McHenry theater students aim to impress with variety of musical solos, duets and trio in ‘Musical Revue’

For McHenry East High School senior Michael Karm, the upcoming run of “Musical Revue” is a chance to show how much his singing has improved.

Karm and dozens of other students from both of McHenry’s high school campuses debuting the show next week for a socially distanced live audience.

The show features a playlist of 11 solos, two duets and a trio, plus two larger group songs, from 15 different musicals. They include hits from “Newsies,” “Wicked,” “Les Miserables,” “Hairspray,” “Hamilton” and others, with a variety of dancing as well.

With the option to choose a piece from any musical, Karm said he went for “Close Every Door” from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” because he had auditioned for a singing role with that number about two years ago.

He felt it didn’t go well then, when he was a sophomore, he said after a dress rehearsal Thursday.

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Costume designer Otto Krueger helps cast member Taylor Wickenkamp with her dress backstage Thursday, March 4, 2021, during a dress rehearsal for their upcoming performance of "Musical Revue" at McHenry High School West Campus in McHenry. The musical opens at 7 p.m. Friday, March 12, and will have performances at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, March 13; 3 p.m. Sunday, March 14; 7 p.m. Friday, March 19; and 7 p.m. Saturday, March 20. All performances will be in-person at the theater under reduced capacity of 50 spectators. (Matthew Apgar/Matthew Apgar)

“There was an opening in a tenor section, and that was the song they picked. I completely butchered it,” he said.

But this year, he wanted to prove that he could nail the piece as a solo.

“It’s a way to show I’m not only going to sing it, I’m going to absolutely sing it as good as possible. I practiced it for hours and hours, a lot all the time,” Karm said of picking his song from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

McHenry East sophomore Alayna Majkrzak said she thinks the format is great because it allows each performer to play a role and a song they’ve always wanted, for any reason at all. She said the popularity in her TikTok feed of the song “Screw Loose” from the musical “Cry-Baby,” which was based on a 1990 film of the same name, was the reason she picked the piece to perform.

“We just get to showcase everyone’s different talents. It’s so fun. I just really like how we’re doing it,” Majkrzak said.

Going with the “Musical Revue” format, where students are mostly alone on stage, was a natural choice, said Tracy Tobin, the McHenry east musical producer. The students are also masked while singing and stand apart as much as possible while performing together.

Since the students remain on a hybrid schedule with some virtual learning as COVID-19 remains on the loose, it provided some certainty that rehearsals should be able to run safely, Tobin said.

“We didn’t know how things were going to go when we first started,” Tobin said.

But working on the Musical Revue, she said, has been a joy and brought a sense of normalcy to the students.

“I would probably be more sad,” without being able to participate in the performance, Karm said.

McHenry High School District 156′s “Musical Revue” shows are planned for 7 p.m. on March 12, 13, 19 and 20, as well as 3 p.m. March 14, all at the West Campus auditorium, 4724 W. Crystal Lake Road, McHenry.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for the evening performances, and 2:30 p.m. for the March 14 matinee. Tickets are $10 each, and fewer than 50 remained available as of Thursday, Tobin said. They must be purchased online at www.vancoevents.com/JRV.

“I think they did a fabulous job with their song choices, and it covers such a wide range of shows from classics to some of the newer, modern ones,” Tobin said in a news release.

Other high schools around and near McHenry County have on-stage productions in the works, too, with plans to make viewing available without cramming auditoriums too tightly as the pandemic continues to keep large gatherings off limits.

At Woodstock North High School, students are working on a show called “Northern Lights,” which Performing Arts Center Manager Sue Lewis said would be a “showcase of scenes, songs and surprises.” Rehearsals are being held remotely there.

“We hope to have our theatre students literally onstage in late April or early May,” Lewis said in an email. “We want our kids back, especially our seniors. Rehearsals in April will hopefully be hybrid with masks. We intend to rehearse small groups only, and we’ll record our showcase and then stream it to parents, friends, and our local community.”

Woodstock North theater students also have wide breadth of creative license, Lewis said.

“Freshmen thru senior theatre students will have the opportunity to perform what they excel at, or they can step out of the shadows and make their own dream come true,” Lewis said in the email. “If a student has always wanted to write their own dramatic scene, they can. If students want to compose music and play their own piece, they can. If a student wants to choreograph, they can. Anything is possible.”

At Crystal Lake Central High School, students are currently in dress rehearsals for a production of “Working,” a musical that originally opened in the 1970s and was revived in 2012, said Kimberly Scherrer, the school’s choral director and the musical’s producer.

That work was chosen by Scherrer because it’s presented as a series of vignettes that was turned into a musical.

“It could possibly be produced in any COVID-19 situation,” she said. “Without contact, I needed to eliminate romantic musicals, and I decided no comedy because there is no audience laughter to support the students on stage.”

They had even discussed setting up green screens behind students’ desks at home to allow sets to be constructed for a fully remote production, Scherrer said.

In two weeks, a Fox River Grove filming business, Waysound, will use four cameras to capture a live performance of “Working” at the Crystal Lake school, she said, and it will be streamed from April 16 to 25, with a link to the video set to be put onto the school website.

During spring last year, her cast was about to debut “Fiddler on the Roof,” and on opening night, the audience capacity was reduced due to the coronavirus.

“We lost the majority of our musical. Only parents were allowed to see it, and then they closed the show. That was traumatic for students,” Scherrer said. “My No. 1 goal in picking a musical [this spring] was we would have one no matter what. Even if kids were 100% at home, I could still bring them a musical.”