Poor Theatre Company Chicago premiere of Jessica Goldberg’s Good Thing doesn’t live up to its name. It parallels two dysfunctional families -one a middle aged childless couple struggling with a twenty year unhappy marriage and the other – a twenty-something married couple living in squalor with a drug using younger brother.
Directed by Marie Cisco produced by MPAACT At the Greenhouse Theatre, Chicago Hauntingly beautiful saga of letting go of life and it’s attachments is a gem I must confess that I am among the Chicago reviewers who somehow don’t cover the terrific work of MPAACT like we do other local theatre companies. Shame on us! … Read more
Hello Dolly! contains a funny, romantic and innocent book by Michael Stewart adapted from Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker. Director Rachel Rockwell plays it for all the laughs contained. David Lively deftly plays Horace as as the grouchy store keeper with his spot-on comic timing and grim malice. We see Horace as a cranky, unloved miser and ½ millionaire who runs a feed store in Yonkers, New York. Dolly Levi is determined to marry Horace but she must help some loved starved folks while she eliminated her competition for Horace’s hand. The result is a bewitchingly cute tuneful romantic musical comedy.
Jones uses the technique of having Grimm speak as the chimpanzee that only us audience members can understand-and- Trevor, the chimpanzee can’t understand the humans, But, of course, we can understand both. This ingredient garners much humor as we hear Trevor verbalize his thoughts, dreams and desires. We also see his loving mother figure, Sandra (Mierka Girten) as she struggles to maintain Trevor as her housemate rather than a caged animal.
During the 90 minute production, we witness how some boys can go wild and play to their most base instincts. We see how a contemporary flash mob or football game rivalries can elicit the group savage instincts in youths like these English boys did. That potential wildness impulse is explored vividly that hopefully the youths who see this timely production will begin to understand. They learn that such violence is not just a game as these English boys proclaim upon being rescued.
John Guare’s 1982 play Lydie Breeze is the third play in his Nantucket cycle. Guare seems to be channeling Eugene O’Neill here with the long flowery speeches and the ghost references hint at Ibsen. This is not one of Guare’s better works.
Directed by Anne Kauffman At the Goodman Theatre’s Owen Stage A drama of life and love ponders the question is life worth living? Playwright Noah Haidle’s Smokefall is a tedious affair that is structured like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with a surreal absurdist tone similar to Samuel Beckett’s work. Set in Grand Rapids, Michigan, … Read more
There are few better ways to get in a chuckle on hump day, but Wednesdays at the UP Comedy Club are offering a delightful improvisational event that’s never the same take twice. Offer up a song, cast your vote, and marvel as a lovable cast (and pianist) do their musical revue just for you.
Both playwright Rinne Groff and Meyer Levin each shared a strong connection to Anne Frank’s story. Groff took Levin’s passion for getting the Frank diary published in the USA and his determination to write the definitive stage adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. The long battles inspired Groff to write Compulsion. Meyer Levin (1905-1981) was the model for Sid Silver (Mick Webber).
What a unique and charming expedience to enjoy this one-man — no really one-puppet — show, purportedly covering the last 12 hours in the life of Moses (in real time). The task is no more outrageous than the clever cavorting of the crotchety puppet narrator who — although he has been told he looks Jewish — assures us that he is not made of kosher cardboard. One puppet plus one bare table creates an entire dramatic world.