Tag: beautiful

The Force Was With Me in 1968; My Favorite Theater

dire straitsJuliet says, Hey, it’s Romeo,

you nearly gave me a heart attack

Dire Straits-1980

After trading in some expiring airline miles for subscriptions, I am surrounded by dozens of magazines, packed with year end lists. Best TV Shows No One Is Watching, Best Recipes No One Is Making, Best Candidate No One Is Believing. I feel like making a list too. But don’t shackle me by a mere year. How about The Best Theater of My Life-By Decades. If you like going to plays and musicals, I hope this brings back memories and gets you thinking about your own favorites. If you aren’t a theater fan, don’t worry, it is still at least as much fun as 10 Favorite Quotes From This Season of Empire!

1950’s

I was born in the middle of the decade, so I didn’t go to much theater. That doesn’t matter. My parents had the original Broadway Cast Album of My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway et al. I did not see a live performance of the show for many, many, years (1993, an uncomfortable Richard Chamberlain as Henry Higgins) but MFL forever is, forever was, and forever will be my favorite musical. It’s no accident I parodied it in my anti-banker tirade!

1960’s

I’ll start with a musical that I didn’t see on stage until 40 years later. My girlfriend game me the Original Cast Album of Hair for Hannukah, and I was hooked. A friend and I were inspired to compose Haircut-The Censored Jewish Love-Rock Musical which, unfortunately, has never seen the light of production. Now my co-author is an honored film critic and I write blogs. But Raff and Fox could have been another Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I did see a few live shows. In 1968 I was at the Goodman Theater for a stunning production of Othello. I didn’t understood all the plot twists, and I couldn’t predict that Len Cariou, the actor playing Iago, would become famous as Sweeney Todd. But I am sure that nobody in the theater that night would have been surprised to know that the electrifying young man playing the lead would soon win a Tony Award playing  Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope on Broadway and become even more famous a few years later in a galaxy far far away, when James Earl Jones gave  his voice to the inter-galactic Man in Black, Darth Vader.

1970’s

One singular sensation, and you can forget the rest. It was A Chorus Line and Barb and I were together by the time it tapped into our lives. I am a sucker for seeing behind the curtain, and this show brought the curtain tumbling down. I will admit to enjoying some Andrew Lloyd Weber – Tim Rice productions in the ’70’s, but Evita never held my interest the way those struggling dancers begging for a chance on the line did.

1980’s

Cats, with an explanation. I know all of its faults and all the dreadful productions of it. I have seen a few of those myself. Why does it make my list? Because it was the question to the Final Jeopardy answer on my one Jeopardy appearance. And I got it right! Take that, Alex Trebeck.

1990’s

We have one “family musical”, and it is Les Miserables. It has lasted from the cassette of the cast recording we played endlessly during Michael’s car pools, to the Milwaukee road trip for Laury’s first theater experience, and finally to see the film as a Christmas Day group outing many years later. My favorite 5 digit number? Two-four-six-o-one!!

2000-2015

You would think I would have a lot of standouts from this period. Laury was living in New York City part of that time, so Barb and I visited often and had many theater weekends. But we saw some REAL bombs. Does anyone remember Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Our planned Spiderman adventure was cancelled in the shows early days of equipment malfunction. But I was enraptured by August: Osage County (missed it at Steppenwolf, saw it on Broadway) and rocked with American Idiot. Our most recent visit was to give Barb a chance to see Bradley Cooper in The Elephant Man, but it was Jessie Mueller in Beautiful that won our affection.

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OK, back to all the magazines lists.  Gotta find out who the ten highest paid character actors of 2015 were! But I would love to know what your favorite theater has been. Leave a comment on ChicagoNow or Facebook, or drop me a note at lesraff@post.com. Hope to hear from you!

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Menagerie à Trois: Almost As Much Fun As It Sounds

charlie
A Box of Charlie

We gotta get out of this place…

…if it’s the last thing we ever do.

The Animals-1965

You all remember Max . Our 90 pound multi-breed will greet you at the door with his Irish Wolf Hound-like smile, a loud but friendly bark, and a demand to be loved. He is Barb’s shadow, though happiest when I am giving him his nightly chin rub. When I do, his swishing tail cools the bedroom like a powerful Casablanca fan. Phoebe, our featherweight kitten, is much less likely to be seen when you stop by to visit, but for Barb and I  she is a rolling ball of fluff who loves a good tummy massage and racing us up the staircase. Although Max’s aging joints will love living in a ranch home and Phoebe the speed burner might hate it, the two are our Model U.N. picture of peaceful coexistence.

This Thanksgiving our weekend has been livened up by a visitor primed to end our domestic tranquility. With Laury travelling for the holiday, we have stepped in under the provisions of the “Forever Plan” to baby sit Charlie, Laury’s six year old Havanese puppy. Charlie was Laury’s loving companion through her years in New York City and transition back to Chicago, and is always a welcome visitor in our home.

The American Kennel club describes the Havanese breed as ” a small, sturdy dog of immense charm”. Charlie is indeed small, is indeed sturdy, and does his exuberant best to demonstrate immense charm. He can bounce high off any floor or wall, gobble up cat food faster than Phoebe can come out of hiding, and his playfulness has helped Max remember what it was like to be a doggie adolescent again. Like all dogs, he loves Barb to death and tolerates me as necessary. He comes equipped with  little blue pills for us  to slather in peanut better and give him nightly (the pills are  for behavior, not for  the other blue pill type of problem,) as well as a limited supply of Valium. The Valium is to be ingested when he demonstrates  too much “Crazy Havanese Time”, but the instructions Laury left were unclear. We are not sure if we are supposed to give Charlie the Valium or take it ourselves. Fortunately, Charlie was on a leash when a magnificent looking coyote trotted across our front yard yesterday; if  not, Charlie might have waggled over to say “Hi!” and become an excellent appetizer.

Laury will be picking up her pooch later today, ending our Thanksgiving holiday.  But before the weekend closes, let me give thanks.  I am blessed with a loving wife and healthy, growing, family. Nothing brings me greater joy. I am thankful for the professional skills and opportunities both Barb and I have that allow us to be of service to our community. I celebrate the roof over our heads, and the fun we will have doing it all over again while building our empty nest home. And I am grateful and proud that I have been able to chronicle it all in these posts, and that so many readers have gotten to know us and say “I didn’t know you could do that!”

In closing, an entertainment note  for our local readers. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”, the big hit for The Animals, was written by the  Brill Building songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Their story is a part of the Carole King musical “Beautiful”, which is just coming to town. If you love music, King, or just a good time, you must see this show!

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