Brian Parry is fantastic (as usual) as the aging king awhile Elaine Carlson equals Parry’s verbal assaults. I could watch and listen to these two debate as they anchor a fine cast in one of the finest productions of The Lion in Winter seen on a Chicago stage in years! This is a wonderful written script expertly performed by a superb cast.
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I think this play is for women, mothers and teen girls. They will relate and maybe understand the talk more than I did. The speech patterns of the girls – their tendency to talk fast and run their words together with the contemporary pop culture references made it difficult for me (a senior male) to understand. The younger folks, especially the women, laughed at the comments while I was clueless.
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Murder mysteries were one of the most popular genres of theatre once, but rarely were they as political and action-packed as Matt Pelfrey’s 2010 adaptation of In the Heat of the Night. The novel by John Ball is today best known for being the source material of the film, directed by Norman Jewison and staring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, which won the Academy Award for best picture in 1967. But Pelfrey’s script and Louis Contey’s production with Shattered Globe are exciting, disturbing, and possess a stylistic flare perfect for the stage.
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In this production, I rediscovered Brooks’ clever humor. There is so much going on in this nonstop show that it simply overwhelms us. Can a show have too many laughs? Comedy returns to musical comedy with The Producers. Mel Brooks is outrageous as he attempts to offend as many people, places, nationalities, genders and institutions as possible. He does it without regard to being ‘politically correct.’ Thank God for Brooks’ chutzpah!
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The show’s cast of non-Equity players danced superbly and the main characters were first rate. Equity should do something about such terrific talent working for way under what their worth before all Equity tours disappear.
But for Chicago audiences, Bullets Over Broadway plays as a nicely paced, well danced show with funny lines (Woody Allen at his funniest) and spot-on dancers particularly the dancing gangsters.
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Dreamgirls is a manic, polished and classy music and dance romp through Motown. You’ll quickly get excited by the sheer energy and deep emotional truth in this modern operetta. Powerful and richly evocative voices nail the tunes as the nuances of the struggles to attain and survive fame and fortune in the music world is sensitively presented
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With the players screaming and foul-mouthed dialog plus many black-outs for set changes and weird visuals and strobe lighting, the confusing plot just rambles on toward a sort of redemptive ending that finds the Internet girl being transformed back to a human after sacrificing her soul mate to save the world. Of course, by that time I had become anxious for this convoluted work to end after it self-destructed early on
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This 80 minute show is emotionally packed, profoundly sad, yet is a spirited look at strength of the Scottish women determined to make sense out of tragedy. The ensemble acting is terrific, with Amy Kasper and Jeff Brown particularly effective. The tone and message is clear and powerful. The show is worth experiencing.
Read MoreBy Richard Strand Directed by Hans Fleischmann At Red Twist Theatre, Chicago, IL Things that make you go hmmmmm…..The Realization
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