Festivities begin at 6 p.m. and the free concerts begin at 7 p.m.  All events take place at the Gazebo in front of City Hall, 9301 Chillicothe Road in Kirtland.

The public is invited to bring a blanket or chair and relax with friends and neighbors and enjoy the music. People also can bring a picnic or take advantage of the city’s grill masters or checkout the available food trucks, according to a news release.

These concerts are sponsored by the Friends of the Kirtland Public Library and the City of Kirtland and paid for, in part, by a grant from the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, or NOPEC.

There will also be a trivia contest at every concert.

Attendees can pick up a trivia sheet between 6 and 7 p.m., and answer as many questions as you can by the end of the concert. The turn the sheet in at the Friends of the Library table. Answer sheets with at least 10 correct answers will be entered into a prize drawing.

The concert schedule will be:

• June 28: Beauty Night with the Chardon Polka Band

Visit with representatives of local parks, then show off polka skills with The Chardon Polka Band. There will be food available for purchase.

• July 12: Faith Night with Perfect Choice

Meet representatives of the local churches and faith communities. Perfect Choice is a 10-piece party band with a four-piece horn section. There will be food available for purchase from Fungry Food Truck!

• July 19: City Night with The PopTarts

Curious about local businesses?  Meet the people that work in the community. There will burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

The PopTarts are “four groovy chicks who sing the most popular hits from the ’60’s girl groups. With their mini-skirts and big hair, they are hoppin’ and boppin’ with their choreographed movements,” according to the release

• July 26: “City Night” PrimeTime Big Band

Cleveland’s PrimeTime Big Band plays swing, big band, jazz and ballads with Debbie Gifford as the featured vocalist. There will burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

• Aug. 2: Dog Days of Summer  with Debbie Gifford Quartet

Kirtland’s own Debbie Gifford is back and keeping it jazzy with her quartet. Attendees are invited to bring their dogs. Also, there will be hot dogs available.

The show became an obsession for many, inviting audiences into an inner sanctum of lavish settings and private planes at their beck and call — and where viperous family dynamics reigned supreme. Sometimes the violence was literal, like a prestige Punch and Judy show — it certainly looked like Kendall was about to gouge his brother’s eyes in the finale’s eleventh-hour showdown — becoming a physical manifestation of the spiritual violence they were forever inflicting upon one another.

Their excessive net worth was handed down to them by Daddy. Their magnificent incompetence? Courtesy of Daddy, as well. Logan Roy’s real legacy wasn’t the billion dollar corporation he built, but the sons and a daughter he dumped into the world like a carton of battered, unwanted dolls missing tufts of hair. Congratulations?

The show’s driving force was the ongoing trauma doled out by a manipulative father and emotionally detached mother who left these siblings forever scrambling for validation, only to have it yanked from their grasp just when they think it’s within reach. They are incapable of keeping a secret long enough to surprise their adversary. They make the same mistakes, over and over. Can you not see their humanity? Can you not feel their anxieties? Who can keep a straight face watching these overindulged clowns slip on yet another banana peel?

How much of the show’s appeal was rooted in schadenfreude? They’re miserable, even with all that money — and hooboy, is it a lot of money. Why are they fighting over this company when they never even have to work?

Over four seasons, the series was filled with aspirational visuals, marvelous performances and biting-ridiculous interplay.

And yet, for me, “Succession” was a masterfully empty show. There was no room for anyone else but the Roys and their feelings.

That tunnel vision was by design and a nifty bit of deflection that provoked fan cams and weekly power rankings and questions of “who will end up on top???” because showrunner Jesse Armstrong had little interest in telling stories about anyone outside this family’s insular circle. There was no contrast — or anyone to meaningfully challenge to their worldview.

And that is “Succession’s” great fumble. As a show, it was too in love with the navel gazing of its central characters, becoming the equivalent of a closed room filling with carbon dioxide and muddling the ability to think straight. From a narrative standpoint, someone needed to open a window and let some air in.

I’ve talked about these critiques in previous reviews. The series finale has only reaffirmed what I see as the show’s strengths as well as its profound nothingness. It failed to give us a better understanding of how soulless corporate chieftains operate at this level and, like hospital shows and legal dramas, it gets many of the finer details about the business world wrong anyway.

But there are other things that don’t ring true. In life, some words and deeds are deal breakers — you can’t come back from them. Not so for the Roys. They trash one another, retreat to lick their wounds, and then pick back up again with a shrug. This hasn’t been my own experience of the world. Deep betrayals usually come with real and permanent consequences. The Roys are codependent and maybe that’s why they refuse to quit one another, even as they poison their own well.

