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When the Rain Stops Falling, a dark, poetic drama by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell, has been given a first-rate production by City Garage, the avant-garde company headed by Frederique Michel.
In Here Lies Love, David Byrne’s concept of doing a rockish musical about the life of Imelda Marcos––former First Lady of The Philippines and famous for her shoe collection––in the manner of a ‘60’s “Happening” with the audience being part of the interaction, is quite bold. Byrne’s collaboration with composer Fatboy Slim in the songs, which mix romantic pop ballads with blasting, pounding cacophony, is also all quite theatrical.
British playwright Simon Stephens’s adaptation of Mark Haddon's novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” is currently a big hit on Broadway. He will undoubtedly find additional favor with this gripping, but also terrifying, portrait of British teenagers in peril inspired by his own experiences as a teacher.
Fabulous, the “Some Like It Hot”-style musical with book and lyrics by Dan Darby, music by Michael Rheault, gives us a transvestite romance on a ship, with Nick Morrett and Josh Kenny play men escaping from danger. It’s a barrel of fun performed by a lively cast who are all fine singers, a tap dancing quartet of cute sailors, some broad comedy, and romance.
Director Rick Hamilton keeps everything jumpin’, aided by Mary Lauren’s bouncy choreography. They call it “The Queen of New Musical Comedies,” and it sure is. You’ll have a great time.
Sting fans rejoice. The Last Ship has set sail on Broadway, and it looks like it’s going to be a long voyage. Those in the know will recognize many of the songs, as they’ve been featured in albums by the charismatic singer-songwriter.
Existential voids come in all shapes and sizes. Samuel D. Hunter's begins in an unnamed assisted-living facility located (unsurprisingly) in the hinterlands of a likewise remote Idaho city. Its corporate owners are closing it down at the end of the week, leaving certified nursing assistants Faye and Ginny, staff supervisor Jeremy, and part-time cook Ken to care for the three remaining residents—surly Tom and cheerful Etta, who remain unperturbed, and Etta's 90-year-old husband Gerald, who chafes under advanced dementia.
Conor McPherson may have forsaken alcohol after his brush with the Grim Reaper, but his universe is still that of a pub-crawler down to his last euro, reliant on the grudging charity of family and friends. In this myth-infused underworld realm, demons wear steel-toed boots—the better for kicking the weak and helpless—while angels in blue jeans dispense grace in the form of back-alley cut-rate hand jobs for shamefaced men too timid to expect anything more. (This is Ireland, after all.)
Edward Albee's curmudgeonly decision to affix an addendum, written in 2004, to his career-making one-act play, The Zoo Story, written in 1959, shouldn't be surprising. Far from solving mysteries probed for over five decades by learned scholars and acting-class students alike, though, his revision only further muddies the expository waters.
There is a musical aspect at the heart of You Can't Take It With You that rhythmically and melodically transports us into another state of consciousness.
A new wrinkle in casting brings an interesting aspect to Lee Blessing's 1988 play A Walk in the Woods in this fine revival by the Keen Company. Traditionally played by two males, we can now sense that a battle of the sexes has been integrated into the interplay between two negotiators, one American the other Russian. And it works effortlessly and effectively.
In first place, for now anyway, the most remarkable play this season is, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on a 2003 novel by Mark Haddon. Creatively produced and directed by Marianne Elliott (War Horse),its imaginative staging and impressive cast takes your breath away while remaining emotionally evocative. The novel, written for young adults, makes for a fascinating theater production for all ages.
Ayad Akhtar's twisting drama at the Lyceum Theater, Disgraced, is as timely as an up-to-the-minute newsbreak. First produced off Broadway in 2012, the tempestuous play won the Pulitzer Prize for its examination of the Islamic faith in today's culture.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two notorious young Texas outlaws, who, with their accomplices known as The Barrow Gang, masterminded a reign of terror in five states during the years 1932-34. Both were in their early 20s and lived in the slums of West Dallas.
Towne Street Theater, L.A.’s leading African-American theater company, has celebrated its 21st anniversary by mounting the world premiere of Barbara White Morgan’s powerful social drama, 1969. The choice of title is significant, as it was in the late 60s that the Black liberation movement in the USA began to come apart after a decade of successful rebellion against the white power structure, led by such figures as Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton.
Some of us may remember and others may be only vaguely aware of the events surrounding the integration of Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas in 1957. It was a turbulent time in America as bigoted, white anti-integrationists openly defied the push by Negro activists to integrate an all white school. This, despite the Supreme Court decision Brown Vs. Board of Education in 1954.
