Composer Bill Whelan Director John McColgan Produced by Broadway in Chicago At the Palace Theater, Chicago Pulsating rhythms soar in dance spectacular The 20 year phenomena, Riverdance, hasn’t lost its energy as people can’t seem to get enough of the Irish step dancing set to a haunting, rhythmic original score of Irish influenced folk music. … Read more
Directed by Patrick New Created by and starring David Kovac At First Folio Theatre, Peabody Estate in Oak Brook, IL Fooling Buddha is clever, intelligent, charming and entertaining! I’d walk a million miles for one of those smiles! David Kovac enlightens us with his story telling and trickery. “A miracle is a tragedy with a … Read more
Playwright Adam Rapp is one of the contemporary masters of establishing atmosphere. Just reading his plays Red Light Winter and Essential Self Defense is enough to set one on edge; the worlds his characters establish are vividly eerie and unsettling. Theatre companies are challenged when producing his work to maintain that feeling of constant low-level tension, and one solution is to use an unusual venue that easily lends itself to grittiness. For the Chicago premiere of The Edge of Our Bodies, Tuta Theatre Chicago artistic director Jacqueline Stone has created a site-specific performance in a Ravenswood Manor garage near where the Brown line crosses Manor Avenue. The muffled, but ceaseless clang of the crossing signal is the perfect accompaniment to a play that heavily emphasizes decay and distance.
Like most translated works by prominent authors, Bertolt Brecht’s The Life of Galileo presents a director with many different versions to choose from. But this play is particularly open to interpretation because there is no definitive version of it even in the original German. Brecht (1898-1956) worked and re-worked it from the late 1930s until the end of his life, and even collaborated on an English adaptation with Charles Laughton while living in Hollywood. What started off as a simple, straightforward Marxist-inspired narrative about the inevitability of social progress brought about by new technology was complicated by the development of the atom bomb, and perhaps, the establishment of an actual communist regime in Germany. Since Brecht’s death, the play has been reworked several times by other authors, and director Nick Sandys selected David Hare’s version due to its quicker pace and vernacular dialogue. This is surely one of Brecht’s most important works, and yet, for those used to the anti-realist writing techniques Brecht experimented with, it may come as a surprise that this play is still, at its core, a straightforward historical drama.
Kelsey Brennan (Andrea Sarti) and Shawn Douglass (Galileo Galilei). Photos by Johnny Knight.
We first see Galileo Galilei (Shawn Douglas) as an idealistic professor in Venice who has to take on private students because he cannot get by on what the university pays him. The chancellor (Blake Montgomery) has an answer for that: Galileo should develop technology the university can make money off of if he wants to get more funding, and in the meantime, he should be grateful for his intellectual independence (yes, the play is still in many ways relevant). Galileo’s newest student, Ludovico (Caleb Probst), tells him of the recently invented telescope, and Galileo makes his first substantial amount of money in a long time by pretending to have invented it. The chancellor is enraged when he uncovers the professor’s deception, but while Galileo did not invent the telescope, he did see the potential in it to be more than a toy or a military tool: he turns it toward the stars.
Douglass (Galileo) and Stephen Spencer (Sagredo)
Galileo’s discovery that Jupiter has moons utterly discredits the geo-centric, Ptolemaic model of the universe which has held sway since ancient times. He is delighted to have proof supporting the much simpler heliocentric theory put forward by Nicolaus Copernicus, but Galileo’s friends warn him that by contradicting scientific orthodoxy, he is contradicting political orthodoxy. No longer under Venetian protection after his telescope fraud, Galileo finds a precarious position at the court of Florence, where he is subject to the Inquisition, and becomes the subject of great controversy. He has supporters within the Catholic Church, but also fearsome enemies, who claim he is undermining the special place humans have in creation, and therefore, not only the Church’s claim to power, but the basis of morality and the value of human life itself. Galileo finds these objections histrionic and ridiculous, but in a time of deep popular dislike for the Church, his teachings are seized upon by its enemies, putting him, his family, and his students in an awkward and dangerous position.
