of vivid prints, Olowu also takes his tailoring seriously. According to Goldman, what makes his garments special is “a lightness in fabrics and extraordinary taste in color and print mix.” “He comes from a very authentic place and it translates in his collections,” Goldman says. “There is no one I know who makes clothes that are as flattering as Duro does. It all seems to fit beautifully on a body. Clearly [my clients] love him and they treasure his pieces–they come in just to get his things. He’s a treasure.”

The admiration, Olowu says, is mutual. “The manner in which the wonderful women of Chicago have supported my career in fashion and wear my womenswear collections which are sold there is really inspiring,” he says. “Like the city’s museums and private collectors, these women are enthusiastic, curious, and keen to explore new ideas in their original form. They also love quality over trend, something that is a wonderful and unique trait.” One of those women was Michelle Obama, who first discovered Olowu’s designs while her husband was running for president. She subsequently sported many of Olowu’s garments in official engagements and even got him to decorate a room in the White House for Christmas in 2015.

Now Chicagoans will have the opportunity to savor Olowu’s vision in a different way. “For me, both [curating and designing] require an intuitive eye and a free hand in order to reflect the real and cosmopolitan world we live in,” Olowu says. “I feel very lucky and inspired to be able to do both.”

Olowu’s London boutique serves as inspiration for one of the later sections of “Seeing Chicago.” Some of his designs are displayed in that area, but they are far from the central focus. The bulk of the exhibit consists of almost 350 objects, all borrowed from local public and private collections. Most of them belong to the MCA, but many come from places such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Block Museum of Art, South Side Community Art Center, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.

“I began with the idea of exposing and showcasing the amazing MCA Collection, which exemplifies this city’s original approach to contemporary art and culture,” Olowu says. “But I soon realized that a much more generous and open approach to the city’s public and private collections was necessary to honestly and justly convey the unique sensibility of museums and collectors in Chicago. The duty and beauty of museums is to hold up a mirror to its audience regardless of social standing or class and create a unifying experience with local and international art in a way that is a source of pride for the people of the city. The MCA has given me the opportunity to create an exhibition that I hope is an example of this.”

Some of the featured artists include turn-of-the-century groundbreakers like Henri Matisse and Rene Magritte, and contemporary names such as David Hammons, Barbara Kruger, Ana Mendieta, and Fred Wilson. Even though there will be works from across the world, dozens of artists connected to Chicago will be on display. Amongst them are Dawoud Bey, Simone Leigh, and Kerry James Marshall as well as leaders of local movements AfriCOBRA and the Chicago Imagists. There will be rare surrealist art books by Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, and Salvador Dali. “That kind of international, or what we’ve been calling cosmopolitan and transcultural view of not only the history of art but also of the city, is very important,” Beckwith says.

The way Olowu displays his selection is an art in itself. Instead of the usual stark white cube, artworks are placed against colorful walls in shades of orange, purple, and teal. Paintings and photographs are installed vertically, or “salon-style,” in arrangements that promote unexpected conversations between the pieces.

“It’s so exciting for me to see a Matisse painting mirror an African sculpture. Starting to make those kinds of leaps into our imagination is going to be really incredible,” Beckwith says. “I don’t think we realize that when we go to museums, oftentimes the work that we see in one specific gallery or in one show is usually like for like. That is to say that all the works in African sculpture are in the African galleries. All the works by French painters of the late 19th century are in another gallery by themselves. All the pottery from Asia is either in the Asian gallery or in the decorative arts gallery. We began to separate things out in ways that feel logical, but what it doesn’t often allow is for things across cultures to speak to each other, or things across time periods to live with each other. Duro kind of ignored those basic art historical claims and just asked us to realize the affinities that art may have, across the country, across the world, across time.” v

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In the 19th century, amid social unrest, crime, and infectious disease in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Five Points in New York City, an American dance was brewing. The source of this new creative energy was a combination of cultures colliding and competition. “Black people and Irish people were on the street corner together, in the music halls together, in the pubs together,” notes choreographer Michelle Dorrance. “And Irish were referred to as Blacks, and Black dancing was called jigging.” In the 1840s, a series of contests, or “challenge dances,” spearheaded by Irish dancer John Diamond (sometimes referred to as the “greatest white minstrel dancer”) brought the blackface performer head-to-head with the young man who replaced him in P.T. Barnum’s show, William Henry Lane, known as “Master Juba.” Juba roundly triumphed over the ill-tempered Irishman in all but one contest, staged in cities nationwide. Described by Charles Dickens as “the greatest dancer known,” Juba gained worldwide fame as the only Black dancer in all-white minstrel companies and the first Black performer to be billed above a white performer in minstrel shows.

