Review: One well might argue that Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” is a less than perfect play. But the neatly framed picture of hypocrisy at its core is so clear, indeed so ringingly universal in its human embrace, that it resonates in any culture. Witness the Russian-language production (with English supertitles) that officially popped the cork Jan. 27 on Shakespeare 400 Chicago, a yearlong aggregation of events dramatic and otherwise spearheaded by Chicago Shakespeare Theater. ★★★★
Read the full story »Mozart and Beethoven shine in hands of CSO; dust sticks to erstwhile premiere from archives
Review: What was good was very good in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s concert with music director Riccardo Muti on Oct. 1 at Orchestra Hall. Then came the program’s bizarre second half, which recalled the previous week’s fare and left one wondering just how weird – and musically marginal – the CSO’s 125th anniversary season will turn out to be.
Theater 2015-16: Steep gets down and grapples with Linklater premiere, more Simon Stephens
17th in a series of season previews: Founding artistic director Peter Moore says Steep Theatre’s 15th season captures the essence of what this scrappy company is all about – “ground-level views of life.” That low-angle survey begins with the world premiere of Hamish Linklater’s “The Cheats,” about two neighboring couples who suddenly find themselves uncomfortably close.
Theater 2015-16: A gentlefolk’s guide to love, murder, other diversions at B’way in Chicago
16th in a series of season previews: Broadway in Chicago’s bountiful fall series of touring shows, crammed into four performance venues – Bank of America Theatre, Oriental Theatre, Cadillac Palace Theatre and Broadway Playhouse – opens with one of the hottest new musical comedies to come out of New York, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder,” and winds up at the holidays with the pre-Broadway world premiere of “Gotta Dance,” a testament to youth as an expression not of age but of spirit.
‘Marriage of Figaro’ at Lyric Opera: Stellar voices prevail in a farcical take on Mozart’s comic gem
Review: If Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” is inherently and effectively a bittersweet comedy that edges into farce, the new production directed by Barbara Gaines that opens the Lyric Opera of Chicago season reframes it as farce that edges into cartoon. This “Figaro,” conducted by the Hungarian Henrik Nánási in his American debut, fares best where a uniformly strong cast of singers is allowed to stand and deliver Mozart’s witty, touching, brilliant and wise arias and ensemble numbers. ★★★★
While the band played on, Chicago Symphony and its musicians hammered out a three-season deal
Update: The new deal is good through Sept. 16, 2018.
‘Gem of the Ocean’ at Court: Setting a spiritual table for Wilson’s canon in a haven of peace
Review: August Wilson’s decade-by-decade portrait gallery of the African-American experience across the 20th century begins just two generations after slavery, indeed with characters who were born into shackles. To grasp the cultural resonance and progression of the last nine plays in the sequence, it’s essential to know the first one, “Gem of the Ocean,” which now unfolds in a perceptive and finely textured production directed by Ron OJ Parson at Court Theatre. ★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Victory Gardens comes out swinging with season of punches, premieres
15th in a series of season previews: The play first up for Victory Gardens Theater this season, Roy Williams’ “Sucker Punch,” might be seen as a summary statement of what fifth-year artistic director Chay Yew has tried to bring to this company. It’s a story steeped in gritty realism about two young black boxers in rundown London struggling to find meaning in life.
Shakespeare director Barbara Gaines modulates to Mozart at Lyric Opera, and sees second Bard
Interview: The first venture for the Lyric Opera of Chicago this season is also the first Mozart ever taken on by Barbara Gaines, artistic director at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And in the poignancy – and the comedy – of “The Marriage of Figaro,” Gaines finds the Bard’s own sensibility, his empathy and his compassion.
