Articles in Theater + Stage
Theater 2013-14: Chicago premiere leads off Porchlight’s exploration of musical landscape
Fourth in a series of season previews: Porchlight Music Theatre prides itself on taking a new approach to classic musicals, “as if the script just came across the desk,” says managing artistic director Michael Weber. Opening with the Chicago premiere of the two-hand farce “Double Trouble,” Porchlight’s 2013-14 season reflects that spirit of approaching a show “with an understanding that we can stretch it and explore it in a different way.”
Theater 2013-14: Hank Williams’ life in song and world premiere on American Blues slate
Third in a series of season previews: The spirit and legend of Americana buoys the 2013-14 season at American Blues Theater, from a musical biography of country star Hank Williams to the world premiere of Christina Gorman’s “American Myth,” about a professor of history who has perhaps fudged the details of his own past. The new season also sees storefront American Blues taking up residence at the Greenhouse Theater Center on North Lincoln Avenue.
Theater 2013-14: Charting course back to its earthy roots, Profiles celebrates 25th season
Second in a series of season previews: Profiles Theatre will mark its 25th anniversary this season by getting back to what co-artistic director Joe Jahraus calls the lean, mean style that has set this company apart. That’s lean as in Neil LaBute’s “Wrecks,” a one-actor narrative about the devastation of a man’s life wrought by the death of his wife, and mean as in Rhett Rossi’s “In God’s Hat,” which plays out through the taut, charged reunion of two estranged brothers when one of them is released from prison.
Theater 2013-14: TimeLine will raise curtain with fresh look at classic ‘Raisin in the Sun’
First in a series of season previews: TimeLine Theatre rolls into its 17th season by turning back the clock more than half a century to Lorraine Hansberry’s classic story of racial prejudice in Chicago, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Though two of the Milwaukee Rep leads will appear at TimeLine – Greta Oglesby as Mama, who’s bent on seeing her family better situated, and Mildred Marie Langford as her daughter Beneatha, who dreams of a medical career – this production will be a complete rethinking of the work, from sets to concept.
‘Molly Sweeney’ at American Players Theatre: From gentle darkness, a voyage to rough light
Review: She is a perfectly happy lady, Molly Sweeney. Though blind since early childhood, she’s content in her soul, and wondrously in touch with the world, which she views – through the tactile, auditory and aromatic senses – as very much hers. Then her husband and a once-celebrated eye surgeon convince her that an operation could open up unimagined vistas of bliss. That’s the harrowing thrust of Brian Friel’s intimate tragedy “Molly Sweeney,” delivered with equal parts of sensitivity and irony and shattering impact at American Players Theatre.. ★★★★
‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ lights the open sky with crisp mirth at American Players
Review: Traditional criticism hasn’t been altogether kind to Shakespeare’s early comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which is often portrayed as a workshop effort that set the stage for the Bard’s later, more sophisticated riffs on the madness of love. But this summer’s sharply drawn, energetic and sly production at American Players Theatre makes a savvy, satisfying case for a comedy worth catching. ★★★★
Chicago Shakespeare returns Bard to parks with merry madness of ‘Comedy of Errors’
Preview: What could be funnier, or crazier, a more riotous lark than Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s touring production of the Bard’s “Taming of the Shrew” in parks across Chicago last summer? The answer well may be this summer’s CST encore: 26 free performances in 18 parks of Shakespeare’s madcap farce “The Comedy of Errors.”
As ‘Book of Mormon’ ends Chicago mission, tears of laughter run to Sal Tlay Ka Siti
Review: This you can believe: “The Book of Mormon,” Chicago’s sit-down production of the hit Broadway show that is totally outrageous and equally endearing, will end its run at Bank of America Theatre on Oct. 6 so that a national tour with the same cast can commence. Broadway in Chicago is already promising a return, after visits to Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities, but not until sometime in the 2014-15 season. ★★★★
‘Million Dollar Quartet’ poised to break record with 2,000th performance of a rockin’ night
Preview: It will hardly come as news to anyone who has seen the show, possibly several times, but “Million Dollar Quartet” – recalling a chance jam session that brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins – has proved to be solid-gold entertainment. The Chicago show will see its 2,000th performance on July 11 at the Apollo Theater, which only extends “The Million Dollar Quartet’s” record as the longest-running Broadway show in Chicago theater history.
