The Devil’s Day Off is a new work written by Signal Ensemble member John Steinhagen. It depicts bored, irritated Chicagoans during a 24-hour long power outage during a heatwave. As tempers flare and bodies wilt, we are treated to many sliver-thin slices of life.
Read MoreEmma is attending a college party in Chicago. She’s the only black woman there. A black man who looks like Idris Elba is also in attendance, but other than him, everybody is white, upper-middle class, artistic, and liberal. Emma says they’re wise enough not to be bothered by it. They are not, however, wise enough to refrain from constantly being unintentionally offensive. Emma knows she is being shown off. She resents the other women asking her to confirm that they’re oppressed.
Read MoreConsidered to be Rodgers & Hammerstein’s most beloved musical, The King and I is set in Siam in the 1860’s. It tells the story of Anna, a widowed Englishwomen, who becomes a tutor to the King’s children as part of the ‘westernization’ of Siam by the King. The King, played with a tortured nature by Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte is torn between clinging to his ancient customs and embracing modern ways.
Read MorePlaywright Abbie Spallen has a bit of McPherson’s wacky characters, some of Friel’s monologues with a dose of McDonagh’s dark humor in her plays. Strandline is a funny yet searing work that deals with the mourning for Mairin’s (Kirsten Fitzgerald) dead husband who drowns in sight of Mairin and town’s folk during a wedding celebration in a seaside town on the Northern Ireland border. It seems that Mairin’s husband drowned trying to save some French tourists.
Read MoreHappy Days, Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play of fleeting hope and endless woe colliding with one another, is at the core a fascinating subject. However, the content undoubtedly worked a lot more to shake up an audience in 1961 than in 2014. Theatre Y in Logan Square attempts to bring this morose menagerie into the 21st Century with the use of broken down technology piled up to the waist of our heroine. I spent time admiring the craftsmanship of this mound of monitors before the play began, but of course a well-constructed set is not what makes the play. Truly, the set can only serve to enhance or hinder the experience.
Read MoreThe Lieutenant of Inishmore is a 2001 gore-comedy which ridicules terrorism. The show, which mostly takes place on the tiny Irish island of Inishmore, is a fast-paced, high-energy farce. Unfortunately, the Irish accents are a severe pitfall for this cast. I was told this presented less of a problem at previews than at press night, and hope it gets resolved early in the run.
Read MoreIf this play were only a satire of Agosto Boal-type socially conscious theatre contextualized within Chinese history, it would be inside baseball enough. But the second act takes us into outright absurdism, as the theatre technology seizes direct control of the human characters and forces them through seemingly spontaneous fourth-wall breaking story snippets, which are of course, really scripted.
Read MoreChicago, under the innovative leadership of William Massolia, director Scott Weinstein and music director Elizabneth Doran, is the first theatre to experience this newly reworked of the voyage of the Titanic from the crew’s,the passengers – first, second and third class’ point of view. The brilliance of Maury Yeston’s score and the efficiency of Peter Stone’s book comes to life in the intimate Theater Wit stage.
Read MoreLet me step back a moment. Follow me back in time. Pseudo-Chum is a play written and directed by Sean & Carolyn Benjamin. Presented by the Neo-Futurists, the play reveals to us three aspects of Chum, the play within the play Pseudo-Chum. Chum is about a family that makes a trip to the coast of Australia to cull sharks. Beginning with the secret death of the patriarch of the family, lies and betrayal set in early, as the family begins to metaphorically and literally attempt to ruin one another.
Read MoreOn October 21st, Chicago Folks Operetta presented a one-night show, Operetta in Exile. The ninety minute long piece was a tribute to the Jewish composers and lyricists of the Berlin and Vienna operetta genre who remain largely unknown in English. Part revue and part history lesson, the piece is an example of CFO’s dedication to spreading appreciation for central European culture in North America.
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