The Great American Trailer Park Musical
Add the one-note mentality that presents the blue collar trailer park ‘trash’ as a group of stupid, simple-minded losers into a sort of “one-joke” affair that quickly wore out its welcome.
Latest from Chicago Critic
Into The Wake
I was impressed by the creative and craft of the Mossman/Miller film. In The Wake is a memory film that utilizes the main elements that distinguish film from other art forms. The cinematography was thrilling with a fine blend of panorama shots with thrilling chase footage with telling close ups.
Ah, Wilderness!
We meet the Miller family – four children, the mother and father with an aunt and an uncle all surviving living together in an upper middle class Connecticut house. It is the 4th of July, 1906 in a time of pure innocence in America.
The Vortex
When Nicky, Florence’s 24 year old son arrive home from a year in Paris, the ill-tempered youth has something explosive to announce to his mother. Florence is so occupied doting on young lover that she dismisses Nicky as merely a rage-filled youth.
The Glass Menagerie
Some plays are so brilliant, so perceptive, so poignant that they can be seen time and again — each viewing revealing another gem. This is the case with The Glass Menagerie. In this classic work, four anguished characters — successfully depicted by Redtwist Theatre’s excellent cast — are not only unrelievedly human but also amazingly archetypal.
Adrift
Adrift nicely moves back and forth in time allowing us to see, from Isaac’s memory of growing up with his father and the haunting remembrance of dad’s battle with post traumatic stress disorder.
The Dumb Waiter
It’s been over 50 years since Harold Pinter’s chilling and influential vignette of two hit men debuted, and TUTA’s revival proves it’s lost none of its power to haunt the mind.
How to Train Your Dragon
It sure is a major event–as the best elements of large-scale animation video meets vivid lighting and with actors and dragons flying about over the audience produces the setting for the group of Viking (sporting a thick Scottish brogue?) …
The American Plan
This psychologically compelling work features a collection of damaged and emotionally wrecked individuals struggling to escape their unhappiness. They are filled with fear- of loneliness, of abandonment and the loss of the amenities of the good life. The don’t want to utilize the figurative American plan-that is one price for both room and meals.
Richard III at Oak Park Festival Theatrre
We are enticed by Theis’ sly performance as Richard even when he outlines his evil plan in a monologue that gets us to almost like this charming but purely evil villain. His asides to the audiences with their wink and sour faces keep us intoxicated with Richard’s manipulations leading to killings that lead to his ascending to the English crown