Director Jim Schneider’s cast of 18 women had trouble trying to land the acidic comedy from Luce’s stinging dialogue. The fast talking and over-the-top hyper acting by most of the cast made much of the comedy fall flat. The sameness and high-pitched vocals from many of the cast became tedious very quickly. Lack of comic timing lead to funny lines being thrown away.
With Stations Lost, as the second part of Fitzpatrick’s trilogy (follows last year’s This Train), Fitzpatrick has written a most compelling and thoroughly engaging performance art piece. Adapted and Directed by Ann Filmer, Stations Lost uses the blend of personal storytelling, video art of Fitzpatrick’s unusual covers and illustration art and bluesy/folk songs (sung by Lynne Jordan to John Rice’s guitar) to express Tony’s impressions about his world.
We all know The Blues Brothers, the classic cult hit from 1980 with SNL members John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, a film that is dear to many people’s hearts, especially, perhaps, here in Chicago, where the film was set. So tampering with something like this, well, it’s sort of like trying to make a Broadway musical out of Pulp Fiction, or remake Casablanca: Bogart and Bergman defined those roles such that anyone else playing them would just be wrong.
The three of them immediately launched into several new songs, presumably on the debut album Theo’s recording right now, each of them very strong and containing what one has come to expect from Theo: good lyrics, nice hooks, excellent chord progressions. Theo writes like he talks, so the colloquial nature of his lyrics make the songs very approachable while remaining catchy and smart.
As the play opens, Theo and Louise Maske (Jack Birdwell and Jessica Maynard, a fellow University of Michigan alum) rush into their apartment, scandalized: while they were innocently watching the king’s parade, Louise’s underwear fell to her ankles. She immediately swept them up, she contests, but Theo is concerned that he will lose his job and his reputation because of his wife’s “indiscretion.”
That Face, the debut from 19-year-old English playwright Polly Stenham, is impressive in its maturity. It does not come off, at first blush, as something a teenager would write. That said, the teen angst and actions are closer, fresher, more realistic than something written by a significantly older writer. This is very much a teen drama, sort of Skins-meets-Albee.
…actor/playwright Joshua Rollins’ first full length play, A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes, is a masterpiece! It is one of the finest world premieres I’ve seen since Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain. Rollins’ work is flawless and so real it was scary. This action-packed mystery will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout its 85 minutes.
There is nudity on stage for shock value, for sexual stimulation, and for simple gratuitous exploitation – and then there is the tasteful use of nudity that propels the artistic creativity of the folks at The Living Canvas. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Pete Guither, the Living Canvas’ 2011 production: Rain deals with the fundamental connection between the human body and the natural world — the pure and essential relationship between water and flesh. It’s theatre, it’s dance, it’s movement, it’s art, it’s a celebration!
In Wilde’s wordy, biblical sounding prose, Salome becomes a tedious interruption of the story of how Salome demands the head of Lokanaan in payment for her performing the dance of the seven veils.
Now, let me state that most children and adults will find this production charming and quaint – and so did I. The material – the Menken score and the Ashman/Rice lyrics and the enduring fairytale about love, acceptance and friendship is so strong that it always finds the hearts of the audience.