westport | “Songs in the Key of Love,” a musical revue featuring soulful vocal duo Illy and Horace with a crack band, three nights in February including Valentine’s Day, will celebrate relationships: good, bad and just so-so. The feel-good revue at Westport Playhouse is designed to shift the needle into the red for any couple, while leaving audiences laughing and longing, featuring familiar romantic hits such as “Got to Get You into My Life,” “Just the Way You Are,” and many, many more. (Might there be a Stevie Wonder song or two? “Songs in the Key of Life” is the title of his blockbuster 1976 double LP, which we’re sure is available to stream nowadays.) With performances from Tennessee to Texas, Missouri to Maine, Horace has sung soulful ballads to Broadway standards. He has been compared to legendary artists such as Luther Vandross and Barry White. (Also, he sang “Ol’ Man River” in a production of Showboat.) A director, choreographer and songwriter working on her debut CD, Illy has a musical theater resume that includes everything from Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Showboat to the hysterical 2019 performance of Avenue Q at Westport … in the role of Gary Coleman. Tickets are $30 and are available at westportplay.com or the box office. Show dates and times are Feb. 14, 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m. Kobe Steakhouse of Japan is offering a special dinner package that includes a pair of show tickets, a confirmed exclusive reservation at Kobe and a $100 food credit, all for $150. Reservations are available at either 5 or 5:30 p.m. Garage parking is validated at the box office, so don’t leave your parking ticket under the sun visor!
ellisville
It’s hard to keep track of the many author events that our County Library schedules throughout the year. Here are three complimentary appearances at two different library branches—gas up today and set your GPS! Featured authors’ books will be available for purchase at each event. Thursday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. speaker, yoga teacher and author Becky Vollmer will discuss and sign You Are Not Stuck: How Soul-Guided Choices Transform Fear Into Freedom at the Daniel Boone Branch, 300 Clarkson Road. You Are Not Stuck is a blend of straight talk, humor and clear action steps to help reset our priorities, drown out any incessant negative voices and make bold choices. Vollmer says we all feel stuck sometimes: in our jobs, relationships, habits or when the life we’re living just doesn’t add up to the one we want. When paralyzed by fear, the solution isn’t just courage—it’s choice. Because we all have choices, we just have to be brave enough to make them. Two nights later, experience someone completely different in Ellisville. Saturday, Jan. 28, 6:30 p.m.: In conversation with StL-based artist and cartoonist Steenz, award-winning middle grade nonfiction author Steve Sheinkin will discuss his highly anticipated graphic novel adaptation of Bomb: The Race To Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. Monday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m., the County Library’s celebration of Black History Month kicks off two days early with The Rev. Otis Moss III, author of Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times, at the Florissant Valley Branch, 195 New Florissant Road. Moss, senior pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and one of the country’s most renowned civil rights leaders, shares his guide to uplift spirits as The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work for social justice continues apace.
ballwin
Michael Keane, who owns three St. Louis gyms—a Fit Body Boot Camp in Ballwin, another in Warson Woods, plus Phoenix A+ Coaching in St. Louis—has been in addiction recovery for five years. Keane was a scholarship recipient from The Next Step in 2020 when he was awarded funds to help him complete an additional training certification. That certification has helped him strengthen service offerings at his gyms, and now, he wants to give back by raising $10,000 for the nonprofit by March 31. A group of relatively buff men and women have pledged to walk 1 million steps between now and the end of March to stand in solidarity with people in recovery who are looking to better their lives and, in turn, the lives of their families and community. As a culminating event, the group, many of whom are in 12-Step recovery themselves, will walk on March 25 from Keane’s Fit Body Boot Camp in Ballwin to his Phoenix A+ Coaching location on The Hill. The Next Step, founded to help recovering people pay for their vocational, undergraduate or graduate education, had been operating out of donated space. The organization is about to complete its quest for its own location along Manchester Road in the county. Visit thenextstepstl.org.
notable neighbors
downtown west
Like so many other men and women at any number of coffee shops and cafés around town, the bearded man was intent at his laptop when we arrived at a Panera to chat about the City Museum, his pride and joy. But unlike any of the other people hard at work, Rick Erwin looked up and smiled, stood and shook hands. Erwin, creative director of the iconic, unique space in a converted turn-of the-20th-century building on Washington Street, once integral to the street’s halcyon days as nexus of the StL’s shoe and garment district, would argue that those days are, in fact, these days. Many of the unique pieces of ephemera that wouldn’t fit inside, or that wildly creative minds decided would look better on the roof, are atop a 13-story building. By wildly creative, we mean the oeuvre of the late artist—visionary, really—Bob Cassilly and his ilk. Erwin demurs. “I’m just fortunate to have such a team of creative people,” he says, not a touch of self-aggrandizement in his voice or body language. “Everything was in Bob’s vision,” he continues. “I had to lose my ego.” Erwin, now 46, had worked side-by-side with Cassilly beginning in 2005, and continued as museum manager for a few years after his mentor’s untimely death in September 2011—at the controls of a bulldozer while working at his next urban concept, Cementland—until Erwin assumed his present role. The museum occupies the first four floors; only the sky is above much of the urban playground. The planet’s most unusual workplace has been through several iterations of management and is now operated by Premier Parks, with fiduciary decisions in the hands of execs who have many years at theme parks, e.g. Six Flags, under their tool belts. For this and many other aspects of his job, Erwin is grateful: “I never had to put together a budget.” Accounting isn’t in his collection of brushes. In fact, he was studying for his master’s at the Art Institute of Chicago when he heard about an unusual opportunity right here in river city. Not that Cassilly would have bothered with a detail like posting it. During our interview with Erwin, both of us went off on tangents; your journalist’s notes are practically inscrutable, if not outright illegible. Erwin’s eyes sparkle as he pauses, grins, then says: “I even have the Bob mumble!” Meanwhile, his hands punctuate his speech. And it’s no mumble, by the way. He talks with unbridled enthusiasm and, yes, his lips move pretty fast. “I’m just so excited to share it!” Erwin says, arms opening wide. Alas, he hasn’t been able to find a suitable helicopter for the museum, and miles of bureaucratic red tape have prevented an actual NASA rocket from appearing on the roof. So far. Where else can you find so many installations, so much stuff to (take a deep breath)… “swing across, walk into, spin around, climb up, slide down, crawl under, jump over…” etc.? That’s quoted from citymuseum.org.
