A holiday glow: Strawdog’s ‘Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins’ and Broadway in Chicago’s ‘Dear Evan Hansen’
The solstice is near and a cold snap is here already—here are a few choices off the beaten seasonal path to put some spring in your frozen step and keep a little bit closer with friends and loved ones.
Nicholas Pardo and Melanie Vitaterna. Photo by Jenn Udoni/Franco Images
Strawdog Theatre Company has offered up Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins for five years running—they went virtual in 2020, even, no need to take a mulligan—and its endlessly crafty spirit suggests it isn’t going to go away any time soon. (It’s also free!)
Adapted by Michael Dailey from the children’s book of the same name by Eric Kimmel (with songs by Jacob Combs), it naturally tells the tale of a quick-witted goodnik named Hershel (Jordan Zelvin) and his encounter with some nasties who prevent his little shtetl, nestled at the foot of a mountain, from observing the holiday. All told through the lens of a traveling theatre troupe, The Ovals of Ostropol, who sing, dance, conjure, and contort their way through the tale. Oh, and puppeteer some of the most delightfully unorthodox puppets this side of Minsk (Puppets by Caitlin McLeod and Rocio Cabrera. If you’re looking for a conversation piece, they’re auctioning off this batch after the run ends.)
Like the best of theatre for children, it’s a nimble-enough sixty-or-so minutes—after besting the goblins for three consecutive nights of Hanukkah, Dailey and company are smart enough to cover the next four via farcical montage. While perhaps the framing device goes on a little long—the Ovals perform the story in exchange for a night at the inn in a non-observant town—it completes the ragtag picture.
I may not have been able to sing the prayers on each night Hershel lit each Hanukkah candle with just as much reverence as cheeky defiance, but I was able to follow along with “The Latke Song.” I got some in my belly in short order.
Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins runs through January 1st, 2023 at the Edge Off-Broadway Theater, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave. For reservations or more information, please visit strawdog.org.
Anthony Norman. Photo by Evan Zimmerman.
Loop-ways, the Nederlander isn’t glowing with warm and modest candlelight, but with a bazillion smartphone and desktop screens, all showing off perfectly curated social media feeds. Indeed, the title character of Dear Evan Hansen has a rival in Peter Nigrini’s projection design. In tandem with David Korins’s inky void of a set, they become a force in their own right.
A force that threatens to swallow up Evan Hansen (Anthony Norman), a debilitatingly anxious and lonely teen, who doesn’t think he has a life to curate. That is, until a tragedy, a misunderstanding, and his desire to please somebody conspire to put him on a high wire. And then the Internet tunes in, and the wire grows longer and more perilous. Ah, but the dopamine hit of being liked…
Praised for its prescience pre-pandemic, and having survived a punchline of a film adaptation, it’s remarkable just how much the live production sustains. The tenor of social media that governs the plot at times feels radically different than what’s come to pass five, six years later, but, then as now, we didn’t need social media to not-quite communicate with each other.
Armed with Steven Levenson’s book, by turns swift and melancholic, and anthemic songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul just as they broke into mainstream-ish music, I think the real star is director Michael Greif. Like his co-production of The Notebook this past fall, whatever objections one might have to the material, everyone in the audience is rapt, paying attention to the right things. It hits what it intends to hit perfectly, which is no small feat.
Norman is a crack shot, for sure—you feel your stomach tightening along with his, but thrill when he opens up his throat and reveals the tangled adolescent mess within—but Coleen Sexton, as his latchkey mother Heidi, is herself a veritable Annie Oakley. And it’s during her big Act Two solo that those bazillion screens go dark and we get a scene from life, lovingly uncurated.
Dear Evan Hansen runs through December 31st at the Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St. For tickets or more information, please call (800) 775-2000 or visit broadwayinchicago.com.
For more reviews on these or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.