Steadstyle Chicago
	July 2010 Theatre Review by Lawrence Bommer
	Aida No comeback triumph, this first musical by the reconstituted Bailiwick Chicago is neither a gift to Elton John nor from him.  If you were hoping for a revised revival gone right, it may take another 11 years.  Back to the beginning: Premiering in Chicago in 1999 and christening the Cadillac Palace Theatre in a pre-Broadway tryout, “Aida” was well worth seeing.  A state-of-the-art sound and light show, Robert Falls’ 160-minute staging often bewitched.  Bob Crowley’s eye-popping, neo-Egyptian flying sets blazed with gorgeous post-modern colors.  The visual delights included the Pharaoh’s imperial staircase and soaring gold throne, some Escher-like slave quarters, a vertical swimming pool with “flying” swimmers, and a throbbingly phosphorescent Nile.  Crowley’s eye-popping costumes featured a fabulous New Kingdom fashion show that Ziegeld would find vulgar.  Natasha Katz’ lighting painted swirling canvases on anything that moves.  You could imagine a Disney theme park in the offing. The problem was hearing “Aida.”  If familiarity breeds contempt, this factory worked overtime.  Forget that Verdi ever covered the story with glory 139 years before.  Like “Rent” and “Miss Saigon,” “Aida” could have been a legitimate pop-culture spin-off of a celebrated opera.  The sturdy story chronicled a love snarl that entangles the Pharaoh’s successor Amneris, her betrothed Radames and an essential Egyptian warrior, and his beloved Aida, a Nubian princess who, shrunken to slavery, raises Radames to love.  But, lumbered by Tim Rice’s editorializing lyrics and forced rhymes, Elton John’s numbingly dull score reduced the Romeo-and Juliet plot to an exercise in excess.  The Afrocentric concessions amounted to pandering. Whether R&B, Euro-pop, Mo-Town mix or lite rock, Elton’s songs with their boring back beat, mellowed-out mediocrity and predictable major chord changes ran together like watercolors.  Talents as electric as Heather Headley’s scorching and soulful Aida and handsome Adam Pascal’s ardent Radames couldn’t disguise the trivializing.  A kind of Afro-Egyptian Mulan, Headley’s Aida must, we know, become her own heroine–but why take forever to grow a backbone?  Radames’ discovery of how love levels everything is the show’s sole spontaneity. The crudely anachronistic script, a hodgepodge by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Falls, trivialized the love triangle by turning Sherie Rene Scott’s Princess Amneris into a bubble-headed material girl.  Triggered by seeing Radames two-time her, Amneris’ final transformation into a merciful monarch seemed insultingly improbable.  The latest recombinant clone of “Les Miz,” “Aida” was an ejaculation musical: The plot forced the music to climax every twenty minutes.  A stage surrogate, “Aida” felt it all for you, cynically assuming that special effects make up for a heart. Eleven years later, it would be great to report that the unearned emotions, cloying anachronisms, clashing tonal shifts and melodic lack of inspiration had been solved either by the apparently unimproved Broadway production or this enthusiastic Bailiwick revival.  Lacking the distraction of the original production’s stunning sets, the latter, staged by Scott Ferguson with an ensemble, whose youth doesn’t always make up for experience or instincts,  delivers a homegrown intensity to the communal spiritual “The Gods Love Nubia” that ends the first act. Initially more sassy than regal, Rashada Dawan’s Aida finally get seriously sulky later on but by then it’s one more unexplained mood swing.  Brandon Chandler brings an ardent pop tenor to Radames, enough to make the love duets tingle, smolder and finally combust, but here he has to carry more weight than he’s ready for.  No more a princess than Dawan, Adrianna Parson’s Amneris still moves improbably from a silly sorority star/vapid valley girl to a stunningly inexplicable forgiveness of Radames for two-timing her with her slave.  The choreography, such as it is, is by the numbers.  Also, on opening night there were problems with the lights brought on by the excessively hot auditorium.  It felt all too much like ancient—and modern—Egypt, with a touch of Chicago humidity thrown in for variety.  I’ve never seen so many fans in the audience—and I don’t mean happy supporters. The stuff that grated in 1999—the tacky Egyptian fashion show that instantly trivializes what’s supposed to be a tragic love story, the potpourri pastiche of Johns’ score, the flippant and pseudo-hip dialogue, the unintended camp that keeps us from caring—they’re all there.  How could they not when this is a rock concert posing as a musical?  This “Aida,” destined to be long forgotten when Verdi’s opera still thrills, would be best served by a highlights compilation because there’s no texture to link the numbers and the only pluses are the performances.  "Aida" plays through August 1, 2010 at the American Theater Company.  For more information on this show, please visit the Theatre In Chicago Aida page.   About Lawrence Bommer A native Chicagoan, Lawrence Bommer has been an active free-lance writer and playwright since 1975.  For twenty years he wrote a weekly column, "Opening Nights" for the Friday section of the Chicago Tribune, where he also regularly contributed theater criticism and feature writing.  His work has appeared in Stagebill, the Pulitzer-Lerner newspapers and The Advocate. Mr. Bommer was theater editor for the Windy City Times since its founding until 1999; from 1986 a theater critic for the Chicago Reader (where he has also written for the "Calendar" and "Our Town" sections); Chicago Free Press, where he was contributing editor until the paper’s demise in spring 2010; Chicago Footlights, where he has been a regular contributor; and Plays International, where he is the Chicago correspondent.  He has also contributed to the Hollywood Reporter, PerformInk, Screen Magazine, CitySearch, the Chicago Illini, Inside Chicago, Illinois Entertainer, the International Theatre Festival of Chicago newsletter, Plays International, CitySearch, Playbill Online, TheatreMania, CurtainUp.com and Chicago Enterprise.  Mr. Bommer is a three-time finalist for a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the "arts criticism" category.  In 1991 he became a regular theater and, dance critic and arts writer for the Chicago Tribune.  His commentary has also aired on LesBiGay Radio, WGN and on Milwaukee Public Radio. As a playwright, Mr. Bommer's work has been produced in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Madison and, in Chicago, by the Organic Theater Company (Jonathan Wild [1979], Poe [1980]. Gulliver's Last Travels [1993] and by Lionheart Gay Theatre (Gunsel, The Tyrannicides, Killers and Comrades).  Since 1976 Mr. Bommer has taught at the Francis W. Parker School and was a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1969 to 1975 (where he received his Master's degree in English), as well as a guest lecturer at the College of DuPage, Roosevelt University, DePaul University and the University of Chicago.  Mr. Bommer is a member of the American Theater Critics Association and has been a member of the National Writers Union and the Dramatists Guild.