A lengthy first act wouldn’t have been a bad thing, if it didn’t begin with such low-energy dirges as ‘Let Peace Fill The Earth/Vine And Fig Tree.’ The traditional ‘Yonder Come Day’ rose slowly like the sun, and Ulali’s ‘Mahk Jchi’ ended predictably with the sound of a rain stick.
Dressed in knee-length vests of rainbow hues, HERSONG hit its stride with ‘Music In My Mother’s House,’ which made me wonder why they hadn’t opened with this selection. ‘The Stove,’ a song about a mother who picked up a sledgehammer and demolished a stove, was also well-received. ‘Deep Fat Frying,’ a duet by Kathy Wilson and Brooke E. Wilson, continued the ‘mother’ theme, with a humorous life lesson about not doing your deep-fat frying in the nude. The mood once again turned terribly serious with ‘Three Spirituals’ (with HERSONG members on-stage and scattered in the box seats and in the aisles) and ‘Harriet Tubman.’
The second half of HERSONG’s set was equally as uneven. They moved from Holly Near’s ‘Change of Heart’ into another humorous duet (‘When I’m Not Near The Girl I Love,’ performed by Lucia Dryanski and Anne Lewis), and appeared to be in need of a shot of caffeine as they sang ‘Caffeine Blues.’ The highlight of the set was a near-roof-raising reading of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ And although it sounds like a punch-line to a lesbian joke, there was a drum present in HERSONG’s final number ‘Kwahari.’Dressed in black slacks with white shirts and pink ties, the massive Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus never sounded better than it did in the second act. While I maintain that some of the choreography remains a bit too complex for some members, the dancers were a nice addition to the lively opening number ‘Back In Business.’ CGMC didn’t display a trace of irony while singing the hetero lyrics of ‘Vive L’Amour,’ although there was plenty of sarcasm to be found in the Burt Bacharach/Hal David medley, which included ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,’ ‘I Say A Little Prayer,’ ‘The Look Of Love,’ ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’,’ ‘Always Something There To Remind Me,’ and ‘Promises, Promises.’
CGMC gave ‘Nature Boy’ a new coat of paint and it continued its infatuation with the work of Frank Wildhorn by performing ‘Into The Fire.’ ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,’ with the line ‘we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home,’ segued into a foot stomping rendition of ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken.’ The uplifting finale, ‘You Can’t Stop The Beat,’ from the Tony Award-winning musical Hairspray, found some CGMC members adorned with exaggerated wigs, as they were joined on-stage by members of HERSONG.