It’s conspicuous that we never see them with the kind of pointless hobbies and distractions that the rich tend to favor — that Kendall hasn’t spent an inordinate amount of money climbing Mount Everest or Shiv isn’t breeding horses on a sprawling estate somewhere or Roman isn’t playing around with crypto.

But the series absolutely nailed one truth: Every business decision we saw unfold was, in some way, bad for workers unlucky enough to have their livelihood tied to Waystar Royco. Much of that was kept off screen. The show was disinclined to spend time developing characters who weren’t power players and who might have had pointed things to say about the Roys of the world. Imagine if the series had ended with a full circle moment from pilot episode when Roman taunted a little boy, ripping up a $1 million check in his face. Maybe that boy has grown into a teenager with a long memory. What is his life like now? What are his disappointments and grievances?

Roman never gave that moment on the baseball field a second thought. It was gone from his brain the second he stepped on the helicopter to venture back from whence he came. I suppose that’s the point. Roman’s disinterest is one thing. But the show’s disinterest is just as damning.

Armstrong favored the dollop approach, which always struck me as begrudging but also disingenuous. In the penultimate episode of the series, Kendall’s loyal assistant informs him she’s leaving the job, throwing him into yet another one of his emotional tailspins. But we never learn anything about her — what she wants from life or how she feels about this ridiculous family and the garbage behavior she’s had to endure. We never go home with her and see her in private. Those moments simply do not exist. The show does not care. The show maybe does not want you to care.

In the final episode, Waystar Royco is ultimately sold to a Swedish tech company and the emotional focus remains where it has been for the show’s entire run: How this affects the Roys.

Left unspoken is the fallout on those employed by this blasted company. The bid was way too high and it’s a deal that will likely saddle the new company with billions in debt and result in massive layoffs companywide. But never mind, “Succession” has always preferred to guide your focus back to the Roy siblings and their fishbowl temper tantrums. That’s an intentional decision and one that has always undercut the show’s ability to actually say anything meaningful. Everything is decontextualized.

It’s bad when billionaires use their wealth to exert influence on levers of power and make life unaffordable — untenable — for the rest of us. We might as well be nothing more than dots on the ground, to borrow from “The Third Man.”

You’re allowed to enjoy “Succession.” Liking or disliking the show isn’t a moral stance.

But it’s worth asking why so many prestige shows like “Succession” choose to center the concerns of fictional wealthy people while studiously avoiding a meaty critique of their influence.

Celebrity documentaries often dig up old talk show footage, and early in HBO’s “Being Mary Tyler Moore” we see her interviewed by David Susskind. The exchange reveals both the host’s stubborn assumptions about gender roles and Moore’s polite disinterest in pandering to his line of questioning.

The clip is from 1966, just as “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was drawing to a close. The sitcom made Moore a star playing Laura Petrie, and in Susskind’s estimation, the character is an “idealization of the American wife.” Then he pontificates, just generally, on what he sees as the sad state of matrimony in real life: Walk into any restaurant and “the woman is yakking like crazy and the man has a hurt, bored expression.”

What he fails to realize is that he’s creating that very dynamic in the television studio — except he is the one yakking like crazy while his guest has a hurt, bored expression. He thinks women are only “half-married” if they work outside the home. She gently but firmly pushes back. “Women should be human beings first, women second, and wives and mothers third,” she tells him. “It should fall in that order.”

Moore could turn the world on with her smile. Pioneering and funny. But woe to the person who underestimated her steely intelligence.

Off-screen, she was reserved in ways that differed from her most famous roles, first as Laura Petrie in those pedal pushers (previous to that, housewives appeared only in dresses, and it was a change Moore pushed for) and later as local TV news producer Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

She had impeccable comedy instincts — full of warmth and vulnerability and class — and I wish the film tried to examine a bit further how she sharpened those talents over the years.

She would switch gears with “Ordinary People” in 1980. It was a departure from what audiences had come to expect, instead playing a brittle, grieving mother who kept her feelings bottled up to preserve her elegant, upscale suburban Chicago facade. But Moore probably had more in common with the character than many realized — maybe not so chilly, but aloof. She kept to herself and wasn’t naturally open and revealing. That’s one of the more interesting revelations of the film.

She was a combination of strength, nervousness and determination, but she didn’t see herself as Mary Richards, independent woman extraordinaire. She was married throughout the show’s run to Grant Tinker (who headed up her production company MTM Enterprises), but the character’s backbone? “That was real,” she says. “That kind of substance and intrinsic dignity of being.”

