Theatre Building
Chicago
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Today’s theater purists are often irked by the “encroachment of Hollywood stars on Broadway marquees,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Stroll through Manhattan’s Theater District to study the lit-up names, and you’ll see plenty of proof that Hollywood track records are perceived as the best insurance for big-budget productions. But perhaps it has always been that way. Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s 1936 Stage Door, set in a boardinghouse for aspiring thespians, recalls an era “when the theater was first reeling from the intrusive influence of the Hollywood studios.” Yet one of the themes is that the “talented and hardworking stage actresses” at the heart of the play were even then losing roles to vapid movie stars. All of which makes Ferber and Kaufman’s “remarkably prescient” counterattack on Hollywood especially ripe for revival.
Stage Door would “probably never debut on Broadway today,” said Kris Vire in Time Out Chicago. An “overstuffed show” with three acts, two intermissions, and 32 speaking parts, it would likely be deemed too risky a venture. For this production in Chicago, however, director Robin Witt has pared down the show to its essentials with great skill and “minimal double-casting.” She’s also corralled so many of Chicago’s best young actresses that “you wonder how any other theater has a show running.” Mechelle Moe “fires on all cylinders” as idealistic lead Terry Randall—but there’s not a weak link in the ensemble. Commercial theaters may increasingly be relying on big-name celebrities to ensure profits. This production, though, serves as a “lesson on what’s been lost” by shutting the door to young up-and-comers.
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