British playwright David Eldridge has written an ode to high school teachers everywhere with Under the Blue Sky – now in its Midwest Premier at Steep Theatre. Free from romantic sentimentality, Under the Blue Sky is part contemporary life commentary where a bomb can change life in an instant and part a love letter to those who dedicate themselves to teaching high school.
Read MoreNow 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.
Read MoreWhile 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.
Read Morecreated 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.
Read MoreFrom 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.
Read MoreAnd yet, although the overall effect of The Tales of Hoffmann is comic, Offenbach is a deft manipulator of emotions, and the very end of the piece is profoundly and deeply affecting. At the very end, Offenbach brings true, devastating weight to the opera, and leaves the audience with exactly the feeling he wishes.
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreBut 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.
Read MoreHer 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
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