‘Glee’ tour hits town for a mega-watt victory lap

Chicago Tribune
By Andy Downing

“Glee Live!” rumbled into a sold-out Rosemont Theatre with all the subtlety of a monster truck rally.

Mixing high camp with an overdose of arena-rock bombast, Tuesday’s concert, the first in a two-night stand, featured group performances by a dozen regulars from the popular FOX show, including student leads Lea Michele (Rachel) and Cory Monteith (Finn).

For the uninitiated, the series, which concludes its first season on June 8, follows the lives of glee club members at fictional William McKinley High School as they navigate issues ranging from teen pregnancy to student-teacher crushes. “The second someone tries to rise above?be different?the herd pulls them back in,” football coach Ken Tanaka notes in the pilot episode. And more often than not, “Glee” goes out of its way to celebrate these social misfits.

For this brief, four-city victory lap, the crew kept the exposition to a minimum, focusing the 70-minute set on the show’s musical numbers. After a brief video introduction from “Glee’s” adult leads? Matthew Morrison (Will Schuester) and the scene-stealing Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester)?the cast launched into a fist-pumping, pyrotechnic-fueled “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life,” led by a leather jacket-clad Monteith, sounded similarly steroid-injected, though the volume couldn’t obscure the fact that the song felt ill-suited to the characters. It would be a major surprise if any of the show’s central figures?with the possible exception of mohawked football player Puck?even owned a Bon Jovi album.

Better were a handful of stripped-down numbers, including a solo turn where Michele vamped her way through Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain On My Parade”?a fitting song choice for the talented, headstrong and somewhat entitled Rachel. A soaring duet on “Defying Gravity” between Michele and the underutilized Chris Colfer (Kurt) showed equal restraint, the pair’s voices winding together until they were nearly indistinguishable.

While the concert’s “bigger is better” approach didn’t always connect, it did generate a handful of eye-catching set pieces. In one sequence that looked like it sprang from the imagination of rapper Xzibit, Amber Riley (Mercedes) delivered a scathing “Bust Your Windows” while flanked by seven bikini-clad cheerleaders and perched atop a black Escalade. “Bad Romance,” in turn, doubled as a Lady Gaga-themed fashion show, the cast members donning a half-dozen looks inspired by the pop provocateur, including glittery lobster headgear and an angular, Judy Jetson-ish look modeled by a bemused Colfer.

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