Tom Williams Combining Rogers’ folksy, down-home kitchen-sink humor with satire of national politics and a message of hope, the presentation plays like a 1934 live Rogers’ radio show with McKillip displaying the rope tricks as Will’s trade mark.
Tom Williams has won the 2010 James Friend Memorial Award for Criticism for his work as creator and founder of www.chicagocritic.com
The amazingly honest performances, rich in nuance and depth, make Our Lady of the Underpass a most enticing and wholly engaging theatrical work. Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set and Jess Klug and Mac Vaughey’s vivid lighting give an aura that sure could be an portrait of a holy woman.
The rock opera covers a wide range of emotions, actions including violence. With the over powering music and the uneven vocals by some players, You Took Away My Flag is long on rock anthems, a cliche-ridden story and several false endings.
It is refreshing to see an new play that contains wit, humor, biting satire with zinging commentary about what it is to be human. Ozma & Harrier is playwright Daniel Caffrey’s satire on the influence of TV sitcoms and pop culture.
I believe that using irritating rhymes and hip-hop speech patterns not only makes the words hard to understand but comes off as trivializing the horrors of surviving the slaughter in the Sudan. Combine the strong African accents with the gibberish, sports-orientated, hip-hop tirades and The Lost Boys of Sudan reduces the struggles of survival by the three teens as a provocative adventure. Too much whimsy and artsy disjointed scenes lowered the impact of the Sudan’s tragedy.
Miller’s 2002 penultimate play brilliantly satirizes modern politics and faith in a media-obsessed society. This is whacked-out satire that contains both Miller’s wonderful dialogue and apt speeches and, a rarely used farcical satirical style each used to hone in to make Miller’s duality– “hope and disgust, high amusement and despair. It’s all packed into one play.”
A Life is both an engrossing work filled with fully developed characters and a poignant look at how bitterness and judgmental attitudes can lead to an unfulfilled life. We see that many of us have some of Desmond’s traits in us.
Miller’s writing in good hands with this cast. My only problem is with some of the young women who speak too fast and run their words together making them hard to understand. Craig C. Thompson, Jennifer Mathews, Nancy Friedrich and Edward Kuffert were particularly effective.
Director/choreographer Rachel Rockwell has assembled a cast of 33 (with mostly Equity actors) that features “A” list talents lead by Larry Adams (Father), Cory Goodrich (Mother), Mark David Kaplan (Tateh) with excellent work from the commanding Quentin Earl Darrington as Coalhouse Walker Jr. Valisia LeKae (Sarah), Max Quinlan (Brother), Stef Tovar (Houdini) and Summer Naomi Smart (Evelyn Nesbit) each made major contributions to the show.