Susaan Jamshidi (Virginia), Stephanie Diaz (Mrs. Sarti), Douglass (Galileo), and Spencer (Sagredo)
Douglass plays Galileo as he’s written: a man so complacently confident in other people’s powers of reason that he does not recognize his folly until it is too late. But from the opening incident with the telescope, he’s willing to put his own advantage above , and it’s a credit to Douglass’s acting that he so often makes us forget this. The final scenes, in which Galileo deals with the fall-out of his recantation, is Douglass’s moment to shine, as the full weight of what Brecht conceives as his historical legacy falls upon him. They are also the stand-out moments for Kelsey Brennan as Andrea Sarti, a boy who has admired Galileo for his entire life, and is the play’s conscience until the revelation of Galileo’s human weakness shakes him as deeply as the revelation of the universe’s true nature shook the people he thought needed awakening. Most of the other actors play multiple characters, and Montgomery deserves particular credit for playing both the chancellor and Cardinal Barberini, who became the Pope who reluctantly condemned Galileo. His roles require him to balance comic caricature with real menace, and even, as Barberini, moral conflict.
Caleb Probst (Ludovico), Todd Michael Kiech (Federzoni), Stephanie Diaz (Mrs. Sarti), Kelsey Brennan (Andrea), Kevin Matthew Reyes (Fulganzio), and Shawn Douglass (Galileo)
Finding the real conflict in the story is director Nick Sandys’s accomplishment as well. For most of the play, we are presented with a person who is objectively right battling with people who are willfully ignorant and wicked or think themselves to be engaged in a noble lie. Rachel Lambert’s early twentieth century costume design and John Boesche’s projections of dates and places referencing Brecht’s life are obscure to people who don’t already know their significance, but don’t detract from the presentation, and look quite lovely with Joe Klug’s set. However, while the play never loses our interest, it’s not until we get to the end that we see the point Brecht discovered in his own work. By capitulating, the father of modern science allowed technological progress to take place only on terms dictated by the entrenched powers. Brecht saw that with nuclear weapons, but heliocentrism turned out not to really be a threat to the Church or princes, either. By the end of Galileo’s century, autocrat Louis XIV was calling himself the Sun-King (because the world revolved around him), and Jesuits were using the newfound ease of predicting the movement of planets as evidence that the universe was designed by an intelligence who made humans in His own image. The complex relationship between science and power was one Brecht spent the latter part of his life reconsidering, and in The Life of Galileo, we are forced to reconsider it as well. Perhaps, in that sense, it fits into his conception of Epic Theatre after all.
By Abe Koogler Directed by Jonathan Berry At American Theater Co (ABT), Chicago Awkward dialogue and lack of action mars slice-of-life drama After sitting through 95 minutes of awkward dialogue from a group of characters who I couldn’t care less about, I asked myself, who is the audience for Kill Floor? The five characters, four … Read more
The show does not shy away from the number of people killed, but its recounting of heroism and, in its own words, compassion and grace, works so well because it is so truthful. It’s nice to be reminded that in a crises situation, most of the strangers around you, such as the other audience members, will try to help. United Flight 232 communicates an uplifting message in a manner which resonates because it is told so convincingly, and in such a way that we feel its consequences.
Writers Theatre is entering a new phase in its history, with the opening of a $28 million dollar new theatre complex. So what better way for the literary-oriented company to celebrate than Arcadia, one of the densest works by one of the most famously intellectual contemporary playwrights? Besides thermodynamics, determinism, historiography, and the transformation of knowledge into meaning, landscape architecture is one of the major themes of the play. And though the new building, located close to Writers’ old home at Books on Vernon, still needs to go through some adjustments before becoming a completely comfortable space (I hurt my knee before the press opening and the accessibility ramp lacks a railing), it has already proven it retains the company’s highly-valued intimacy, and that artistic director Michael Halberstam knows how to use his larger stage.
By Richard Strand Directed by Stuart Carden At Northlight Theatre, Skokie Historical tidbit unfolds into a humorous yet profound twist of history Playwright Richard Strand takes a historical factual situation and turns it into an often funny yet profound drama about a most influential method for the Union to free the slaves, as well as … Read more
At Carrie Secrist Gallery 835 West Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL ‘By Hand’ the group show currently on display at Carrie Secrist Gallery is a collection of wall hung objects (paintings, drawings, embroideries and one wall drawing) seeking to display multiple interpretations of artistic ‘skill’. While there is a great deal of variation in the works … Read more
The Swedish queen Christina is one of the most fascinating figures of the seventeenth century, and the ambiguities and uncertainties about her life make her a common subject of dramatic portrayals to this very day. Having come to the throne as a child at the time when Sweden was one of Europe’s great powers, Christina’s refusal to abide by gender, religious, and political norms caused a great deal of controversy, as did her massive spending on intellectual and artistic pursuits. Now, at the Frontier Theatre as part of Jackalope’s initiative to assist itinerant companies producing Chicago premieres, Cor Theatre is presenting an English-language translation of French Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard’s drama about the queen, which focuses on the ideological conflicts during her reign. Questions of determinism, personal fulfillment vs. public responsibility, and the ethics of love are a lot to cram into a play which is also heavy on action and veers wildly between pathos and comedy, and Cor’s production, like everything at the Frontier, is barebones. But it is also highly stimulating.
