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THEATER REVIEW

Illinois Wire 
The American Dream Songbook at the Next Theatre
By Dan Zeff


EVANSTON : The American Dream Songbook explores the American Dream in words and music and finds this elusive holy grail drenched in disillusion, alienation, and false values. That would make for a pretty glum evening if the songs and performances weren¹t so entertaining.

 The show is still another innovative concept from that house of innovation, the Next Theatre.

 Next artistic director Jason Loewith started with the revival of Leonard Bernstein¹s 1950¹s one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti . But that piece only runs 45 minutes, so to flesh out the production, Loewith commissioned five songs from young contemporary American composers to create a second act commentary on the thorny topic of the American Dream, circa 2008.

 Bernstein wrote “Trouble in Tahiti ” in the early 1950’s and it had a brief run on Broadway in 1955. The opera is very much a 1950’s period piece, when the postwar American suburbs were the lodestar of the white American middle class and also the symbol of shallow comforts and empty materialism. But the work is more a portrait of a marriage gone bad than a sociology term paper about the barren goals of American life at mid century.

 Sam is ambitious and self-centered. Dinah feels emotionally abandoned by her aloof and unromantic husband. Bernstein tells their glum story almost entirely in song through seven scenes. The show is basically a two-hander between Sam and Dinah with a trio of singers providing choral commentary and sometimes taking on minor characters. But the show is a slender work, with the exception of one very funny scene in which Dinah imagines herself romantically involved in one of those South Seas movie love stories (hence the title of the opera).

 The husband and wife are well sung by James Rank and Karen Doerr, though their voices don’t match well. Rank has a musical comedy voice and Doerr is operatic and in their duets Doerr’s vocal power tends to dominate. ‘Trouble in Tahiti ’ ends up being essentially a one-note tale of a couple emotionally adrift who can’t seem to find a way back to connect with each other. The husband isn’t a particularly sympathetic figure and their unhappiness isn’t very involving for the audience.

 ‘Trouble in Tahiti’ is really a table setter for the more intriguing second half of the production, when those five young composers take their whack at the American Dream from today¹s perspective.

 The first piece, by Chicago composer Kevin O’Donnell, is a continuation of the troubled relationship in the first act--a new couple and a new decade but the same old emotional disconnect. The music takes a chipper turn with ³Betty, the Clam Girl² by the successful musical theater composer Michael John LaChiusa. This number is a lampoon about a homely girl who finds glamour through an arduous physical makeover. The piece satirizes the American lust for outward physical beauty, an easy target but a fun one in LaChiusa’s musical imagination.

 The centerpiece of the second act is Michael Mahler’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Britney Spears.’ The number is an elaborate send-up of the American fascination with celebrityhood, with Spears both manipulated and manipulating in creating the image of the ultimate youth-driven celebrity (Justin Timberlake is also a participant). The number could have been tasteless or obvious, but Mahler’s clever lyrics tell a story that is both hilarious and cautionary.

 Michael Friedman¹s ‘Things We Wanted: Two Murder Ballads’ shows how the imagination of children is exploited by American legends told to youngsters.

Josh Schmidt ends the act with ‘This Little American Dream,’ which starts out as the only optimistic bit of the evening and ends humorously and ironically taking the same sour view of the American Dream that dominated the rest of the production.

The three-performer chorus of ‘Trouble in Tahiti ’ takes center stage with Rank and Doerr in the second act. They are Jason Bayle, Brandon Dahlquist, and Bernadette Garza, all quality singers and actors with Garza particularly notable.

 Loewith directs the entire presentation, with Tommy Rapley, who seems to be everything these days in Chicagoland musical theater, handling the choreography. Collette Pollard’s all-purpose set features giant mirrors at the rear of the stage. Jason Fassl designed the lighting, Janice Pytel the costumes, and Jeff Dublinske the sound. Jeremy Ramey is the musical director of the very fine six-piece orchestra that ends the evening with a jaunty Dixieland march down the aisle.

 The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.

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