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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Chops is a winner on many levels. It is a nostalgic remembrance of the Rush Street night club era as well as a clever con plot to gain cash. The Randy Steinmeyer and Daniel Patrick Sullivan have terrific stage rivalry with Larry Neumann, Jr. contributing passive stability. These outstanding actors under Richard Shavzin’s tight direction make this 88 minute one-act zing along. You’ll be engrossed into the world of jazz and conmen as the glimpse into a lost era finds these guys trapped into to who they are. This show is a treat.
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“Catch Me if You Can” is quite simply the classiest and splashiest community theatre production I have enjoyed in ages. Don’t be fooled by the venue. You may be walking into the Buffalo Grove Park District, but Big Deal Productions’ 2016 summer extravaganza matches and occasionally exceeds some Chicago Equity productions with ambition and the kind of scale rarely seen on any stage these days. Producer Lindsay Grandt and Director Ken Preuss have marshaled together an extraordinary company of volunteers who have committed themselves heart and soul to exploring a classic cat and mouse game in which the traditional roles of good guy and bad guy get turned upside down.
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For people who old enough to have been married, or are in their late twenties and considering it, the show has obvious emotional resonance. In its current staging under the direction of John Glover, it also is surprisingly theatrical for that’s basically just two conversations.
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