Tom Williams Seven Brides is a light weight musical with country/barn dance tunes and romantic ballads. The show is cute, funny and heartwarmingly innocent. While the score is underwhelming, it is a toe-tapping delight. Steve Blanchard plays Adam effectively and Abby Mueller has the spunk to command the stage as Milly. The dancers dominate with several show-stopping high energy dances.
The story gets even more bizarre but enough said since I believe that Hinderaker has gone much too far as he tries to stimulate his anti-gun message. This play becomes a fantasy cautionary tale that stretches credulity.
Hinderaker sure leaves out other possibilities if he wants to protect students. What about arming the teachers or having police patrolling in the school? What about more sophisticated gun detecting equipment? What about controlling distribution of guns and ammunition? I could go on and on.
Three Sisters is a modern naturalistic character study of unrequited hope as each character tries desperately to garner some happiness out of their drab day-to-day existence. The Piven production is a subtle, nuanced production wherein we witness both the decay of the privileged class in Russia and their desperate search for meaning in their lives
Williams finds classic tragedy in the contemporary South. In this poetic expressionist vision of the struggle between truth and illusion in the face of mortality and the fraught attempts of the family members to communicate amongst themselves, Williams effectively expresses the pain and loneliness each feels as they resort to attacking each other as their means of relating.
With gobs of camp, grouping, men kissing men and spoken in speech patterns that ran from mumbling, to running their words so quickly as to be inaudible to screaming – this flamboyantly awful production is more of a gay boys acting out than a serious look at the trials, foibles and failures of Oscar Wilde.
A few seconds into the Carmen overture, Bizet’s haunting melodies and stirring rhythms remind us of his brilliance. We’ve heard Bizet’s music as underscoring for films as much as we’ve heard them in an opera house. Now add a large cast including the Chicago Children’s Choir and you have a most memorable evening of grand opera!
Carolyn Defrin deftly narrates with loads of help from fifth grader Caroline Heffernan who smartly plays the innocence of childhood as Scout Finch Lee’s alter-ego from her childhood. Seldom have I seen a fifth grader with the acting chops and ability to not only deliver her lines but to have spot on timing to convey humor and pathos. Caroline Heffernan is a dynamite talent.
Guy and Pam with help from their son Bobby (Tyler Ross), set into motion a series of mishaps, mayhem and madness around the concept of a petite teenager girl raping a football player. The silliness and the physical action escalates into hilarity as the preposterous action unfolds
In this Equus, it surly is Alan’s play as Ian McCabe’s gusty, rivetingly chilling and brave performance as Alan totally dominates. McCabe has that “look” and the pent-up passion that moves Alan from a timid boy to a explosive sexual-religious fanatic who sees God in the horses he cares for. McCabe’s fully entrancing performance complete with three nude scenes emphasis the sexual tension that the boy feels toward the horses.
The first act of the now titled: At Home At the Zoo is a wordy, repetitive boring piece that depicts Peter’s family life as a sort of set up for the brilliant The Zoo Story. Maybe it was Albee’s ego or a bout with dementia because why diminish the play that established you as a playwright with an inferior work such as Homelife?