Playwright Abbie Spallen has a bit of McPherson’s wacky characters, some of Friel’s monologues with a dose of McDonagh’s dark humor in her plays. Strandline is a funny yet searing work that deals with the mourning for Mairin’s (Kirsten Fitzgerald) dead husband who drowns in sight of Mairin and town’s folk during a wedding celebration in a seaside town on the Northern Ireland border. It seems that Mairin’s husband drowned trying to save some French tourists.
Read MoreHappy Days, Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play of fleeting hope and endless woe colliding with one another, is at the core a fascinating subject. However, the content undoubtedly worked a lot more to shake up an audience in 1961 than in 2014. Theatre Y in Logan Square attempts to bring this morose menagerie into the 21st Century with the use of broken down technology piled up to the waist of our heroine. I spent time admiring the craftsmanship of this mound of monitors before the play began, but of course a well-constructed set is not what makes the play. Truly, the set can only serve to enhance or hinder the experience.
Read MoreThe Lieutenant of Inishmore is a 2001 gore-comedy which ridicules terrorism. The show, which mostly takes place on the tiny Irish island of Inishmore, is a fast-paced, high-energy farce. Unfortunately, the Irish accents are a severe pitfall for this cast. I was told this presented less of a problem at previews than at press night, and hope it gets resolved early in the run.
Read MoreIf this play were only a satire of Agosto Boal-type socially conscious theatre contextualized within Chinese history, it would be inside baseball enough. But the second act takes us into outright absurdism, as the theatre technology seizes direct control of the human characters and forces them through seemingly spontaneous fourth-wall breaking story snippets, which are of course, really scripted.
Read MoreChicago, under the innovative leadership of William Massolia, director Scott Weinstein and music director Elizabneth Doran, is the first theatre to experience this newly reworked of the voyage of the Titanic from the crew’s,the passengers – first, second and third class’ point of view. The brilliance of Maury Yeston’s score and the efficiency of Peter Stone’s book comes to life in the intimate Theater Wit stage.
Read MoreLet me step back a moment. Follow me back in time. Pseudo-Chum is a play written and directed by Sean & Carolyn Benjamin. Presented by the Neo-Futurists, the play reveals to us three aspects of Chum, the play within the play Pseudo-Chum. Chum is about a family that makes a trip to the coast of Australia to cull sharks. Beginning with the secret death of the patriarch of the family, lies and betrayal set in early, as the family begins to metaphorically and literally attempt to ruin one another.
Read MoreOn October 21st, Chicago Folks Operetta presented a one-night show, Operetta in Exile. The ninety minute long piece was a tribute to the Jewish composers and lyricists of the Berlin and Vienna operetta genre who remain largely unknown in English. Part revue and part history lesson, the piece is an example of CFO’s dedication to spreading appreciation for central European culture in North America.
Read MoreOn Wednesday, October 22, 2014, I was luck enough to experience on the finest chamber music orchestra, Sphinix Virtuois with Catalyst Quartet as they Tour in their Americana program. The young dynamic troupe is a professional chamber orchestra and theonly all-Black and Latino string orchestra in America. This 18 person is a a one month tour is an homage to The Star Spangled Banner as member and composer-in-residence premieres a new work titled Banner as an ode to our beloved anthem.
Read MoreIn a world premiere pre-Broadway production, Amazing Grace has some merit as an historical bio-musical. As far as it goes, Amazing Grace chronicles the early adventures of John Newton (1725 – 1807) who composed the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” in 1772. This world premiere pre-Broadway production is a massive epic musical complete with a clipper ship set and a quasi-operatic score filled with stirring anthems and power ballads
Read MoreThe story is that of the 1915 lynching of Jewish industrialist Leo Frank (Jim Deselm) in Georgia. Leo is from Brooklyn, came to Georgia to manage a relative’s pencil factory, and can’t stand the South. It doesn’t care for him, either. His wife, Lucille (Sarah Bockel), an Atlanta native, thinks he’s overly hard on a region he doesn’t understand, and often wishes her husband could be more emotionally intimate. On Confederate Memorial Day, one of the girls who works in the factory, thirteen year old Mary Phagan (Peyton Tinder) comes Leo’s office to collect her pay. That night, she is found murdered in the factory basement.
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