Strong acting and a powerful theme can’t quite bring Juan Ramirez Jr.’s world premiere at Subtext Studio Theatre (part of Destinos: 6th Chicago International Latino Theater Festival) to life. Though Kairis Rivera (who also translated) and Jorge Aguilar invest their characters of undocumented migrant and coyote with genuine feeling, and director Omar Vicente Fernandez paces […]
Category: Theater Review
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Familial feminism in La Tía Mariela
Through spicy tales of gossip, beautifully passionate visuals of traditional music and dance of the Yucatán Peninsula, and witty dark humor, Conchi León’s renowned play La Tía Mariela reminds audiences of the joys and heartbreaks of family dynamics as well as the power of oral tradition. Destinos: 6th Chicago International Latino Theater FestivalThe festival continues […]
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Math isn’t scary in El Baile de los Números
With Halloween just around the corner, what could possibly be spookier than bringing together two equally scary entities: witches and mathematics. However, in Teatro Tariakuri’s newest production, El Baile de los Números, the play’s theme is to destigmatize this fear around math and show the joy that numbers can bring. Under the direction of Karla […]
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The Last Living Gun is a dystopic spaghetti western
The Impostors have only been producing since 2018, and (like every other company) were on a hiatus from live production from March 2020 to fall of 2021. But they’ve already carved out a distinctive niche doing the kind of fabulistic and allegorical work that House Theatre of Chicago regularly cranked out. But while House seemed […]
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Wall Street bloodbath
Last year for the Halloween season, Kokandy Productions presented Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Now they’re back with another slasher songfest: American Psycho: The Musical, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel by book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and with a score by Duncan Sheik, whose original songs are interspersed with pop hits like “Everybody Wants to […]
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Lycan it rough
The roommates in Steve Yockey’s 2013 one-act “Little Red Riding Hood” redux are too young to be spending their weekends hunkered down like grannies in a cabin, but that’s exactly what their domestic situationship has devolved into. Ben (Joshua Servantez) fears the “forest” of the big city and prefers DVDs over dance floors; Jack (Gardy […]
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Eurydice loses its way
At first, it seems like a match made in heaven. Or rather, Mount Olympus. But marriages between goddesses and mortals are complicated, and throughout Greek myth, their unions are defined by ultra-dramatic misfortunes. So it goes with Eurydice and Orpheus, the former a minor deity and sea nymph, and the latter the musically gifted mortal […]
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The Lehman Trilogy is TimeLine at its finest
Three actors play more than 50 characters over a span of some 160 years in the TimeLine Theatre/Broadway in Chicago collaboration on the epic drama The Lehman Trilogy. But it’s not daunting statistics that propel this powerful production, codirected by Vanessa Stalling and TimeLine associate artistic director (and cofounder) Nick Bowling. When house lights come […]
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Sanctuary City explores the plight of DREAMers
Before Martyna Majok won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her drama Cost of Living (which was planned for this season at Victory Gardens before the board decided to close up shop at the Tony Award-winning theater), her plays got airings with small companies around Chicago. (She graduated from University of Chicago in 2007.) Red […]
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Debutantes and debacles
Pearl Cleage isn’t from Chicago, but she’s been produced enough here that she feels like an adopted playwright at least. Now-defunct Eclipse Theatre Company (dedicated to the one playwright, one season model) offered a season of Cleage plays back in 2007, and that same year, Court Theatre did a stunning revival of her 1992 frontier […]
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Purgatory in a dystopian disco
Set in a place that is equal parts dystopian disco and minimal sci-fi torture dungeon (set and costumes designed by Natasha Djukic), Zeljko Djukic directs Adam Ranđelović’s adaptation from Daniel Gerould’s translation of Stanisław Witkiewicz’s tragicomic 1919 piece of existentialist hand-wringing. Plasfodor (Kevin Webb)—married to the mute Mamalia (Venice Averyheart), who dances her words rather […]
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All about the Franklins
There’s a great show onstage right now in Chicago about a Founding Father who is not named Alexander Hamilton. And while it doesn’t feature an award-winning score by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mesmerized: A Ben Franklin Science & History Mystery at Chicago Children’s Theatre boasts its own fine collection of talent onstage and off. Adapted by Suzanne […]
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Big songs, too much story
When people talk about the glory years of Chicago theater they rarely mention Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. After opening in London’s West End in 1992, with Jane Horrocks in the title role, it was done at Steppenwolf in 1993 (with Hynden Walch as Little Voice) and was later transferred to […]
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Never trust the tyrants
Though it’s based loosely on a real story, John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi plays like a cross between torture porn and Shakespeare, what with the piling up of butchered bodies, hints of incestuous longing, and even a touch of lycanthropy thrown in for good measure. The Duchess of MalfiThrough 10/21: Thu-Sat […]
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The room where it happens, again
At this point, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is beyond critic-proof. (Once you’ve had an entire episode of Drunk History dedicated to your recap of the events in your musical, what else is there to achieve?) But for the fanatics and newbies alike, I’m happy to report that the current Broadway in Chicago touring production of the […]