The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen features the whimsical, macabre style that has become the Strange Tree Theatre trade mark. You’ll laugh and groin and you’ll wonder what will happen next in this expertly produced and well-acted comic tale of love, murder and mutilation. The ensemble delivers the tale with aplomb. Strange Tree Theatre is an intoxicating different troupe with a zany theatrical outlook on storytelling.
Seanachai Theatre Company (Equity troupe) follows their terrific production of The Weir with Irish playwright Gerard Stembridge’s wacky kitchen sink comedy, That Was Then. This is a contemporary tale of the simmering tensions beneath the surface between the Irish and the Brits told through a unique blend of theatricality that finds two kitchen/dinning room sets as the scene of two social/business meetings between an Irish and a Brit couples whose need for a loan reverses itself over time.
But the Servant of Two Masters is anchored by the work of Omen Sade as the servant Truffaldino. Sade is a master comic deft at physical comedy, wordplay, improv and body movement. This guy is a pure comic able to endlessly evoke laughter through his natural talent and his dedication to the art of comedy. Omen Sade is a young master comic extremely skilled and totally committed to his art. His is emerging as a major player in the Chicago theatre scene
Kaufman and Hart authored the play as a vehicle for their friend, Alexander Woollcott, on whom they modeled the lead role, Sheridan Whiteside – revived excellent well in this production by Jon Steinhagen. Woollcott was famously insufferable, and the writers decided to explore the results should he become an unwilling house guest after slipping on the stairs. Needless to say, hijinx ensue: he terrorizes his hosts
It is definitely a modern play: soliloquies – or rather parts of a lecture, directed at the audience – transition between scenes, this breaking of the fourth wall not offering, as in Shakespeare, a furthering of the plot, but rather is used as metaphor and history lesson. It is a play about Chicago, and yet not; it is a story about those stories that populate the city’s metallic, maternal pastiche.
The two hour mystery is a tour de force for both Larrt Yando and Lance Baker. Without their acting skills and stage instincts, Sleuth would not be able to attain and sustain the suspense necessary to satisfy our curiosity. You’ll become engaged as you wonder what will happen next
There are few playwrights more enjoyable than Neil Simon, and few comedies as delicious as Plaza Suite. Time has not dulled the biting wit of the dialogue, the humor of the situation, and the perceptive peek into the foibles of romance, love, and marriage. Here in room 719 of the Plaza Hotel in New York, we watch the tale of three couples as a marriage dissolves, a seduction occurs, and a bride is persuaded to begin wedded bliss.
Italian Noble Laureate playwright Dario Fo’s 1970 play satirized the topsy-turvy tale of an actual “accidental” death, ruled a suicide by the Milan police detectives. Fo’s farce combines a political agenda with pure, in-your-face slap-stick comedy. When a mental patient, aka, the Madman (Joseph Stearns in a tour de force performance) adopts the persona of the Chief Judge, mayhem erupts.
The story is in many ways a typical Knight of the Swan tale from the Middle Ages: a mysterious stranger (Lohengrin, in this production excellently portrayed by the South African tenor Johan Botha) appears, on a boat pulled by a swan, to save a troubled damsel (Elsa, the soprano Emily Magee); he then leaves, once a promise is broken, often that of not requesting the name and lineage of the hero
Bradshaw never offers any type of resolution in this work. It seems that he only wants to stir up the gray areas between such reprehensible behavior. Racism and homophobia sure can upset an audience as evidence by several loud grunts and the sound of people storming out of the theatre. Mary offends Blacks, religion, gays, white Southerners, victims of prostate cancer as it demonstrates that education is no cure for bigotry.