The 60 minute play involves revelatory exchanges between Teya and Luke that forces Teya to examine his life and his failures as a writer. This unique memory play dissects how we can experience a sort of willed amnesia to thwart bad memories and personal failures. Teya’s real legacy is threatened by Luke’s meticulous documentation of his life and his words.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Hamlet replaced his tights with a jumpsuit and his flat cap with a crash helmet? Neither have I. Thankfully, The Neo-Futurists theatre troupe, led by Ryan Walters, has taken up that task, and is presenting us with the Daredevils Hamlet.
Signal Ensemble Theatre’s spiffy new theatre (at 1802 W. Berenice in the old Breadline Theatre building) opens with a well acted funny early (1968) Tom Stoppard farce – The Real Inspector Hound. This 75 minute one act is a hoot! It pokes fun at theatre critics, stage mysteries such as Mousetrap, and is a lesson in absurdism satire.
For those who have not seen David H. Bell’s master work – Hot Mikado – trust me on this one – get to Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook to witness the most energetic, funny, toe-tapping musical comedy you’ll ever see. It is a tour de force comic satire: it is a dazzlingly spirited dance spectacular; and it is musical treat. In short, Hot Mikado deserves mention as one of the great all-time musicals. Amazingly, despite being a world-wide hit, this Hot Mikado has never played Broadway!
Blackbird is a disturbing piece about a girl reuniting with a man, with whom she had a sexual affair with when she was 12 years old.
One of the more difficult aspects of a rock musical is the sound design so that the powerful instruments don’t drown the vocals and reduce it to incoherent noise. Christopher Kris deserves a big round of applause of balancing all of these elements, including the addition of a hand-held microphone for solos.
Stacey Flaster has found a rich emotional core that often is overlooked in many productions of Carousel. Natalie Ford, a terrific singer with strong acting abilities quite subtly but ever stead fast both understands and loves Billy Bigelow (Cooper David Grodin) unconditionally
In Love’s Bright Coils is a study on how we have expressed our love throughout the past 300 years, to how we express it today. It was inspired by the letters written by director Kat Paddock’s grandparents during World War II
The core of the show’s energy came form the strong supporting cast led by the Michael Weber’s exuberant Charlie Davenport, the Wild West show’s manager. Weber and George Hearn (Buffalo Bill) and Michael Accardo (Wilson/Pawnee Bill) deftly landed the show’s tribute to show biz with their wonderful “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”
Among the things that made this work a long 80 minutes are: the entire cast mostly spoke their dialogue in such a fast pace with their words running together that it was hard to understand much of it especially with that Southern drawl. What has happened to enunciating? Southern folks speak slowly – they do not machine gun their speech even when upset.