Latest from Chicago Critic

Fun Home, now playing in a two week run at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, is a curious Broadway musical on many levels. Ultimately, Fun Home carries a powerful emotional impact as the entire show works much better than any of its parts. I was enchanted mainly by Jeanine Tesori’s ( Caroline, or Change, Shrek The Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Violet) hauntingly varied score. This memory musical is based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel – Fun Home. It won Tony’s for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score in 2015.

Sing’ In The Rain is a musical fable filled with rich humor, exaggerated film satire, and, of course, explosive tap numbers that bring goose-bums to tap lovers (like me). This classic film musical works nicely on stage. Young audiences will see a Golden Age musical comedies in its pure form. Who doesn’t love a tap show?

The Magic Play by Andrew Hinderaker, now in a world premiere at the Goodman Theatre is both a magic show and a drama. Owing to the magic skills with deft acting, Brett Schneider plays a rising young magician who takes the stage hours after his lover-boyfriend has left him. After being extremely impressed by Schneider’s opening card tricks (nicely projected on a large screen), the magician’s acts starts to unravel, illuminating his offstage personal life.

This 75 minute one -act uses reverse chronology by starting out at the end of the betrayal and going bad in time toward how it all began. Pinter wants to explore the difficulty in maintaining honest relationships with out mates. Loyalty and commitment to family never occurs to these narcissistic heavy drinking intellectuals. Betrayal is a wordy and a tad too redundant as Pinter’s repetitive dialogue hints at how much these characters try to rationalize their behavior. The indirectness of the words masks the pain, doubt and rage inherent in a story of marital betrayal.

It is New Year’s Eve and Jack and Hannah decide to stay at home to celebrate the new year. They give the staff, including Hannah, the rest of the day off including New Year’s Day. Hannah is given a cash bonus in an envelope just before her husband Harrison (Edward Fraim) arrives to take her home. The two couples have a drink to celebrate the new year. After Margaret and Harrison depart, Hannah discovers that Margaret forgot her bonus envelope. She put the envelope on the drink stand where Margaret will easily find it when she returns to work.

Taking place during the UK miner strike in the 80’s in North Eastern England. A young boy named Billy Elliot (a very talented Cade M. Pearlman), not so well at boxing, accidentally finds himself dancing among a dance class filled with young ladies in tutus. Although, he is the only boy there is something about that class that makes him feel at ease.

In Beth Kander’s world premiere drama, The Bottle Tree, the focus is on the rural Southern (Mississippi) gun culture. We meet Myrna Mason (Kathleen Ruhl) who is the matriarch of the poor-white-trash Mississippi Mason clan. Myrna is an old maid aunt to Rhoda (Christina Gorman) and her surviving daughter Alley (Katherine Acosta). Myrna is obsessed with the ghosts of her family. She believes in the hoodoo folk magic rural tradition. She has a Bottle Tree in her yard to help trap bad ghosts so that they will not influence her family.

British playwright John Hollingsworth has penned a cautionary tale that exposes the conservative view of multiculturalism that believes that brown people, especially followers of Islam, can never really be “British” even if they are born in the UK or have been there since childhood. The fear Englishman express from those of color and those who embrace Islam have started raising their ugly heads in Bradford, England.