Latest from Chicago Critic

yeast nation (the triumph of life)

For me the use of a pounding hypnotic rock score and the scream-singing was too much. I believe that lyrics and music should work together to enhance and further the story in a manner to be appreciated and understood. Rock music makes that difficult at best.

Treasure Island at Lifeline Theatre

Treasure Island is about seamen, mutineers and treasure hunters each determined to get wealthy from the buried gold. Heroism, personal integrity and a boy’s actions are present in this classic legendary tale.

12 Ophelias: A Play with Broken Songs

A water hole douses several of the players as the play mirrors a world of word scraps that lead to cold raw sex that Ophelia uses to cut a new path in life for herself. Raw emotions and vivid sensuality erupts once Ophelia rises from her watery grave to fulfill her carnal desires

Year Zero

Having to cope with both their present mourning and their collective past from the mother’s escape form the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the 1980’s, Ra and Vuthy struggle to find their place in America.

Fake

Playwright Eric Simonson’s fascinating new work, Fake, rekindles the controversy and the impact of the discovery of the infamous “Piltdown Man” thought to be the missing link between ape and man.

Stoop Stories

Her haunting performance contains the truth of living and spilling out your stories on the ‘stoop’ (front steps of an apartment building). Dael deftly mixes poetry and realism into a portrait of Harlem’s forgotten people.

The Hostage

This is a major triumph for Berry and the folks at Griffin Theatre Company! Behan’s play is part Irish melodrama, part music hall musical, part political and cultural satire (of the British and the Irish) and part circus. This is not your sentimental, poetic Irish drama

Black Comedy

The show opens to a darkened stage as two people talk and move about as if the lights were functioning. Then when the women turns on the record player—boom!—the lights go out—and in a clever twist, the stage lights come on—so we see when the character’s can’t.

Man of La Mancha

Forced to ‘plead’ his case with his cellmates, Man of La Mancha turns into a play-within-a-play where he tells on Quixote’s story as his defense. The result is a journey from the realm of reality into fantasy. Is he mad or just the purest idealist?

boom

It is an off-beat show filled with sharp dialogue as it blends big themes (the end of the world and biological mutations, etc.) with dating rituals and “intensely significant coupling.”