‘The Tempest’ at Chicago Shakespeare: Magic rules on Prospero’s island, by wand and word
Review: In double magic that beguiles ear and eye with levity and levitation, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has invoked a rare vision of the Bard’s lyrical play of vengeance transcended by forgiveness, “The Tempest.” Co-directed with no slight imagination and great sleight of hand by Adam Posner and the magician Teller (he of Penn and Teller fame), CST’s season opener is pure enchantment – as credibly human and affecting as it is vibrant, fanciful and fresh. ★★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Raven expands to five plays, kicks off season with three Midwest premieres
14th in a series of season previews: Opening with a run of Midwest premieres, Raven Theatre expands from four plays to five this season to capitalize on the opportunity offered by its dual performing spaces. And first up is a Mark Stein’s searing “entertainment” with the long, ironically evocative title of “Direct from Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys (An Evening of Vaudeville and Sorrow).”
Theater 2015-16: Steppenwolf 40th anniversary boasts premieres by Frank Galati, Tracy Letts
13th in a series of season previews: Two world premieres and three first-time Chicago stagings form a doubly celebratory season at Steppenwolf Theatre – marking the company’s 40th anniversary and honoring the legacy of its longtime artistic director, Martha Lavey, who stepped down at the end of last season. Steppenwolf opens with the world premiere of Frank Galati’s adaptation of “East of Eden,” John Steinbeck’s sweeping, tumultuous epic novel about family dynamics and fortunes set mainly in California early in the 20th century.
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ at Redtwist: Friendly fire at close range, brutal and brilliant
Review: Seeing a play at tiny Redtwist Theatre, where a full house of 30 or 40 viewers often encircles the unfolding drama, can be an experience of in-your-face intensity. But the company’s electric burn through Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” takes intensity to a harrowing new place. ★★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Lifeline plots two comedies, with a gritty digression to ‘Midnight Cowboy’
12th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: ‘Disgraced,’ 4 world premieres accent a many-splendored season at Goodman
11th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: The binding threads are classic in Court’s pursuit of Greek and modern
10th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Northlight swings its beacon toward gay community and family redefined
9th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Presto! Chicago Shakespeare season blows in with super-magical ‘Tempest’
8th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Porchlight, in its Chicago style, jumps into season of musicals with ‘Side Show’
Seventh in a series of season previews: Michael Weber, the artistic director at Porchlight Music Theatre, makes no bones about his company being a brash urban Chicago enterprise. That, he says, is why Porchlight’s 2015-16 season opener, a revamped version of the 1997 musical “Side Show,” is going to be special. Then, as if to underscore this true grit, it’s on to another earthy evening with an encore of the company’s Jefferson Award-winning Fats Waller revue “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”
Role Playing: Tracy Michelle Arnold debunks madness as force that drives Blanche DuBois
Interview: Tracy Michelle Arnold, who portrays a feisty and resourceful Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” at American Players Theatre, doesn’t buy the common perception of this embattled woman as “a crazy person.” Arnold sees Blanche as a scarred fighter who never gives up her struggle to survive, even at the end.
Theater 2015-16: In farewell to Lakeview home, Strawdog maps season with 3 world premieres
Sixth in a series of season previews: Strawdog Theatre’s 2015-16 season is the last hurrah at its old home up the well-worn stairs on Broadway in the Lakeview neighborhood. While redevelopment will force Strawdog to relocate next year, the season at hand finds the 28-year-old company in peak vigor with plans for seven shows in two full-fledged series. Three world premieres highlight a 2015-16 season that will include four productions on the main stage and three in the company’s intimate Hugen Hall series.
Theater 2015-16: Fearless Redtwist confronts ‘Virginia Woolf’ and takes on a world premiere
Fifth in a series of season previews: Seven seasons ago, Michael Colucci and Jan Ellen Graves, the married founders and still co-artistic directors of Redtwist Theatre, went at each other as George and Martha, the warring gamers in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” This season they hand over those rhetorical 8-ounce gloves to new sparring mates as Redtwist opens its 2015-16 series with another go at Albee’s dark comedy about love and marriage.
