SWEET HOME, CHICAGO

Week 6 - 'Immigrants Eat our Dogs'

WEEK 6

(Around the corner from us at Wieners Circle - “Immigrants Eat Our Dogs” - scroll down for link to Jack McBrayer at Wieners Circle filmed for Conan O’Brien)

HENRY V FIRST NIGHT 

The ‘Lord of the Rings’ musical just recently finished its hugely successful run in The Yard at CST. Orcs and elves from around the 50 states of America and 40 other countries flocked in their thousands to see the show. It really was a heart-warming sight to see excited families of ‘Ringers’, in full Hobbit dress, have their photos taken in and outside the theatre. Almost more thrilling, the magnetic lure of the ring was so mighty that 74% of the audience had never even been to CST before. Next stop on the journey for the cast and show is Auckland, New Zealand - for many the very epicentre of Middle Earth.

I missed the February press night of Ed’s Richard lll in the Courtyard Theatre as I was doing ‘Deathtrap’ at the Mill at Sonning. I did, however, catch a Sunday matinee of the show when in a moment of madness, I made a quick dash to Chicago for just 24 hours of sunshine and Shakespeare. Leaping in the car after the last rehearsal run through of our show, I drove to Heathrow Terminal 5, popped the car in the long term car park, hopped on a plane to Chicago O’Hare arriving at 9pm, slept, had brunch with Ed before the Sunday preview matinee starring the stunning Katie Sullivan (Richard lll), gave her a post-show kiss and hug, gave Ed a post-show kiss and hug before he had to zip off to give tech notes, I hopped in a car back to O’Hare to catch the night flight home to London in time for school pick up and the tech and previews of our show. It was a case of instant logistics and wonderful friends who swept in to look after D2* for the weekend. There was simply no time for jet lag.

The only moment of madness in last Fridays’ Henry V press night was when I forgot that I had left my curlers in and looking like Hilda Ogden, almost walked into the pre-show party as Ed was about to launch into his speech to high end donors and board members who, by the way, I had never met before and vice versa. The universe stopped me just in time.

What a treat the evening was. An Ed Hall Shakespeare. I’m biased but you’ve just got to accept that. Whether it’s his Propeller, RSC or CST – there’s a special alchemy on the stage that he is able to create with all his companies.

Those opening minutes of his Julius Caesar up at Stratford as the cast, that included the ever-immaculate Tim Pigott-Smith RIP as Cassius, walked up and over on to the stage in formation accompanied by Simon Slater’s trumpet voluntary. Oh my, the goose bumps – we knew we were in for an evening we would never forget. The lovers quarrel in Propeller’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which to me has never been more pant wettingly hilarious than played by Robert Hands as Helena, deep voiced Johnny McGuinness as Hermia, Dugald Bruce Lockhart as Lysander and Vince Leigh as Demetrius (I have been in two productions of The Dream and hold no resentment); a naked Tony Bell as Dr Pinch in Comedy of Errors running across the stage with a burning sparkler up his bum (no point looking up Shakespeare’s stage directions); Karl Davies, playing Young Clown in The Winter’s Tale, attempting to count his sheep ably assisted by the company 'bahing' on all fours as, yes, you guessed it, sheep; Dickie Dempsey and Gunnar Cauthery playing Mopsa and Dorcas in the same production, singing Bohemia’s version of All the Single Ladies with full choreography; the abattoir of Rose Rage (Henry Vl Part 1,2 & 3) with Robert Hands's thrillingly terrifying Margaret of Anjou despatching Guy Williams’s Duke of York with the flick of a tuning fork and a full throttled Sanctus; Katie Sullivan lying on the stage having lost one of her blades in battle giving her ‘My Kingdom for a Horse’ speech.

Golden moments in a catalogue of golden productions. He is a master at creating companies and finding actors who are ‘up for it’ and want to collaborate and this Henry V cast led by young Elijah Jones are no different – they are stupendous. What a night. It had all the anarchy and joy of a Propeller Shakespeare.

(Richard Maltby, Ed, Me and ‘national treasure’ Andre de Shields)

The evening was not only the First Night but it also marked the first production of Ed’s as Artistic Director at CST and I was so grateful to our friends who flew in from all over to lend their emotional support. Shout out to the lovey Linda Thorson (Tara King of The Avengers) who flew in from Toronto; Broadway legend Richard Maltby (he directed me in his production of Closer Then Ever in London) and ‘National Treasure’ Andre de Shields in from NYC who were mobbed everywhere they went. Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune Theatre Critic was so intrigued by their presence at CST that he wrote in his Tribune diary column - “Lovely men both, they were coy about why they were there, muttering a little something about a future project on Navy Pier.” Of course, I can neither confirm nor deny this. Even if you send round the ridiculously handsome Austin Butler, clad in nothing but his tighty whiteys to hand feed me a sack load of chocolate covered almonds, I ain’t talkin’.

