Chicago Play & Musical Reviews

How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

May 27, 2014May 2, 2014 by Tom Williams

This Broadway musical has not held up after more than fifty years and it is seldom produced in Chicago because the material is mediocre and the book comes off as more goofy than satirical despite Rob Lindley’s correct choice to play all the corporate types larger-than-life. There are laughs, terrific energetic choreography (by Brenda Didier) and several terrific performances but the shows seems to be trying to hard to land such out of date material.

Avenue Q at the Mercury Theatre

May 27, 2014April 30, 2014 by Tom Williams

Jackson Evans , as Princeton and Leah Morrow, as Kate Monster were among my favorites from a cast of accomplished troupe of talents that sang well, delivered laughs and won the hearts of the audience. Adam Fane, as the flaming queen Rob was a hoot!

Mill Fire

May 27, 2014April 29, 2014 by Tom Williams

As the flashbacks demonstrate the pressure the steel companies face from a dwindling marker for steel, union pressure to save jobs and the stress from undermanned steel mills, a tragedy became more likely. Sprinkled throughout are the Widows who expound on the conventional grieving they experience after their loss.

The Sound of Music at the Lyric Opera of Chicago

May 27, 2014April 29, 2014 by Tom Williams

This flawless production does everything right. From the opening scene that finds the nuns changing in Latin to Maria (Jenn Gambatese) soaring as she sings the title song on a set that screams Alps, we instantly become enchanted into the world of Salzburg, Austria in 1938.

In the Garden

May 27, 2014April 28, 2014 by Tom Williams

Chronicling Charles Darwin’s discoveries was nicely and effectively presented due to Gmitter’s fluid writing upon Collette Pollard’s suggestive set. Director Jessica Thebus’ staging underscores the ambitious storytelling effectively. The combination of telling Charles’ amazing rise to fame as the most controversial writer of the 19th Century and his lifelong romance made for an engaging play.

Lay Me Down Softly

October 23, 2022April 25, 2014 by Tom Williams

Lay Me Down Softly is essentially a memory play centered around the patchwork family of Roadshow. The action and metaphors are sports references and the on-going boxing matches. We see how hope and dreams were stiffed as this group laments through melancholy their lost dreams. Each character depends on the Roadshow family for sustenance, companionship, and recognition.

Emma

September 11, 2017April 24, 2014 by Tom Williams

Emma lives in a world of tea parties, gossip and social snobbery. Emma proves to be a disastrous matchmaker and only her confident (and secret admirer) Mr. Knightley (Ben Muller) will tell her the blunt truth. Filled with clever romantic twists, nice period music and dance, nicely choreographed in period authentic English dances by Mady Newfield and Tammy Ravitts Bretscher, Emma has the potential to be a worthy comedy of manners but a critical element mars the production.

A View From The Bridge

September 15, 2017April 24, 2014 by Tom Williams

Eddie Carbone , a longshoreman, is overly protective and desirous of his 17 year old live-in nice Catherine (Ayssette Munoz). Eddie runs this Sicilian family in the old school manner—as a dictator. His wife Beatrice (Sandra Marquez) tries to council Catherine to follow her heart as she persuades Eddie to let her grow up by taking an office job

Ruined

October 4, 2026April 22, 2014 by Tom Williams

In their year of one playwright – 2014 – Lynn Nottage, Eclipse Theatre Company, under the creative direction of Aaron Todd Douglas, have mounted a powerful and wonderfully performed version of Ruined, the finest play by the talented Lynn Nottage.

She dramatizing the atrocities committed against women in the long civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nottage puts her immense research and writing skills to work to create situations and characters aptly depicting the conflicts in East Africa from a women’s perspective.

The President

September 11, 2017April 21, 2014 by Tom Williams

Their latest work is a madcap screwball comedy by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar who wrote Liliom that was adapted into Carousel the musical. The President (1930) finds the hands-on control freak President Norrison, played with manic aplomb by John Arthur Lewis (doing the finest work of his career here). Norrison is getting ready for a holiday when his ward, Lydia (Michelle M. Oliver) announces that she is pregnant and married to a poor Communist taxi driver named Tony Foot (Travis Delgado)