REVIEWSREVIEWS BYTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Lives of the Pigeons

Famed poet Sherod Santos demonstrates his skill at dialogue and quirky character development in his 75 minute one act drama, Lives of the Pigeons. Two older men, Gus (Vincent Lonergan) and Max (Done Bender), old friends for years, spend many days in the park playing chess. Theses two exchange stories, social commentaries and observations about such things as the nature of “good behavior.” The quip that good behavior only is rewarded in prison; that in normal life good behavior goes unheralded.

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A Cole Porter Songbook

It’s thus with considerable relief to report that Theo Ubique’s newest revue featuring the work of America’s most urbane songwriter is, at the very least, never boring. Under the auspicious vision of director Fred Anzevino, A Cole Porter Songbook is the tenth of Ubique’s unique cabaret-style productions featuring the blockbuster songwriting talents of Broadway.

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REVIEWSREVIEWS BYTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

The Internationalist

The Internationalist is a very long one act play. Is this play about jet lag or is it an overused exercise in the limitations of language? Who knows? The lack of hints are manifested by the decision to have all the Europeans speak perfect unaccented English as they stitch from the gibberish they normally speak. I can only conclude that playwright Washburn was determined to not give any concentrate meaning to her work. This, at first, makes the show a mystery but as the endless scenes mount up, and nothing much or with any meaning happens, it dawns on us that we are being duped by Washburn.

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Fat Pig

Steppenwolf’s third annual Next Up, featuring the work of Chicago’s up-and-coming generation of theater artists, continues with a mounting of playwright Neil LaBute’s 2005 black comedy Fat Pig. And under the direction of David Prete, this subtle ‘comedy of manners,’ currently playing at the Steppenwolf Garage, successfully showcases LaBute’s characteristic ambiguities in charting the moral lapses of the prototypical American male.

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The Liar

Without a doubt, the Writers’ Theatre’s production of David Ives’s ‘translaptation’ The Liar—freely adapted from the 1643 French comedy Le Menteur by Pierre Corneille—is the funniest ticket in town. And those eager to kick off their summer right could do significantly worse than with this dazzling fireworks display of language, ingenuity and comedic bravado. William Brown (who directed last season’s A Little Night Music at Writers’) directs an exceptionally adept young cast as they bring the linguistic intricacies of Ives’s verse comedy to life, tickling the ear even as they titillate the mind.

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Fray Plays Mozart at the CSO

David Fray

I was highly disappointed that at seemingly the last minute, pianist David Fray chose to substitute for Mozart’s glorious Piano Concerto No. 25 in C the relatively overplayed Concerto No. 20 in D minor. While, like all of Mozart’s late piano concertos, this work is on a very high plane, it arguably lacks some of the scintillating magic of the others; at times it even begins to sound like Mozart is writing in rote-tragic mode. In fairness to Mozart, this evening’s performance did the work few favors. After an expressively wooden orchestral introduction,

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