What’s coming to the stage in March

Cody Combs as Evan Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen. (Photo credit: Amy Nelson)

Whoever first insisted that “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” likely did not hail from Chicago, where winter can roar all month long. But even if temperatures gradually begin to rise, there are countless plays, musicals, concerts, and dance productions that are ready to be enjoyed in cozily warm theaters. 

And a good number of these works have been created and/or are performed by exceptional Jewish artists. Here is a sampling of what’s coming in March. 

Theater: 

Dear Evan Hansen premiered in 2015 at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C., opened on Broadway a decade ago, and became a Tony Award winner for best musical— as well as for best book for a musical (by Steven Levenson) and best original score (with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul). 

This deceptively small show, with just eight characters, is an intriguingly written work depicting 17-year-old Evan, an anxious high school senior who finds himself at the center of a community’s attention after a tragedy at school, leading to both a web of lies and a path of self-discovery. 

Evan, who doesn’t fit in at school, is in therapy, where he has been advised to write a letter for himself explaining why it is “a good day.” This aims at “a form of self-discovery and acceptance.” Meanwhile, a complex relationship unfurls between Evan (played by Cody Combs), and a fellow student, Connor Murphy (played by Jake DiMaggio Lopez) who, as it turns out, is profoundly troubled. 

Serving as the show’s director is Chicago-based Jessica Fisch, who grew up in a Jewish family near the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey; her grandparents lived in Manhattan. Fisch said she often skipped high school classes in the late 1990s in order to see matinees on Broadway. 

“I have never seen this show, or its 2021 movie version,” said Fisch, who has directed a great number of shows. “But when I read this robust play, it felt so contemporary. It is structured in a unique form—with no specificity of its particular location … In many ways, it feels like a Greek play and chorus to me. As for the music, it has a very contemporary pop score. And the set for the show is also very stylized and immersive, with the use of screens, mirrors, video design, and projections. I think its sense of anxiety, loss, and technology can shape the lives of its audiences.” 

The show is running now through March 22 at the Paramount Theatre at 23 E. Galena Blvd., in Aurora. For tickets, visit paramountaurora.com or call 630-896-6666. 

Music: 

There will be a wonderful tribute to Jewish composers and musicians at Symphony Center in early in March. 

First comes a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. on March 5 and 6, led by Klaus Makela, the Finnish conductor who will become the 11th music director of the Orchestra in 2027. 

The program will open with Le Boeuf sur le toit, a playful work described as “a kaleidoscope of rhythmic wit and whimsy” composed by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), the son of a long-established Jewish family based in France.  

Which is also the setting for George Gershwin’s ever popular An American in Paris, first performed in 1928. The show is a jazz-influenced symphonic poem for orchestra inspired by the time he spent in Paris. His purpose, he said, was to “portray impressions of an American visitor as he strolls about that city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere.” The piece is structured into five sections and “has hints of the American blues, and spasms of homesickness.” 

Also on the program is The Rite of Spring, a classic by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky who, incidentally, was widely known as an antisemite. 

Directly following, on the evening of March 7, is the Zukerman Trio, featuring the Jewish violinist/violist/conductor Pinchas Zukerman, born in Tel Aviv in 1948, but a New Yorker since moving there to study at Juilliard in 1962. The others in the trio are cellist Amanda Forsyth, his wife, and pianist/composer Michael Stephen Brown, also Jewish. 

The Symphony Center is located at 220 S. Michigan Ave. in Chicago. For tickets to both  concerts, visit cso.org or call 312-294-3000. 

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