Shenandoah

Usually when something gets a lot of hype, it fails to live up to it (Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, etc.), but this was not the case with Shenandoah. What a fabulous show!!! Director David H. Bell knew how to use the space perfectly. Most productions I've seen at the Marriott Lincolnshire have utilized the aisles just as much as the stage itself for performance space, but other than the train sequence, which was perfectly suited for the aisle, they were able to keep the action fully on the stage, and this confinement made it much more intimate and affecting. The cast was all top notch, but of course the star was David Hess, as Charlie Anderson, the head of the Anderson family, played by Jimmy Stewart in the movie. He had a fabulous voice and was able to play tender, tough, angry, reflective, all at the drop of a hat. It was a masterful performance and he was totally deserving of the solo curtain call he got at the end. The program notes state that he is going to follow this up with the national tour of Sweeney Todd, playing Sweeney, and I wish to god the producers would change their mind and schedule a Chicago stop, I would LOVE to see him in that role. The rest of the cast was just as entertaining, lots of eye candy, particularly Galen Schloming and Christian Libonati as the middle sons, and Stephen Schelhardt as the daughter's love interest. The best number of the show was Next to Lovin' I Like Fightin', all the testosterone on the stage dancing around was quite a sight to behold. All the songs were well done, from the gradually rousing opening number, the gorgeous We Make a Beautiful Pair/Violets and Silverbells, and the emotionally overpowering ending, Pass the Cross to Me. The script stuck very close to the movie, which makes sense since the screenwriter was part of the scriptwriting team, although in order to make the running time more manageable, several important events happen offstage at the end of the first act and throughout the second act (boy's abduction, the visit to the prison camp, the homecoming and meeting with the doctor, and all of boy's adventures after his escape). Fortunately, unlike South Pacific in which the offstage events are the most important, the story survives these cuts and moves nicely along without leaving the audience feeling like it missed something, although the ending does feel even more undeserved, but the cast handles it nicely. As I stated earlier, there is one important change between the movie and the musical, and after seeing it play out, I'm able to go with it better than I thought I would. It does help drive home the anti-war message more, although the show really is not as anti-war as earlier reviews made it sound like, although it definitely is not as pro-war as the movie ended up being (not that the movie was really that pro-war, but it could be interpreted as being so). It's a very personal story of one family's experience with war, and it's left to each individual audience member to draw their own broader conclusions. I believe this is the last weekend of the production, so I can't really keep promoting it, but if you're in the area and don't have plans, I highly recommend it. It's great to have a Broadway-quality theatre doing older Broadway shows (or even newer shows that may not ever get done anywhere else, according to the program, they've done Annie Warbucks, Chess, 70 Girls 70, and the Goodbye Girl, hopefully they'll all get revivals sometime soon, along with Grand Hotel and The Will Rogers Follies) that we may never get a chance to see like this otherwise.