Written by Paul Slade Smith, a 14 year Chicago actor now on tour with Wicked, Unnecessary Farce finally after 6 years makes its Chicago debut. Under Alison C. Vesely superb casting and tight direction, Unnecessary Farce is a whip-smart comic farce that produces enough laughs to get anyone through winter.
Through the musical, we see cute puppets moving the action along. Blair Thomas, the show’s director, is a master at utilizing puppetry along with live actors to tell a story. We see Victor and his Houdini puppet trying the Water Torture escape using only a water glass and a 6 inch puppet.
A fast-paced look at the world of professional sports that tries to invest the audience in the players outside the stadium as much as we invest in those who play within it.
While playwright Colburn vividly dramatizes the stilting Christian beliefs including Dasiy’s (Rebecca Buller) sexual attraction to Ian and Aaron’s confusion, he seems have both Ian and Claudia insincerely using the Christian beliefs more as an escape from their past sins than belief in an all-powering God. The contradictory behavior of Ian is a clue since Ian wants Claudia back, wants to be saved and he wants to have sex with Daisy.
With Jessica Thebus adaptation of The Tempest and her co-direction and co-creation with Redmoon’s Frank Maugeri, the resulting The Feast: an intimate Tempest is a unique art piece utilizing some text with puppets, video, music, masks, and a banquet table made in a cross with moving slats.
Mandy and Richard indirectly influence James but Sarah, despite marrying James after nine years, still is determined to go back to war zones. Forced to decide between her love for James and a normal life and her thrill-seeking war photographing that makes “time stand still,” Sarah’s choice to resume living in chaos is plausible and understandable.
It seems that Amir is trapped between his identity as a Muslim American and his personal identity as simply another American. The collusion of these identities are dramatically played out in Disgraced.
That lesson is not lost in The House Theatre of Chicago’s revival production of Death and Harry Houdini, the show that put them on the map ten years ago. It’s a true wonder of Chicago theatre—mingling vaudeville with magic, prose with poetry.
Add the blandness of Celia who without warning or set-up confesses her secrets to Pierre. I never once felt that Celia would be sexually attractive to the passive Pierre. It seems that playwright Higginson wants to show how two troubled and emotionally damaged folks can find connections despite their racial baggage. But I never for a moment believed these two have any deep connection
What doomed Clutter for me was the contradictory style of the piece. Clutter, at first, plays as a police procedural mystery then abruptly becomes a comedy featuring two eccentric brothers and several zany supporting characters. The parallel stories about two sets of brothers didn’t work since the play’s hook is the wacky recluse Collyer brothers who live together and never threw anything away