The Magic Play by Andrew Hinderaker, now in a world premiere at the Goodman Theatre is both a magic show and a drama. Owing to the magic skills with deft acting, Brett Schneider plays a rising young magician who takes the stage hours after his lover-boyfriend has left him. After being extremely impressed by Schneider’s opening card tricks (nicely projected on a large screen), the magician’s acts starts to unravel, illuminating his offstage personal life.
This 75 minute one -act uses reverse chronology by starting out at the end of the betrayal and going bad in time toward how it all began. Pinter wants to explore the difficulty in maintaining honest relationships with out mates. Loyalty and commitment to family never occurs to these narcissistic heavy drinking intellectuals. Betrayal is a wordy and a tad too redundant as Pinter’s repetitive dialogue hints at how much these characters try to rationalize their behavior. The indirectness of the words masks the pain, doubt and rage inherent in a story of marital betrayal.
It is New Year’s Eve and Jack and Hannah decide to stay at home to celebrate the new year. They give the staff, including Hannah, the rest of the day off including New Year’s Day. Hannah is given a cash bonus in an envelope just before her husband Harrison (Edward Fraim) arrives to take her home. The two couples have a drink to celebrate the new year. After Margaret and Harrison depart, Hannah discovers that Margaret forgot her bonus envelope. She put the envelope on the drink stand where Margaret will easily find it when she returns to work.
LEAVINGS explores how a history of trauma impacts generations of African-American families. We meet Mama Bea (RjW Mays), the 111 year old matriarch of a Chicago family while in her final days becomes obsessed with uniting with the white Governor Skinner of Mississippi (Richard Engling) in order to set to rest the spirits that have haunted her family over 180 years. She has evidence that she and the governor are both descended from a nineteenth century slave owner who left the White half of the family with a heritage of privilege and economic security while the Black half with a history of familial separation, segregation and violence. Mama Bae knows that only by uniting the White and Black sides in a ritual of reconciliation can the tortured spirits that haunt the family be put to rest.
Taking place during the UK miner strike in the 80’s in North Eastern England. A young boy named Billy Elliot (a very talented Cade M. Pearlman), not so well at boxing, accidentally finds himself dancing among a dance class filled with young ladies in tutus. Although, he is the only boy there is something about that class that makes him feel at ease.
In Beth Kander’s world premiere drama, The Bottle Tree, the focus is on the rural Southern (Mississippi) gun culture. We meet Myrna Mason (Kathleen Ruhl) who is the matriarch of the poor-white-trash Mississippi Mason clan. Myrna is an old maid aunt to Rhoda (Christina Gorman) and her surviving daughter Alley (Katherine Acosta). Myrna is obsessed with the ghosts of her family. She believes in the hoodoo folk magic rural tradition. She has a Bottle Tree in her yard to help trap bad ghosts so that they will not influence her family.
British playwright John Hollingsworth has penned a cautionary tale that exposes the conservative view of multiculturalism that believes that brown people, especially followers of Islam, can never really be “British” even if they are born in the UK or have been there since childhood. The fear Englishman express from those of color and those who embrace Islam have started raising their ugly heads in Bradford, England.
Hamilton lives up to the hype as it is engaging, high-energy and an emotionally thrilling theatrical experience. It is an opera, a rap show, and an accurate history lesson that presents as dazzling entertainment. In this breakthroughs work, Lin-Manuel Miranda has moved the Broadway musical (opera) into new areas. It is terrific storytelling that bravely takes pop culture into the world of opera and Broadway musicals. The good news is that he has brought a new audience to musicals as young folks love this show.
The classic revenge tale “The Tempest”, reimagined at Chicago Shakespeare Theater as a traveling tent show of trickery and amazement, was recognized for Production-Play for a large theatre, Direction of a Play for Aaron Posner and Teller, Magic Design for “The Great Tomsoni” Johnny Thompson, and Lighting Design for Thom Weaver.
Porchlight Music Theatre’s “Dreamgirls”, the story of the aspirations and success of rhythm and blues artists in the 1960s and 70s, was honored with awards for Production-Musical for a midsize theatre, Principal Actress Donica Lynn, Supporting Actor Eric Lewis and Costume Designer Bill Morey.
Pastor’s timely interpretation is timely indeed — if one sets one’s time by 20th century Italian history. Set over three periods of Italian political and social unrest, Pastor’s Prokofiev’s Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet becomes the 1930’s Capulet militaristic Fascists versus the Montague liberal low and middle classes; then, in the second act, the 1950’s Capulet Red Brigade political terrorists versus the Montague peace-loving liberal low and middle classes (?); and then, finally in the third act, the 1990s . . . we’re more or less back to plain-ol’ Romeo and Juliet — but in Berlusconi-led Italy of “increasing social divisions!” And for those of us who cannot imagine what these periods of Italian history must have looked like — any more than what Shakespeare’s time did look like — there are projections of Italian pedestrians milling about their ravaged country — which projections are not at all as helpful in focusing the story as they might sound.