Theater 2015-16: Ever-changeable Hypocrites plan two intense musicals, three dark dramas
Fourth in a series of season previews: The Chicago theater company that now appears to be one thing, then slyly becomes completely different (and hence calls itself The Hypocrites), will serve up a typically careening season for 2015-16: two existential musicals framing three plays that peer deeply into the abyss of fate.
Theater 2015-16: American Blues will trumpet three decades with gritty anthem of ‘Rainmaker’
Third in a series of season previews: Gwendolyn Whiteside, the producing artistic director of American Blues Theater, sees a cosmic – or perhaps the better word is earthly — connection between her company and N. Richard Nash’s play “The Rainmaker,” which opens ABT’s season. “What draws us to ‘The Rainmaker,’” she says, “is its expression of incredible human resilience and the human need for hope.”
Theater 2015-16: It’s an energy surge at TimeLine as timeless Mike Nussbaum opens in ‘The Price’
Second in a series of season previews: Surveying the scheme of plays, actors and directors for TimeLine Theatre’s 2015-16 season, its 19th, artist director PJ Powers’ voice fills with palpable excitement. The company’s opener, Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” observes the playwright’s 100th birth year – and it stars Chicago’s living legend, Mike Nussbaum, who’s not far behind Miller on that time line.
Theater 2015-16: Reveling in discomfort zone, Profiles leads off with the off-beat ‘Jacksonian’
First in a series of season previews: Profiles Theatre opens its 27th season with an off-the-wall, grimly humorous, borderline surreal gem of a play fraught with wacky characters and murder, Beth Henley’s “The Jacksonian,” that might have been tailored expressly for this devoutly edgy company. It launches a lineup that finds Profiles in its high-intensity groove.
Role Playing: Christopher Donahue, as Ahab, finds sea’s depth in sadness of a vengeful soul
Interview: Christopher Donahue contemplates the weathered, craggy, doggedly vengeful figure of Captain Ahab, the iconic central character of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” whose cosmic persona Donahue brings into vivid focus on the stage at Lookingglass Theatre. And in the driven whale hunter, the actor finds a paradox. “Ahab abides far away from humanity,” Donahue says. “He is as much a creature of the sea as the creature he’s trying to kill. The sea lives in him. I think he believes himself to be as strong and tumultuous as the sea itself.”
‘Pride and Prejudice’ at American Players: Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, with charm and brevity
Review: You can’t blame an audience for lapping it up: Skilled and familiar actors playing beloved characters in a story so cherished that everyone can pretty much recite along. But that doesn’t necessarily make for memorable theater. Witness the American Players Theatre stage version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★
‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ at American Players: Shakespeare’s fat Falstaff and some lusty LOL
Review: If the delight of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” lies in the sparring between that fat, delusional romantic Sir John Falstaff and a raft of characters determined to rub his nose in reality, this broad comedy ultimately hangs on two hooks, and the rollicking production at American Players Theatre delivers them both at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★
Role Playing: Lance Baker embodies the ennui, despair of fugitive Jews in ‘Diary of Anne Frank’
Interview: Of the eight Jewish characters huddled together against the Nazi terror just beyond the door of their little room, in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” one of them arguably feels the confinement, the boredom, the uselessness more than the others. He is Mr. van Daan, a business associate of Anne’s father; and Lance Baker, who portrays this restive soul at Writers Theatre, sees him as a man marginalized in his own heart.
Composer and architect connect as Kalmar illuminates Adams’ ‘Harmonielehre’ at Grant Park
Review: Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus performed Haydn’s Harmoniemesse and John Adams’s Harmonielehre on Aug. 8, is one of the most striking structures in a city full of awesome architecture. The Frank Gehry-designed outdoor stage calls to mind a bullet hole in sheet metal, dynamic silver panels exploding outward in spontaneous, sweeping waves.
