Now it is Chicago’s turn! And the recent New York opening — even with such a stellar star as Bernadette Peters — couldn’t surpass the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production. If this review were limited to just one word, that word would be magnificent! What a sight for the eyes, what a pleasure for the ears, what a treat for the mind.
Quickly the battle is on between Anna and Deeley. The verbal barbs fly as their deadly combat rages. When Kate retires to take a bath, Deeley remembers that he met Anna more than 20 years ago in a pub. Anna and Kate were roommates 20 years ago before Kate married Deeley.
While Rodgers’ music is lush, varied and melodic, I believe that it was Larry Hart’s often sad yet smart lyrics that made tunes like “Falling in Love with Love”, “Little Girl Blue”, “My Funny Valentin,” “Blue Moon,” “I Could Write a Book” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” American classics.
created a very difficult, very real, very European piece of theatre. The characters do not speak exactly as normal people would; it is a kind of artificial speech that furthers the play’s goals of shocking us out of our day-to-day boredom and non-introspection and forcing us to look inwards, consider ourselves, consider society, consider what we believe the world should be like.
From the Circle is not just a play made up of folktales from around the world; and yet it is simply a play made up of folktales, taken from around the world. It is at once heady and primeval, even primordial. The show takes acting, takes theatre, back to its roots – in storytelling. The acting is broad, archetypical, basic. And because of this, the emotions can all the more easily seep through and affect the audience; the audience no longer needs the actor to feel for them, they find the emotions coming up from within themselves. It is a transposition that reminds us of what real theatre is.
We see a group of believers who are desperate, despite their misgivings, to connect with a departed loved one. The methodology of the seance and the trickery of the moderators and their medium add fuel to the desperate believers.
But Con Melody, a drunken ex-Irish gentry and disgraced Major in Wellington’s British Army, is so caught up in the past that he only drinks and keeps up his ‘gentlemanly manners’ despite being almost destitute. Con’s self-delusion is constantly being fought by his realistic daughter Sara.
Her very first tale – about awakening one morning to find the houseguest who was sleeping beside her had died during the night – transcends what must have been the horror of the experience. As she says, it is not only that he died during his own sleep, he also died during hers. Upon completing the story, Fisher begins the first of her many interchanges with the audience, turning up the house lights to see if they have any questions
The situations are absurd and the acting is spirited even if some of the funny moments seem strained. But as a light off-night show (Mondays & Tuesdays), The People’s Choice fills the bill. Brandon Galatz shows promise as the hapless President.
Not even the leading avant-garde director, Max Truax could , despite a dark, depressing set design (byMichael Mroch) and a totally dedicated cast, could make Henrik Ibsen’s 1866 verse tragedy, Brand, audience friendly. Written while Ibsen was on a self-imposed exile in Italy, Brand is a ‘think” piece about Ibsen’s Christian views concerning freedom of will and the use of sacrifice to illustrate one’s Christian faith.