Richard Greenberg launches his world-of-sports play, Take Me Out, with superstar batter Darren Lemming announcing to the press that he is gay, but the repercussions vested upon his teammates, his fans and his career will not be what we expect. Darren's problem, you see, is not that he is gay, but that he believes he can do no wrong—the undoing of tragic heroes since the Greeks starred in the Dionysic leagues.
The martyrs of Salem, Massachusetts, were not the first scapegoats of a society undone by its own fears, but the source of their persecution has entered our language to describe a practice sadly continuing to the present day. For as long as we refer to the harassment of a designated subculture as a "witch hunt," sorcerers and sorceresses will provide the metaphor for parables of gay liberation.
Of all Shakespeare's plays, his ranting-in-the-rain scene in King Lear is unsurpassed for sheer Wagnerian spectacle, so nobody can blame Chicago Shakespeare Theater's for deciding to open their 2014 season with flourish and fanfare. The title role also constitutes an irresistible star turn for mature actors, so who can argue with the casting of Larry Yando—whose credits include both Scrooge and Scar—as western literature's most abusive Dad?
Innumerable musical comedies from Broadway's golden age could be improved by a new book, a more essential element these days than it was once. Except for the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon of classic musical plays whose books have remained virtually intact, the memorable songs contributed by the earlier team of Rodgers and Hart, the brothers Gershwin, plus those by Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter (to name just a few of the greats) in their mostly forgotten shows have been largely disassociated from their source.
It was inevitable that my reaction to Disgraced, which premiered two years ago at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, would be colored and impacted by events in the real world.
An explosion, an act of terrorism, has devastated the upper floors of a high-rise Manhattan office building, the offices of a large law firm. Two employees find themselves trapped within an elevator that has only one unstable cable holding it from falling. Stuck between the upper floors, the elevator provides a place for its conflicted occupants, previously strangers to each other, to meet and grapple with the choices they have made.
Chicago learned its lesson with the disastrous summer of 1995, introducing city-wide safety measures to more quickly remedy the hardships associated with unusually high temperatures. This is small comfort to the sweltering citizens in Devil’s Day Off, Jon Steinhagen's panoramic portrait of an urban landscape in 2014 under siege by 112-degree heat indices exacerbated by a 12-hour electrical power failure arising from overloaded cooling systems.
Edgar Allen Poe's copyright expired long ago, leaving its content open to any number of revisions (will we see a "Zombie Edgar Allen Poe" soon?), but though The Mammals's aesthetic fully embraces dark-romantic sensationalism, it rejects spooky-tunes parodies. Audiences looking for cheap giggles might enjoy roaming the shadowy corridors and creaking elevator of the Zoo Studio's industrial quarters but won't find them in this program of performance pieces based on the Father-of-American-Gothic's greatest hits.
"Tony has lived only in Chicago" Stan Klein tells us. The "Tony" of whom he speaks is Tony Fitzpatrick—artist, poet, and raconteur in the tradition of Ben Hecht, Nelson Algren, Mike Royko, Studs Terkel and Rick Kogan. After 55 years, though, this son of the Big Shoulders has announced his departure from his Ukrainian Village quarters for New Orleans, where he will "be warm, draw birds and find decent food." In this coda performance to his “Nickel History” trilogy, he bids his city and its people goodbye.
What a pleasure it is to watch actors perform in a hit show. Even consummate professionals give just a little more when they know they’re in a sure-fire hit. There’s that extra sparkle in the current production of On The Town.Everyone in the cast really shines; the songs are sung full out, the dance steps have verve and bounce, the lines are effortlessly popped out to the last row in the second balcony. And throughout., the audience roars with appreciation.
Fifteen minutes into Black Ensemble's revue, audience members might find themselves asking three questions: 1 What are songs written by Bob Dylan, Glen Frey and Sammy Fain doing in the score of a show billed as a tribute to Etta James? 2) Why does the playbill list five singers (excluding understudies) in the title role? 3) Who's that sassy chick with the fluttery hands and chirpy voice mincing around in mint-green chiffon and gold pumps?
When Can-Can premiered, way back in 1953, it was not much loved by the more rigorous critics, some of whom regarded this Montmartre musical as a kind of convenient catchall for some great Cole Porter songs. The principal problem was Abe Burrows’s book, which didn’t give the principal players any interesting backstories (that is, to speak of or to sing about).