Chicago Wine Journal »
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Burgundy’s range is reflected in two beauties from Leclerc, Gille
Tasting Report: The power, the finesse and the sheer intellectual engagement that stamp top-quality red Burgundy wines were amply displayed in youthful, sharply contrasting examples I recently tasted from two producers in the famed Côte d’Or, Domaine Gille and Domaine René Leclerc.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Sbragia’s Merlot makes a regal splash from a bargain bottle
Tasting Report: It’s always such a smile-inducing pleasure to come upon a wine that exceeds all expectations in its price class. A terrific example is Sbragia Family Vineyards’ Dry Creek Valley Sonoma Home Ranch Merlot 2012, a wine stuffed with the goods to compete well beyond its modest price of $24.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Santa Duc draws arc of splendor with old-vines Gigondas
Mulling Wine: To glimpse the poor, stony soil is to wonder how it could ever produce the grapes that Domaine Santa Duc in turn translates into some of the most seductive wine in the Southern Rhône Valley appellation of Gigondas. But the proof was there in a palate-pleasing, indeed eye-opening vertical sampler of Santa Duc’s single-vineyard, old-vine Gigondas Prestige des Hautes Garrigues.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Brancaia delivers three Tuscans that are super and then some
Tasting Report: The wines of Tuscan producer Brancaia are well worth seeking out. There’s something exceptional here to meet budgets across a wide range. An array of Brancaia wines were served at an off-beat cheese party at the East Loop Chicago restaurant Tesori, when chef Danny Sweis sliced into a new 80-pound wheel of parmesan.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: With elegant 2014 Viognier, Darioush does a beauty one better
Tasting Report: One of the great pleasures of a visit to France’s Northern Rhone Valley is the luscious Viognier produced in Condrieu. I would have said it was matchless – until I had the equally happy experience of the Viognier from Darioush in California’s Napa Valley. The Darioush Viognier is a recent discovery for me. I first tasted it in the 2013 vintage – a lovely expression of white wine that in its combination of buttery depth and finesse evoked not only the Viognier of Condrieu but also the plush majesty of the top Chardonnays in Burgundy. And the newly released 2014 may prove to be even better.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Classic art of Jaboulet’s new Chapelle mistress
Tasting Report: Since my earliest forays into French wines, the brightest stars in my firmament have consistently included the patrician Hermitage La Chapelle produced by Paul Jaboulet Aîné in France’s Northern Rhône Valley. So it was little short of enchanting to step back through time at a vertical tasting of this great expression of Syrah at a recent Chicago seminar sponsored by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Aged Burgundian glory from three négociants
Mulling Wine: By chance or perhaps my natural gravitation, I just completed a sort of hat trick – meal accompaniments from three of my favorite Burgundy producers, all of whom fall into the somewhat misunderstood category of négociants.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Burgundy-style Pinot Noir from an Oregon star
Tasting Report: Since its founding in 1989, Domaine Serene in Oregon’s Willamette Valley has emerged as one of the top producers of Pinot Noir in a region famous for that wine. In a horizontal tasting with friends of four different Domaine Serene bottlings from the 2011 vintage, it became readily apparent why this house continues to enjoy such high esteem.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: A new Spanish horizon for old-vine Garnacha
Tasting Report: With the dramatic emergence of Spanish wines in recent years, Grenache has gained familiarity in its Spanish robes as Garnacha – which might lead one to assume that the “two” grapes are one and the same. Indeed they are, and yet there’s a world of difference between them. That became clear during a Chicago seminar last week presented by Spanish producers of Garnacha from Cariñena, a small appellation long overshadowed by the likes of Rioja and Ribera del Duero.
CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: The pleasures (and alluring price) of Chablis
Tasting Report: Somewhat to the northwest of the heart of what we think of as Burgundy – that is, the glorious Côte-d’Or with its world-famous Pinot Noir and Chardonnay — lies the appellation of Chablis. Technically, Chablis is part of Burgundy, though it’s more like an island. Or perhaps an unfavored stepchild. But for wine lovers, especially devotees of Chardonnay, Chablis is a discovery-in-waiting.
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