Reviews

Smudge

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Smudge, is a confounding, disturbing yet somehow intoxicating work that i wanted to hate but somehow I was drawn to the wacky work. To quote the director Allison Sjoemaker: “Smudge isn’t a drama, it’s not a comedy; it’s not realism nor is it fantasy.” I found it a far-fetched drama about what it is to be alive, to be human, and to love another. It sure is one of those head-scratching plays that leaves us troubled, terrified and trembling as we leave the theatre. Yet, it is also a thought provoking piece that get us to challenge our basic beliefs especially on the nature of humanity.

Homecoming 1972

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Chicago Dramatists, the playwrights’ theatre, has a 34 year history of developing and mounting new works. Their latest, Homecoming 1972 by Robert Koon is a nicely acted slice of life of life about the physical and emotional effects of war on a small town average guy. The work is played out in a series of two person scenes. The setting is in a small Minnesota town circa 1972 that finds Frank (Matt Holzfeind) as a physically wounded (bad back) and emotionally scared Vietnam veteran struggling to come to terms with the mundane simple world of rural Minnesota upon his return from the tram of War.

The Electric Baby

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…the story was a convoluted intertwined mixture of people bound indirectly by loss. The players mostly over played their characters, especially Amanda Powell as Rosie. Add the over use of Romanian (Gypsy?) folklore against African folklore and we listen to so many age-old aphorisms and truisms that the story seemed to be interrupted by playwright’s need to send us into her world of metaphors Add the moon symbol and, of course, the electric baby and we put the story in second place.

The Misanthrope

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As stuffed full of well-measured comedic performances and lush production values as you are likely to see anytime soon, Newell’s Misanthrope feels as hedonistically indulgent as any French courtier. Like an opulent Parisian banquet (or a drag ball in Harlem), it’s strengths are in its cultivation of the surface’s glittering allure. And in never deigning to take itself as seriously as Alceste takes himself, this production still manages to probe deeper than any hair-brained philosophy.

In the Company of Men

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But if the consciously gray moral tones of Snyder’s production strike us as being overly conciliatory toward its anti-heroes, we should realize that it offers us something decidedly more interesting than its sharp moral disapproval. By opening us up to the subtle seductions of the rakish mindset, In the Company of Men dislodges us from the place where moral judgements feel simply automatic. Rather, we are afforded the opportunity to see our own objections for what they are: the strident disapproval of a middle-class railing against its self-proclaimed ‘betters.’

Reverb

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Without giving away too much, let me state that Reverb is a complex character study as well as a unique lover story that exposes the give new meaning to the term ” reverb. ” It demonstrates the power of wrath on relationships. Reverb is, indeed, a Chicago style in-your-face raw drama. Director Jonathan Berry told me that playwright Leslye Headland turned down a New York City production believing that Chicago actors and storefront theatres would do her work justice. That became a reality with Berry’s tightly nuanced production

Fight Girl Battle World

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This futuristic tale has its moments but ultimately succeeds in wearing us out. I’m not sure who the audience is for this genre of theatre? The action and sheer effort will impress you, its just that the story suffers with all the neat effects, costumes and tones. if you like experimental sci-fi works, then Fight Girl Battle World may be you for.

Speech & Debate

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American Theater Company’s Artistic Director PJ Paparelli has remounted Stephen Karam’s 2007 teen comedy Speech & Debate five years after ATC gave the play its original Chicago premiere. Featuring three hyper-articulate teen misfits as they learn to navigate early adulthood in the so-called “information age,” Paparelli’s current staging is still likably funny and warmhearted even as it continues to ask adult questions about privacy, self-expression, and being comfortable in one’s skin.

Beethoven 6 at the CSO

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In the end, however, it seemed that Mena had just set the metronome at certain level, and was determined not to waver from it. The CSO’s sound certainly benefited from the size of its string section, a marked break from modern convention; but doubling of the winds, in addition would have maintained a better balance. Still, Mena can certainly be very musical at times, and I would not hesitate to say that this concert would have been very much worth-while had I only remembered to arrive after the intermission.

Orange Flower Water – BareBones Theatre Group at Raven Theatre

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“Everything actually has to happen, doesn’t it? You think in your mind things can happen without happening, but in the end, they always have to actually happen.” Or so says Beth, a Pine City housewife in Craig Wright’s 2002 Orange Flower Water, currently on view at Raven Theater. And though its tempting to dwell on how conveniently self-serving Beth’s position may be as she prepares to leave her husband for a different married man, her sense of not being in control of her own life is point that gets made on more than one occasion in this play—and in more than one way.

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