Out theater critic (for The Reader) and cabaret artist Justin Hayford has been getting the star treatment in Three Oaks, Michigan and in the entertainment press. Three Oaks—just inland from Union Pier and New Buffalo around the tip of the lake—is home to the lively, year-old Acorn Theater, a performing arts venue in the historic Featherbone Factory. Hayford, who's gigged at Acorn before, most recently was there June 11-12. Acorn frequently brings Chicago talent around the lake, including solo performance artist David Kodeski, who will appear at Acorn this weekend (June 18-19) and again July 9-10 with two different shows. With tickets modestly priced ($15), the Acorn Theater is worth a stop for weekenders heading up to/back from Saugatuck/Douglas. Find the Acorn online, or call (269) 756-3879.
Hayford also has received high praise for his debut CD, Look Who's Been Dreaming. Staying true to the theme he's developed locally at Davenport's, Hayford concentrates on forgotten songs from Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s. A review of the disc in Show Business Weekly called Hayford 'cool, classy and clever' with 'an impeccably clean sound and style ... . An oasis of sanity in a world gone mad.' Sure, but is he any good in the sack?
Meantime, community favorite Kodeski is popping up locally as well. He and elfin Tim Kazurinsky will be special guests at Dick O'Day's Big, Lovely Liberry at the Green Mill, June 29, 7 p.m. However, Steve Hickson and David Cerda of Hell in a Handbag Productions will beat them to the punch (as it were), guesting for O'Day on June 22 (in drag, we presume). Dick O'Day's Big, Lovely Liberry runs at the Green Mill June 22-July 13 with different guests each week. The show remarks the return to theatrical producing of Annoyance Productions, soon to move into a new, permanent space close to the Green Mill.
It's Pride Month, of course, so everything onstage seems to be turning queer. The Journeymen's adaptation of Jean Cocteau's Le Livre Blanc opened last week (reviewed in this issue); Bailiwick kicks off the 2004 Pride Series this Monday (June 21) with The Last Sunday in June; and GayCo Productions is teaming once again with director Jim Zulevic and The Second City Theatricals to stage a new revue, Weddings of Mass Destruction, at Victory Gardens Theater, July 8-Aug. 15. Gay marriage, constitutional amendments, presidential elections and Clay Aiken are among GayCo's promised targets.
One of our favorite, spunky little performance troupes, Tellin' Tales Theatre, promises 'a light-headed look at healthcare' in Blurred Vision, a new solo work by 'self-proclaimed hypochondriac' and actual surgery survivor Tekki Lomnicki. Trouble with Tellin' Tales shows is that often they don't run long enough for the Windy City Times to review them. So Jonny is tellin' ya' now about Blurred Vision, June 18-27 at Live Bait Theater; (312) 409-1025.
It sounds like a porn dream come true: a show with a young, handsome, hunky all-male cast in which each and every man beats his meat. Would you believe ... Shakespeare? When British director Edward Hall adapted and condensed the three parts of Henry VI into Rose Rage, he set it in a Victorian abattoir; i.e., a slaughterhouse. As produced over the winter at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Rose Rage went through pounds of real meat and animal organs at every performance, beaten, hacked and splattered to represent the savagery of English civil war. Now Chicago Shakespeare has been invited to make its New York debut with Rose Rage, Sept. 17-Oct. 17 at the The Duke on 42nd Street Theatre. The original Chicago cast will take their meat and beat it to the Big Apple.
The important thing for Chicago on the June 7 Tony Awards broadcast wasn't simply the fact that I Am My Own Wife won two awards, but that actor Jefferson Mays specifically thanked 'the About Face Theatre in Chicago' when accepting his Tony as outstanding actor. Such an acknowledgment on national TV is invaluable to About Face, to our city and to our community. About Face brought I Am My Own Wife to Chicago last spring to assist in the show's pre-Broadway development. It will return to Chicago with Mays late next season as a limited-run attraction at the Goodman Theatre.
In local awards, Bailiwick Repertory scored huge at the 31st annual Joseph Jefferson Citations Wing Awards, June 7, walking off with 11 Citations in 10 categories, among them Production/Musical for Dr. Sex and Director/Musical, David Zak for Sex. Bailiwick's very gay productions of Pinafore! and Sin: A Cardinal Deposed also picked up Jeff Citations. [See item below.]