Directed by James Adolphus (with a raft of producers including Lena Waithe), “Being Mary Tyler Moore” relies on old interviews with Moore, who died in 2017, and new off-camera interviews that Adolphus layers in as voice-overs.

Moore’s father would joke that the family came from impoverished nobility, but her mother struggled with alcoholism and that created instability: “She was most at ease at a party, or giving a party,” Moore says. “Everybody’s good-time best gal. Not the most attuned to parenting that I would have liked. She would start drinking during the day and would not stop until somebody found the bottle and took it away.”

Moore found fame in the 1960s, thanks to “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” but her career faltered after that, including a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on Broadway, and a movie contract that compelled her to appear in less-than-stellar films, including 1969′s “Change of Habit,” as a nun opposite Elvis Presley.

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” would put her back on top in the 1970s. But when the show ended, so did her marriage to Tinker. Single for the first time in years, she moved to New York at 40, looking for a fresh start.

Maybe she was hoping to run away from problems that had been festering under the California sun. So much of her public persona was rooted in those exquisite manners — there was almost a throwback quality to the way she carried herself — but we learn that, in private, she could become belligerent after a few drinks. It was only in middle age that she acknowledged alcohol was a problem for her, as it had been for her mother.

She would eventually marry again, this time to a doctor named Robert Levine, who is an executive producer here and who provided the personal footage of Moore at home, including that of an informal gathering before her wedding that has the feel of a slumber party, where she’s toasted by good friend Betty White, among others.

Moore’s second act in New York was less about burnishing her celebrity than about a woman finally coming into herself. L.A. can be thrumming with career neuroses — the kind that foster an arrested development, especially if fame hits early and fast.

Maybe relocating was a way to shed all of that and reinvent some ideas she had about herself.

———

‘BEING MARY TYLER MOORE’

3 stars (out of 4)

Not rated

Running time: 1:59

How to watch: 8 p.m. ET Friday on HBO (and streaming on Max)

———

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

TMZ was among the first to report the news, via a rep, who did not specify the nature of the illness.

Proud Mary personified, Turner’s glorious career had two musical acts. First, she gained fame as the soul-stirring singer to the innovative guitar-playing band leader Ike Turner as part of the wildly popular Ike and Tina Turner Review.

Later, she became an inspirational icon, rebounding from domestic abuse to build her own brand of musical dominance with such runaway hits as “Simply the Best,” “Private Dancer,” “I Don’t Wanna Fight” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

Here’s a look back at Turner’s career.

Contributing: New York Daily News

Since 2020, actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes have co-hosted a podcast together called “SmartLess.” Last year they took the show out on a short national tour, and that adventure is documented in the six-part Max docuseries “SmartLess: On the Road,” which follows the celebrity friends and co-workers to stops on the East Coast, Midwest and then back to Los Angeles.

Perhaps the decision to shoot in black-and-white was meant to undercut some of the pampered Hollywood trappings of the trip. But director Sam Jones (whose credits include the Wilco film “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” and more recently a Tony Hawk documentary) isn’t here to encourage his subjects to shed their well-honed veneer so much as simply document their first-class travels and neurotic conversational jabs. As a trio, Arnett, Bateman and Hayes are self-aware enough to poke fun at their rarefied status while also being disinclined to abandon the perks of said status.

It’s an accumulation of moments that give you a window into the lives of the rich and famous, while also showcasing their talents as performers. Because when they’re on stage playing off each other, or interviewing a guest? They’re freewheeling and charming and know how to put on a good show.

It’s everything else that happens between those performances that’s such a curious blend of fascinating, off-putting and absorbing. They’re far from the worst-behaved celebrities to walk the earth. But too often they interact with their drivers and service workers as if everyone’s a bit player in their world (they usually catch themselves and apologize). They are forever staring at their phones, which is probably the result of being away from their loved ones, but maybe also reflects our collective reluctance to simply sit in a space and absorb what’s happening around us without the distractions of text messages and social media.

They travel by private plane (Arnett drives his sports car onto the tarmac) and from the word go, there’s an edge to their dynamic. Often it’s Hayes looking on amused as Bateman and Arnett needle one another. Is this for the camera or is this their typical interplay?

There’s an extraordinary amount of conversation about food. What they want to eat, how much they’re eating and why is the other guy eating that? Bateman’s running commentary about his companion’s food choices has a sweaty, judgmental undercurrent to it that suggests growing up in show business — an ecosystem where actors are often subject to pointless and mean-spirited comments about their weight and appearance — has done a number on him.

Anyway: Bateman wants gluten-free oatmeal in the mornings and entree-size salads for dinner. The other two want steak.

