Author Archives: Nick Green

The fringe-festival circuit is littered with this type of prefab musical, long on promise and short on execution, a model of misdirected energy and effort. The story in Warfield, USA–a war-torn town dabbles in diplomacy with disastrous results–is fine, but Jazz Hands Across America’s first scripted effort is monochromatic and punchless. Director Michael Descoteaux and […]

The Pintig Cultural Group–which has focused on the Filipino-American immigrant experience for ten years–shouldn’t bother with scripts as bereft of hope and meaning as Larry Leopoldo’s adaptations of three short stories by Filipino-American writer Bienvenido Santos. “Scent of Apples” ends before it really begins, and “Immigration Blues”–in which two sisters scam a retiree for a […]

Seeing all six of the one-acts in George F. Walker’s “Suburban Motel” cycle might make some of his themes fall into place. But there’s no connection between the two plays here except for the shared setting, a motel room, and the generous talents of the Famous Door Theatre Company ensemble. A major stumbling block with […]

It’s shocking that this one-note show, about a Jewish guy who helps his buddy masquerade as a Jew to get chicks, has been so widely produced. After several hours of quiet postshow contemplation/abject horror, I can only say that Sam Wolfson and Bryan Fogel’s low-rent compendium of bad taste and racist stereotypes is a work […]

Using a well-worn copy of the 1989 Chicago Celebrity Chef cookbook, foodie-performers Seth Zurer and Chloe Johnston spotlight their favorite members of the Chicago machine in I-80 Drama Company’s lively cooking demonstration-cum-political overview, which includes recipes from Harold Washington (dessert bars), Richard M. Daley (beef stew), and Jane Byrne (“snow birds”). Though the performances are […]

Playwright Steven Simoncic’s depiction of an African-American couple and an upper-middle-class white couple living next door to each other in Humboldt Park is admirably evenhanded despite the script’s running gag about racial stereotyping in advertising and swipes at overpriced Starbucks coffees. The clever, breezy first act takes a politically correct attitude toward gentrification yet remains […]

Nicholas Wright’s reenvisioning of Vincent van Gogh’s life has broad shoulders and a bigger heart, but all subtleties get washed out in Frank Pullen’s puzzling staging for the Journeymen. The opening scene, which features a flurry of kitchen activity, becomes a 20-minute cooking tutorial, complete with two characters stirring gravy. The energy devoted to superficial […]

While Edward Albee was mining the family-as-prison metaphor early in his career, a lesser-known contemporary worked the same angle but took an increasingly naturalistic approach. Frank D. Gilroy’s 1965 The Subject Was Roses shows a young veteran on three successive mornings in the kitchen of his childhood home, where 20 years of unresolved conflicts between […]

Halfway through the journey of getting his father’s cremains buried at a designated spot in Iowa, the journalist protagonist of Tim Clue and Spike Manton’s comedy says, “I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure when, but we’re going to see this done.” An hour and four or five endings later, in the middle of […]

The final revelation in Stephen Cone’s play–which traps a retired NYPD officer with an unwelcome interloper in a remote beachfront house–is unsettling and graphic. It’s also disappointing, since the last ten minutes get pulled out of the ether in Cone’s purposely elliptical Sam Shepard-style script. But Mark A. Steel as the ex-cop and Tyler A. […]

Leads Steve Tomlitz as Claude and Zach Laliberte as Berger don’t have powerful enough voices to knock their solos out of the park in this quintessential antiestablishment piece, but that’s almost beside the point. Hair redefined the American musical, focusing more on complex themes than characterization, and Tomlitz and Laliberte are skilled enough to elicit […]

Nicholas Wright’s lively if unsubstantiated recounting of Vincent van Gogh’s sexual awakening in London at least aims for historical verisimilitude. The dank kitchen setting and pivotal thunderstorm seem allusions to Wuthering Heights, and references to Dickens and George Eliot abound in his literate script. But suspension of disbelief is a must given the torrid affair […]

Though there’s a dead body onstage for most of Corn Productions’ new show, no one eats, has sex with, or otherwise violates it. What’s going on? If it weren’t for the vaudeville farting routine and whopper of a premise, I’d think this usually transgressive troupe was undergoing some form of behavior modification. Still, there’s no […]