And director Lili-Anne Brown manages to turn See What I Wanna See’s overly plodding pacing into an otherwise brisk two hours of beautiful music and stirring performances. LaChiusa, much like Sondheim, never makes the work of the actor or director easy. Refusing the more cloying sentiments of a Rodgers and Hammerstein, his work requires constant focus and subtle emotional turns. Thankfully Bailiwick Chicago Theatre is up for the challenge!
Read MoreFilled with colorful customs, shadow puppets, and loads of stage combat, Qui Nguyen’s ridiculous comedy, She Kills Monsters, is highlighted with much screaming, physical comedy and over-the-top performances. This wild and unworkable mess is the story of a most unlikable lead character, Agnes (Katherine Banks)’s life is tuned upside down when she stumbles upon her late sister’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook
Read MoreIn Christina Anderson’s interesting play, Blacktop Sky, we meet 18 year old Ida (Kristin E. Ellis), a resident of a Chicago housing project. she slowly befriends a young homeless man who lives on a bench in the project’s courtyard after she witness police rough up a fellow project resident
Read MoreThe Fall of Heaven can be enjoyed on several levels: it is a morality play (good vs. evil); a human comedy; and a hopeful tribute to humanity. it is also as finely constructed and stage theatrical production. Congo Square proves once more that they produce outstanding theatre. Don’t miss this unique show.
Read MoreIn Simon Block’s telling adaptation of Jonathan Safran For’s novel, Everything is Illuminated, a 20something American Jewish boy travels to the Ukraine with only a yellowing photograph in hand. He is Jonathan (Brad Smith) and he is in search of the woman, Augustine, who saved his grandfather form death at the hands of the invading Nazis.
Read MoreLee Blessing calls his A Body of Water as puzzle play; that sure is accurate. When a middle aged couple awaken each day and don’t know who they are, where they are, or the why of anything, the mystery is presented. The couple struggles to discover what has happened to them. Fear and disorientation consumes them.
Read MoreIn Paul Edwards’ smart, nicely paced and well acted stage adaptation, Peyton Place unfolds as a period piece of life in the repressed 1950’s small town America. We meet three women coming to terms with their sexual identities. Constance MacKenzie (Sheila Willis) is an emotionally drained woman and mother to the sensitive and precious daughter Allison (Catherine Gillespie) – am aspiring writer. Add Selena Cross (Sara Renee Gilbert), the poor girl from the ‘shacks” and we have three microcosms of the emerging women of the ’50’s.
Read MoreMievelle calls The City & The City – “wired fiction” – sc-fic and fantasy meets horror meets ghost stories or some combination thereof. It is a mystery rapped into a location fantasy that often confuses more that enlightens despite a worthy cast of ten players who each give it a go.
Read MoreImprobable Frequency is set during WWII—or “The Emergency” as it was then known to neutral Ireland—and recounts the adventures of Tristram Faraday (Mike Dailey)—a British code breaker, spy, and cruciverbalist (meaning one who compiles crossword puzzles). Being dispatched to Dublin in 1941 to investigate a series of implausibly portentous radio broadcasts, Faraday there encounters a colorful cast of IRA revolutionaries, mad scientists, and double agents. Infiltrating their nefarious ranks, Faraday comes face to face with an insidious scheme to…well, best not get into that now. Let’s just say that Improbable Frequency carries on in the absurdist vein (think James Bond meets early Tom Stoppard), humorously stretching the limits of plausibility as far as they can go.
Read MoreFrom Doo Wop to Hip Hop, Black Ensemble Theater’s current confectionery treat, is so sweet it’ll cause a cavity. Executive Director Jackie Taylor and Associate Director Reuben Echoles have collaborated to bring us a remarkable showcase of some of Chicago’s biggest and brightest voices, belting through a panoply of favorites for both young and old alike.
Read More