Hayes: “I think I might get a little surf and turf.” He pauses mid-sentence to turn to a producer off-camera: “You might have to cut this.”

Bateman, sarcastically: “Oh, make sure you cut that.”

Hayes: “Because it’s kind of extravagant, you know?”

Their sprawling hotel suites at the Four Seasons and the Peninsula? Extravagant too. It makes you wonder just how much the tour costs versus how much they’re bringing in with ticket sales. Was the Max series dreamed up as a way to recoup some of those expenses, or is this all profit?

Their audiences, they quickly realize, aren’t coming for thoughtful conversations with an MIT physicist. That kind of interview might work on the podcast normally, but it goes down like a lead balloon on stage. For these live performances, people want to see them riff with fellow celebrities like Will Ferrell, Matt Damon and Conan O’Brien. So the guys pivot and learn as they go.

In their off time, the threesome amuse and annoy each other in equal measure. There’s a punchiness to their interactions, especially in the first few episodes. Maybe that’s fueled by nervous energy about taking the podcast on the road — “I can’t believe they all showed up!” one of them says of the crowd after their first outing — or maybe this is just how they are together. Sometimes they come off like schoolboys looking for their next target to bully. Sometimes they’re genuinely interesting people with relatable anxieties and insecurities, and their conversation becomes less about jokes and barbs and deflection and more about just talking to one another.

Before he became an actor, Arnett worked manual labor jobs in his native Canada. “When I stopped tying my self-worth to what I do for a living, it changed everything.” During their stop in New York, Arnett’s partner visits with the couple’s baby and it’s lovely to see him with his youngest child, and then later his two older sons, who come to a show in L.A. In those brief glimpses, he’s affectionate and involved and alert with his kids.

Bateman tells him: “I’ve been watching what you’re doing as a father, even when you’re out of town, and I’m like, I can squeeze in being a better dad and be less selfish. Just watching the way that you’re doing it, I’m really envious.”

Hayes talks about why the friendship among these three Gen-Xers feels so relaxed and easy, because the alternative has been exhausting: “If you’re a gay man, you spend your life being made to feel like you have to apologize for who you are and kind of taking care of other people’s feelings about the awkwardness they may feel about you. So you constantly have to take that one step and go, ‘No, no, no — I don’t want to have sex with you, it’s OK, you can’t catch it.’ You’re constantly caretaking.”

Bateman talks about the pressures he felt as a child actor, where he could potentially be responsible for the unemployment of hundreds of people. As a minor, he needed a work permit, he says. And if his grades weren’t high enough, the permit wouldn’t be renewed and he would be written off the show. And if he was a lead, bad grades could potentially put the entire series — and everyone’s jobs — in jeopardy.

Financially and career-wise, an endeavor like the “SmartLess” podcast is just gravy. But you can see why they would be drawn to such a lo-fi project that asks them to tap into their natural charms and curiosity, paired with a desire to be around one another in a loosely structured format.

And as travels go, theirs are fairly low-key. By middle age, maybe they’re wondering if this is more trouble than it’s worth, no matter the five-star accommodations nor the endorphin rush they get from being on stage.

Back at the hotel, Arnett stares at his bed lost in thought. “When I was a younger man, we woulda just torn it up. And now I’m just thinking, like, how early is too early for me to go to sleep?”

———

‘SMARTLESS: ON THE ROAD’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Max

———

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

On “Ted Lasso,” Jeremy Swift plays the team’s delightfully offbeat director of operations, Leslie Higgins. A lover of jazz, he is a man who might be more beaten down if he didn’t have the quiet self-confidence of a person who has his personal life figured out.

“I know some of the other actors had a trajectory planned out at the beginning,” said Swift, “but I didn’t. I didn’t really know where he was going. I’m not sure the writers did, either. The first season was very much about divorce for two of the central characters, and they needed a contrast. So they went with a relatively harmonious family for Higgins.” Summing up his experience on the show over the last three seasons: “I just have to pinch myself that I’m in it.”

Swift’s resume includes roles in “Mary Poppins Returns,” “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Downton Abbey,” among many others. When asked about a worst moment in his career, he started off with a disclaimer: “I’m not sure at all what I learned from this experience.”

But the cringiest moments in an actor’s career, he said, “are the things that happen in live theater.”

My worst moment …

“I’ve done a lot of theater, but this was my first job at the National Theatre, which wasn’t until I was 29. It was a production of Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Peer Gynt’ and it had a big ensemble and a really dynamic, award-winning director. It ran from 1989 to 1990.

“And in one scene, the title character goes to an asylum. I can’t remember how, it’s a very strange script. And I played a nude asylum person. I had not been nude on stage before and it’s not something I would inflict on the public ever again.

