Latest news with #ThompsonTwins
Chicago Tribune
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Always Something There …' at Marriott Theatre is a fun and escapist cavalcade of '80s hits
What human fantasy is more powerful than the do-over, the chance to relive your life and fix your lousy youthful decisions? Most of us are stuck with our mistakes, but Samantha Craig, the heroine of the exuberant world-premiere jukebox musical at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, falls asleep one night on a business trip in a dull hotel bedroom and wakes up to find herself roaming the halls of her old high school. She's 18 again. Rick Astley's 'Together Forever' is the soundtrack of the moment and Samantha has the foreknowledge of a woman in her 40s and the ability to remake her sad lot. Out with that lousy boyfriend who became an even worse husband! Out with that job at the toilet manufacturer! Out with that soul-sucking material world, and in with the sensitive hunk, and with Samantha following her destiny of musical stardom. The search is over! (You were with me all the while.) 'Always Something There …' is not exactly original. At various moments, its plot recalls 'Freaky Friday, 'Back to the Future' and 'Peggy Sue Got Married,' not to mention the final acts of 'Our Town' and 'Carousel.' But Billy Bigelow, the humbled fool from that last musical, did not get to warble in the vogue of Johnny Hates Jazz or Boy George, nor did he get to declare 'I Want to Dance with Somebody' or that 'Love is a Battlefield,' unlike the characters in writer Sandy Rustin's show, a veritable plethora of 1980s music. A mostly youthful cast performs (among many others) songs made famous by Madonna, H.E.R., Thompson Twins, Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar and The Go-Gos. The playlist (or mixtape, if you will) contains 23 hits of the 1980s, by my account, mostly pop by one-hit wonders but with a few gentle nods toward New Wave. Most haven't shown up in jukebox shows before. This is my era of music, of stalking the dancefloor at Mean Mr. Mustard's, my club of youthful choice. And at several times during this show, I came to the realization that I was sitting here watching a bunch of mostly early career performers, reviewing a song filled with the songs that will be playing in the nursing home I hope to avoid. Can't say I look forward to a robot giving me a sponge bath with 'Even the Nights are Better' rolling out from the bathroom speaker, but better than existential silence. (I guess. We'll have to see.) The fabulous Heidi Kettenring, who plays adult Samantha, performs these 1980s dance-and-angst hits as if she were doing a Chekhov play with a score by Sondheim — so that ennobles the proceedings, you might say. And as her younger doppelganger, the wide-eyed and talented Christina Priestner certainly does all she can to match Kettenring's vocal chops, although just a hair more irony would not go unappreciated. Beyond those two leads, we get fun performances from Samantha's best pals (Emma Ogea, who I believe was in as an understudy at my performance, is an especially stellar singer), boyfriends bad and good (Ty Shay and Ian Coursey), Leah Morrow essaying a variety of 1980s adults, loosely speaking, and the various other detritus of the 1980s high school genre. As writ jukebox. You should know 'Always Something There …' (really not the best title in my view, especially with an ellipsis) is a modestly scaled show, production-wise, and it comes in at just one hour and 50 minutes, even with an intermission. Most of that is taken up by the songs. Not that the show needs to be much longer. The location mostly is non-specific (although apparently Chicagoland), conflicts are mild, situations familiar by design. Tyler Hanes' amusing choreography is carefully tailored to young singers rather than dancers. But the performers are enthusiastic in that theater summer camp way, it's all fun and, this being a theater in the round, I stared all night at row after row of grinning, nodding faces. Director James Vásquez's laudably zippy (thank god) production holds together, staging-wise, just fine until the last few minutes, where the production peters out a little and lacks a conclusionary button, the necessary cherry on the 1980s Cool Whip. Those final sequences need more work, and I think the script needs both more era-specific edge (Duckie Dale would be better than a nerd transplanted from the 1950s) and beefed-up, self-referential gags, but I'm tellin' ya, that do-over theme sparks emotions even if you are listening to a song first recorded by Debbie (now Deborah) Gibson, who I once sat next to at a show, and not only in my dreams, either. But I digress. 'Always Something There …' is the first new musical at Marriott in something like a decade, even though this theater used to develop many of them, including one based on 'Peggy Sue Got Married.' So that's a real positive this summer. This particular premiere doesn't feel Broadway-aimed (although you never know), so much as an affordable, good-time musical with aspirations to be performed at colleges and summer-stock operations at theaters like the Goodspeed Playhouse, or on some Royal Caribbean megaship off the coast of Curaçao, which I don't mean as condescending. I imagine future cruisers will be as delighted as many in the Marriott audience seemed to be, as we all sat together, nodding our heads to familiar beats and cycling back over our lives and pondering those shattered dreams, shattered dreams. Hey, there's still time. Or so musicals like to lead us to believe. Review: 'Always Something There' (3 stars) When: Through Aug. 10 Where: Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Tickets: $73-$89 at 847-634-0200 and
New York Times
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Who Makes the Red Carpet? Steve.