Adam Gutkin (seated) as Karl Gustav, Tony Bozzuto (Axel), Toya Turner (Christina), and Will Von Vogt (Johan). Photos by Matthew Gregory Hollis.
The play begins with Christina (Toya Turner) already an adult and well into her reign. She has just been sexually assaulted by her cousin, Karl Gustav (Adam Benjamin), and is in the process of contemptuously rejecting his claims to love her when we first see her slouching on her silver throne. This, she says, is an example of the backwardness that grips Sweden, but, to alleviate their Viking-like ways, she has brought in the famous French philosopher René Descartes (Danny Taylor). Descartes teaches Christina that free will exists, but that emotions are controlled by physical structures in the brain. Christina is fascinated, and hopes to use Descartes’s teachings to gain some self-control. Passion has always been her downfall, and now, she has fallen madly in love with another woman, the noble Ebba Sparre (Laura Resinger).
Bridget Schreiber (Erika), Meg Elliott (Maria Elenora), Toya Turner (Christina), Adam Gutkin (Karl Gustav) and Tony Bozzuto (Axel)
Christina’s refusal to take a husband and produce an heir is creating an unstable political situation. Her chief advisor, Axel Oxenstierna (Tony Bozzuto) wants her to marry his son, Johan (Will Von Vogt), and Johan is even more jealously possessive of her than Karl Gustav. The young man is also deeply resentful of Christina’s attempt to rule in a more humane manner, declaring that it is civilized for countries to torture people. The greatest threat to Christina’s reign is personified by her mother, Maria Eleanora of Brandenburg (Meg Elliott). Why, the former queen demands to know, with Sweden at the peak of its strength, is Christina not committed to waging more wars? It’s not like Christina lacks the temperament for it, or the fearsome visage. Her back and shoulders were permanently damaged when her mother through her down the stairs as a child, and Maria Eleanora makes clear she’d do it again.
Toya Turner (Christina), Tony Bozzuto (Axel), and Danny Taylor (Descartes)
It could be an issue with Linda Gaboriau’s translation, or cultural differences between the English-speaking world and Quebec, but Bouchard does not display the finesse to handle Tom Stoppard-like tapestries of history, art, philosophy, and drama. Johan is a caricature of a misogynist, declaring explicitly at one point that lesbianism has no justification for existing except to entertain men. And yet, Maria Eleanora is presented as the most monstrous of ogres, and sound designer Jeffrey Levin supplies a thunderclap during her entrances. I also question whether free will would be regarded in Lutheran Sweden as a Catholic heresy, as characters in the play assert, or whether they would really treat Martin Luther as a prophet like Muslim radicals treat Muhammad.
For all the play’s questionable framing of philosophic issues, it is a potent character drama. The real Queen Christina made a number of tyrannical decisions not emphasized by the play, but we do see her as a proud, aggressive, and deeply insecure yet entitled young woman. Turner deserves a great deal of credit for how far into Christina’s psyche and physicality she is willing to go. The character is truly tragic, in that her downfall evokes pity and fear despite being due as much to her flaws as her difficult circumstances. (It’s not explicitly stated like in August Strindberg’s Kristina, but Charles I of England’s execution hung heavily over the Swedish court at this time.) And though I found the play’s themes somewhat confusing and extraneous, I did enjoy the ways director Tosha Fowler found of telling this story with such limited resources. The personal interactions are exciting, the design is evocative, and I found the conclusion, in which Christina learns the true price and meaning of freedom, moving. Cor’s production of Christina the Girl King is not perfect, nor is the script, but they are respectable, and if the story of this most remarkable ruler is new to you, you will especially enjoy it.
