The cast of six: Dana Tretta, Jeremy Trager, Sara Schoch, Danni Smith, Evan Tyrone Martin and pianist/ music director Austin Cook each had their moments warbling the iconic R & H tunes. Much of the credit for mounting such a well sung revue goes to the sharp casting by Fred Anzevino who always seems to find new talent to populate his shows. But it is the stellar music direction and deft musicianship by Chicago newbie Austin Cook that made a difference.
By Yasmina Reza Translated by Christopher Hampton Directed by Rick Snyder At the Goodman Theatre, Chicago The Banality of Bourgeois Evil God of Carnage is not about the destination: when the four actors come on stage, you already know that, in the end, they will tear each other apart. What God of Carnage is about, … Read more
While Lorraine Freund and Barbara Roeder Harris were excellent as the Mother Superior and the doctor, this show becomes a special theatrical experience by the riveting work from Sara Pavlak as Agnes. Pavlak’s marvelous singing – chanting in Latin – gives her the audio aura that completed when we see her beautiful smile and her bright, loving blue eyes! Miss Pavlak plays Agnes with a most empathetic and innocent manner
No greater example of the painstaking detail Marin took with these etchings than L’Opera Paris c.1908. We can see that Marin is working at a masters etching level with details that are too numerous to count, yet he’s is trying to work into his own. Minute spaces in
Under director Louis Contey and his creative team, Mikhail Bulgakov’s stinging novel satirical of Russian bureaucratic censorship penned in the 1930’s (finished in 1940 but not published until 1967 with much censored Soviet edits), becomes a manically pleasing journey and a fine evening of theatre.
Mary-Arrchie Theatre specializes in raw, gritty Chicago style theatre. They take those attitudes toward British playwright Harold Pinter’s 1967 Tony Award-winning (for Best Play), The Homecoming. The trick to successfully mounting a Pinter play is to have your cast master the space between the words and the difficult swift change of meaning with the utterance of a single word or gesture.
And it’s carried off well. The tribe is strong. Steel Burkhardt, Paris Remillard, Caren Lyn Tackett and Kacie Sheik (Berger, Claude, Sheila and Jeanie) are stand-outs amongst a stand-out ensemble. Really, you couldn’t ask for better people to be doing this show. And, keeping in the spirit with the original production, they do involve the audience – just another boundary that this piece of theater pushed.
I have mixed feelings about this production. Generally, the sound mix made for many of the singers being overwhelmed by the orchestra. I also though that the ensemble has too many weak voices. In an attempt to be an operetta, many of the 24 songs seemed forced and they had a ‘talk-song’ sound similar to the William Finn style. The use of many baseball references diluted the effects of several tunes.
The music is quintessential Handel: Baroque, ornamental, beautiful. He often riffs on a single textual line for minutes on end, like an Enlightenment-era MC5, which is aurally impressive, but does occasionally leave those on stage looking for ways to act around the repetition. Sellers often gives them actions representing certain lines, which are repeated with them.
We find a flirty former actress, Theresa (Lori Myers); a distant 16-year old, Lauren (Rae Gray); a divorced carpenter, Schultz (Steve Kay); an old hippie husband, James (Joseph D. Lauck); and the instructor, Marty (Carmen Roman) Jame’s wife. The group has little in common except that each desire to experience ‘creative drama’ through an adult acting class.