Social issues and, yes, even presidential politics are two themes of the fall theatrical season, with a rare revival of an old Gerswhin show about a fictional White House race and a weird-sounding, cross-dressed, cross-racial takeoff on the old slave soaper, ”Mandingo.”
The Goodman promises Thorton Wilder`s allegorial take on what`s wrong with mankind, pre-historic and mid-20th Century, while Steppenwolf tackles a classic that is ideal for a troupe attracted to hard-hitting socio-politics and rich family melodrama.
Still, this is a fall so varied that there`s equal room for a Broadway-bound, Neil Simon musical premiere, another mega-blockbuster from Britain and an off-Loop, post-modern trip through ”The Arabian Nights.”
Even the season`s splashiest, most eagerly awaited event, ”Miss Saigon,” the first North American production of the British blockbuster outside Broadway, opening Oct. 17 at the Auditorium Theatre, flirts with political topicality, marrying as it does the age-old East vs. West of
”Madame Butterfly” with the more recent, and more viscerally painful, issue of the American war in Vietman. The show is based on Italian opera, scored by a French songwriting team and the product of British directors and producers, but no matter: It swings away at the American Dream (one of its song titles), and zeroes in on a young American G.I. in love with a Saigon prostitute in a great spectacle of a story.
Commercially, the fall season continues the boom that began last year when the Nederlander took over the downtown Shubert Theatre. The Shubert hosts Mandy Patinkin (already in his concert engagement), Stephanie Mills reviving
”The Wiz” Sept. 30 and Michael Feinstein and Rosemary Clooney Oct. 21. Then the holiday treat: ”The Goodbye Girl,” the world premiere of a new musical version of Simon`s movie classic, with songs by Marvin Hamlisch and David ”City of Angels” Zippel, starring Bernadette Peters and Martin Short- already one of the most anticipated events of the Broadway calendar-plays here first, beginning Dec. 29.
Also, ”The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” and Michael Crawford return Oct. 20 to the Chicago Theatre.
In the off-loop commercially, the big event will be the Chicago premiere of Neil Simon`s 1991 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Broadway hit,
”Lost in Yonkers,” Sept. 30, at the Royal George Theatre.
As for presidential politics, the main event will be Remains Theatre`s rare revival of the George and Ira Gershwin 1931 musical, ”Of Thee I Sing,” all about a fictional candidate for U.S. president, John P. Wintergreen, and his platform of love. The show opens Oct. 1.
Steppenwolf Theatre opens with Clifford Odets` leftist classic, ”Awake and Sing!” (Sept. 20), about a moody, miserable, Depression-era Bronx family plagued by unwanted pregnancy and poverty.Later, in marked contrast, Steppenwolf checks in with a holiday poke via ”Inspecting Carol” (Dec. 6), a comic romp about a provincial troupe`s annual misadventures with ”A Christmas Carol.”
Before the real ”A Christmas Carol”Nov.23, the Goodman Theatre will open with a provocative choice, a revival of Thornton Wilder`s ambitious, daunting, revered and reviled allegory, ”The Skin of Our Teeth,” beginning Oct. 5. Wilder`s 1942 tour de force mingles Biblical and prehistoric events, the invention of the wheel and dinosaurs among them, with such contemporary icons as Atlantic City and the Miss America Pageant.
In the Goodman studio, ”Reno Once Removed” continues through Sept. 27 and the world premiere of a musical version of Arthur Kopit`s ”Wings,” his successful drama that shows the view of the world through the eyes of a stroke victim.
In a move maybe a bit overdue, Northlight Theatre in Evanston will present the area premiere of ”Jar the Floor,” by Cheryl L. West, a Chicago- born, African-American dramatist who until now has met with success mostly in cities outside her hometown. ”Floor,” about four generations of women in one black family, a hit last year at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., opens at Northlight Sept. 23.Northlight, meanwhile, follows Nov. 18 with
”Smoke on the Mountain,” a bluegrass musical set in a Baptist Church in 1938.
In a similar case of a local writer hitting big elsewhere first, Victory Gardens Theater will stage Doug Post`s ”Earth and Sky,” a 1990 off-Broadway smash, in its Chicago premiere beginning Thursday; composer-writer Post mostly saw his work in smaller, non-Equity versions here before his New York break. Victory Gardens follows with ”Hospitality Suite,” a West Coast comedy about veteran salesmen sharing a hotel room with a young trainee, Nov. 12.
