A provocative play, a tuba concerto, the return of ‘West Side Story,’ and more

“June is bustin’ out all over.” Of course, credit for that line belongs to Rodgers and Hammerstein and their exuberant song from the musical Carousel. And I have no doubt that genius pair would appreciate the work of the artists to be seen and heard on Chicago area stages this June. Here’s a toast to all of them.

Itamar Moses’ play The Whistleblower

Itamar Moses–the son of parents who met in the Israeli army and then settled in the Bay Area of California–has penned more than a dozen plays. These include his most acclaimed work to date, The Band’s Visit, the musical based on a 2007 Israeli film that opened Off Broadway in 2016 and arrived on Broadway in 2017. The show won a slew of Tony Awards, including those for Best Musical, for Moses’ script, and for the work of Chicago-bred director David Cromer.

Now Theater Wit is producing the Midwest premiere of Moses’ latest play, The Whistleblower , which is being directed by Jeremy Wechsler, the company’s artistic director, and with a cast that includes Michael Kostroff, the actor widely known for his role as defense attorney Maury Levy in HBO’s The Wire.

“Writers rarely know what a play is about when they start,” said Moses during a phone conversation. “And pitching an idea in Hollywood is an act of a sort. I was working on something else when I had the idea for The Whistleblower , in which Eli, a writer (accompanied by his agent, Dan), is making a pitch to a powerful TV producer (played by Kostroff). Eli, who, like me, is of culturally Jewish ancestry, starts out repressing his feelings about the whole thing, but he then suddenly lets go of what might have turned into a major career changer. And I think there is a terrific amount of momentum to this, with Eli just telling the truth in a way that feels like firing something out of a cannon.”

Along the way there is even more truth-telling as, according to Wechsler, “Eli is acting as an informant on himself–exposing the truth about his own relationships to a number of people, including his girlfriend, and deliberately inverting things as he sabotages what could have been a career-making project.”

Meanwhile, as Moses’ play is being staged at Theater Wit, another of his works, the musical An American Tail , is having its premiere at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Based on the 1986 animated film, it’s about a family of Russian Jewish mice who are attacked by the Cossacks and leave for America.

Moses, who said “for the vast majority of my life I did not feel consciously affected by antisemitism,” also is now working on a new play, The Ally , set to open Off Broadway next season. As he explained, “It’s about the complexity of being an American Jew on the political left, and how it is hard to belong to overlapping tribes.”

The Whistleblower runs through June 17 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont. For tickets, visit theaterwit.org or call 773 975-8150.

Lalo Schifrin pays homage to the tuba

Composer Lalo Schifrin–who was born into a Jewish family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, moved to the U.S. in 1958, and is now 90 years old–is most widely known for his film and television scores of which there are about a hundred, including those for Mission Impossible, Cool Hand Luke, The Man from U.N.C.L.E , and Mannix. But Schifrin, whose father was a violinist at Teatro Colon, and who began studying piano at the age of six with Daniel Barenboim’s father, is also a classical composer. And on June 15, 16 and 17, Maestro Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will perform his “Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra,” with Gene Pokorny, the CSO’s Principal Tuba player (for whom the work was written), in the spotlight.

In Schifrin’s words: “In the high register the tuba is an extension of the French horn and can be very tender and expressive. And the concerto I’ve written has elements of the Baroque, of 20th century music, and of America jazz.”

“I performed the premiere of this work with the Redlands Symphony in California in 2018,” said Pokorny, who, from 1975 to 1978 played with what he describes as “the musically passionate players of the Israeli Philharmonic under conductor Zubin Mehta.

“The tempos of this Schifrin work are phenomenally fast,” said Pokorny, noting that “several years ago, after looking at page after page of the score, Muti said he’d conduct it. But it had to be delayed until now because of the pandemic. I hope the Maestro enjoys it. He can conduct anything.”

For tickets to this concert, visit cso.org or call 312-294-3000.

And now for a few final notes

• Lyric Opera’s grand-scale 2019 production of West Side Story, the enduring creation of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins, is returning to the Lyric stage for a monthlong run, June 2-25. For tickets, visit lyricopera.org or call 312-827-5600.
• Coming to the indoor Martin Theatre at Ravinia on June 14 will be Michael Feinstein (the pianist, singer, and passionate fan of what is referred to as “The Great American Songbook”), and the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. They will collaborate in a celebration of “long-lost and beloved music” by George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Richard Rogers, and others. For tickets, visit Ravinia.org or call 847-266-5100.
• Last but not least, as an homage to Harry Belafonte, the actor, singer, Calypso master and civil rights activist who died in April at the age of 96, I suggest you Google his recordings of such Hebrew songs as “Hava Nagila” and “Erev Shel Shoshanim.” In addition, Lisa Keys’ superb article about his connection to Jewish music that can be found at jta.org.

Hedy Weiss, a longtime Chicago arts critic, was the Theater and Dance Critic for the Chicago Sun-Times  from 1984 to 2018, and currently writes for  WTTW-TV’s website and contributes to the Chicago Tonight  program.