“Tap dance was born on the southern slave plantations,” says Dorrance. “A lot of slave uprisings were organized by drums, [which were] central to West African culture.” Body percussion, or “patting juba,” arose as drums were outlawed by plantations. “Tap dance was born in that dire need for expression and communication,” she explains. “And those famous contests between African American dancers and Irish dancers in the 1800s pushed tap and American Irish dance forward. It’s sewn into the history of tap dance. Early tap, then called ‘buck dancing’ or ‘buck and wing,’ lives on the balls of the feet, which is where Irish dance lives. Juba was able to imitate the Irish dancers’ approach to buck dance. And he would imitate them imitating him. Who knows what kind of masterful mockery that was? He was described as doing things people had never seen–he was a masterful innovator. Tap dance is rooted in improvisation. That kind of conversation with the feet is part of the development of the form. It lives in those early contests.”

These thoughts of cultural exchange drove the creation of American Traffic, a new work commissioned by the Auditorium Theatre for Chicago’s Trinity Irish Dance Company by Dorrance, a MacArthur Fellow and artistic director of Dorrance Dance, and Dorrance artistic associate Melinda Sullivan. “Trinity Irish Dance Company is a contemporary Irish American company rooted in the traditions of Irish step dance,” explains TIDC associate artistic director Chelsea Hoy. “We push the boundaries of the form through a performing arts lens. One way we do that is by collaborating with movers from different genres. Michelle Dorrance’s work bears similarities to ours in the way that it honors the ancestors.”

“We were interested in breaking down the rigidity and traditional carriage of Irish step dancing,” says Dorrance. “We wanted to explore a pedestrian quality. The execution of Irish dance is so beautiful but often rigid. The arms are held. In tap, we often have a relaxed upper body and an organic approach.” The title of the work began as a joke, she says–simply a way of organizing the negotiation and exploration of space. “The rule was, when they would pass each other, pass on the right–literally ‘American traffic.’ But it became this thing that reflected a culture that has such depth in its ancestry. Tap is one of the oldest–in terms of immigrated Americans–American dance forms. There’s constant exploration in the piece, and exploration of identity. It’s not about some heavy emotional drama, it just lives in the fiber of the work.”

The exploration of technique and identity is central to TIDC’s mission of innovation in Irish American dance. TIDC was founded in 1990 by Yorkshire-born, Rogers Park-raised Mark Howard, who studied at the Dennehy School of Irish Dance–where fellow Irish American Chicagoan Michael Flatley also trained. Whereas Flatley’s Riverdance became a global phenomenon when it premiered in 1995, Howard has refused traditional Irish dance competitions and Broadway-style spectacles. “We’re the only art-driven ensemble repertory Irish dance company in the world,” says Hoy.

“How are you still doing what you love when [Riverdance] turned into this multimillion dollar thing?” Dorrance recalls asking Howard. “He replied, ‘We just want people to connect with what we do.’ And I thought, ‘That’s exactly what I feel about my art form.’ To exchange the roots of our culture, the rhythmic ideas, to learn more about our techniques, where they came from, and why–that’s fascinating.” v

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Of all the inescapable truths that James Ijames bombards his audience with in Kill Move Paradise, the biggest one is found in the mirror he holds up to the audience. There are few things more dismaying, or more apt to generate a knee-jerk, fear-based, totally ignorant defensiveness, than being forced to confront the worst parts of yourself. And that’s precisely what Kill Move Paradise does, at least for the melanin-redacted people in the audience. With surgical precision, Ijames lays down the facts of living in a country founded by and–for most of its 200+ year history–run by white supremacists. Ijames knows that if you are white, you are part of the problem, so long as the system designed to favor white people remains intact. If you find yourself wanting to look away or giggling nervously or demanding a refund during Kill Move Paradise (all have happened), that says more about you than anything else.

