The Disappearance of Sheena Easton
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Rumor has it that more than Easton’s health could have kept her out of the last two weeks of the Chicago run. Savvy theatergoing sources who saw Easton in the week she did manage to appear, the preview performances November 7 through 13, said she was clearly having a tough time capturing the earthier aspects of Aldonza and her Scottish accent sometimes popped up inappropriately. Kladitis claimed he did not have major problems with Easton’s portrayal and said she played the part as more of a “naive” whore. “She’s more tentative about who she’s going to screw,” he explained.
Word of Easton’s absence from the show came down only hours before the originally scheduled opening night performance on November 14. Opening night was rescheduled for November 19, presumably to allow Easton time to recuperate, but on that day, again only hours before curtain, the show’s press representative announced that Easton would miss that performance and all subsequent Chicago performances as well. Easton’s understudy Joan Susswein Barber wound up in the opening night spotlight opposite a deadly dull Raul Julia as Don Quixote.
The Museum of Contemporary Art has set the date of March 20, 1992, for the official unveiling of German architect Josef Paul Kleihues’s design for the museum’s new home. Kleihues has been making regular trips to Chicago to consult with the MCA staff as he maps out both the interior and exterior lines of the building. A source on the staff said the design that is taking shape will dramatically play off of Lake Michigan; the new museum will go up just a stone’s throw from the lake, on the site of the Chicago Avenue Armory, behind Water Tower Place.