“Basically the inmates of the asylum would come out from beneath the stage. There was a two-hander scene going on before our entrance and it was very philosophical. But when you’re underneath the stage, you can’t really hear properly. It’s like being underwater.

“And even though you have a light — a red light and then a green light for your entrance — I somehow didn’t take any notice of that. And I thought someone said, ‘Go! Go! Go!’

“So I went on stage. And I was about four minutes early into the scene.

“I came out from the trap door and was making these throaty sounds. And I realized, as I heard 25 people laughing underneath me, they weren’t going to follow me. One girl did, and suddenly there we were, looking confused.

“If you were a theater aficionado, you’d think: Something’s not quite right here.

“The two actors who were on stage were looking a bit dumbfounded at our arrival. So I whispered to the other actress: ‘Chase me!’ (Laughs) I don’t know if that made it worse. It probably made it worse, really.

“She didn’t chase me off stage — we should have done that — but I thought, well, we’re on here now. So we just ran about.

“All this is happening while Peer Gynt is talking to the head of the asylum, who turns out to be mad himself — but you don’t know that during that scene — so they just carried on until the rest of this very chaotic company of actors made their entrance from underneath the stage.

“I was able to laugh about it pretty quick. It became this legendary story, really.

“In fact, I told it to Joe Kelly, who is one of the writers and creators of ‘Ted Lasso,’ and (laughs) I came onto set one day and he was telling somebody else the story and he said, ‘I’m sorry, Jeremy, I have told this story to everybody!’ And I went, ‘Ah, OK. Yup.’”

What was going through Swift’s mind when he realized he misjudged his cue?

“Who said ‘Go! Go! Go!’? That is what I thought.

“But I had to keep it together and not look as though I was corpsing. I don’t know if you know that term, it means laughing at myself, at my own mistake.

“Just a sidebar story to that: Because there are breaks (in the run) at the National Theatre, I went to Greece for two weeks and got a really nice suntan. But of course I was wearing shorts the whole time. I hadn’t thought about it at all — at all — so when I came back, it looked like one of the inmates had escaped and had a really nice holiday (laughs). I had a very white bottom-middle area.”

What was Swift’s initial response when he learned the role involved nudity?

“Once I was asked to do it, I thought I would do it in rehearsal, so I did it almost every time. And a couple of the actors went, ‘Oh my god, you did it again?’ But it was because I didn’t want it to build up to be this huge pressure when we finally had to do it in performance. So I got used to it.

“And I presume that’s what happens with naturism: You think (makes uncomfortable sounds) and then you do it and then eventually you think, oh, it’s nothing.”

The takeaway …

“Look at the stage entrance light before going on stage (laughs). If it’s red, don’t go on stage.

“I was very diligent about when I made my entrance after that. And also, there were a lot of costume changes in that show and sometimes that would be time for a little gossip. But after that performance, I was like, ‘Shhhh!’ Be quiet so I can look at the light!’”

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

nmetz@chicagotribune.com

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

She was simply the best.

TMZ was among the first to report the news, via a rep, who did not specify the nature of the illness.

Proud Mary personified, Turner’s glorious career had two musical acts. First, she gained fame as the soul-stirring singer to the innovative guitar-playing band leader Ike Turner as part of the wildly popular Ike and Tina Turner Review.

Later, she became an inspirational icon, rebounding from domestic abuse to build her own brand of musical dominance with such runaway hits as “Simply the Best,” “Private Dancer,” “I Don’t Wanna Fight” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

In recent years, Turner suffered a mix of health challenges including a stroke, kidney replacement surgery, cancer and years of post-traumatic stress syndrome from her turbulent marriage to mentor and partner Ike Turner.

The later-in-life struggle was detailed in a farewell tour documentary “Tina,” in which the once high-stepping hit-maker reflected on a life filled with glorious highs and rock-bottom lows.

“I had an abusive life,” Turner told the camera. “There’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you’ve got, so you have to accept it.

“Some people say the life that I lived and the performances that I gave, the appreciation, is blasting with the people. And yeah, I should be proud of that. I am. But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when do you, how do you bow out slowly? Just go away?”

In the documentary, Turner revealed that the abuse didn’t start with Turner. Even before she became his punching bag — disturbingly detailed in the limousine fight scene from the “What’s Love Got to Do With It” biopic — she was cruelly abandoned by her parents as a child.

When she finally reconnected with her mother as an adult, the reunion was filled with pain.

“Mom was not kind,” Turner said in the doc. ” When I became a star, of course back then she was happy because I bought her a house. I did all kinds of things for her, she was my mother. I was trying to make her comfortable because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like me.”