Directed by Wardell Julius Clark with brutal, beautiful, haunting choreography by Breon Arzell, Kill Move Paradise stands at the unicorn-rare intersection of mesmerizing and indispensable.
The skate park-like set (by Ryan Emens) is a netherworld limbo for three Black men and a Black child who have been murdered by cops. The actors don’t enter so much as they are hurled like crash test dummies across the half-pipe, down into an assaultive purgatory of buzzing lights and throbbing noises.

Isa (Kai A. Ealy) has been there the longest. It falls to him to help newcomers, including Grif (Cage Sebastian Pierre), Daz (Charles Andrew Gardner) and 12-year-old Tiny (Trent Davis) get oriented. The others, for example, are initially confused by the endless spew of sheets from a downstage dot matrix printer. It’s a list of names that Isa reads aloud–hundreds of them, all Black people killed by law enforcement. In Isa’s utterance, the names become an indictment of history and a demand for reckoning. “Jesus,” says Grif in the shattered silence that follows. “They got his ass too,” Isa responds.

Throughout, the actors move purposefully through the audience, demanding prolonged eye contact, puzzling over these creatures who “like to watch.” Grif: “They have a name?” Isa: “America.”

Intimacy and violence director Rachel Flesher makes the violence visited on these young men so wincingly realistic, it’s tempting to avert your eyes. Which, again, points to the problems Kill Move Paradise so vividly underscores. v

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When Blackstar came out in January 2016, I got my hopes up. Maybe, just maybe, this new album meant that David Bowie would go on tour. I made a promise to myself that I would spend anything–sell anything, take out a loan, do anything–for the chance to see Bowie live. Of course those hopes were dashed when just two days later the Starman died, and I’ve spent a lot of time since wondering what it would have been like to be in the presence of such an amazing performer and artist, how it must have felt to see him in his prime. After seeing the Bowie-inspired performance Floor Show, I feel like I don’t have to wonder anymore. And not in the sense that I saw someone do their best Bowie, but that I got to see Alex Grelle (soon to be, if not already, a legend in his own right) create a completely original, electric night of music, fashion, laughter, art, and many, many wigs celebrating the spirit of transformation.

The stage for Floor Show, cocreated by Grelle and director Jesse Morgan Young, is set up like a runway–the friend who accompanied me compared the space to that of an underground show at Fashion Week. Nestled in between two loops of the runway is a full band and two singers (the “Cherrys,” aka Teressa LaGamba and Bran Moorhead). The walls on either side of the band feature projections (designed by Sid Branca) inspired by famous Bowie imagery, and at the direct end of the runway is a two-way mirror where the audience can see performers prepare before the show and in between scenes.

The core of the show is musical performances of Bowie and Bowie-adjacent songs accompanied by Zachary Whittenburg and Erin Kilmurray’s choreography that moves from energetic to stoic to playful to emotional and–perhaps most impressive–a seemingly endless and seamless stream of costume and wig changes, often happening while Grelle is still belting out a tune without missing a beat. Grelle is clearly the star of this show, but the onstage dressers (opening night, Adrian Hadlock and Maddie Barton, the latter replacing Mandyn Mueller for that performance) come in at a close second. (Kate Setzer Kamphausen, Keith Ryan, and Chris Tuttle are credited with costumes, wigs, and styling.)

Despite being built on recognizable source material, nothing about Floor Show is expected. That becomes most clear during one of the most delightful moments halfway through when Grelle and Andrew Sa show up as Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland to perform a show-tune-esque medley of Bowie hits. The performance from Grelle in particular highlighted his range as a performer, able to go from dark brooding Bowie to playful, ingenue Liza in an instant.

Throughout the night I saw it, there was a sense of camaraderie among the audience members that felt rare. There were several moments where I would catch someone’s eye from across the room and we’d both be grinning our faces off as if to say “how amazing that we’re lucky enough to be here for this transcendent moment.” As Grelle continues to create, I have no doubt that there will be someone wondering what it would be like to be at that performance, to be in the presence of such a powerful performer. Lucky for you, there’s still time to say you were there when. Floor Show is a moment that you’ll want to live in forever. v

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It’s not often that a writer will make me see Chicago in a new way, but with his debut collection of interlocking stories, set primarily in Bronzeville’s now-demolished Stateway Gardens housing project for which the book is named, Jasmon Drain has done just that. A young boy named Tracy is our primary guide and narrator, but by the end even the high-rises themselves become fully fleshed-out characters. Though sometimes dreamy with longing for the comforts of a childhood, which, from the outside, appears filled with privation, Drain–who grew up in Englewood and now lives in Kenwood–has fashioned an indelible portrait of this city.

