Chicago Stage Review

Photo Essay by Venus Zarris

Just before the show began, a man excused himself and his son as they exited our row. “I don’t think that you’ll have to worry about us coming back” he said. His little son was already terrified. Perhaps his little son was smarter than we knew as Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular proved to be frightening nightmare. It was also proved to be a dream come true for both young and old.

Anyone of any age that has ever been fascinated by the giant beasts that once roamed the earth has imagined what it would be like to stand face to face with these prehistoric wonders. Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular takes that notion and makes it a reality.

We travel back over 200 million years to a kingdom of hatchlings, where life was teaming and death was just around the corner.

I saw the show with a “Who’s Who in American Educators” science teaching specialist and  12-year-old junior high school student. Both were equally tough audience members and both were equally delighted, dazzled and amazed. Jack Stone, playing paleontologist Huxley, brilliantly guides us through time. Part ringmaster to the Jurassic giants and part prehistoric narrator of their epic struggles, Stone strikes the perfect balance between information and sensation by bringing life to the stories of the long since dead.

But it is the magnificent realizations of these awe inspiring creatures that makes Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular a chance of a lifetime. Where dinos roam, drama unfolds.

Dinosaurs ruled the planet for over 200 million years.

Sadly, they’ll be leaving Chicago soon!

Running through August 1st, Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular is a show NOT TO BE MISSED! You must see it to believe it. Get your tickets now, or else!

(“Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular” runs through August 1 at the Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont. 800-745-3000.)

Buy Tickets - www.dinosaurlive.com The official Walking with Dinosaurs, Arena Spectacular website. Touring the UK, USA and Europe NOW!

* Read the 4 STAR review here: Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular – REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular images by Venus Zarris.

By J. Scott Hill

We at Chicago Stage Review are peas in a couple of pretty specific pods, bound one to another not only by our love of the performing arts, but by our acolyte-like devotion to all things Godzilla. The mere mention of a humungous fake dinosaur rampaging through a major metropolitan area can derail “theater shop talk” indefinitely. Once we learned that Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular would be coming to Allstate Arena, the occasional audible “Squee” bubbling out of one of us was enough to indicate that we had pretty high hopes.

Our wide-eyed anticipation, however, does not mean we are a bunch of pushovers.

This is Chicago – home of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, B. J. & Dirty Dragon, and Garfield Goose and Friends. From the innocent joy of Puppet Bike to the sinister machinations of Redmoon Theater, Chicago is a hardcore puppet town. While we at Chicago Stage Review love puppets and people in dinosaur costumes, we have a low tolerance for dino/puppet suckage.

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular accomplishes many things, and suckage is not among them. Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular manages to combine elements of wildlife documentary, mockumentary, theme park show, guided natural-history museum tour, and a trip to the zoo, to create a grand spectacle chockablock full of both information and drama.

Jack Stone plays the narrator, an onstage fictional paleontologist named Huxley, with gregarious believability. As warm and familiar and authentic as Stone’s performance is, he could have be a three-headed slime monster from Rigel Seven: the production is not called Walking with Paleontologists.

The dinosaurs are the whole shebang, and they are so astoundingly wonderful that they absolutely overwhelm the audience. Creature designer/builder Sonny Tilders has gone so far beyond normal stage puppetry and effects, into the realms of blockbuster movie magic. These creatures completely look and feel alive. The seemingly cumbersome mechanisms for locomotion between the feet of the larger dinosaurs (looking like the dino accidentally stepped on a Formula One car) neither distract nor detract from these amazing feats of creature engineering. Old familiars like stegosaurus, brachiosaurus, and T. Rex are joined by some oddball dinosaurs like the heavily armored ankylosaurus and the giant-headed torosaurus. From the texture and drape of the skin, to the voluntary and involuntary movements of the eyes, to every ferocious step, the thunder lizards in Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular give no indication of being fabricated, mechanical, theatrical devices.

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular contains no blood and very little violence and gore. I did see a few very small children get too scared to watch, but eventually even these kids warmed to the experience. My twelve-year-old daughter said, “Walking with Dinosaurs is amazing. The T. Rex is so lifelike that when it came close, I had to cover my head for protection.” So did her Dad, and everyone else in their section.

DO NOT MISS this brief opportunity to go Walking with Dinosaurs at the Allstate Arena with your whole family. This is a theatrical event that will take you a quarter of a million times farther back into the past than a trip just up the road to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, yet Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular generates a similar kind of immediacy, a similar thrill stems out of the high-spirited live entertainment, providing a similar massive adrenaline rush for the awestruck crowd. At Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular, there is an exuberant feeling of potential mayhem, as if the life-sized adult tyrannosaurus rex could at any moment break free of the Allstate Arena, head west a few miles along I-90, and terrorize Mitsuwa Marketplace or head downtown and trample the Loop!

4 STARS

(“Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular” runs through August 1 at the Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont. 800-745-3000.)

Buy Tickets - www.dinosaurlive.com The official Walking with Dinosaurs, Arena Spectacular website. Touring the UK, USA and Europe NOW!

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular production photos by Joan Marcus.

* Check out an EXCLUSIVE Photo Essay here: Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular @ Allstate Arena - EXCLUSIVE PHOTO ESSAY - Chicago Stage Review

What could stuff a Holiday stocking better than a DINOSAUR?

OK, so maybe it wouldn’t actually fit, but tickets for WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular would and they go on sale December 14!

