Displaying items by tag: Alexandra Silber

Marriott Theatre, Chicagoland's longest-running musical theatre, presents A Little Night Music, a Tony Award-winning musical from Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler that explores the lush, witty, and poignant complexities of love, longing, and second chances. Directed by Nick Bowling (Marriott Theatre: The Sound of Music, Ragtime, Man of La Mancha; and recipient of eight Jeff Awards for outstanding direction), choreographed by Associate Artistic Director Katie Johannigman (Marriott Theatre: Titanic, The Magic School Bus), with music direction by Jeff Award winner Ryan T. Nelson, A Little Night Music previews June 17, and will run through August 9.

Love makes fools of us all. The Best Musical Tony Award-winning A Little Night Music is a sumptuous, sexy, laugh-out-loud masterpiece that will leave you thoroughly enchanted. Set in 1900 Sweden, A Little Night Music explores the tangled web of affairs centered around actress Desirée Armfeldt, and the men who love her. Amid a flurry of jealousy and suspicion, infinite possibilities of new romances and second chances bring endless surprises. Full of hilariously witty and heartbreakingly moving moments of adoration, regret and desire, this dramatic musical celebration of love features some of Stephen Sondheim's most popular songs, including the haunting "Send in the Clowns."

"When I first encountered A Little Night Music as a musical theater student in the late 1980s, I surprisingly connected deeply to a story about middle-aged lovers in turn-of-the-century Sweden," said Director Nick Bowling. "For many artists and audiences alike, this jewel-box musical remains one of the theatre's greatest achievements—not only among Sondheim's works, but of the entire musical theater canon. It is a privilege to return to this story which has captivated me for almost 40 years, and to do so alongside the extraordinary Alexandra Silber and Andrew Samonsky, leading an incredible cast and design team."

A Little Night Music stars Alexandra Silber as "Desirée Armfeldt" (Broadway: Fiddler on the Roof, Master Class; Marriott Theatre: The Music Man), Andrew Samonsky as "Fredrik Egerman" (Broadway: South Pacific, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Scandalous; North American Tour: Parade, Come from Away), Carmen Roman as "Madame Armfeldt" (National Tour: Angels in America; Rivendell: Scientific Method; Old Globe: The Garden of Anuncia; Goodman: Brutality of Fact; Steppenwolf: Side Man; Northlight: Master Class), and Alan H Green as "Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm" (Broadway: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, School of Rock, Sister Act, Play On!); with Veronica Garza as "Countess Charlotte Malcolm," Addie Morales as "Anne Egerman," Eldon Warner-Soriano as "Henrik Egerman," and Madison Uphoff as "Petra," alongside  Joel Gelman, Kelli Harrington, Jake DiMaggio Lopez, Michael Earvin Martin, Victoria Okafor, Olivia O'Sullivan, Colette Todd, with understudies Annabel Finch, Brian Hupp,  Adelina Marinello, Albert Sterner, and Ava Lane Stovall.

The artistic team features Associate Choreographer Joshua Kenneth Allen Johnson, Assistant Director Myesha-Tiara, Scenic Designer Regina García, Costume Designer Sally Dolembo, Wig, Hair & Makeup Designer Miguel A. Armstrong, Lighting Designer Jesse Klug, Sound Designer Michael Daly, Props Designer Amy Peter, Conductor Brad Haak, Intimacy Coordinator Kristina Fluty, and Stage Manager Katrina Herrmann.

A Little Night Music is scheduled to run Wednesdays at 1 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., Thursdays at 7:00 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., with select Thursday 1:00 p.m. shows. Call for dinner-theatre, student, senior, and military discounts. Free parking is available at all performances. To reserve tickets or become a Marriott Theatre subscriber, please call the Marriott Theatre Box Office at 847.634.0200 or go to www.tickets.marriotttheatre.com. To make a restaurant reservation or to purchase a Dinner Theatre Package, please call 847.634.0100 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.

Something wicked is winding its way through the velvet curtains of Drury Lane Theatre—and it reeks of roses, red wine, and murder. Dial M for Murder, the classic thriller originally crafted by Frederick Knott in 1952 and immortalized on screen by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954, returns to the stage with a razor-sharp adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher that’s as stylish as it is sinister.