That early mother-daughter rift could explain why the teenage singer left home to tour with a traveling band.

Anna Mae Bullock was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her parents, Floyd and Zelma Bullock, were poor sharecroppers who split up and left Turner and her sister to be raised by their grandmother.

When her grandmother died in the early 1950s, Turner moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to be with her mother again.

A fan of R&B music, young Anna immersed herself in the local club scene. Among her favorite haunts was a spot called the Club Manhattan.

It was there, in 1956, that she met rock-and-roll pioneer Ike Turner, who often played at the club with his band, the Kings of Rhythm. Soon the young singer was performing with the group, and she quickly became the highlight of their show.

After their recording, “A Fool in Love,” was a hit on the charts, Anna Mae Bullock was rebranded as Tina Turner. In 1962, Ike and Tina Turner were married in Tijuana, Mexico.

Turner’s powerful voice and stage presence made the review a must-see act, whether on the Ed Sullivan Show or as an opening act for the Rolling Stones.

Success also included a string of hip-shaking hits, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “Darlin’, You Know I Love You,” “I Smell Trouble’’ and the ode to Anna Mae’s hometown, “Nutbush City Limits.”

But no song was bigger for the Ike and Tina Turner Review than their slow-to-fast interpretation of the Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” with Ike singing the bass line and strumming the guitar before Tina and her hair-flipping backup singers, the Ikettes, twirled across the stage like spinning tops.

But behind the scenes there was turmoil. After years of Ike’s physical abuse, drug addiction and philandering, Turner left the act and the marriage in 1975 with “36 cents and a gas station credit card.”

The only thing she wanted to keep from the union was her stage name — Tina Turner.

But solo success did not come easily. Turner made guest appearances and low-budget tours in the years after the divorce was finalized in 1978, but was largely considered a nostalgia act.

That all changed in 1983. At age 44, Turner scored with a remake of a classic Al Green tune, “Let’s Stay Together.”

That was followed by her chart-topping “Private Dancer,” which included the song, “What’s Love Got to Do With I.” The song later lended its title to a movie about her life adapted from her autobiography, “I, Tina.”

Decibells will perform during a concert that’s slated for 4 p.m. June 3 at Chapel United Methodist Church, located at 2019 Hubbard Road in Madison Township.

Admission to the event is free, but donations will be accepted to help the nonprofit ensemble purchase its own handbells. Decibells currently borrow a set of handbells from Chapel United Methodist Church.

“On the Road Again” is the title of the concert, which will feature songs such as “California Dreamin’,” “It’s a Small World,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Fly me to the Moon.”

“Come hear us as we get ready for the perfect vacation,” Decibells Director Martha DiLorenzo said, adding the concert can be enjoyed by spectators of all ages.

Decibells consist of 14 ringers who play five octaves of bells. The group has grown considerably from the four or five ringers who turned out for the first few practices after DiLorenzo began rehearsals in October.

DiLorenzo got the idea to start Decibells after going to the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 2022 Spring Festival in Cleveland. The event was titled “Rock, Roll & Ring.”

She attended the festival with fellow members of a handbell choir at a local church. DiLorenzo has been a handbell ringer in that group for about 30 years.

The opening concert of  “Rock Roll & Ring” featured The Raleigh Ringers, an internationally acclaimed community handbell choir from Raleigh, North Carolina.

“They played a rock ‘n’ roll medley with Guns N’ Roses and everything else,” DiLorenzo said. “It was phenomenal.”

At that point, DiLorenzo became inspired to start an independent, nonprofit community handbell choir that could bring similar enjoyment to audiences in Lake County.

One challenge that DiLorenzo faced in starting Decibells was to secure a set of handbells for the ensemble. Drawing upon her knowledge of handbell choirs at Lake County churches, DiLorenzo pinpointed Chapel United Methodist Church as a potential supplier.

“Chapel UMC has bells but doesn’t have enough ringers for a choir,” she said. “So I called them and said, ‘Would you consider letting us use your bells?’ And they said ‘Yes.’ That was very kind.”

For now, Decibells hold all of its practice sessions and concerts at the church, since the borrowed handbells can be used only at that location.

However, financial donations received at the June 3 concert will be earmarked to buy a set of used ones. Having its own would allow the ensemble to perform throughout the community, in places such as senior centers, schools and nursing homes.

“We are a 501(c)(3) organization and all donations are tax deductible,” DiLorenzo said.

To help Decibells reach higher levels of excellence, she is looking to add two experienced ringers, especially in the bass bells.