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular comes to Allstate Arena for eight performances only

Wednesday, July 28 – Sunday, August 1

Tickets go on sale on Monday, Dec. 14

by calling 800-745-3000, on-line at Ticketmaster.com  or in person at the Allstate Arena box office.

* Read the 4 STAR review here: Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular – REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review

* Check out the EXCLUSIVE Photo Essay here: Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular @ Allstate Arena - EXCLUSIVE PHOTO ESSAY - Chicago Stage Review

Rosemont, IL – Dinosaurs once again roam the earth in a spectacular theatrical arena show, WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular, based on the award-winning BBC Television Series. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular is now on tour in North America and will perform 8 performances at Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Road in Rosemont. More than 3.1 million Americans have already seen the production since it opened in July 2007.

The production originated in Australia, where after years of planning, WALKING WITH DINOSAURS came to life at Sydney’s Acer Arena in January 2007.   The show proved to be such a sensation that this North American tour was fast-tracked.  It began a short three months after completing its sold-out engagements in Australia. Since that time, the show’s two companies have played to 4.4 million people worldwide and generated over $210 million dollars in overall ticket sales.

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular is brought to North America by The Creature Production Company, headed by CEO Carmen Pavlovic. Pavlovic said, “The BBC Series was a brilliant blend of special effects, escapism, excitement and information.  Our show brings together all of that, plus something extra - it’s live!   In this production, seventeen roaring, snarling “live” dinosaurs mesmerize the audience – and are as awe-inspiring as when they first walked on earth.”

Pavlovic continued, “The dinosaurs are life-size, making the show so immense, it could only fit in arenas. It’s a $20 million arena spectacle of unprecedented size and quality, which captivates young and old alike. With Walking with Dinosaurs, we really believe we have created a new genre in entertainment and we hope to continue to bring new product to arenas for years to come.”

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular has sold out performances and broken records in arenas all over America – generating $136 million in ticket sales to date. It has been seen on “The Today Show,” Good Morning America,” “Live with Regis and Kelly,” and has been written about in Newsweek, The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. It was the subject of a Discovery Channel Really Big Things episode and a video clue category on Jeopardy.

The production has won the THEA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Touring Event (2007) and the Billboard Touring Award for Creative Content (2008) as well as the Pollstar Concert Industry Award for Most Creative Stage Production (2009) and the ILMC Arthur Award for Best in Show(2009). The THEAs recognize excellence in the creation of compelling educational, historical, and entertainment projects; and both the Billboard Touring Award and the Pollstar Concert Industry Award recognize a show or tour that creatively expands what is offered on the road. The ILMC (International Live Music Conference) Arthur Award for Best in Show recognizes theatre shows and family entertainment.

Artistic Director William May developed the creative vision of the show based on an original idea by entrepreneur Bruce Mactaggart to create an arena version of the Walking with Dinosaurs television series.

A talented and experienced team of creative artists came together to produce WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular. The show is directed by Scott Faris, a Broadway veteran who has worked side by side with Harold Prince, Trevor Nunn, Michael Blakemore, Gene Saks, John Caird, Tommy Tune and Jerry Zaks.  The creatures are designed and built by Sonny Tilders; the set and projected image design are by Peter England; the show’s lighting is by John Rayment, our score was composed by James Brett; sound design is by Peter Hylenski; and Warner Brown wrote the script.

Tim Haines, creator and producer of the original BBC series, which was seen by a worldwide audience of 700 million, serves as Project Consultant to WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular.  The series won six Emmy and three BAFTA Awards.

Ten species are represented from the entire 200 million year reign of the dinosaurs.  The show includes the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the terror of the ancient terrain, as well as the Plateosaurus and Liliensternus from the Triassic period, the Stegosaurus and Allosaurus from the Jurassic period and Torosaurus and Utahraptor from the awesome Cretaceous.  The largest of them, the Brachiosaurus is 36 feet tall, and 56 feet from nose to tail.  It took a team of 50 – including engineers, fabricators, skin makers, artists and painters, and animatronic experts – a year to build the original production.

The show depicts the dinosaurs’ evolution, complete with the climatic and tectonic changes that took place, which led to the demise of many species.  With almost cinematic realism, WALKING WITH DINOSAURS has scenes of the interactions between dinosaurs, and the audience sees how carnivorous dinosaurs evolved to walk on two legs, and how the herbivores fended off their more agile predators.

The history of the world is played out with the splitting of the earth’s continents, and the transition from the arid desert of the Triassic period is given over to the lush green prairies and forces of the later Jurassic.  Oceans form, volcanoes erupt, a forest catches fire — all leading to the impact of the massive comet, which struck the earth, and forced the extinction of the dinosaurs.

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS – The Arena Spectacular will perform 8 performances at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill.   The performance schedule is Wed., July 28 at 7 p.m.; Thur. July 29 at 7 p.m.; Friday, July 30 at 7 p.m.; Sat., July 31 at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 1 at 1 and 5 p.m.

Tickets go on sale on Monday, Dec. 14 by calling 800-745-3000, on-line at Ticketmaster.com  or in person at Allstate Arena box office.  For discounts on groups of 15 or more please call GroupTix at 877-447-7849. Tickets range in price from $19.50 - $69.50.

For more information, please visit www.dinosaurlive.com. Video of the show is available on our site under “Meet The Dinos” tab in the middle of the front page.

The official Walking with Dinosaurs, Arena Spectacular website.