Ghostwritten
Playwright Iizuka’s new play, Ghostwritten, commissioned by the Goodman Theatre, is a drama about the lingering debt, complex family ties told with mystical elements including magical food.
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Hollywood 360 4-11-09
Tom Williams discusses the following stage plays: The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Blue Surge and A Moon for the Misbegotten with host Carl Amari at 11:14 on April 11, 2009.
Pumpgirl
Pumpgirl by Irish playwright Abbie Spallen, is an edgy contemporary work of Irish storytelling. Pumpgirl is presented in intersecting monologues deftly spoken with authentic Irish brogues by the three person cast.
Mrs. Hyde & The Case of the Gaslight Buggerings
Few in the audience laughed, most were uncomfortable. The script was so full of forced double meaning—always sexual and the dialogue contained extremely strained potty talk that initially wasn’t funny and quickly became tedious.
Saturday Morning Movie Club
The Saturday Morning Movie Club is playwright Dan Filowitz’s take on the 30something’s relationship problems. Jonah (Whitney Derendinger) is a detail-oriented guy who resists change in his life. Routine rules his life as he has days for Chinese food with his moved-in girlfriend Sarah (Nora Best) and Saturdays are for a meeting of the Saturday Morning Movie Club hosted by Jonah with his long-time pals Drew (Adam Miller-Batteau) and Greg (Glenn Fancher)
A Moon for the Misbegotten
First Folio Theatre in Oak Brook continues mounting outstanding theatre and their latest is a most worthy mounting of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten. The intimacy of First Folio’s indoor stage (nice set by Angela Miller) at the Mayslake Peabody Estate serves the production well. A Moon for the Misbegotten is the story of Josie Hogan (Erin Noel Grennan in a tremendous performance)—an ungainly daughter of an impoverished sharecropper whose love for alcoholic Jim Tyrone (Christian Gray in his finest performance to date) comes to ahead one long summer night.
Diversey Harbor
By Marisa Wegrzyn Directed by Brian Golden Produced by Theatre Seven of Chicago At the Greenhouse Theater I didn’t see the initial 2007 run of Marisa Wegrzyn’s terrific one-act, Diversey Harbor. I heard it was excellent so I made sure I caught Theatre Seven of Chicago’s remount now playing at the Greenhouse Theater. It is … Read more
The Typographer’s Dream
5th Floor productions offers a funny off-night (Monday & Tuesday) comedy that dares to deal with how our profession defines us as a person. The three—Annalise (Eva Gil) is a geographer; Dave (Max Lesser) is a Court Reporter-stenographer; Margaret (Sarah Kinsey) is typographer—exploration of the idiosyncrasies of their jobs in a quite funny and truthful comedy. These three actors gave honest, heartwarming performances.
Twelfth Night
Chicago Shakespeare Theater seldom disappoints. The plays are tried and true, the acting is always splendid, the productions are often spirited and innovative, and never has there been a staging of Twelfth Night like this one!
The theater’s location on Navy Pier inspired scenic and costume designer Lucy Osborne to recapture that ambience indoors. She is quoted as saying, “There’s something about a pier that suggests a voyage into the unknown. . . .and pleasure piers are just fundamentally playful and sort of decadent.”
Hollywood 360 4-4-2009
Tom Williams Discusses Mary Poppins, Magnolia, Pacific Overtures, Curtains, and Million Dollar Quartet with Carl Amari on Wind AM 560’s Hollywood 360 program on Saturday nights at 11 pm.