Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson
Juliet shines sun-bright in American Players’ earthy view of Shakespeare tragedy
Review: Care as we may for the oft love-struck young swain in Shakespeare’s great tragedy “Romeo and Juliet,” it is Juliet whose desperate predicament holds our hearts in thrall. A successful staging requires, above all else, an irresistible Juliet, radiant indeed as the eastern sun, and American Players Theatre’s affecting summer run boasts just such a blazing star in Melisa Pereyra. ★★★★
Taking 35th-season turn to American classics, American Players hit core of Mamet
Review: As if to signal rebirth at the outset of its 35th season, American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., under new artistic director Brenda DeVita, has widened its scope beyond classic European fare to include the masterpieces of American theater. It could scarcely have dived more boldly into that pool, or more artfully, than with its sharp-edged and idiomatic production of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” ★★★★★
‘Death and the Maiden’ at Victory Gardens: Seeking peace and Schubert in web of horror
Review: The premise, like the title, is intriguing, but Ariel Dorfman’s play “Death and the Maiden” is a problematic work that isn’t helped by an uneven production at Victory Gardens Theatre. Yet Sandra Oh, perhaps best known as Dr. Cristina Yang on the television series “Grey’s Anatomy” and for the film “Sideways,” is magical as Paulina Salas, a woman who survived unjust imprisonment, torture and rape under the old regime of a South American republic – only to sense her former tormentor in the affable fellow suddenly before her in her living room. ★★★
Role Playing: Natalie West scaled back comedy to nail laughs, touch hearts in ‘Mud Blue Sky’
Interview: Natalie West’s portrayal of a bone-weary airline attendant in Marisa Wegrzyn’s “Mud Blue Sky” at A Red Orchid Theatre is so recognizable – who hasn’t felt exactly like that? – in its muted and dryly funny fashion that it comes as a shock to hear that she miniaturized the performance, so to speak, from a larger canvas.
‘Grounded’ at American Blues Theater: Boom! goes the rocket blast, and pilot’s life implodes
Review: The pilot, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, is a proud lone wolf, happiest up there in the wild blue yonder, at the controls of an F-16 homing in on targets in the midst of a Middle East war. Yet there’s a mentionable wrinkle. The Pilot in playwright George Brant’s monodrama “Grounded” is a woman. Gwendolyn Whiteside, the producing artistic director of American Blues Theater, suits up and steps out front to portray a human being who thinks she knows herself – only to discover her true humanity in both the sweetest and the most devastating terms. ★★★★
Lessons of Riccardo Muti’s Schubert cycle tell as CSO caps season with poetic Mahler First
Review: What Riccardo Muti has brought to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in his first four years as music director was on display June 19 as the orchestra crowned its season with a revelatory pairing of Schubert’s graceful Fifth Symphony and Mahler’s splendorous First.
Role Playing: Dave Belden, actor and violinist, adjusted pitch for ‘Charles Ives Take Me Home’
Interview: When Dave Belden took on the role of a violinist whose daughter wants nothing more than to play basketball, in Jessica Dickey’s “Charles Ives Take Me Home” at Strawdog Theatre, he saw himself as perfectly suited to the part. He plays in the Chicago Sinfonietta. What he had to overcome was his notion of himself as a fundamentally nice guy.
London Aisle: At Shakespeare’s Globe, bloody revenge served au naturel in ‘Titus Andronicus’
Review: To watch a production by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on its home turf, an open-air replica of the Bard’s original playhouse, is to sense the Elizabethan theater as a living, breathing – not to mention grunting and sweating – organism. Amid the swarming actors, you’re on top of the action; or make that, in the recent instance of that spectacle of maim and slaughter “Titus Andronicus,” the mayhem. ★★★★
Under new director, American Players Theatre shows changed outlook with Mamet opener
Preview: As if running up a banner announcing its annexation of the New World – where, of course, it is located – the classically oriented American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., opens its 2014 summer with a new commitment to Americana, leading off with no less bracing a representative than David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”
Leading CSO toward finale of Schubert cycle, Muti imparts mastery of Viennese tradition
Interview: Conductor Riccardo Muti’s final two weeks of the season with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra also bring the consummation of his season-long cycle of Schubert’s symphonies. From his perspective “in the middle of the river,” as Muti puts the ongoing project, the CSO is absorbing the style and finesse of his reference ensemble: the Vienna Philharmonic.
