Bright lights? Big deal.

New York state of mind
Reviving the Loop as a theater destination has been a pet project for Mayor Daley; the reported $60 million the city has poured into the downtown theater district since the late ’90s has included funds for the Goodman’s new facility and the swanky restorations of Broadway in Chicago’s Cadillac Palace, Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental and LaSalle Bank theaters. With the high-profile offerings of the Goodman, Lookingglass and Chicago Shakespeare all in city-subsidized spaces, coupled with the bustling crowds along the Randolph Street corridor, the mayor’s gamble could be viewed as a massive success. But the biggest winner in the Loop is one that, though it didn’t start here, may become the new identity of Chicago theater. You can see it every night at the Oriental: “Chicago—Midwestern Home of Wicked.”

GILDED AGE Broadway in Chicago’s Lou Raizin shows off the restored Oriental Theater lobby.

The megashow’s remarkable run wouldn’t have been possible without the birth of BIC seven years ago. As company president Lou Raizin tells it, BIC was a marriage of convenience between two New York–based companies, Live Nation (then the theatrical arm of Clear Channel), which had control of the Oriental Theatre, and the Nederlander Producing Company, which owned the LaSalle Bank Theatre (then called the Shubert). Live Nation and the Nederlander brought their theaters together, then picked up a third, the Cadillac Palace, from Fox Theatricals.

With the added muscle of being the only Broadway touring presenter in town and the flexibility of having multiple spaces (which allows it to accommodate long runs), BIC set about to change the way New York producers view Chicago theater. “Prior to Broadway in Chicago, anything west of Manhattan was considered ‘the road.’ That’s not the case today,” Raizin says. “Today it’s New York, Chicago and then the road. Chicago stands second only to New York in terms of where it is in the [commercial] industry.”

Earlier this year, BIC released the results of an economic impact study it had commissioned. Among the findings: BIC shows have an annual attendance of 1.5 million, and 42 percent of its audience comes from outside of Illinois; 85 percent of those out-of-town patrons say the show they’re seeing is the primary reason they’re in town.

It would be interesting to find out if those theater-minded patrons saw any local shows while they were here, but Raizin doesn’t have that data. Neither does Lyle Allen, managing director of industry trade group the League of Chicago Theatres. Allen’s unenviable job is to serve the promotional needs of 200-plus member theaters, from powerful institutions like the Goodman and Drury Lane Oakbrook to the tiniest North Side shoestringers, a task he mildly terms “a challenge.” Allen admits many of the League’s promotions are aimed more at tourists than local audiences.

Despite BIC’s impressive tourist numbers, Raizin insists Chicagoans, particularly the company’s subscription base, are still the focus. He cites BIC’s commitment to pre–New York engagements as both the reason for Chicago’s enhanced status among commercial producers and a boon to Chicago audiences. Chicagoans who got first dibs on megahits like The Producers and Spamalot no doubt enjoy their bragging rights (while those who sat through The Pirate Queen might disagree), and we’re extremely grateful for the opportunity to see history-making post-Broadway performances like Cherry Jones in Doubt or Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (If pressed, we might even admit we’d see Rent again.)

In short, when Broadway is good, Broadway in Chicago is good. But judging our city on when and for how long we get New York shows is still an awfully New York–centric way of viewing ourselves. “Clearly, in terms of a show that’s Broadway bound, they’re ultimately heading to mecca. Chicago’s not their final destination,” Raizin says. We’re pretty sure that a first look at Christina Applegate’s Sweet Charity isn’t what led The Guardian’s Michael Billington to name us “the current theatre capital of America” in 2004. Chicago theater’s street cred didn’t come from Randolph Street. The companies that gave Chicago its stellar reputation over the last three decades were famously born in old classrooms, church basements and empty storefronts (check out “Cheap shots,” for some recent examples)—exactly the kind of companies that now have to compete with Loop programming for attention.