David Rice Archives - Chicago Reader

Three women are standing together, shot from below. There is a gray background behind them. They are unsmiling, staring into the middle distance. The woman in the middle has her arms crossed over her chest.

Caryl Churchill gets some love from Chicago theaters

by Kerry Reid February 3, 2023February 6, 2023

British playwright Caryl Churchill is having a bit of a moment this month in Chicago. Court Theatre opens her rarely produced 1983 play, Fen, under the direction of Vanessa Stalling on February 10. And Curious Theatre Branch opens This Is Not a Churchill—four plays inspired by her work—this weekend at the Facility Theatre in Humboldt […]

The set is a living room and dining room combination. Faded wallpaper on the walls, a wooden arch in the rear, and a staircase on the left. Three men are at a small table in the living room, a bottle of whiskey and glasses in front of them. Two younger men are seated on either side, with an older man standing and talking to them in the middle. At the dining room table, two women are seated. On the right is an older woman with long gray hair wearing a nightgown. A younger woman in a light green dress sits left. Another younger woman in a dark dress stands behind the table between them. All the women are laughing, apparently at the men.

Theater Review

Celtic conflicts

by Kelly Kleiman February 2, 2023February 2, 2023

Ann Noble’s play about an Irish family decompensating after the mother’s death had its premiere in Chicago nearly 30 years ago, and it’s showing its age. There are plots and subplots and Irish-lit tropes like a storytelling session apropos of nothing, but none of these achieves warp, or even tarantella, speed. As the dutiful daughter […]

Four women in white dresses stand together in a group embrace. One of them wears a wreath of flowers in her hair.

Theater Review

A big-hearted Little Women

by Kerry Reid December 21, 2022December 21, 2022

First Folio Theatre planned to produce the world premiere of Heather Chrisler’s adaptation of Little Women back in spring of 2020, but COVID took that production out just as surely as scarlet fever ended Beth March. (Calm down: the book is over 150 years old, so spoiler alerts don’t apply.) Though of course one never […]

A man in a trenchcoat and fedora stands in a doorway, right behind a woman in a purple coat and hat who is also peering around the door.

Theater Review

Secret, but saggy

by Jack Helbig February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

Note to would-be play adapters: Agatha Christie’s second published detective novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), is in public domain. That means you can pretty much do whatever you want with this text, and still call it an “adaptation.” This is pretty much what First Folio executive artistic director David Rice does here. Extremely loosely based […]

White woman, Asian woman, and Black woman from left to right

Ghost Light

Fire in Oak Park and changes in Oak Brook and Jefferson Park

by Kerry Reid December 3, 2021December 3, 2021

Oak Park Festival Theatre was one of the first companies back to live performance this year after the COVID-19 shutdown with their production of The Tempest, staged in their longtime outdoor home at Austin Gardens. They weathered that storm, only to suffer a fire on November 23 at their offices in downtown Oak Park, located […]

Christian Gray as Edgar Allan Poe in foreground, two shadowy figures of women in the background

Theater Review

Poe finds a Pleasant Home in Oak Park

by Jack Helbig October 21, 2021October 21, 2021

Given the choice of presenting an evening of Edgar Allan Poe’s better known stories and poetry (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven”) and writing a play about the tormented alcoholic author and his obsessive pre- and post-mortem love for his first cousin/child bride Virginia, David Rice did both, weaving together dramatic readings of Poe’s […]

Arts & Culture

The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story finds the broken heart in the horror

by Jack Helbig October 30, 2019August 18, 2021

Oak Park Festival Theatre’s production promenades through the Cheney Mansion.

Arts & Culture

Shrew’d! attempts to make Taming of the Shrew palatable to a modern audience

by Jack Helbig July 19, 2018August 18, 2021

When in doubt, they sing it out.

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