Tom Williams Besides Verdi brilliant score, the voices sing with passionate emotions. Tenor Marcello Giordani commands the stage and soars to the heavens while Sondra Radvanovsky – a Chicago native- raises to the demanding role of Aida. She triumphs in her first time as Aida at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The audience cheered her performance! Jill Grove’s mezzo effectively demonstrated Amneris’ heartache and Gordon Hwkins strong baritone rules his scenes.
Another stunning production featuring 27 actors/dancers with 13 Equity plays and 17 stop-shelf musicians at Paramount Theatre in Aurora. It still holds audiences with its stunning honesty and emotionally exhilarating heart…A Chorus Line is so strong a piece that nothing can dent its emotional impact. Judging by the full house for Wednesday matinee, musicals have found an audience in the Far Western Suburbs.
This lightweight fare is a delight for everyone, especially those between 40 and 50 years old. ABBA was their group. ‘Dancing Queen,’ ‘Honey, Honey,’ and ‘Take A Chance On Me’ recall the 70’s when romance, sensuality and adventure reigned.
The dynamic of this drama lies in the bickering, sexual advances, mockery and stress each student endures as they struggle for grades, money, acceptance, and some sexual release. Much of this 1 hour and 55 minute play builds the emotional tension nicely as director Jonathan Berry swiftly paces the dramatic tension toward a wrenching conclusion
In The Drawer Boy, we meet two friends living and working a farm in 1972 rural Ontario. Angus (Will Kinnear) and his friend Morgan (Nick Polus) who run their farm through a harmonious daily ritual based on Morgan being the farmer and Angus being the cook, housekeeper and account. Tolerance, trust and routine rule their lives. They seem content until a young man-an actor- arrives at the farm asking to learn about farming by living and working with Morgan and Angus.
But once the show is trimmed and refocused, Invisible Man will emerge as a masterful stage work. After all the text of the Invisible Man remains an important depiction of the American experience. Teagle F. Bougere tour de force performance gives the Invisible Man demonstrates the human search for identity by an anti-hero everyman
The early scenes that depict the determination and strength of each women are marvelously played out as each establishes their own rules for the relationship. Pearl will only sing unheard slave and work songs if Susannah works to find Pearl’s daughter. The two eventually unite to allow each to become “successful” on each’s terms.
I must say that playwright Dennis Kelly over works the speeches that come across as as personal confessionals or sketches or interwoven scenarios that have a thin strand with one couple – David (Peter Moore) and Jess (Julia Siple) – debt-laden misery of a married couple as their spending and lavish lifestyle threaten their peace.
Nick is a sexually frustrated teen and adventure seeking lad who devises ever more dangerous Internet games to quench his thirst for danger and control over others. Based on a true story of a British teen who ventured down a dark path into the virtual world from a 2005 “Vanity Fair” magazine story, Nick creates a fictional Internet identity first as a harmless prank then as a personal obsession
Prolific playwright Brett Neveu, a company member of A Red Orchid, presents his sixth world premiere at the intimate Old Town Chicago theatre. Megacosm is an amazingly eerie and totally engrossing cliff-hanger 85 minute one-act comic mystery…Chris (Larry Grimm) is a nerdy shaggy-haired inventor anxious to make a presentation to Britt (Danny McCarthy) the head of a multinational corporation. The atmosphere around the company’s headquarters is ripe with violent protestors.