“(Qualified ringers) could email me at decibellslake@gmail.com for information or come to the concert and talk with me afterward,” she said.

The COVID-19 pandemic had just hit, and as she was hunkered down at home, she felt inspired to “put a little up in my giddy,” said Twain during a recent phone interview.

The end result was the single “Giddy Up!” off of her sixth studio album, “Queen of Me,” which dropped earlier this year. It’s an upbeat, country dance-pop tune, drenched in feel-good vibes that gave Twain her first Top 10 single in years.

“It was a way to cheer me up,” Twain said of the track ahead of her Queen of Me Tour coming to the Shoreline Amphitheatre on Friday.

“The whole album, ‘Queen of Me,’ ended up being very much in that same spirit,” she continued. “It was like, ‘OK, come on, it’s time to cheer up!’”

That sentiment has translated well to the live show, Twain insists, as she kicked off the tour on April 28 in Washington. It’s also very different from her Let’s Go! Las Vegas residency, which played inside Zappos Theater from late 2019 through September 2022.

“It’s been fabulous,” she said of the tour so far. “We’re having a lot of fun and the crowds are in great spirits and I’m energized by sharing this music. It’s a variety of music, and that’s really fun for me because I’m doing stuff from way, way back and then new stuff; it’s just a mix of everything.”

And because she knows fans like to take lots of pictures and post videos of the shows on social media, she likes to change things up a bit at each stop to keep it fresh.

“I’ve styled all of the wardrobe myself, so there’s always something unique and different,” Twain shared. “They’re all one-offs so you couldn’t spoil it for yourself even if you did go online and look.”

Along with some of her biggest hits like “Any Man of Mine,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” Twain has peppered new music into the current setlist including “Giddy Up!,” “Pretty Liar,” “Waking Up Dreaming,” “Inhale/Exhale Air,” “Pretty Liar” and the album title track.

“Queen of Me,” and its extended version, which features additional songs and remixes, is filled with everything from dance-pop bangers to country-tinged ballads, and it found Twain teaming up with some unexpected songwriters and producers. The album includes collaborations with Tyler Joseph from Twenty One Pilots and Adam Messinger, who is known for his work with the Canadian reggae band Magic! and pop sensation Justin Bieber.

“The album evolved stylistically and I was just doing everything that I loved,” Twain said of broadening her sound and approach. “I really loved Adam’s work with Magic! and I wanted to tap into his talents, so I called him and said, ‘You know, we’re probably an unlikely match, but can I send you some songs and you can play around with them?’ So I sent him ‘Queen of Me’ and “Pretty Liar’ and I loved what he did.”

“Tyler Joseph, I’m a big-time fan of his. I told him that I knew he didn’t normally produce other people’s work, but asked if I could send him a song, and if he liked it, if he’d consider it at some point,” she continued. “It took him a while to get around to being able to do it because he’s so busy with his own stuff, but he really loved ‘The Hardest Stone.’ He did that out of the love he had for the song and put his magic to it and I love what he did. All the collaborations were with artists that I am a personal fan of their work and I sent it to them without planning on how they would turn out or anything, it was just let’s go and create some music and see what happens.”

Though it didn’t make the album, Twain released a cover of Harry Styles’ “Falling” for her Spotify Sings session in March.

“I listen to Harry on my own free time because I’m a big fan of his,” she said of choosing the song to cover. “That was one of his songs that I’d put on repeat and I thought, ‘Wow, I’d actually like to sing this one.’ So when it came up to do some covers, that was a top choice.”

She teamed up with Styles during Weekend One of the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio when she came out as a surprise guest during his headlining set to sing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” and “Still the One.” It was a memorable moment that almost didn’t happen because Twain’s schedule was so hectic.

But she made time for Harry.

“It was totally unexpected,” she said of the roaring response the Coachella audience had to the performance. She had a little bit of experience out at that venue since she headlined Coachella’s country music sister festival, Stagecoach, back in 2017, but this was an entirely different audience.

“I wasn’t expecting that reaction,” she said. “It was overwhelming and just very, very awesome.”

Twain is a big fan of TikTok videos. She posts plenty of her own, but she’s really into all of the dancing videos and creative content, even when it involves fans using her music to create the clips. She’s also impressed by the dedication of the people that come out to the shows sporting homemade versions of some era of Twain’s fashion.

“That is so fun,” she said. “I’m telling you, the audience is my entertainment at every show. I’m not watching my own show, I’m watching them and it’s so entertaining. When people come dressed up — whether it’s the denim on denim or the ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman’ outfit or whatever — it means something to me. It means that it matters to them and has made some sort of statement in their lives and I’ve successfully shared my work and my art with them. It’s the biggest compliment.”