Set against the moody backdrop of 1950s London, the production invites us into the polished yet precarious world of Margot (Amanada Drinkall) and Tony Wendice (Erik Hellman) - a couple whose marriage gleams with charm but conceals a darker undercurrent. Beneath the tailored suits and cocktail-hour smiles lies a web of betrayal, manipulation, and a meticulously plotted murder that threatens to unravel with every twist of the telephone cord.

Hatcher’s adaptation breathes fresh life into the suspense, tightening the dialogue and sharpening the stakes while preserving the noir elegance of the original. The result is a theatrical experience that feels both vintage and vital - a slow burn that simmers into a full-blown psychological inferno.

Tony Wendice, a former tennis star turned calculating husband, discovers his wife Margot’s affair with mystery writer Maxine Hadley (Alexandra Silber). Rather than confront her, he plots her murder with chilling precision, believing one perfect move will reclaim his unraveling life.

But perfection proves elusive.

When the plan collapses, the story spirals into a maze of blackmail, disloyalty, and psychological warfare. Margot becomes both pawn and player, navigating a world where loyalties shift, truths blur, and every silence speaks volumes.

This isn’t just a thriller—it’s a taut exploration of control, vulnerability, and the artful menace of manipulation.

Alexandra Silber, Amanda Drinkall, Erik Hellman in Drury Lane Theatre's Dial M for Murder.

The players are sensational in the dialogue heavy, quick witted, edge-of-your-seat mystery thriller. Erick Hellman delivers a diabolical and shrewd Tony, Amanda Drinkall is delightful as Margot and Alexandra Silber is a true force as Maxine. Johnathan Weir is also tremendous as sleuthing Inspector Hubbard while Ian Paul Custer is perfectly cast as the Tony’s patsy, Captain Lesgate.

Wonderfully directed by Adam Immerwahr in his Drury Lane debut, this production of Dial M for Murder masterfully marries vintage intrigue with a brisk, modern rhythm. It’s not just a revival - it’s a reinvention – and Drury Lane Theatre is the perfect venue to stage this mystery thriller. The bones of Frederick Knott’s original mystery remain intact, but the pacing has been sharpened, the humor dialed up, and the twists recalibrated for a contemporary audience.

Visually, the production luxuriates in noir-inspired elegance, its seductive precision shaped by a powerhouse design team: Paige Hathaway’s scenic work evokes shadow and intrigue, Joshua Schmidt’s sound design hums with tension, Emma Deane’s lighting casts drama in every corner, and Nicole Boylan’s costumes wrap the cast in mystery and allure. Shadow-drenched lighting carves out tension in every corner, while period costumes evoke mid-century elegance tinged with menace. The sound design - subtle yet insistent - acts as an invisible character, underscoring moments of dread, desire, and deception. It’s a production that doesn’t just tell a story; it envelops the audience in its atmosphere.

The result is a theatrical experience that feels both timeless and timely - a stylish homage to Hitchcockian suspense, reimagined with the velocity and wit of modern storytelling.

At its core, Dial M for Murder is a taut exploration of trust fractured by ambition, love corroded by suspicion, and appearances polished to mask peril. The play doesn’t simply flirt with deception - it dissects it. Every gesture, every line of dialogue, is laced with the question: how far will someone go to preserve their illusion of control, or to dismantle another’s?

Dial M for Murder is a psychological chess match where secrets are currency, gaslighting is taken to the extreme and duplicity is both weapon and wound. As the characters maneuver through layers of manipulation and moral ambiguity, the audience is left to ponder not just who’s guilty - but whether anyone is truly innocent.

Running through October 26^th, this is a highly recommended thriller that you won’t want to miss. For tickets and/or more show information visit https://drurylanetheatre.com/dial-m-for-murder/.

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!  

You got trouble, my friends, if you’re going to put on Meredith Willson’s The Music Man.

If you’re going to stage a show that’s been staged ten thousand times since its 1957 Broadway debut—from Hugh Jackman on the stage to Matthew Broderick on the screen to every doggone high school from Clear Lake to Mason City.

A show lovingly recreating an era (Willson was born in turn-of-the-century Iowa) and themes (Willson’s virtuosity on the piccolo found him playing in John Phillip Sousa’s band and Toscanini’s New York Philharmonic) that aren’t quite old enough to be ancient but aren’t familiar enough not to seem dated.

To try and recreate those songs.

