It sure seems that prolific playwright Don Nigro has the self referential dialog of those tongue-in-cheek mystery films from the ’40 & ’50’s down pat. His world premiere, City of Dreadful Night is a smart, coy, and full engaging 90 minute mystery reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain novels turn into black and white films.
Read MoreWith our current mode of abbreviated words in newspapers and magazines and texting speak, enjoy the full British precision of the English language in Jeeves, and awaken your ears to its beauty and complexity. Jeeves provides not only exact language, but the most colorful sophisticated insults…a lost art from a bygone era. Even the novel slang and expressions like “a sticky wicket” prove amusing. “Jeeves Takes a Bow” is all silly fun with little social commentary…a wonderfully comedic escape from our complex day-to-day concerns. We need more Jeeves!
Read MoreAmerican politicians are sold to us as though they were tubes of toothpaste, and Mr. Munby’s Cesar looks to be no different. But the whole thing feels a touch too ironic, too cheeky, as we soon suspect the image of Cesar—like that of all great American politicians—to be infinitely more impressive than the man himself. Yet if Brutus is to enact a genuine tragedy, then Cesar must be no less than he claims: “…constant as the northern star,/ Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality/ There is no fellow in the firmament.” After all, there is no hero’s dignity in slaying an upstart impostor.
Read MorePerhaps what is most appealing about Wagner’s 1868 opera Die Mestersinger, despite the near 4 hour and 45 minute running time, excluding intermission, is the sheer accessibility of the subject matter. Rather than taking old folk tales and German mythological heroes for its theme, the opera tells an all too strikingly relevant story of a Guild of Master-singers—a sort of modern German adaptation of Grecian bards, with music added—and the struggle of an outsider and up-start, in this case the noble Walther von Stolzing, against the insensible artistic establishment.
Read MoreI grew up listening to Billie Holiday records so I am quite familiar with her unique blues-oriented distinct jazz singing style. I can state with absolute certainty that Alexis Rogers has Billie Holiday’s style down pat. Add her fabulously realistic acting deftly depicting the pain Billie suffered as she tried to blunt reality with heron and whiskey and Rogers combines her amazing channeling of Holiday’s singing style with a sting of personal stories about the horrors of her life.
Read MoreDispensing with an overt critique of the American foreign policy establishment, BTBZ is about the faces on the ground and their baser instincts for blood, sex, power, and money that threaten to overwhelm them in the aftermath of anarchy. But what, the Tiger asks, might ultimately be said of God’s nature in the face of such wrath and violence? Atheism, in this case, would be the more comforting (if less convincing) position. The darker truth, as BTBZ only intimates, is that God is Himself a warrior—one who, on occasion, demands blood sacrifice.
Read MoreCovering three worlds: adolescent high school cultural, the events surrounding the Columbine Shootings, and the thirteen-year aftermath, Columbinus runs 2 hours and 43 minutes making it an exhaustive affair. My main problem with this production is its length and the over theatricality of parts of the show.
Read MoreLet’s just say then that there was something reminiscent in this production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, produced by the Steppenwolf Theater Company. The boxcar-like stage. The parallel rows of spectators. The crazy man in the middle, railing against some unperceived horrors, unable to be saved or helped. The play is set in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in some unspecified little English town adjacent to the sea. Stanley Webber, the Boles’ tenant for the past year and a proverbial “washout,” is even at the play’s outset a rudderless boat. But things are about to change for Stanley when two strange men show up to the house looking for board. And, it would appear, looking for Stanley
Read MoreIf you’ve ever call a call center for support, you’ll be able to relate to Anupama Chandrasekhar’s Disconnect. It is a fresh look at the outsourcing of American jobs to India where speaking flawless English is considered a high status accomplishment. Disconnect is set in Chennai, India in 2009 during the American recession at a bad debt collection agency.
Read MoreBy Reginald Edmund Directed by Russ Tutterow At Chicago Dramatists Southbridge is an intricate and moving drama on the dangers
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