It might seem like a quirky way to begin this column, but here it is… I just want to send cheers to the Lovin' Spoonful, that immensely popular rock band of the 1960s, and to the memory of Zalman Yanovsky, the group's Canadian-born lead guitarist who was not only Jewish, but even spent a brief time living on a kibbutz in Israel.
The reason why? The heat wave that has marked Chicago weather this summer had me singing the opening lyrics to one of the Spoonful's most widely known songs: "Hot town, summer in the city."
But high temperatures aside, it is worth noting that Chicago stages are notably busy this summer (and of course air-conditioned). In addition, there is an exceptional exhibit of a rarely seen body of work by Marc Chagall on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee that is just a two-hour drive from the city.
Here is a look at some of the many and varied choices you can make in the coming weeks:
An unusual exhibit of work by Marc Chagall
Now on display at Jewish Museum Milwaukee through Sept. 8 is "Chagall's Dead Souls: A Satirical Account of Imperialist Russia." It's a showcase of 96 rarely seen etchings by the artist that illustrate "Dead Souls," the Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel in which a landowner named Chichikov was able to buy and sell serfs (the laborers who, until 1861, were considered to be property or "dead souls"), and to secure tax deductions in the process. Along the way, Chichikov interacts with a slew of other characters, some of whom are steeped in middle-class pretentiousness at the time.
Chagall (1887-1985), who drew on many different artistic mediums throughout his life, created thousands of vibrantly colored paintings, as well as stained glass works, tapestries, and ceramics. In the case of the black and white illustrations for "Dead Souls" he used etching, dry point, and aquatint techniques on specially hand-made paper.
Gogol's work has been described as "a satirical journey into the heart of his Russian homeland's darkness," with Chichikov, its main character, an unscrupulous hustler. And in his "Dead Souls" etchings Chagall used Chichikov's nose "as an ever-changing emotional marker." Worth noting: At the 1948 Venice Biennial, Chagall won the Grand Prix for "Dead Souls," and was praised for the "outstanding mastery of his illustrations."
Whether or not you can make it to the exhibit in Milwaukee, I recommend that you read Alexandra Shatskikh's highly detailed story about this particular aspect of Chagall's work. Learn more at tretyakovgallerymagazine.com.
For more information about the Milwaukee exhibit, visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org, or call 414-390-5730.
Note: Find some wonderful works by Chagall at the Art Institute of Chicago, including his stained glass masterpiece, the brilliantly colored "America Windows" (1977), created to celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial.
You also can head outdoors to 10 S. Dearborn (Chase Tower Plaza), to see "The Four Seasons," his vast, 70-foot-long mosaic--a rectangular "box" made of thousands of inlaid chips, and portrays six scenes of Chicago.
'Carousel' staged by Music Theater Works
Composer Richard Rodgers, who was born into a Jewish family, and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, the son of a Jewish father, were unquestionably the Broadway musical theater geniuses of the mid-20th century. They created one brilliant score after another, including such classics as
Oklahoma,South Pacific
,
The King and I,
and
The Sound of Music
.
Carousel
, their much beloved second collaboration that opened on Broadway in 1945, drew on
Liliom
, a 1910 play by the Hungarian-born son of German-Jewish parents. The musical transplanted that play's story from its Budapest setting to a town on the Maine seacoast where a troubled romance between Billy Bigelow, a carousel barker, and Julie Jordan, a young millworker, unfolds. And it has enchanted audiences for decades with such beautiful songs as "If I Loved You," "You'll Never Walk Alone," "Mister Snow," and "June Is Bustin' Out All Over."
Now this classic will be produced by the ever- excellent Music Theater Works, the resident professional, not-for-profit musical theater operation that was founded in 1980, and has made the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, located in Skokie, its home. The production will run Aug. 8-18. For tickets, visit Ticketmaster.com or call 847-673-6300.
A photo exhibit -- 'Shtetl In the Sun'
Now on view at the Illinois Holocaust Museum is an exhibit of pictures taken by Andy Sweet, a young photographer in the late 1970s who captured Jewish life at that time in South Beach, Florida.
As the scene is described, this was "when more than 20,000 elderly Jews, many of them New York transfers and Holocaust survivors, dubbed an area of about two square miles their home," and that area became "a modern-day shtetl--a lighthearted community reminiscent of the tightly knit, predominantly Jewish pre-World War II Eastern European villages."
The exhibit runs through Oct. 13 at the museum. Visit ilholocaustmuseum.org or phone 847-967-4800.
Rachel Bloom at Steppenwolf
You might already be familiar with Rachel Bloom, the actress, producer, singer-songwriter, and author who co-created the musical comedy
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
that ran on television from 2015-2019.
Now, at the Steppenwolf Theater, Bloom will perform
Death Let Me Do My Show
, her one-woman musical comedy (a sell-out in its off-Broadway run), that is described as "filled with raunchy and escapist material that definitely is NOT about the ever-present specter of death, and in NO way will explore the pandemic, and all the tumultuous events that ensued in her personal life."
The show will run Aug. 14-24 at Steppenwolf, 1650 N. Halsted. For tickets, visit steppenwolf.org/RachelBloom, or call 312-335-1650.
Hedy Weiss, a longtime Chicago arts critic, was the Theater and Dance Critic for the
Chicago Sun-Times
from 1984 to 2018, and currently writes for
WTTW-TV
's website and contributes to
the Chicago Tonight
program