“Trouble”

“Till There Was You”

“Seventy-Six Trombones”

To try and attempt to touch the hem of the salesman’s trousers worn by Robert Preston’s Professor Harold Hill—Preston not only originated Hill and played him for much of the original production’s 1,375-show run and the beloved 1962 Hollywood adaptation, he is Professor Harold Hill. Nobody—not any one of those ten thousand (or more) high school or professional actors, not even Hugh Jackman—can be the band instrument-peddling flim-flam man like Preston was and is and always will be.

My friends, if you’re going to attempt all of that… well, you’ve got trouble.

Unless you’re Katie Spelman, who is directing and choreographing Marriott Theatre’s current production of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. Spelman’s production lovingly embraces and focuses on some aspects of Willson’s original, while avoiding the pitfalls such an iconic show presents. But what this production does best is it knows its strengths, and it leans into them, giving Spelman’s show its own unique flair.

We see the sort of Harold Hill we’re going to spend the evening with right away aboard the train from Rock Island. In most productions I’ve seen, me and the rest of the audience know the first scene’s big reveal, and our eyes remain glued to a particular passenger despite the cast’s best efforts at the syncopated opening number, “Rock Island.” But even though we spot KJ Hippensteel at the back of the train car, we don’t focus on him. Instead, we focus on the enthusiastic ensemble that everyone—Marriott’s in-the-round setup means it’s always the best seat in the house—sees up close and personal and from all angles. Ron E. Rains, all dolled up like a turn-of-the-country fellow, leads the charge, while his fellow passengers run through Spelman’s clockwork choreography. Right away, I was glad to see a familiar face, Michael Mahler, who brought the same charm to each role in this play as he has in many past.

After Hippensteel’s Professor Harold Hill disembarks from the train to River City, Iowa, this closeness and intimacy we felt aboard the train transfers right into town. This production doesn’t try to recreate River City on a Hollywood scale. But it really focuses on certain things and gives us a good, close look at them, which we might not have gotten on the Broadway stage or the silver screen.

The citizens of River City are each and every one unique. And, as they move around the round, allowing us to see each and every one of them, we appreciate the details of each of their costumes (by Raquel Adorno), we appreciate that each one is someone. Particularly charming are youngsters Emily Ann Brooks and Sam Linda, Janet Ulrich Brooks’ Widow Paroo, Elin Joy Seiler’s Amaryllis, Alex Goodrich’s Mayor Shinn, Melanie Loren’s hilarious Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn, and the spot-on barbershop harmonies of the school board quartet (Matt Edmonds, Quinn Rigg, Michael Potsic, and the afore-mentioned Mahler).

Besides the ensemble’s vocal strengths, the singer who really shines is Alexandra Silber as Marian Paroo, the town librarian. No shrinking violet, no old-maid-against-her-will, and not even Mrs. Partridge (although I do love Shirley Jones’ Marian the Librarian), Silber brings her Grammy-nominated vocals to the fore. This production’s brought Julie Andrews-caliber pipes to the party—Silber’s soprano as she sang of “My White Knight” gave me chills.

But while all of these strengths—the ensemble’s skill, the cast’s charm, the performers’ pipes, the theater’s—are recognized and utilized and add up to a unique and charming take on an old favorite, I’ve not yet addressed KJ Hippensteel as Professor Harold Hill. And that’s because, like the production itself, Hippensteel’s Hill reads the room and knows what the room needs, or he knows how to sell the room what the room thinks it needs.

Hippensteel’s Hill doesn’t try to go toe-to-toe with Preston’s over-the-top traveling salesman—he’d have failed like every other Hill since Preston caught his last train ride. But Hippensteel’s Hill knows his own strengths.

He’s city pretty and, while out of place in a place like River City, he’s a curiosity. He’s slippery, slinking around with an easy physicality that sometimes seems to be at twice the speed of the Iowans moving around him. And Hippensteel’s Hill seems like he might just be a nice enough fellow—while Preston’s Hill, played by an actor who up until then had usually played screen villains, is a bad guy you hope could see the light, Hippensteel’s Hill is a good guy who you hope can right the ship after some bad life choices.

But, because this is The Music Man, a show we music theater folks know and love, Hippensteel’s Hill does give us the flourishes, the hand gestures, the hops, the dips, all the pizazz we came into the theater expecting from the professor. However, Hippensteel does it on his own terms, as his own Harold Hill. Just like the entire charming and unique production of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man does, playing now through June 2 at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire.