REVIEWS

REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Fun Home- 2016 National Tour

Fun Home, now playing in a two week run at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, is a curious Broadway musical on many levels. Ultimately, Fun Home carries a powerful emotional impact as the entire show works much better than any of its parts. I was enchanted mainly by Jeanine Tesori’s ( Caroline, or Change, Shrek The Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Violet) hauntingly varied score. This memory musical is based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel – Fun Home. It won Tony’s for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score in 2015.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

The Magic Play

The Magic Play by Andrew Hinderaker, now in a world premiere at the Goodman Theatre is both a magic show and a drama. Owing to the magic skills with deft acting, Brett Schneider plays a rising young magician who takes the stage hours after his lover-boyfriend has left him. After being extremely impressed by Schneider’s opening card tricks (nicely projected on a large screen), the magician’s acts starts to unravel, illuminating his offstage personal life.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Betrayal

This 75 minute one -act uses reverse chronology by starting out at the end of the betrayal and going bad in time toward how it all began. Pinter wants to explore the difficulty in maintaining honest relationships with out mates. Loyalty and commitment to family never occurs to these narcissistic heavy drinking intellectuals. Betrayal is a wordy and a tad too redundant as Pinter’s repetitive dialogue hints at how much these characters try to rationalize their behavior. The indirectness of the words masks the pain, doubt and rage inherent in a story of marital betrayal.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Resolution

It is New Year’s Eve and Jack and Hannah decide to stay at home to celebrate the new year. They give the staff, including Hannah, the rest of the day off including New Year’s Day. Hannah is given a cash bonus in an envelope just before her husband Harrison (Edward Fraim) arrives to take her home. The two couples have a drink to celebrate the new year. After Margaret and Harrison depart, Hannah discovers that Margaret forgot her bonus envelope. She put the envelope on the drink stand where Margaret will easily find it when she returns to work.

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MUST SEEREVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

LEAVINGS

LEAVINGS explores how a history of trauma impacts generations of African-American families. We meet Mama Bea (RjW Mays), the 111 year old matriarch of a Chicago family while in her final days becomes obsessed with uniting with the white Governor Skinner of Mississippi (Richard Engling) in order to set to rest the spirits that have haunted her family over 180 years. She has evidence that she and the governor are both descended from a nineteenth century slave owner who left the White half of the family with a heritage of privilege and economic security while the Black half with a history of familial separation, segregation and violence. Mama Bae knows that only by uniting the White and Black sides in a ritual of reconciliation can the tortured spirits that haunt the family be put to rest.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

The Bottle Tree

In Beth Kander’s world premiere drama, The Bottle Tree, the focus is on the rural Southern (Mississippi) gun culture. We meet Myrna Mason (Kathleen Ruhl) who is the matriarch of the poor-white-trash Mississippi Mason clan. Myrna is an old maid aunt to Rhoda (Christina Gorman) and her surviving daughter Alley (Katherine Acosta). Myrna is obsessed with the ghosts of her family. She believes in the hoodoo folk magic rural tradition. She has a Bottle Tree in her yard to help trap bad ghosts so that they will not influence her family.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Multitudes

British playwright John Hollingsworth has penned a cautionary tale that exposes the conservative view of multiculturalism that believes that brown people, especially followers of Islam, can never really be “British” even if they are born in the UK or have been there since childhood. The fear Englishman express from those of color and those who embrace Islam have started raising their ugly heads in Bradford, England.

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MUST SEEREVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Hamilton

Hamilton lives up to the hype as it is engaging, high-energy and an emotionally thrilling theatrical experience. It is an opera, a rap show, and an accurate history lesson that presents as dazzling entertainment. In this breakthroughs work, Lin-Manuel Miranda has moved the Broadway musical (opera) into new areas. It is terrific storytelling that bravely takes pop culture into the world of opera and Broadway musicals. The good news is that he has brought a new audience to musicals as young folks love this show.

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