Playwright: Jesse Case, Kate James and Timothy Sniffen. At: Civic Opera House, Wacker Drive at Madison. Tickets: www.lyricopera.org; 312-332-2244; $35-$75. Runs through: June 30
Following a single sold-out performance last January, the theatrical odd couple of Lyric Opera of Chicago and The Second City have partnered to offer a limited-run of a musical revue intended to show that operaoften regarded as high-falutin'is approachable and can let its hair down. Even so, it's a gilded affair amid the lavish Art Deco splendors of the Civic Opera House, although this show offers something spectacular few get to see: the view from the theater's vast stage.
For this engagement, the audience is seated onstage in a make-shift cabaret of tables, chairs and sofas, looking across the huge orchestra pit and up to the boxes and balconies in their gold-and-crimson glory. A small platform, also onstage, serves as the performing area with room for a three-piece orchestra. Light refreshments and drinks are available (Chandon California champagne at $40/bottle is a good deal) to complete the cabaret experience.
The revue itself is amusing, if genteel. It features such signature Second City devices as a pinch of four-letter words, some sex talk, several clever musical numbers and an "opera" improvised from audience-supplied material. The company sings an overture which makes fun of both audience and musical expectations and follows up with a master class for singers taught by a horny, bisexual diva. A blind-date scenefound in almost every Second City revueoffers a neurosurgeon (her) and an aromatherapist (him) bonding over Wagner's Ring Cycle (running 41 hours through the addition of newly discovered material).
Still, the show treads gingerly on opera itself, perhaps wisely refusing to bite the hand that feeds it. There's talk of Wagner's Ring Cycle, for example, but nothing about Wagner himself, a prime target for satire (a closet cross-dresser, among other things). There are no jokes about short tenors or behemoth sopranos, nor are there jokes about barihunks or other trim-and-sexy singers. Surely there's a fine skit in tenors at the gym or bassos in leather.
Still, the eight-person cast (two of them actual Lyric Opera singers) and three musicians make it an entertaining evening with the "Song of the Trumpet Player," an entire opera chorus applying for one office job and a musical tribute, "To Operaland" ("Life is so much nicer with an orchestra behind it..."). The very finest bit is 12-tone composer Arnold Schoenberg flopping as a stand-up comic when all his musicological jokes go over the audience's head. In a case of life-mirrors-art-mirrors-life, the jokes are funny and the audience mostly doesn't get them. Billy Bungeroth is the director of this thoroughly amiable evening and Jesse Case is the musical director (and composer of all music not written by Bizet or William Bolcom ). FYI: Tickets are selling fast.