Heimann cast the fabulous Danielle Brothers as Don Quixote. Brothers has the intense acting chops necessary to play the eccentric ‘knight.’ She also has the lower register to effective land her powerful songs. Excellent decision. Heimann filled the show with outstanding character actors equally adept as actors and singers.
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, under James Bohnen light touch, have mounted a heart warming comedy filled with three of the most lovable characters. This is both a ‘buddy’ play and a comedy of manners involving three seniors confined to a soldiers’ retirement home.
Days To Come is a harbinger of the film noir genre of a murder mystery. In this dark play, we witness illicit love, power struggles for the family business and for the establishment of worker’s rights as they strike for better wages.
Leave it to Jackie Taylor to come up with a quasi-religious theme to show case terrific gospel, R & B, blues, and smooth ballads tunes from the likes of The Temptations, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, The Isley Brothers, Paul Simon and Curtis Mayfield.
Annual Jeff Equity Awards TimeLine Theatre’s much-extended production of “The History Boys” took top honors in the midsize theatre Play category and walked off with 5 statues, the most of any production honored at the festive ceremony held at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.
The gusty Promethean Theatre Ensemble shows why they are a young theatre troupe worthy of note with Ed Rutherford’s ambitious and finely imagined stage adaptation of Beagle’s 1968 novel, The Last Unicorn. Director Rutherford’s staging has hints of Mary Zimmerman’s style as story theatre containing use of masks, puppets and highly theatrical movements including songs, physical comedy and narration.
The New Colony theatre company has a marvelous world premiere drama now running at the upstairs at the Royal George theatre. This show is not your run-of-the-mill relationship drama. Not by yards! Calls to Blood is as 80 minute, tightly drawn and well directed (by Andrew Hobgood), relationship drama that starts out with a typical situation. Jacob (Gary Tiedemann) and Alison (Sara Gitenstein) are a perforct married couple of six years. The indeed do love each other, they get along terribly well and life is perfect for them.
The House on Mango Street provides an exploration of neighborhood and community, and the play brackets this with opening and closing songs (sung by the full cast) which trace a Mexican-American family’s journey from renting in familiar Chicago residential areas – from Loomis Ave. to Keeler and Paulina – before they actually buy a house on Mango.
The music was ostensibly difficult but seemed mostly natural in the voices of the singers. The minion of hell seemed sardonically off-key, but it seemed to suit his character. The majority of the music was a thinly layered texture of subtly dissonant melodic fragments.
This uneven production tries too hard to be a farce, to be a keystone cops comedy while also trying to be a espionage thriller and a comedy of manners. The show is much too long and it gets slowed down by long wordy speeches and involved plot explanations.