This highly entertaining musical treat is light on story, small vignettes designed to introduce the next song, but long on Southern, small town music. Featuring a nice blend of country, folk, old-time rock ‘n roll, blue grass, Cajun, cowboy and western, blues with gospel thrown in,
When the audience isn’t cheering the endeavors, it’s holding its breath: what lithe performers, what contortionists. Everything that seems impossible suddenly is made to look impossibly easy.
Overall, the opera seemed like it was written by a gifted composer who had not yet solved all the dramatic problems set up by the unholy marriage of punk England to ancient Greek drama.
Set in a Lakeview Chicago neighborhood in the backyard of a two-flat (terrific realistic set by Kevin Depinet) on July 4, 2007, we find two 30something married couples and their older landlord couple having a barbecue. They are intelligent, liberal yups engaging in light banter that turns into a heated debate about how are life choices in times of transition shape out entire lives.
As with their previous festival subjects, King Lear and Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet is another tale of family relationships and the demands of filial obligations. Highlights of the program, which will cover 13 sessions over three weeks,
The Village Players can’t seem to make up their minds if they are a community theatre company or a professional troupe. Their production of Bat Boy: The Musical is peopled with a collection of rank amateurs who can neither sing, act or dance
No matter what one does, the appeal of Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre is rather narrow. The-hypocrites’ current production of Oedipus, pared down to a 50-minute one-act and directed by whiz-kid artistic director Sean Graney, is no exception…
The scene is set for the framing tale: how Scheherazade (Louise Lamson) prevents her husband, King Shahryar (Ryan Artzburger) from killing her with the dawn of each new day, staying her execution for 1001 days, by telling him compelling stories that pique and continue his interest.
Tom Williams discusses the following stage plays with Carl Amari: The Who’s Tommy at Circle Theatre; The Walls by Rivendell Theatre at Steppenwolf Garage Theatre and Love Person at Victory Gardens Biograph Theatre. May 30, 2009
Fairey is a welcomed new voice whose ability to tell a worthy, dramatic story with ample dose of very funny lines engages us from the start. Her humor emerges from her quirky, memorable characters and from their situations. Yet the humor in Graceland never diminishes the dramatic power of her play.