Jacob Davis Theatre at the Center kicks off the holiday season with the regional premier of a musical based on Truman Capote’s 1956 short story “A Christmas Memory.” The show does indeed take the form of a memory, and mixes childhood nostalgia with just the right amount of melancholy. The small cast easily shifts through a wide range of music to expand Capote’s story while remaining faithful to his tone.
Iphigenia in Aulis is the first of three ancient Greek tragedies Court Theatre will perform over the next three years. The others, written by the other two surviving tragedians, will together form a trilogy telling the story of the House of Atreus. It’s an ambitious project that will mainly be of interest to academics and die-hard theatre fans, but it’s off to a strong start.
As a Dickens adaptation, the show is long, and I wish the evening performances didn’t start so late. There are a few plays-within-the-play that could have been left out. Still, anyone who isn’t satisfied just seeing A Christmas Carol this winter would do well to give Great Expectations a try. Given the challenges of a smaller theatre, many of Gerace’s solutions are ingenious. The cast seems to make up far more people than they do, and the whole show is a celebration of the imagination
Mud, River, Stone wraps up Eclipse Theatre Company’s season dedicated to Lynn Nottage. The choice is odd, since the play, written in 1998, is one of Nottage’s earlier works, and is an ancestor to her Pulitzer Prize winning Ruined, which Eclipse has already produced earlier this year. This production is strong, but has to compensate for an illogical script.
Spartan Theatre Company takes its names from its minimal budget and aesthetics. The company was founded in 2012 by three Roosevelt University alumni. Therefore, they deserve especially high praise for their excellent production of Tony Kushner’s 1980s work A Bright Room Called Day, now playing at Chemically Imbalanced Theater….This show was a bold choice for such a young company, and they do it justice
Verdi’s 1853 opera is here interpreted during a civil war in early nineteenth-century Spain. Loyalist commander Ferrando (bass Andrea Silvestrelli) keeps his soldiers awake one night by telling them a spooky story. Years ago, the old count had a “gypsy” burnt at the stake because he blamed her sorcery for his younger son’s illness. The gypsy’s daughter then abducted the little boy, and burnt him on the same pyre as her mother. It just so happens that this is the backstory to the plot, and the present Count di Luna (baritone Quinn Kelsey) is the surviving brother. Currently, he is at the castle to woo the noblewoman Leonora (soprano Amber Wagner).
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.
Emma 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.
The 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.
If 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.