“The shit we deal with in Baghdad, it doesn’t exist in America,” declares Sahir early in Martin Yousif Zebari’s Layalina, now in a world premiere at the Goodman under Sivan Battat’s direction. The newly minted Assyrian bridegroom is both right and wrong. The devastation of “shock and awe” bombing by American forces (followed by a […]
Author Archives: Kerry Reid
Great songs, so-so script
On the ticketing page for Broadway in Chicago’s presentation of the touring version of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, there’s a small line at the bottom: “Please note that Tina Turner does not appear in this production.” Given that Turner turned 83 last November and retired from performing at 69, the caveat hardly seems necessary. […]
International Voices Project opens The Shroud Maker
Since founding the International Voices Project in 2010, Patrizia Acerra and her artistic associates have brought playwrights from around the globe to the attention of Chicago audiences. The annual International Voices Project Festival presents staged readings (often in partnership with other cultural institutions and consulates) that introduce writers who are largely unknown in the U.S. […]
The lies of others
I’m just going to get the obvious adjective out of the way right now: Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, now in its local premiere at Steppenwolf under Austin Pendleton’s direction, is definitely Stoppardian. As in much of Tom Stoppard’s work, the story spans decades—1920-2010, to be precise. And also as in Stoppard, an object (in […]
Street songs
In what was seen at the time as quite the upset, Avenue Q took home the Tony Award for best musical in 2004, beating out the Wicked machine and the critically acclaimed Caroline, or Change. The 2007 documentary ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway lays out the behind-the-scenes stories of that season, culminating in Avenue Q […]
Sisters in arms
When it comes to Factory Theater, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Shannon O’Neill’s play The Kelly Girls, about two sisters in Northern Ireland, would be close in tone and spirit to the endearing Northern Irish comedy series Derry Girls. After all, Factory has been providing high-spirited pastiches/parodies that both satirize and celebrate the best […]
Home at last
Theatre Y started searching for a permanent home in North Lawndale three years ago. As founding artistic director Melissa Lorraine puts it, “It’s been a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The first place they considered, near the Pulaski Pink Line stop, was a little too small. The second, the Central Park Theater […]
Dublin songs
Romantic regret and stubborn optimism seem as intertwined in the national character of Ireland as a Saint Brigid’s cross, and those qualities suffuse Once, the 2012 musical adapted by Irish playwright Enda Walsh from John Carney’s original 2007 screenplay of the same title. That this Irish tale, which is not quite a love story but […]
Here he is, baby
Artists Lounge Live, started by the husband-and-wife team of Michael and Angela Ingersoll, specializes in presenting tribute shows to various musical legends. (Michael Ingersoll was in the original tour of the Four Seasons-inspired bio-musical Jersey Boys, and Angela has played Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.) Now they’ve brought in John-Mark McGaha, an Alabama-born […]
Warm and fuzzy
Charles Dickens’s schoolmaster Mr. Gradgrind from Hard Times (he who insists, “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts”) would feel right at home in the grim factory town run by a petulant archduke in Mac Barnett’s 2012 children’s book Extra Yarn. There, young Annabelle and her schoolmates are […]
Floor Show keeps swinging
Alex Grelle and Jesse Morgan Young’s Floor Show premiered in a brief electric run in February 2020 at the Chopin. The plan was to bring it back later that spring. But then . . . you know. Blessedly, this compelling exploration/channeling of the chameleonic (and always self-aware) spirit of David Bowie—to call it a “tribute […]
Sisters in war
Dominick Alesia’s original musical, now in a world premiere with the Impostors under Stefan Roseen’s direction, follows a young girl, Amelia, as she searches through a country shattered by war for Miranda, the older sister she never knew she had. Along the way, much like Dorothy and Alice, she encounters helpmates who are on their […]
Chicago Theatre Week kicks off
Update February 24: Chicago Theatre Week has been extended through March 5. “If you see our show, that’s at least two spots on your bingo card!” That’s what Jimalita Tillman, global director for the Harold Washington Cultural Center, said at the Chicago Theatre Week kick-off party Monday night at Wicker Park’s Den Theatre. She wasn’t […]
Seeing the forest and the trees
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods premiered three years before Robert Bly’s Iron John sent men into the wilderness as part of the “mythopoetic men’s movement,” complete with sweat lodges, drum circles, chanting, and other rituals designed to restore a pre-industrialization notion of masculinity, combined with Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” narratives. The […]
#OscarsSoWhite
This past fall, TimeLine offered a blistering revival of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind, in which a Black actress in a 1950s Broadway play about lynching (penned and directed by white men, naturally) takes a stand against the insulting stereotypes in the script and the microaggressions in the rehearsal room. They’ve followed that up with […]