Newsies delivers enough sheer energy with an adventurous story that depicts a worthy moral. This exciting show is filled with heart, empathetic characters as the boys win a round in quest of their place in the scheme of life in turn-of-the-Century New York. Newsies is a fine show filled with enough joy and energy to light up our holidays. It is much better than the film. Hurry, you have only until August 7th to see this fun show.
Concepts such as the above are effectively explained by McLean during this 80 minute one-act solo show. This show is for fans of C. S. Lewis, for those who enjoy a “thinking-person’s” play, and for anyone who enjoys a tour de force performance. Actors need to see Max McLean to learn how to make subtle and complex material by an academic sizzle on stage. McLean delivers in C. S. Lewis onstage The Most Reluctant Convert without being ‘preachy.’
In Thomas Klingenstein’s world premiere play Douglass, about an episode from the life of famed author, orator, and escaped slave Frederick Douglass, Klingenstein explores what he interprets as one such situation his subject encountered in New Bedford, Massachusetts prior to the Civil War. It could be a fascinating episode from the life of one of America’s most dramatic personalities, but unfortunately, the play is mostly static.
Reprising their wildly popular, twice-extended, Jeff Award-winning co-production from the spring, The New Colony and Definition Theatre Company remount Evan Linder’s nation-wide conversation-starter Byhalia, Mississippi at The Steppenwolf, giving those who neglected to learn its difficult life lessons another chance at redemption.
A common complaint about one-person shows is that the speaker tends to be poorly motivated to monologue to the audience for over an hour. Susan Padveen’s The Portrait, about Austrian Art Nouveau painter Gustav Klimt, suffers from the opposite problem.
Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys tells an old (yet familiar) story in a strikingly unique way; and, speaking as one not fond of historical or racial stories, I think every theatregoer will find something to enjoy in this fantastic production (excepting children, obviously). Though there is a lot of factual information to digest throughout the play, the all-too-human story comes through in the fantastic acting, singing, dancing, and uproarious masked satire (though, be aware, this is not a “musical”). So even if you get lost in the sequence of trials or forget who did what when, one will likely find themselves effected one way or another.
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s early work Our Lady of 121st Street is one of the most popular sources of scenes and monologues for actors in training. With a large, diverse cast of troubled and bizarre characters, it provides ample opportunity for performers to make memorable impressions in just a few minutes. The play is also a snapshot of a community, instead of a traditional story, and therefore, it’s interesting to see how a professional production handles it.
But, I did have some problems with the bland, too-specific “talk-songs” that dominated this show. The dialogue was underwritten making the show depend on the “sound-all-alike” songs far two much. After three or four talk songs, my ear only heard the same sound alike songs. I’d advise more dialogue and less singing plot twists. The power ballads and anthems by the leads are terrific but those talk songs are repetitious and annoying. Here less is more. One of my friends suggested that War Paint needs to be refocused as a play with music with drama intermixed with those strong power numbers so expertly delivered by Lu Pone and Ebersole.
Schenkelberg is a former Scientologist, and in a show that is as hilarious as it is sad, she details her whole journey into and away from the religion, minus eight hundred thousand dollars and all of her personal relationships.
After a few changes to the script and re-staging for a park environment, Kirsten Kelly and Chicago Shakespeare have revived their short version of Twelfth Night for this summer’s city-sponsored Shakespeare in the Parks program. Featuring some of the same cast members as the production that played earlier this year in Chicago schools, Kelly’s Twelfth Night is endearing, funny, and light-hearted with just the right amount of intelligence.