Winter blues got you down? I know! Let’s put on a show!
Every January for the last hundred years or so, enthusiastic performers from the University of Chicago community have come together to create a comedy revue. It’s been my good fortune and a source of high pleasure to take part in the productions for the last six or seven years. Written by the talented Andy Austin-Cohen, with music by Bob Aschenhurst, Julian Harvey, Noel Taylor and other gifted composers, the show is a light-hearted lampoon of university and contemporary life.
This year, I play Oleana Salamander, producer of raunchy reality TV shows and Dan Friedrichs, my cameraman and I, get stuck in Grimy Gulch when our bus breaks down on the way to film “Naughty Nerdettes; Real Chorus-Girl Co-Eds of Las Vegas.” The action shifts between the University’s Smart Museum of Art and Grimy Gulch. The singing, by the professional Lauren Miller, Trip Driscoll, and Sara Stern is beautiful, and I do my signature dismemberment of someone else’s gorgeous music, in this case “L’ho perduta” from Marriage of Figaro. The performance is January 28 and 29 at the University’s Quadrangle Club. Tickets are on sale now (773-493-8601) and you definitely do NOT need to be part of the U of C community to attend–so please, come one, come all, have a drink, have a meal from the Q Club’s great kitchen, and enjoy the show!
