Porchlight

I just ordered my tickets for Ragtime, and I'm very excited. It got a rave review in this morning's Sun Times. I'll be seeing it on Friday, May 4. I've been impressed with Porchlight over the past 10 years or so since they first showed up on the scene. As editor of my college newspaper's entertainment section, I often got free passes to shows and movies, and somehow, when Porchlight first formed, I ended up on their mailing list and got to see several of their first shows, including 2 productions of Macabaret and an original musical called, I believe, Hereafter (it's been almost 10 years, so I'm a little fuzzy on the title, but I think Hereafter was it). Even then the productions were outstanding, although I'd like to know what happened to their first leading man Elic (yes, that's spelled correctly) Ryan Brammlet. He was hot and was the leading man in the productions mentioned above. He definitely seemed like he was going somewhere in the theatre world, but obviously he went somewhere since I haven't seen him again since the second Macabaret. I continued to follow Porchlight after I graduated and didn't get the free shows anymore, and they have continued to impress me. They became an Equity company a few years ago and really stepped up their game with a stellar production of Sweeney Todd (out of the 5 Sweeney productions I've seen, it's second only to last year's great Broadway revival). While the space constraints at first seemed like a problem, it appears that they tackled Ragtime, one of the greatest shows ever, and surmounted the technical problems. I can't wait to see it, and of course will be reporting all my thoughts after.