Role Playing: Joseph Wiens starts at full throttle to convey alienation of ‘Look Back in Anger’
Interview: The first thing Joseph Wiens had to overcome in achieving his electric performance in John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” at Redtwist Theatre was the sheer volume of lines. Well, that and what he calls the “mishmash” of British accents. And of course the machine-gun speed at which Osborne’s teeming language had to be delivered – intelligibly.
Off-beat coupling of works by Ullmann and Orff casts vibrant light on opera as intimate theater
Review: When opera is really working as theater, you tend to forget you’re listening to sung speech as you lose yourself in drama’s thrall. That’s precisely the effect in Chicago Opera Theatre’s potent evening of one-act rarities: Viktor Ullmann’s darkly surreal “The Emperor of Atlantis” and Carl Orff’s wry parable “The Clever One.” ★★★★
Jazz premiere, youth band lead ‘Truth to Power’ and Prokofiev is spotlighted by Feltsman, CSO
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Truth to Power” festival swung fully into celebratory mode, with a jazz premiere and music of Prokofiev taking center stage, in a series of four diverse concerts at Orchestra Hall over a long weekend May 29-June 1.
‘Juno’ at TimeLine: Good effort can’t redeem Blitzstein’s tepid musical on O’Casey classic
Review: Sean O’Casey’s colorful play “Juno and the Paycock,” about a poor family’s bit of luck in strife-torn Ireland, has enjoyed unstinting popularity since its premiere in 1924. But when Marc Blitzstein turned it into a musical in 1959, the show flopped and has never recovered. TimeLine Theatre’s ambitious revival demonstrates why. Review: ★
Role Playing: Shane Kenyon touches charisma and hurt of lovable loser in Steep’s ‘If There Is’
Interview: Into the life of overweight, lonely, sullen teenager Anna, in Nick Payne’s play “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet,” bursts her similarly miserable but emotionally supercharged uncle Terry. He’s an instantly appealing guy who, says actor Shane Kenyon, has invested a lifetime of energy in “running away from growing up and accepting responsibility.”
‘Charles Ives Take Me Home’ at Strawdog: Tune is familiar but dad, daughter can’t harmonize
Review: John Starr has enjoyed a successful career as a classical violinist, but he feels like he’s living between bookends of alienation. He never shared his father’s zeal for sports, and now his daughter is determined to make basketball her life. In Jessica Dickey’s radiant play “Charles Ives Take Me Home,” brought warmly to life at Strawdog Theatre, it is a headstrong, pragmatic and philosophical composer – in spirit anyway – who guides a father and daughter toward common ground in their disparate passions. ★★★★
Van Zweden, CSO plumb Shostakovich Seventh to kick off festival on theme of ‘Truth to Power’
Feature review: With a ringing affirmation of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, conductor Jaap van Zweden and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have plunged into a multifaceted festival celebrating three great 20th-century composers whose music sprang from personal and political tumult. In all, the festival, dubbed “Truth to Power” and devoted to music of Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten, features 14 performances of seven different concert programs across 18 days.
‘Henry V’ at Chicago Shakespeare: Noble production, except His Majesty is missing
Review: Chicago Shakespeare’s vivacious production of “Henry V” poses something of a paradox: Much of its energy emanates from the youthful presence of Canadian import Harry Judge as the king – and what is least remarkable about this show is Judge’s surface-skimming account of the embattled monarch. ★★★
‘Look Back in Anger’ at Redtwist: Bitterness nurtured as mode of life in post-war England
Review : Jimmy Porter is a bright but very angry young working-class Englishman who has grown to adulthood in the decade following the end of World War II. While he has married somewhat above his social grade, his life is going nowhere. In John Osborne’s searing 1956 play “Look Back in Anger,” Jimmy consecrates his sharp wit and tireless energy to a seething, circular rant. Jonathan Berry directs an electric production at Redtwist Theatre, where Joseph Wiens lends volcanic Jimmy all the brilliance and sadness of a man in existential warp, spiritually homeless in a world that has lost its meaning. ★★★★
Raven Theatre’s sharp image of ‘Vieux Carré’ evokes turning point for playwright Williams
Review: Raven Theatre’s very fine production of Tennessee Williams’ “Vieux Carré” bespeaks that lyrical playwright in the long, sad twilight of his creative career and, indeed, his life. It is a look back into the predawn of Williams’ emergence as an important voice, a play filled with rich characters of meager means, and the lean, fierce eloquence of this account directed by Cody Estle gets it wonderfully right. ★★★★
‘Lay Me Down Softly’ at Seanachai: Characters looking for a narrative in the Irish countryside
Review: Billy Roche’s play of the Irish outback, “Lay Me Down Softly,” is a bit of a shaggy-dog story – and in the instance of Seanachai Theatre’s dreary go at it, the emphasis is on the dog. ★
Role Playing: Ramón Camín sees working-class values in Arthur Miller’s tragic Eddie Carbone
Interview: Some people will tell you Eddie Carbone, the Brooklyn longshoreman whose life disintegrates in Arthur Miller’s play “A View From the Bridge,” is the tragic victim of his attraction to the beautiful young niece who has grown up as his ward. But not actor Ramón Camín, who says he forged his gripping portrayal for Teatro Vista simply by taking Eddie as a man of his word.
