Chicago Opera Theater offers us, with this concert, a chance to see two stunning chamber pieces, one composed by Romantic Robert Schumann, the other composed by the more modern, Czech composer Leo Janáček. The only accompaniment is a piano, and the only set is a screen with projections. And they are intimate and beautiful – even when the overall production asks the audience to draw comparisons between the pieces that seem a stretch.
Read MoreAs the tension rises and the emotions erupt, the party devolves into a painfully raucous night of revelations as several family members struggle to reckon with the accusations. The play manically moves between celebration and pathos, from exploding repressed emotions to acknowledgment of long held secrets.
Read MoreAccording to co-producer Mat Churchill, “Total theater means an immersion into a variety of staging techniques, from traditional to the heretofore unseen.” That was present in threesixty production’s amazingly thrilling production of Peter Pan. This show will blow you away with its inventive story telling and eye-popping video that complimented and enhanced the visual experience of flying over London in 1904.
Read MoreThe costumes, makeup, and set all create this bizarre world, within which characters refuse to look at each other, staring straight at the audience, or start trembling and convulsing, throwing tables and chairs, and behaving in generally outlandish and weird manners. It’s sort of like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on a very heavy Ibogaine trip. And it works so well.
Read MoreThis material could be really vital, really brutal, heart wrenching stuff. But instead it’s just entertainment. It doesn’t really grapple with the issues, you don’t leave the theater thinking about how our school systems need to be changed, updated, for the times.
Read MoreA Little Night Music is something of a novelty: it is a musical set completely in waltz time (technically 3/4, although there is also some 6/8). This makes it sound like it could get monotonous: how varied can music be if it’s nothing but one time signature? But America has never had a problem with music in only one time signature (has Lady Gaga done anything that’s not 4/4 yet?), and what’s more, Sondheim’s music is so rich, so varied, so clever and complex, that it is anything but monotony.
Read MoreI never thought I’d ever say that I liked the later, more sanitized versions of Grease much more than this revival! ATC’s 2011 production was simply too long and too unfocused as it contained a vastly inferior score than the later Broadway stage productions and the film. I believe, at 2 hours 45 minutes, the show is 45 too long
Read MoreThe intricacies of plot and character are manifold, as one would expect from a play of this era, and moreover of Shaw. His wit is clever as ever, and his eye is particularly keenly pointed towards British society. He dissects what money is to those who don’t have it, what it’s not to those who do, and what sorts of things people would have to go through to get it, or keep it.
Read MoreGoggins songs are worthy and the hooky comedy is spiced-up with terrific work from Alene Robertson, Felicia Fields, Lauren Creel and Nicole Miller. Mary Robin Roth’s performance was particularly funny and heartfelt.
Read MoreLeave it to the creatives at the American Blues Theater to come up with a fresh, raw dark comedy – Rantoul and Die by Mark Roberts – now in its Regional Premiere at the upstairs space at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater. Written by a TV sitcom writer/producer, Mark Roberts (“Mike & Molly”), Rantoul and Die is far from a tame TV sitcom- rather it is a raw, foul-mouthed edgy dark comedy about four skankiets yet heartbreakingly real characters.
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