Playwright: book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang & Robert Falls, music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice. At: Bailiwick Chicago (fka Bailiwick Repertory Theater) at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron. Phone: 866-811-4111; $25-$35. Runs through: Aug. 1
When Guiseppe Verdi’s opera premiered in Khedivial Opera House in Cairo, Egypt, in 1871, the triumphal procession scene included among its ranks live horses, camels and elephants. The 1998 world-premiere production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s pop-musical adaptation at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre featured a six-ton segmented pyramid, and the 1999 pre-Broadway tryout inaugurating Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre featured a burial scene incorporating a tomb suspended above the stage that malfunctioned one night, plummeting eight feet to the ground and sending the actors within to the hospital. Bailiwick Chicago, however, has only a six-piece orchestra; an assortment of lighted slides and stencils; and a brief, but fully realized fashion parade featuring the winners of a design competition sponsored by the producers specifically for that purpose.
Ironically, a budget prohibiting extravagant (but too frequently inert) spectacle works to the advantage of this poignantly romantic tale. Our play begins in a museum where a tour guide introduces the story of Aida, a Nubian princess taken prisoner by an Egyptian captain, Radames, and given as a slave to his betrothed, the frivolous Amneris. A bond soon arises between captor and captured, even as the former’s ambitious father plots to rule over the kingdom, and the latter’s oppressed countrymen rally to their reluctant sovereign. With no escape from their patriotic duties, the unhappy couple must embrace an untimely death, vowing with their last breath to reunite in a happier world to come. And as we return to the present, we see their prophecy manifest itself.
Under the direction of Scott Ferguson, orchestra director Robert Ollis, vocal director Jimmy Morehead and co-choreographers Gary Abbott and Kevin Iega Jeff, Elton John and Tim Rice’s cumbersome libretto has been whittled down to a tidy two and a half hours with no reduction of the elements we expect of its genre—soaring harmonies in a variety of contemporary styles, athletic Afrocentric dances, women wearing Ricky Lurie’s dazzling period-inspired frocks and men wearing sweaty bare chests. Rashada Dawan and Brandon Chandler make a touching pair of star-crossed lovers, the intimacy of the ATC space allowing for character-driven nuances absent in larger venues, while the progress of Adrianna Parson’s Amneris from selfish vanity to responsible leadership lends weight to the themes explored in this agelessly modern myth.