After a few changes to the script and re-staging for a park environment, Kirsten Kelly and Chicago Shakespeare have revived their short version of Twelfth Night for this summer’s city-sponsored Shakespeare in the Parks program. Featuring some of the same cast members as the production that played earlier this year in Chicago schools, Kelly’s Twelfth Night is endearing, funny, and light-hearted with just the right amount of intelligence.
Chops is a winner on many levels. It is a nostalgic remembrance of the Rush Street night club era as well as a clever con plot to gain cash. The Randy Steinmeyer and Daniel Patrick Sullivan have terrific stage rivalry with Larry Neumann, Jr. contributing passive stability. These outstanding actors under Richard Shavzin’s tight direction make this 88 minute one-act zing along. You’ll be engrossed into the world of jazz and conmen as the glimpse into a lost era finds these guys trapped into to who they are. This show is a treat.
“Catch Me if You Can” is quite simply the classiest and splashiest community theatre production I have enjoyed in ages. Don’t be fooled by the venue. You may be walking into the Buffalo Grove Park District, but Big Deal Productions’ 2016 summer extravaganza matches and occasionally exceeds some Chicago Equity productions with ambition and the kind of scale rarely seen on any stage these days. Producer Lindsay Grandt and Director Ken Preuss have marshaled together an extraordinary company of volunteers who have committed themselves heart and soul to exploring a classic cat and mouse game in which the traditional roles of good guy and bad guy get turned upside down.
For people who old enough to have been married, or are in their late twenties and considering it, the show has obvious emotional resonance. In its current staging under the direction of John Glover, it also is surprisingly theatrical for that’s basically just two conversations.
The New Colony, under the direction of Evan Linder, puts their attention to where it truly matters: into a very strong cast. And though the story is sometimes confusing and, to me, ambiguous as to its meaning, it too raises some curious questions as to what it means to be human and how sometimes the gap between who we are and who we want to be cannot be bridged.
Few Shakespeare plays are better suited to outdoor performance than the seasonally appropriate fantasy romance A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now at the Mayslake Peabody Estate, First Folio’s production, directed by Haley Rice, is an amusing romp through the woods, with a talented group of actors who are mostly new to the company.
Operetta in Exile begins with six songs from Die Blume von Hawaii, a 1931 collaboration between three Jewish artists, Paul Abraham, Alfred Grunwald, and Fritz Lohner-Beda. The story is typical of what defines an operetta: it is light-hearted, uses stock characters, and a formulaic plot. However, between the songs we learn about Abraham’s persecution at the hands of the Nazis.
Alex’s Eroica is a 75 minute morality play about secrets and hypocrisy. Victor (Felipe Carrasco) is the popular 20something basketball coach at the town’s local high school. He has a medical deferment from the draft, but he is a pro-war patriot. His wife Sally (Sara Pavlak McGuire) is a super-patriot who lost her father before she was born to WWII and now has her brother MIA in Vietnam. She laments that Victor can’t serve. Why?
Why do a show about a possibly brain-damaged actor interpreting every role in Hamlet with the aid of puppets, projections, facial spasms, and acronyms? The answer, “Busey” says, is to prove that he can. And for a hilarious seventy-five minutes, we can watch a slow-rolling disaster interlaced with occasional flashes of genius as Carl pars down Shakespeare’s longest play into a rapid-fire series of commentaries, deluded sidetracks, and high tragedy.
Add the wonderful, two-level apartment set (designed by Collette Pollard) based on the look and feel of playwright Guirgis’ Manhattan apartment and the set becomes a character in the play! Riverside is filled with several monologues that are full of social commentary. Quotes like this one from Lulu: “I may look how I look, but that don’t mean I am how I look” add rich insights and honest humor and some sex.
Without giving away more, Between Riverside and Crazy is a master work, a terrific night of theatre as well as a timely honest look at racial issues especially dealing with cops. We see Eamonn Walker as the Battalion Chief on the TV series Chicago Fire-now see Walker in a fabulous live turn as the flawed ex-cop. Between Riverside and Crazy is one of the best plays of 2016, don’t miss it.