London Aisle: National Theatre’s ‘King Lear’ captures folly and fall of one old but unwise
Review: Shakespeare’s willful, vain, fatally blindered King Lear enjoys all that monarchy can bring, only to discover too late that kingship is like the bubble reputation – once tossed away in a moment’s folly, irretrievable. London’s National Theatre offers a gripping “King Lear” expressive of majestic folly and deep sadness. ★★★★★
Solo comedy ‘Buyer & Cellar’ creates fantasy image of Barbra Streisand & her private mall
Preview: Actor Michael Urie has never seen Barbra Streisand’s personal mall built into the lower level of her home – no, seriously, a street of ornate shops filled with her collections of antiques, dolls, gowns, etc. – but he says that after his long-running one-man comedy “Buyer & Cellar,” in which he plays the mall’s imaginary minder, he either will receive a personal invitation or he will be banned.
‘Motown the Musical’ launches tour in Chicago, and hometown headliner thinks that’s Supreme
Preview: It was no great leap for Chicago native Allison Semmes to take on the role of Diana Ross for the national tour of “Motown the Musical,” which launches May 8 at the Oriental Theatre. Semmes grew up listening to the Supremes and other Motown sounds on her mom and dad’s vinyl LPs: “My parents say when I was about 3 years old, I was harmonizing with the vacuum cleaner.”
Visiting the Darwins: ‘In the Garden’ dispenses some homey chat about homo sapiens and God
Review: Scene upon witty scene, there is much to admire about Sara Gmitter’s elegant and facile new play “In the Garden: A Darwinian Love Story,” which in its world premiere at Lookingglass Theatre offers a kind of evolutionary portrait of the marriage of Charles and Emma Darwin. Floridly festooned in designer Collette Pollard’s literal interlacing of the natural and civilized worlds, “In the Garden” exudes a radiant, if benign charm. ★★
Teatro Vista’s ‘A View From the Bridge’ frames tragedy of good man snared by nameless trap
Review: Great theater does not require introduction or advocacy. It announces and proclaims itself. It is, in other words, what it is. Behold the heart-breaking, thrilling greatness of Teatro Vista’s raw-boned take on Arthur Miller’s classic 1950s tragedy “A View From the Bridge,” the story of Eddie Carbone, a dock worker in Brooklyn’s Italian-American community scaping together a living even as he veers toward catastrophe. ★★★★★
‘If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet’ at Steep: Noting the footprint, but missing the people
Review: Anna is 15 years old, seriously overweight and disconnected from just everything: her mom and dad, her school mates, her life. But disconnection runs in the family. Anna’s parents don’t seem to notice her. Then into their midst, in Nick Payne’s absorbing and painful play “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet,” pops the girl’s utterly lost soul of an uncle bearing a glimmer of hope. It is a promise as fragile as it is paradoxical, and exquisitely framed by four superb actors in Steep Theatre’s fine production directed by Jonathan Berry. ★★★★
Bates’ new concerto is feather in violinist’s cap when Slatkin leads CSO in American concert
Review: What an engaging, stimulating change of pace, this weekend’s all-American concert fare offered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Leonard Slatkin at Orchestra Hall. Extending from classics by Barber and Gershwin through William Schuman’s bold, robust Sixth Symphony to youthful Mason Bates’ cleverly crafted Violin Concerto, the program heard April 17 offered a resounding reminder of this country’s enduring contribution to orchestral music in the modern era.
‘The Great God Pan’ at Next – When narrative runs out of thread, the drama is left dangling
Review: The setup of Amy Herzog’s play “The Great God Pan” is intriguing: A man in his early thirties reconnects with a childhood chum who makes deeply disturbing claims about their formative years. Problem is, where we ultimately expect catharsis the playwright leaves us merely teased. And despite director Kimberly Senior’s sensitive and tempting effort, the current production at Next Theatre cannot magically spin this fragment into whole cloth. ★
