July 27, 4:58 PM, in the sweltering afternoon of a hothouse week, my friend Jeff and I arrived at a kiosk between a shuttered Starbucks and a Cash4Gold stand on the pedway level of Block 37. We were reporting for duty as Detectives Peacock, among the first set of Chicago players to officially experience Right […]
Category: Theater Review
Posted inTheater Review
Port of Entry offers an exhilarating journey
Long recognized as Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood, Albany Park has also served for generations as the destination for immigrant families. As the University of Chicago’s Chicago Studies program noted, “From the 1970s onward, Albany Park became a community of immigrants. By the 1990s, the neighborhood had the highest numbers of Filipino, Guatemalan, and Korean immigrants […]
Posted inTheater Review
Amped-up oligarchy
It’s not clear that there’s anything funny about the life story or legacy of John D. Rockefeller, which raises the question of Corn Productions’ attraction to the material and goal in presenting it. Unfortunately, although clever bits appear throughout this satirical history lesson, Ryan Stevens’s production of his own play relies on the actors’ shouting […]
Posted inTheater Review
No country for old men
Harold Pinter’s 1974 play No Man’s Land occupies the territory between his earlier “comedies of menace,” such as The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, and the more overtly political work he’d create in the 1980s (Mountain Language, One for the Road). But it’s primarily a comedy of language, at least in Steppenwolf’s current intriguing staging […]
Posted inTheater Review
Hair metal hijinks
The Mercury Theater production of this five-time Tony-nominated musical re-creates the 80s with such abandon that the audience’s fervor was palpable (and loud) on the night I attended. Tommy Novak’s staging of Rock of Ages creates a fun environment where musical theater mainstays intermingle with fresh standouts on the local scene. Reminiscent of the Emcee […]
Posted inTheater Review
Disney delight
The stages at Chicago Shakespeare Theater are accustomed to classic tales of daring sword fights, magic spells, and a prince in disguise—just the kinds of stories that Belle loves to read. Although Navy Pier is far from Belle’s French provincial town, CST’s production of the Disney favorite Beauty and the Beast roars to life nonetheless. […]
Posted inTheater Review
The magic of romance
The description for Henok Negash’s Meant to Be at the Chicago Magic Lounge makes it sound a little like a navel-gazing self-actualization exercise. Negash, we’re told, “specializes in offering a personalized mystery; meaning that he is not looking for perfection but rather connection.” Rest assured that what you’re in for at the show is a […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Wiz Walk shows us a way forward
There are days I don’t think I can handle one more essay on the precarious state of the American theater. It’s not that I’m in denial about the existential threats facing so many institutions large and small. I just feel rather helpless to change what’s going on. And let’s be honest—even a wistful desire to […]
Posted inTheater Review
Sisters in song
George Brant’s Marie and Rosetta, now at Northlight in a production directed by E. Faye Butler, is a tribute to the contributions of Black women in gospel, rhythm and blues, and rock, as embodied by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Marie Knight—neither of whom are as nearly well known as they deserve to be (even though […]
Posted inTheater Review
A Midsummer with some twists
Is there a Shakespeare comedy better suited for an outdoor production in a park in July than A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Much of the play itself takes place outdoors in the summer, in the woods on the outskirts of a very English-seeming Athens. And the stories that unfold there are just twisty enough to keep […]
Posted inTheater Review
Elements of Style has substance
Dorothy Parker once famously observed, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” The latest prime-time offering from the Neo-Futurists, Elements of […]
Posted inTheater Review
Princess Di—Gone But Still Kicking! paints a divisive portrait of the late royal
An icon and legend, the late Princess Diana, first wife to King Charles III, lends herself to many different interpretations. Jillann Gabrielle has established herself as a creator and performer of one-woman musicals about such iconic women as Greta Garbo, Hedda Hopper, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Now Gabrielle presents her interpretation […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Art of Bowing gives us too much of nothing
Ian Damont Martin directs the world premiere of Nathan Alan Davis’s post-everything meta intergalactic meditation on what it’s all about. Akwasi (David Goodloe)—on a bare stage save for a blinding, bare light bulb on a stand—tells the audience that theater’s dead and that he’s not an actor. He’s joined by Enoch (Beck Nolan), who has […]
Posted inTheater Review
Spongeworthy
The SpongeBob Musical had its pre-Broadway run here in 2016. I missed that, but I can’t imagine it was any more delightful than what Kokandy Productions has concocted in the basement at the Chopin. Stephen Hillenburg’s Nickelodeon series about the plucky and absorbent title character inspired this toe-tapping, whimsical explosion featuring songs by a murderers’ […]
Posted inTheater Review
Shakespearean shaggy dog
For Midsommer Flight’s tenth annual production of free Shakespeare in Chicago’s parks, the company has chosen as shaggy a dog story as the Bard had in his quiver. In ancient Britain, Princess Imogen secretly weds Posthumus to get out of marrying her stepmother’s odious son, Cloten. What follows includes (but is not limited to) alleged […]