Upstairs, the Body Politic will still play host to ”Wild Men!” through early fall but, after nearly a year of not producing a show, return with the American premiere of Doug Lucie`s ”Fashion” at the Gallery Theatre Oct. 13 and then hosting Barto Productions` ”The Tempest” at its home base Nov. 17. The University of Chicago`s Court Theatre promises an electrifying
”Othello” Sept. 24, with Harry J. Lennix as the Moor, Steve Pickering as Iago and Eric Simonson handling the directing chores. Court follows with a revival of John Guare`s ”The House of Blue Leaves,” about a hapless group of New Yorkers on the day the pope visited New York in 1965, opening Nov. 19.
Wisdom Bridge offers a new adaptation of ”The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Sept. 23, and the world premiere of an as yet untitled new play by Jim Geoghan (”Only Kidding”) Dec. 2.
The ETA Creative Arts Foundation is reviving last season`s hit, ”Tatum Family Blues,” beginning Thursday, and a new comedy about a divorced man and his courtship of a younger woman, ”The Brother & the Bap,” Nov. 19.
The Illinois Theatre Center in Park Forest checks in with the area premiere of Canadian Elliot Hayes` family drama, ”Homeward Bound,” Sept. 25 and Joan MacLeod`s ”Amigo`s Blue Guitar,” about an El Salvadoran refugee, Oct. 30.
The Next Theatre in Evanston opens with a new adaptation of Charles G. Finney`s ”The Circus of Dr. Lao,” about a Chinese man who visits a small town with his magical creatures, written by Tom Mula and Dale Calandra, and starring Mula, Wednesday. Later, Next will present Shakespeare`s ”Julius Caesar,” Nov. 10, staged by Next`s young hot shot, Dexter ”Bouncers”
Bullard. And the National Jewish Theater in Skokie begins with ”The Songs of War” Oct. 21.
In the suburban musical arena, Marriott`s Lincolnshire Theatre continues with ”Grand Hotel” through Nov. 1 and then ”The Sound of Music” beginning Nov. 11; Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace continues ”Meet Me in St. Louis”
through Oct. 4 and ”The King and I” starting Oct. 14; Drury Lane Dinner Theatre in Evergreen Park has ”Taking Steps” through Oct. 25 and ”Annie”
opening Nov. 4; and Candlelight Dinner Playhouse and the Forum Theatre in Summit see no reason not to run the hits ”Phantom” and ”Out of Order”
through December.
Highland Park`s Apple Tree Theatreplans ”Ain`t Misbehavin”` Oct. 2 and, in a surprise move, Chicago comic actress Peggy Roeder going after Lily Tomlin`s impersonations in Jane Wagner`s ”The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” Dec. 11.
The struggling, smaller theaters, as usual, are going for the pluckier risks, and at the top is Center Theater`s remarkable coup in catching a Beth Henley world premiere, ”Control Freaks” Sept. 20, thanks mostly to Center artistic director Dan LaMorte`s collegiate friendship with the ”Crimes of the Heart” dramatist.
Also, the ever-innovative, Lookingglass Theatre Company unveils ”The Arabian Nights” Sept. 26.
Bailiwick continues Christopher Cartmill`s ”light” trilogy with ”Light in the Heart of the Dragon” Wednesday in the Theatre Building (where the Victorian musical thriller ”Trask & Fenn” premiered from New Tuners last week).
Famous Door Theatre, who did such a splendid ”Salt of the Earth” a few seasons back, takes over Bailiwick`s old home in the Jane Addams Hull House on Broadway with its just-opened ”The Conquest of the South Pole,” about four unemployed workers who pass the time by re-creating in fantasy play Amundsen`s expedition to the South Pole.
Pegasus Players plans a new Stephen Sondheim revue (”You`re Gonna Love Tomorrow”) Oct. 25.
Touchstone Theatre opens its new digs in the old Steppenwolf Theatre with Peter Hall and Inga Stina`s admired new translation of Ibsen`s ”The Wild Duck” Sept. 23.
Griffin Theatre Company, after struggling in a loft, moves to the Calo Theatre in Andersonville with ”Generations” Sept. 26.
In what sounds like the wildest show of the lot, City Lit brings us playwright Sterling Houston`s ”Womandingo.” Directed by Arnold Aprill, black men play white women-Scarlett O`Hara, in other words, as a burly, statuesque black man-and vice versa, in an Old South take-off that has won wide-eyed applause in San Antonio and Indianapolis. The show begins here Sept. 26 at Victory Gardens Studio Theater.
