By Patrick O’Brien Grief is anything but orderly—the Kübler-Ross model belongs more to pop culture than actual psychology. In attempting to impose order anyway, in Life After, a newish musical now at the Goodman, librettist-composer Britta Johnson spins an arioso detective story. Hidden within the empty chatter of neighbors dropping off umpteen casseroles, the endless
‘Skates’ won’t change your life, but it’s fine, ’nuff said
By Patrick O’Brien Admittedly, even when it was announced two years ago, Skates screamed “vanity project”: Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo–American Idol finalists, partners in both music and life–in a Grease/Xanadu hybrid. They belt high Js and make kissy-faces for two hours while everyone else is left to fall on their asses—in every sense of
‘Moulin Rouge’ sure can can-can, but should it?
By Patrick O’Brien With his 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, maximalist auteur Baz Luhrmann didn’t so much capture lightning in a bottle so much as cask some old-school absinthe straight out of fin de sieclé Paris’s Latin Quarter: something zingy and not a little hallucinogenic. Luhrmann didn’t so much make a movie about a melodramatic love
‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ is an opera of radical listening
By Patrick O’Brien In the very white, very old-accustomed world of opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a radical new work for both its Black writers (score by Terence Blanchard; libretto by Kasi Lemmons) and its focus on the contemporary Black American experience. It may also be radical as an opera that feints toward a bloody
Lyric Opera’s straightforward ‘Tosca’ belies its messy human story
By Patrick O’Brien For an opera concerning love and lust in a time of war and upheaval, Puccini‘s Tosca, the immortal “shabby little shocker”, is never less than straightforward. The physical production of Lyric Opera’s new-to-Chicago staging is certainly straightforward. There are faithful recreations of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the
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