Lookingglass ‘Big Lake Big City’ means murder, lethal comedy on dark streets of Chicago
Review: Enter a hurled chair, pursued by a raging detective. Thus begins Chicago playwright Keith Huff’s rambunctious, violently funny police drama “Big Lake Big City,” a slice of Chicago’s underbelly examined from the viewpoint of a rough-cut cop who probably never met a suspect he didn’t punch or a woman he understood. “Big Lake Big City,” in its world-premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, is slyly skewed, uproarious fun, a spider’s web of interlaced lives and cross-hatched deeds adding up to an open and shut case of sober insanity. ★★★★★
As Mary-Arrchie spins Williams’ ‘Menagerie,’ memory play is filtered through glass darkly
Review:;One of the delights of this 2013 Chicago summer is a gently revisionist production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” by Marie-Arrchie Theatre, conceived and directed by Hans Fleischmann, who also plays the role of Tom. After selling out last fall at Angel Island and transferring to Theater Wit in May, the show has extended its run to July 28. ★★★★★
‘The Three Musketeers’ at Lifeline: Acrobatics meet melodrama in a one-for-all free-for-all
Review: If Alexandre Dumas’ historical novel “The Three Musketeers” is a romantic adventure of epic proportions, Lifeline Theatre’s adaptation for the stage is a busy amusement, a shrunken likeness that has its appealing features but falls well short of capturing either the bravura spirit or the inherent drama of the original. ★★
American Players Theatre offers Shakespeare, Friel, Stoppard in a festival mix in the woods
Preview: What’s in a name? American Players Theatre, which has been filling summers with drama since 1980 in the woods of Spring Green, Wis., doesn’t trade on the Shakespeare brand. But in every aspect of making theater, from staging to vocal delivery to its choice of plays, this ambitious enterprise hews to the Bard as its reference point. In the 2013 mix of eight plays, which opens June 15, APT includes a typical infusion of Shakespeare, a stylistic sweep from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Hamlet” to “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Role Playing: Ora Jones had to find her way into Katherine’s frayed world in ‘Henry VIII’
Interview: Ora Jones, so assured and imposing as Queen Katherine in “Henry VIII” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, was just as confident she had blown her audition for the part. And that wasn’t such a bad thing, she thought – because Katherine’s great speech in her trial scene, the very audition piece that Jones would come to deliver with authentic majesty, had left the actor essentially mystified.
Eight hot Chicago plays you should have seen come round again in Theater on the Lake fest
Preview: Theater director Halena Kays is exaggerating only slightly when she refers to the million plays you’d have to see if you hoped to catch every show in a Chicago season. That’s the beauty of Theater on the Lake, the summer reprise of eight top productions that opens June 12 with original casts reassembled. It’s a bonus round for theater-goers who simply ran out of nights.
Behind forbidden love in ‘West Side Story,’ clashing views of what’s right in America
Preview: The crux of conflict in the musical “West Side Story” may be the time-honored insanity of warring factions – the Sharks and the Jets in this case – but the play is also a portrait of cultural assimilation and clashing perspectives on what an immigrant group has to gain and what it risks losing. This American classic comes to the Oriental Theatre on June 11 in a version modeled on the latest Broadway production, even to the use of Spanish dialogue.
Confused identities and a flair for mendacity spark comic romp in ‘The Liar’ at Writers’
Review: Young, lusty, autobiographically creative Dorante embraces a simple code: The unimagined life is not worth living. From the tangled roots of that premise springs Pierre Corneille’s 1643 comedy “The Liar” – revamped and translated for today’s English-speaking audiences by David Ives, and now brought to the stage with a farcical flourish at Writers’ Theatre. ★★★★
Role Playing: Kareem Bandealy tapped roots, hit books to form warlord in ‘Blood and Gifts’
Interview: Our guy – the American – in J.T. Rogers’ play “Blood and Gifts,” about the United States’ clandestine effort to blunt the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, is a CIA agent. We see the unfolding events through his eyes. But the character who elicits our sympathy and commands our imagination is an Afghan warlord called Abdullah Khan. He is made credible flesh and elusive spirit at TimeLine Theatre in a riveting performance by Kareem Bandealy, who says his portrait reflects both his own cultural heritage and the desperation that drives this unpredictable warrior.
‘The Misanthrope’ at Court: Rants that rhyme keep laughs coming in crisp, modern Molière
Review: When Molière’s satiric play “The Misanthrope” first came to the stage in 1666, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris, its mockery of society as duplicitous, self-aggrandizing and narcissistic must have had audiences teary-eyed with laughter. Just so is Court Theatre’s deliciously decadent new production LOL stuff. Indeed, director Charles Newell’s imaginative, sharply executed enterprise is simply not to be missed. ★★★★
‘In the Company of Men’ at Profiles: The boys will have their vengeance; then love walks in
Review: ★★★★
‘Henry VIII’ at Chicago Shakespeare: Depicting the king in kindly tint, as Elizabeth’s forebear
Review: ★★★★
Australian drama troupe transcends handicaps with serio-comedy full of backstage laughter
Review: If the title “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich” provokes more than the usual curiosity about fresh dramatic fare, the play itself — presented by the ensemble that created it, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre – leaves one hardly less perplexed upon emerging from the experience. “Ganesh” displays a singular aspect of beauty, even sweetness, until it takes a bitter turn and dissipates as if into a vacuum, into nothingness. ★★★
Role Playing: Eva Barr explored two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’
Interview: To watch Eva Barr play out the progressive, early-onset dementia of the woman at the center of “Still Alice” at Lookingglass Theatre is to forget you’re looking at the subtle, skillful work of an actor. Yet hardly less remarkable is the way Barr arrived at the role: She began, in first readings with playwright-director Christine Mary Dunford, by taking a different part, an alternate Alice – a separate character Dunford identifies simply as Herself.
‘Vera Stark’ aims a satiric lens at Hollywood stereotype of black film characters in 1930s
Review: ★★
‘Blood and Gifts’ at TimeLine: Blood-soaked Afghanistan as pawn in U.S.-Russian faceoff
Review: ★★★★★
Oh, what a beautiful show: Lyric ‘Oklahoma!’ sweeps the plain with bounty of song, dance
Review: ★★★★★