Jack Fry, whose previous solo play, They Call Me Mister Fry, was a hit at the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival, returns to L.A. with his latest monologue, Einstein. Fry, a writer as well as a performer, has created an Albert Einstein we haven’t seen on stage before. Gone is the stereotypical image we have of the renowned physicist––frizzy-haired, wise-cracking, Chaplinesque. In his place, Fry gives us a 35-year-old Einstein––vigorous, driven and tormented.
As Wisconsin’s only woman-run theater company, Renaissance Theaterworks has made a name for itself by producing plays featuring strong female characters. Actually, its mission is far broader than that, but one glance at its latest offering, Amelia, tells you that the troupe is still passionate about its initial mission. This tale, by Alex Webb, is equal parts history lesson and love story.
The Wallis Theater has once again culled the very best of children’s theater from around the world to present this multi-sensory theatrical adaptation of Jean Giono’s environmental classic, recommended for ages 7+.
The Man Who Planted Trees tells the inspiring story of a shepherd who plants a forest, acorn by acorn, transforming a barren wasteland. As much a touching tale as it is a hilarious puppet show, the piece shows us the difference one man (and his dog!) can make to the world.
This is a play aimed at audiences who know how plays are made—or who want to know how plays are made. The playmakers, in this case, are the Bad Settlement Theater Company (BSTC) and its season line-up: The Great Gatsby, Balm in Gilead and an original adaptation of the American classic, Moby Dick.(Chicago theater history buffs may recall pioneering productions of these same plays, mounted by the Wisdom Bridge, Steppenwolf and Remains companies in 1991, 1980 and 1982, respectively.
Forever, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith (on commission from Center Theater Group), is a solo play which deals with life and death in a brave, rawly powerful way. Orlandersmith, a much-feted African-American poet, playwright and actor, centers her monologue on a recent visit she made to Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where some of her personal heroes are buried: Apollinaire, Edith Piaf, Richard Wright, Jim Morrison. They represent the family she created for herself after leaving the family she was born into.
Vince Melocchi’s Nice Things, now in a world-premiere run at Rogue Machine, goes deep into post-industrial America for its drama. Set in 2009 Dunsmore, PA, a town turned wasteland by the closure of the factories and mines that once supported it, Nice Things shows just how bleak life is for the working-class folk who are stuck there these days. Because their jobs have been shipped overseas, they must look to the military for a way out of poverty and hopelessness.
WingSpan Theater Company opened Tennessee Williams’s 1967 surreal drama, The Two Character Play, October 9, 2014 at The Bath House Cultural Center. Kevin Scott Keating and Lulu Ward star.
The answer is Nathan Lane. The question is what’s the best reason to see It’s Only A Play.This nearly sold-out smash hit is playing to full houses chocked with appreciative theatergoers. Just as trumpeted, the laughs never stop because director Jack O’Brien has done a masterful job keeping everything moving at breakneck speed. The deck is stacked with performers who know how to deliver a line for maximum effect. Playwright Terrence McNally is in familiar territory, and nary a quip fails to get the desired reaction.
Written in 1936 by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, You Can’t Take it with You brings the Vanderhof extended family of crazies, all colorful semi-artises doing their thing, to Broadway’s Longacre Theater. In the Sycamore family, everyone follows his bliss, but each bliss flies in a different direction. Yet they all end up in a kind of chaotic unity. There is definitely something lovable about this group anchored by Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (James Earl Jones) whose cheery philosophy is, "Life is kind of beautiful if you let it come to you."
Wisconsin audiences get their first look at the national tour of Oncein the spectacular Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, the state capitol.
A few words about the center: celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the center was built on a primary donation of $205 million by the creators of American Girl dolls. The donation came after the company was sold to Mattel for zillions of dollars.
The year is 1936, deep in the Great Depression. But you’d never know it from the cheery attitude of the multi-generational Sycamore family in the current production of You Can’t Take it With You. Director Scott Ellis has taken this old Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman chestnut and used his alchemy to turn it into spun sugar.
How do you not hate a kid who just graduated from Juilliard and is immediately given the starring role in a Broadway play? When the actor is Alex Sharp, the question becomes how does someone that young and inexperienced give such a brilliant performance? As Christopher, the boy who is a genius, except when he’s dealing with other humans, Sharp is onstage virtually the entirety of The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time. Within that time, he does what seems nearly impossible: he makes a character who is inherently unlikeable into someone we care about deeply.
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