With Jessica Thebus adaptation of The Tempest and her co-direction and co-creation with Redmoon’s Frank Maugeri, the resulting The Feast: an intimate Tempest is a unique art piece utilizing some text with puppets, video, music, masks, and a banquet table made in a cross with moving slats.
Mandy and Richard indirectly influence James but Sarah, despite marrying James after nine years, still is determined to go back to war zones. Forced to decide between her love for James and a normal life and her thrill-seeking war photographing that makes “time stand still,” Sarah’s choice to resume living in chaos is plausible and understandable.
It seems that Amir is trapped between his identity as a Muslim American and his personal identity as simply another American. The collusion of these identities are dramatically played out in Disgraced.
That lesson is not lost in The House Theatre of Chicago’s revival production of Death and Harry Houdini, the show that put them on the map ten years ago. It’s a true wonder of Chicago theatre—mingling vaudeville with magic, prose with poetry.
Add the blandness of Celia who without warning or set-up confesses her secrets to Pierre. I never once felt that Celia would be sexually attractive to the passive Pierre. It seems that playwright Higginson wants to show how two troubled and emotionally damaged folks can find connections despite their racial baggage. But I never for a moment believed these two have any deep connection
What doomed Clutter for me was the contradictory style of the piece. Clutter, at first, plays as a police procedural mystery then abruptly becomes a comedy featuring two eccentric brothers and several zany supporting characters. The parallel stories about two sets of brothers didn’t work since the play’s hook is the wacky recluse Collyer brothers who live together and never threw anything away
Rockwell’s engaging production makes the rise and fall of a business giant come to life with action as we meet and see the interactions and personalities of the principal players who guided and manipulated questionable business practices into an elaborate and sophisticated shell game that produced the illusion of a profitable company. Enron became the most infamous scandal in financial history of American commerce.
Audiences…seemed to enjoy Legally Blond more than I did. Its the style and content I dislike but I must say that Marc Robin did make the show a wonderful, light-weight escapist musical comedy that most folks will enjoy.
The ambitious, driven ultimate stage mother, Mama Rose is one of the great characters in all of American Broadway musicals. Any production of Gypsy depends on who plays Mama Rose. New Yorker Klea Blackhur’s booming voice channeled Ethel Merman takes over as the determined stage mother.
Another stunning production featuring 27 actors/dancers with 13 Equity plays and 17 stop-shelf musicians at Paramount Theatre in Aurora. It still holds audiences with its stunning honesty and emotionally exhilarating heart…A Chorus Line is so strong a piece that nothing can dent its emotional impact. Judging by the full house for Wednesday matinee, musicals have found an audience in the Far Western Suburbs.