The looming presence over much of Stateway’s Garden (Random House) is Tracy’s mother. She haphazardly raises Tracy and his older half brother, Jacob, while focusing much of her attention on keeping her looks and finding a man who will stay. The lessons she imparts to her children are blunt and unsentimental. “Life isn’t about fun. It’s about money,” she spits out at Jacob when the boy tries to refuse to go with her to a short-lived job at a store back on the west side, where she’d grown up. To Tracy, who visits this store only once, it is a world of wonder, but to his mother it is but a tiresome means to an end. The chasm between an adult’s perception and that of a child has rarely been evoked so precisely and heartbreakingly.

Tracy’s overriding wish is for his mother to love him and pay him attention, but he observes her with a mixture of fascination and fear: “Mother stood slowly and put both hands to her knees to guide her legs straight. She released a groan while standing, then walked into the hall, past my bedroom, and made the left turn to the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door. She hardly ever shut the door while in there.” Here and through many other moments throughout these stories, Drain nails how strange, even foreign, those closest to us can be.

When Tracy and the other boys want to visit other parts of the city, they jump the fence and run across the Dan Ryan Expressway, dodging speeding cars, then vault over the barrier, taking care not to touch the third rail, onto the 35th Street CTA platform. It’s a harrowing way to catch a public train, but these boys have no other means to experience places outside their immediate environment. Everyone in these stories is striving to find a better life, to get out of the projects, to live out their dreams. But it’s not so easy to forget where you come from; nor do you necessarily want to, when being honest with yourself.

In the second-to-last story, “Love-Able Lip Gloss,” Jacob, a beautiful cipher for much of the book, tells his story. Now an overweight, middle-aged man, he can’t let go of his past as a youthful heartthrob. He carries on an on-again, off-again masochistic affair with his childhood sweetheart, a woman who managed to leave Stateway Gardens behind. But Jacob couldn’t take the leap when given the opportunity and is stuck instead romanticizing the past and ruing what might have been. Jacob is but the last of the people Drain describes in all their complexity. He is not a writer who traffics in caricature or simplification.

I’ve known of the streets and buildings in this book for decades, but now feel like I’ve been there. Through slyly poetic language and an absolute grasp on place and description, Drain has added to the canon of Chicago literature. He belongs on the shelf next to Algren, Brooks, Dybek, and Wright–writers who know and love this city in all its magnificent contradictions, its unique, ugly beauty. v

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This musical version of the 1987 Michael J. Fox vehicle, receiving its world premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, tells a sweet, lighthearted story–plucky young man climbs the ladder of success from mail room to executive suite–that feels a lot like an updated version of Frank Loesser’s 1961 Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, only without the bite or wit or heart. Where How to Succeed at least attempted to satirize American corporate culture (and largely fell short), The Secret of My Success is content to tell a story that would barely sustain one episode in a sitcom. Even though the story touches on some of the more devastating aspects of contemporary business (layoffs, plant closings, kleptocratic leadership), the show remains relatively toothless.

Part of the problem is the show’s bland, cliche-filled book by Gordon Greenberg (who also directs) and Steve Rosen. You just can’t tell an interesting story if you are content to give us, without irony, a show full of stock characters and predictable plot twists. The show’s forgettable score, by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler, is less shallow than the book, though at times the songs often feel like pastiches of better-known pop tunes of the last 50 years. Still, the tunes are ear pleasing, and the lyrics are frequently playful and witty.

A larger problem though is that the show’s story and message–the vanity of success, the importance of integrity and love–is too intimate for the big stage, and gets lost in all the singing and dancing and general Broadway glitz. Heidi Kettenring and Sydney Morton, as the two major female characters in the show, do a great job bringing heart and fire to the show. But Billy Harrigan Tighe brings no heat to his portrayal of the lead; again and again we found ourselves yearning for Michael J. Fox’s sly Alex Keatonish charm. v

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