On a recent weekday morning in La Mirada, a suburb outside Los Angeles, Steve Olive, 58, walked among hundreds of carpet rolls in red, green and lavender in a white, sun-drenched, 36,000-square-foot warehouse. Laid out on the floor was a 150-foot stretch of rug, delivered by truck from Georgia a few days before, in the custom shade of Academy Red that is only available for the Oscars. Mr. Olive himself may not be famous, but celebrities have strolled the plush craftsmanship of his carpet for nearly three decades. His company, Event Carpet Pros, has supplied carpets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys and Emmys, as well as for Disney, Marvel and Warner Bros. movie premieres and the Super Bowl. And, at a moment when carpets have moved beyond the classic red and become splashier and more intricate, his handiwork has become more prominent. He has crafted custom designs like a shimmering, sunlit pool carpet for the 2023 'Barbie' world premiere and a green-and-black ectoplasm drip carpet for the 'Ghostbusters' world premiere in 2016 that took a month to create. 'I haven't come across anything that we couldn't do,' Mr. Olive, who founded the company with his brother-in-law, Walter Clyne, in 1992, said in an interview. But this week — after a brief dalliance with a champagne shade two years ago — the Oscars opted for tradition and returned to a carpet in Mr. Olive's exclusive Academy Red. The 50,000 square-foot rug was installed outside of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, in preparation for the ceremony this weekend. What sets Mr. Olive apart in a chaotic, high-stakes industry is his reliability, said Joe Lewis, a producer for the Oscars who has ordered the awards show's red carpet from him for the past 16 years. (Mr. Olive declined to disclose the cost of the job.) 'He's like a drive-through window,' Mr. Lewis said. 'You place your order, you pull around and it's ready for you. That's what we like about Steve.' Word of Mouth Growing up in Cerritos, Calif., then a tiny town of about 15,000 about 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Mr. Olive never thought he would leave the state. His parents worked 14-hour shifts in a bottling factory to support four children, with Mr. Olive being the youngest. After graduating from high school, an opportunity arose to work as the bodyguard for 1980s acts like Mötley Crüe, George Michael and the Thompson Twins. Mr. Olive, a 6-foot-2 former linebacker, did not think twice. He was working local security backstage at a Thompson Twins concert, he said, when he got a lucky break. 'The band bodyguard had to fly back to England, and they asked me if I could started immediately,' he said. 'I was like, 'I'm in.'' But after an admittedly sheltered adolescence, life on tour, Mr. Olive said, proved to be a shock to the system. 'It wasn't a pretty picture, with the drugs and the groupies,' he said. 'It was very difficult for me.' Regardless, he was on the road for about five years, traveling across Europe and Asia. But he was ready to do something — anything — to get out of that job. 'It was quite gross at times,' he said of the environment he encountered while taking care of bands. His brother-in-law, Mr. Clyne, who had been installing tents around the country, saw a need for a company that specialized in event flooring. He asked Mr. Olive if he would be interested in starting one with him. In the beginning, Mr. Olive said, they were a hustle-fueled operation, putting rolls of AstroTurf under tents at small events to hide the ground and enlisting friends to help with installs. 'It was a word of mouth thing, like, 'Hey, who'd you use for your carpet?'' he said. 'And it just spread.' They pitched themselves to events that might be interested in their services. Soon, Mr. Clyne set his sights on one of the biggest events of all: the Academy Awards. 