SHANIA TWAIN

Presents the Queen of Me tour

Tickets: Starting at $70; Ticketmaster.com

When it comes to shaggy dog sports movies of the late 20th century, few did it better than Ron Shelton. As a writer and director, he understood the appeal of semi-ridiculous, semi-charming men past their prime looking for one last shot at greatness — or at least a half-baked redemption. Sandwiched between the soulful minor league romance of “Bull Durham” and dusty pro golfing dreams of “Tin Cup,” Shelton turned to the high-spirited pickup basketballs games of Los Angeles for 1992′s “White Men Can’t Jump,” a buddy film starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as an unlikely pair who team up to hustle any takers.

But “White Men Can’t Jump” no longer exists to be fondly remembered and rewatched, but as a library title to be reimagined. Shelton is credited as a co-writer here with Kenya Barris and Doug Hall, and that should be the good news. But like so much else that Hollywood endlessly recycles, the question hovering around the edges of the movie is simply: Why?

The original is on Hulu. The new version is on Hulu. All things being equal, what would compel audiences to watch the remake?

Stepping into Harrelson and Snipes’ basketball shoes are Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls, and they have a nice, unforced chemistry together. But they’re stuck inside a movie that lacks shape and propulsion — and the effervescent presence of Rosie Perez and her “Jeopardy!” ambitions — but adds a back story about thwarted potential.

In the first movie, basketball was just a means to an end: Fast cash. Now it’s that plus something more.

Better known for his music career, this is Harlow’s first major role as an actor. He plays a one-time college player named Jeremy, whose dreams died with his two bum knees. Now he’s scrapping by selling detox potions and coaching one-on-one. He’s one of those white guys who tries too hard around Black people — this feels like Barris’ influence on the script; it’s a style of joke he’s returned to often across his projects — but Harlow has a looseness that works. He’s a goof who believes in the power of meditation (when he’s not popping pain pills, a detail that is introduced and then mostly abandoned) and he strolls onto the basketball court wearing Birkenstocks and socks and looking out of place. But he can still hit a three pointer.

Harlow has the benefit of a far more seasoned scene partner in Walls, playing a top high school prospect named Kamal who flamed out after decking a heckler at a game. Ten years later, he’s married with a kid and keeping his head down, working as a package delivery driver. He’s stoic for the most part, except when he rings a doorbell and the homeowner says “Don’t I know you?” and all that repressed bile about his nonexistent basketball career comes back up. Walls brings a sense of melancholy to the role and instead of the brash, cocky guy of the original, he’s skeptical and contemplative and bruised. That gives things a slightly more serious subtext.

Walls has real chops (memorably as Don Cornelius in the “Soul Train” biopic series) but here he’s playing a character sapped of the kind of over-the-top personality that might give the film a stronger comic energy. (Calmatic is the director, who also helmed this year’s “House Party” remake).

Kamal and Jeremy are both in need of fast money, but their pickup game hustle is missing that loose-limbed combination of con-artistry and joke-filled, testosterone-fueled posturing. This should be more fun.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare the two movies, but it’s instructive because the changes don’t deepen or improve the story so much as rob it of what made it interesting in the first place. Harrelson played a mostly likable mess of a man who was his own worst enemy; Snipes played a fast-talking, street savvy type who wasn’t above hustling his own partner. But here, Harlow is closer to the human embodiment of a golden retriever looking for a home, while Walls is saddled with character beats that amount to rolling his eyes at his partner’s weirdo antics.

Even the trash talking is minimal and flat.

In other words, everything feels cleaner. No betrayals. No massive debts owed to scary guys. No real banter. And the women are barely more than plot points, although Teyana Taylor does a lot with the little she’s given as Kamal’s wife. Lance Reddick, who died in March, shows up briefly as Kamal’s father and it’s bittersweet to see him in one of his last roles.

Despite it all, the movie mostly hangs together, even if it lacks some of the visual punch of the original, which shot exclusively at outdoor courts. Too many of the early scenes here take place in dimly lit indoor gyms that give off a claustrophobic feel, although the twosome do eventually play at Watts and Venice Beach, locations also featured in the first film.

But at its core, this isn’t a story about two hustlers. Deep down, both Kamal and Jeremy still pine for the NBA. A truer, more shambolic story would have spent time sorting out why that’s such a pipe dream now that they’re in their late 20s. Instead, in the end the movie chooses fantasy.

Hoop dreams, indeed.

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‘WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for pervasive language and some drug material)

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: Hulu

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

nmetz@chicagotribune.com

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