Seeking solace in the arts during a difficult winter
Hedy Weiss
As I write this column, there continues to be an immense, pitch-black cloud of wartime darkness hovering over Israel and the Middle East. Yet in at least some way–whether in the form of a darkly comic one-man show, a grand-scale work of musical theater, a piece of classical music, or a new form of visual expression–there are still brief opportunties of escape. And they offer proof that the arts are among the very best of all medicines.
Consider the following:
Alex Edelman in Just for Us
at the Steppenwolf Theatre:
Just for Us — a zany, brilliantly funny, and simultaneously disturbing 90-minute one-man show that has already been heralded in London, on and off Broadway, and beyond– chronicles a bizarre, one-night-only experience.
Alex Edelman is a Boston-bred, 34-year-old actor/comedian/writer, who grew up in a worldly Orthodox Jewish family, spent a year at a yeshiva in Jerusalem and earned a degree from New York University. He began receiving a slew of antisemitic threats online. And, at one point, he decided to go to a meeting of “White Nationalists” and he was inadvertently invited to attend at an apartment in the borough of Queens, N.Y.
So, what happens to this man whose identity is not initially revealed to the others in the room, and who even briefly connects with a pretty girl who is part of the group?
“I guess I’ve always thought about what comedy can do,” said Edelman, during a brief phone conversation. “Mel Brooks and Norman Lear were hugely influential. I developed Just for Us in 2012 and 2018, and have done a lot of tweaking along the way- an important part of a comedian’s growth, and a gift when it’s your own show.” And his rapid-fire delivery, frequent asides, and bristling humor and commentary are remarkable.
“My next show is about Israel and Palestine,” Edelman said. “It’s a complicated situation, and a dangerous one for all involved. But I feel a deep connection to the people in Israel, and have many friends there.”
The Steppenwolf performances will mark the end of the run of Just for Us , a show that Edelman tried out at The Den Theatre (a 300-seat house in Wicker Park) before taking it to New York.
The show runs Feb. 15-25 at Steppenwolf, 1650 N. Halsted. For tickets, visit steppenwolf.org or call 312- 335-1650.
Two superb musicals
One of them, Fiddler on the Roof , needs absolutely no introduction, and never fails to beguile.
The other, The Band’s Visit , opened Off Broadway in 2016, hit Broadway the next year, and earned a phenomenal 10 Tony Awards–including one for Best Director of a Musical, awarded to Chicago-bred David Cromer. This show is somewhat less widely known, but simply should not be missed. And, given the chaos of the current moment, what is notable is that both these Tony Award-winning musicals capture something profound about Jewish life as it unfolds in different places and at different moments in time.
Fiddler –with its music by Jerry Bach, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick (whose passing we mourned just last year), and book by Joseph Stein-is based on the Yiddish stories by the beloved Sholem Aleichem. The musical chronicles Tevye the dairyman, and his wife and five daughters who live in a village in the Pale of Settlement in the early years of the 20th century, just before the fall of Imperial Russia.
The show runs Jan. 24-March 24 at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook. For tickets, visit drurylanetheatre.com or call 630-530-0111.
The Band’s Visit , based on the 2007 film by Israeli writer/director Erin Kolirin, features a score by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses. The musical, set in 1996, follows an orchestra from Alexandria, Egypt that arrives in Israel and waits in the Tel Aviv bus station where it expects to be welcomed by a member of a local Arab cultural organization–who fails to show up. A ticket agent then misunderstands where the musicians want to go and mistakenly gives them tickets to Bet Hatikvah, an isolated desert town, where they meet Dina, the charming owner of a little café, who offers them a place to stay until the correct bus arrives the following day. And that is just the beginning of a whole lot of interaction and music in this charming show.
The Band’s Visit runs Feb. 8 – March 17 at Writers Theater, 325 Tudor Court in Glencoe. For tickets, visit writerstheatre.org or call 847-242-6000.
More musical treats
The bravura pianist Emanuel Ax, born to Polish Jewish parents who were Holocaust survivors, will be joined by violinist Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Yo-Yo Ma for an all-Beethoven concert at Orchestra Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 3.
Then, a few days later, also at Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) will feature its first performance of “Musica Celestis,” a 1990 work by Aaron Jay Kernis, a Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning Jewish American composer. The program also includes works by Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Kernis’ piece was inspired by the medieval conception that refers to the singing of angels in heaven in praise of G-d. The piece will play on Feb. 8 and 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Orchestra Hall.
Rounding out the concerts at Orchestra Hall, the CSO will also perform George and Ira Gershwin’s score to An American in Paris live, while the film is shown on the big screen. The concert plays at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 9.
For tickets to all three of these concerts, visit cso.org or call 312-294-3000.
Choreographer Liam Scarlett’s acclaimed Hummingbird –in which three pas de deux about love and longing are set to Philip Glass’ Tirol Concerto for piano and orchestra–marks one of the three works of the Joffre Ballet’s “Studies in Blue” program.
The show runs Feb. 15-25 at the Lyric Opera House. For tickets, call 312-386-8905.
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.