Then there was Hannah McKeand…..

Dear friend, all round mensch, artist, award winning travel writer and Polar Explorer extraordinaire who flew in from New Mexico. So extraordinaire is Hannah that she is in the Guinness Book of Records not once but twice. Here are the details so you too can be amazed -

https://www.hannahmckeand.com or

Hannah McKeand

She’s off again to Antarctica in a couple of weeks where she’ll be for the next five months setting up base and hanging out with the Emperor Penguins. She is so good at setting up a base from scratch – creating an inviting and cosy environment inside a polar tent, making runways in the snow, looking after the mental wellbeing of a team, thousands of miles from home - that she and her partner (who also works in Antarctica and is phenomenal with a screw driver), took one look at the unopened boxes in our house and took us and the situation generously in hand. What can I say? The woman walks on water whether frozen or not.

(photo of Hannah and polar bear)

They shifted and emptied boxes, hung pictures (and we have many), helped lug the recently purchased heavy pieces of furniture up and through the house from nearby ‘Brown Elephant’. In just a matter of hours, they had turned our house into a home. 

(Brown Elephant is a vintage resale shop that supports LGBTQ+ healthcare and funds care for the uninsured and under-insured at Howard Brown Health. We thought, why buy new? This way we are helping our local community and if, when we move again and have no use for the furniture, we can just donate it back to Brown Elephant.). 

(Dennis driving the UHaul with furniture from Brown Elephant)

SCHOOL (pronounced SKOOEL)

The strangest thing happened on our way to school/skooel the other morning. I didn’t know it was part of the first day protocol to come into school with a drink of your choice, obvs not alcohol but fizzy drinks are ok (!) Most students come with a Starbucks decaf something. So as I had failed miserably on Day One, I decided to do it on Day Two and stopped off at what looked like a perfectly normal Starbucks just down from Wieners Circle on the way to Lincoln Park. BUT NO and I really mean NO. Like Philip Pullman’s Subtle Knife, we appeared to have slipped through a tear in the universe. The servers spoke English, albeit American English, but still our perfectly normal order of “Please may we have one Iced Decaf Mocha and an Earl Grey Tea with milk” was lost in translation and arrived as “One Iced Matcha Latte and an Iced Green Tea.” Try as I might, I couldn’t see the similarities.

‘I’m awfully sorry but we ordered an Iced Decaf Mocha and an Earl Grey Tea” I said and he/she/they repeated back my order as two completely other incomprehensible drinks. I really was very confused by this stage and it was only 7.50am. Rather then doing that British Abroad thing of talking really loudly at someone when not understood, I went down the route of speaking really slowly and over enunciating every vowel and consonant as I repeated the order. Eventually our drinks arrived and as I turned to go a lady in red, sitting alone at a table, looked me straight in the eye and said -

“You shouldn’t live with that girl in pink.”

“Sorry?”

“You shouldn’t live with that girl in pink.”

“That’s my daughter!”

“Yes, you shouldn’t live with that girl in pink.”

I am never ever EVER going there again.

CITY NEWS

You can all stand down - Michael ‘Air’ Jordan (retired star of the Chicago Bulls) has found a buyer for his multi million dollar Chicago Mansion.

Chicago is in the Top 10 for the most rodent infested cities of America – I can testify to that. Earlier this week, Dennis and I were nearly mugged by one as we went out for a full moon amble. We turned the corner and there he was, like a scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (obvs Den was the Good). Lee van Rattus just stood there looking us up and down for a good 30 seconds before he flicked us the bird and lumbered off into the shadows. High Noon at High Night. Den didn’t even cock a leg, so disinterested was he. He had caught a rattus on Tooting Common a while back and it squeaked and squirmed so loudly that, like a member of a striking union, he downed ‘tools’ - “Nah, that’s not for me.” Now he just sticks his nose in the air and ignores them. Den don’t do rats.

Set your calendars and start limbering up for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday 13^th Oct. 

AND, incase you were wondering, Henry V got cracking notices and runs until 6th October - https://www.chicagoshakes.com for tix.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Apparently, Kamala is pronounced – ‘coma (,) la’

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Thank you for reading my weekly diary. If you have enjoyed the post do pretty please hit the heart button - apparently it makes the ether elves in the SubStack main frame very happy - and let me know if you would like to hear more of anything. Not wanting to clutter up your inboxes, I’m thinking of moving my diary from weekly to monthly … any thoughts?

 Watch Jack McBrayer & Triumph Visit Wiener's Circle for Conan O'Brien Jack McBrayer & Triumph Visit Chicago's Wiener's Circle | CONAN on TBSJack McBrayer & Triumph Visit Chicago's Wiener's Circle | CONAN on TBS

 *Daughter Two