'We got involved from reaching out to the academy, and other vendors and contacts we had in the business that referred us,' he said. It's hard to imagine, but the modern awards show red carpet did not always exist. What is now considered a prime opportunity to capitalize on the relationship between fashion and celebrity, not to mention the publicity a designer receives when a star models their wares on one of Hollywood's biggest stages, was once a much more subdued affair. Before 1961, stars walked directly into the venue without a designated spot to take photographs. Once the current red carpet made its debut, though, it became a premium platform for not only fashion, but also personal branding, life announcements like pregnancies and engagements, and, of course, must-see pop culture candy. And, Mr. Clyne argued, Event Carpet Pros, with its scrappy team and 'anything is possible' mentality, could provide the floor for that world stage faster and more efficiently — and, in 1997, the Oscars bit. 'He's old school' Mr. Olive works out of an airy office in a corner of the La Mirada warehouse, with a brown leather sofa, a large flat-screen TV — recently tuned to a Los Angeles Dodgers game — and a movie theater-size poster of Al Pacino from the 1983 drama 'Scarface.' On his desk are a dry-erase computer pad, an oversize monitor, a magnifying glass and square, black-rimmed spectacles. The rush of traffic filtering in from Alondra Boulevard becomes like white noise after a while. The business has fully stocked warehouses on both coasts, including a second location it opened in Dalton, Ga., in 2015, where the carpets are manufactured. In addition to marquee events like the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Country Music Association Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards, the company also handles orders for weddings, birthday parties, corporate events and golf tournaments. ('Georgia is big for those,' Mr. Olive said.) With approximately 70 employees, Event Carpet Pros handles as many as 30 orders and 10 installs per day during awards season, completing a total of more than 30,000 projects each year. The carpets are made from recycled materials and are recycled after the events, Mr. Olive said, possibly beginning life anew as wall insulation or carpet padding. Mr. Olive used to go to the premieres, he said, but he now lets other members of his staff handle the on-site work. 'I haven't been much of a film person, but I used to be,' he said. 'Since Covid happened, I got away from the films, because you had to go to movie theaters.' (He does, however, profess to be a fan of country music, specifically of Chris Stapleton.) One of the company's most frequent customers is Craig Waldman, the president and chief creative officer at 1540, an event production company based in California whose clients include Marvel, Disney, Netflix and Apple. Over more than 30 years, he and Mr. Olive have worked on thousands of events together, including the 'Captain America: Brave New World' and 'Bad Boys: Ride or Die' world premieres. 'To know him is to do a man who will do whatever it takes,' said Mr. Waldman, adding that his longtime collaborator was now more like family. 'He's old school in the best way — someone who values relationships, craftsmanship and getting the job done right.' In Hollywood, 'whatever it takes' has always been a tall order, but in the past 20 years, it's become even more demanding, as studios have asked for different carpet colors to stand out among a sea of red on social media, in addition to logos, prints, glitter and more. 'It's turned into just an extravaganza,' said Mr. Olive, who said this year's trendy colors so far had been fluorescent green and champagne. Red carpets are still the most popular, he said, followed by white and black. But there is yet to be a custom design, he said, that his company has not been able to pull off. 'We're always able to find some way to get it done,' said Mr. Olive, who keeps an Instagram archive of some of his favorite creations going back more than a decade, including an 'Aladdin' print carpet, a runway-pattern rug for the 'Planes' movie premiere and the red-and-yellow carpet for the 'Deadpool & Wolverine' premiere at Lincoln Center in New York last year. While a large portion of the company's orders involve custom dye requests, it also keeps a stock of carpet in 30 colors on hand. 'I'll get a call at midnight, and someone will say, 'We forgot to order carpet for our event tomorrow. Can you show up by 10 a.m. with 20 rolls of black carpet?'' Mr. Olive said. 'And we'll be there.'
